This collection provides readers with a diverse and contemporary overview of research in the field. Drawing upon scholarly writing from a range of disciplines and approaches, it provides case studies from a wide range of 'non Western' musical contexts. In so doing the volume attends to the central themes that have emerged in this area of popular music studies; cultural politics, identity and the role of technology. This collection does not seek to establish a new theoretical paradigm, but being primarily aimed at researchers and students, offers as comprehensive a view of the research that has been carried out over the last few decades as possible, given the global scope of the subject. Inevitably, the experience of globalisation itself runs through many of the contributions, not only because musicians find themselves part of an immense flow of international culture, technology and finance, but also because Western scholarship can also be considered an aspect of such a flow. The articles selected for the volume take different disciplinary approaches; many are close ethnographic descriptions of musical practices whilst others take a more historical view of a musical 'scene' or even a single musician. Some essays consider the effects of emerging technologies upon the production, dissemination and consumption of music, whilst the political context is central to other authors. The collection as a whole serves as a resource for those who wish to be better acquainted with the diversity of research that has been carried out into non-western pop, whilst also highlighting the broader themes that have, so far, shaped academic approaches to the subject.

Introduction; Introduction; 1: Democratic Aristocracy and Aristocratic Democracy; 2: The Ethical Embellishment of Social Struggles; One: Leadership in Democratic Organizations; 1: A. Technical and Administrative Causes of Leadership: Introductory-The Need for Organization; 2: A. Technical and Administrative Causes of Leadership: Mechanical and Technical Impossibility of Direct Government by the Masses; 3: A. Technical and Administrative Causes of Leadership: The Modern Democratic Party as a Fighting Party, Dominated by Militarist Ideas and Methods; 1: B. Psychological Causes of Leadership: The Establishment of a Customary Right to the Office of Delegate; 2: B. Psychological Causes of Leadership: The Need for Leadership Felt by the Mass; 3: B. Psychological Causes of Leadership: The Political Gratitude of the Masses; 4: B. Psychological Causes of Leadership: The Cult of Veneration Among the Masses; 5: B. Psychological Causes of Leadership: Acessory Qualities Requisite to Leadership; 6: B. Psychological Causes of Leadership: Accessory Peculiarities of the Masses; 1: C. Intellectual Factors: Superiority of the Professional Leaders in Respect to Culture, and Their Indispensa-bility; the Formal and Real Incompetence of the Mass; Two: Autocratic Tendencies of Leaders; 1: The Stability of Leadership; 2: The Financial Power of the Leaders and of the Party; 3: The Leaders and the Press; 4: The Position of the Leaders in Relation to the Masses in Actual Practice; 5: The Struggle Between the Leaders and the Masses; 6: The Struggle Among the Leaders Themselves; 7: Bureaucracy. Centralizing and Decentralizing Tendencies; Three: The Exercise of Power and Its Psychological Reaction upon the Leaders; 1: Psychological Metamorphosis of the Leaders; 2: Bonapartist Ideology; 3: Identification of the Party with the Leader ("Le Parti c'est Moi"); Four: Social Analysis of Leadership; 1: Introductory. The Class Struggle and Its Disintegrating Influence upon the Bourgeoisie; 2: Analysis of the Bourgeois Elements in the Socialist Leadership; 3: Social Changes Resulting from Organization; 4: The Need for the Differentiation of the Working Class; 5: Labor Leaders of Proletarian Origin; 6: Intellectuals, and the Need for Them in the Working-Class Parties; Five: Attempts to Restrict the Influence of the Leaders; 1: The Referendum; 2: The Postulate of Renunciation; 3: Syndicalism as Prophylactic; 4: Anarchism as Prophylactic; Six: Synthesis: The Oligarchical Tendencies of Organization; 1: The Conservative Basis of Organization; 2: Democracy and the Iron Law of Oligarchy; 3: Party-Life in War-Time; 4: Final Considerations