RIP Richard “Pete” Peterson

In 2008, I attended an academic conference called “Exploring New Media Worlds,” at which I gave a paper on mp3 bloggers, record labels, affective labor, and so forth.  My panel were all discussing similar ways in which music was working itself out online, and the audience had a bunch of interesting questions.  After the session broke up, I was approached by an older gentleman who couldn’t have been taller than 5′4″, and who’d asked for a clarification during the Q&A.  These sorts of conferences are always “polite” to a degree, but for whatever reason, this man seemed honestly interested in what I had to say, enough to flag me down as I packed up.  He introduced himself as “Pete,” gave me his card, and asked me to send him my paper, and then split.  This is not a strange occurrence at a conference, and I put the card in my shirt pocket, then to meet up with the guy who was waiting for me.  “Whoa, dude,” that guy immediately said.  “Pete Peterson, huh?  Heavy hitter.  Gave you his card!”  As we were walking out the front of the building, I took the card out of my pocket and looked it over.  It took me a second to realize who Peterson was.  Then it hit me.  Whoa, indeed.  He wants to read my paper?!

Pete had left the building just before us, and was already walking across the Texas A&M quad, backpack safely strapped on.  He was still in eyeshot, and I was remembering reading his article a semester or two prior, when I saw him pass a family with a small child, barely old enough to walk.  The child was holding a balloon.  Pete stopped, knelt down, and from what I could tell, had a little chat with her.

I usually don’t get all worked up over RIPs and all, but Pete is an exception.  Richard Peterson’s academic CV is enough to warrant bowed heads from anyone who seeks to write about music, or the ways in which genre and authenticity are molded by larger social, technological, legal, and organizational forces.   Peterson’s pragmatic approach paralleled that of his predecessor Howard Becker, whose “art worlds” concept has pretty well worked its way into the pop-critical lexicon.  Peterson’s not been as widely dispersed (though my own “Social History of the mp3″ was in its own way a hopeful first shot), and that’s our loss.  Peterson’s earliest mark was made with his “production of culture” perspective (pdf), which offered researchers in any discipline an alternative approach toward studying culture to the Marx-derived Cultural Studies stuff that was clogging academic pipes.  If Becker’s art worlds are the Velvet Underground, we might consider Peterson’s production of culture the Joy Division of academic studies of culture afterwards–cited by so many, so influential over a subsequent generation.  Peterson was more or less the first researcher to advocate studying the minutae of the mundane means of production as a way to understand how cultural forms are shaped, as well as offer a distinct method for doing so.  A bit later, the ideas would lead to a modest little piece called “Why 1955? Explaining the Advent of Rock Music” (pdf), the title of which should speak for itself, and his magnum opus: “Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity.”  Anyone interested in writing about music (especially in a current climate of renewed arguments about that last word in the title) should read it.

About a week later, I emailed Pete, thanked him for his comments, and sent him my paper.  His response was quick, concise, and with the perfect combination of casual and professional:

“Eric, thanks much for sending your paper.  I look forward to getting into it.  (Incidentally, though you have every reason to be proud of it, the ms you sent has no attribution!).  Since you have an interest in music I have taken the liberty of sending a copy of the paper from which my presentation was given.  It  has been conditionally accepted by the  ASR – they just want us to like (sic) the paper to larger issues in the discipline.

cheers,  pete”

Yes, I sent Richard Peterson a copy of a paper without my name on it.  A sixth-grade mistake.  And then he sent me a draft of what would eventually become, from what I can tell, the last major work he was involved: “Classification as Culture: Types and Trajectories of Music Genres,” co-authored with Jennifer Lena (pdf).  While it’s of a piece with Peterson’s other scholarship, I’ll admit that my own current research into genre has moved a bit aside from this formulation.  When I first downloaded it from his email, I didn’t care at all–it wasn’t as much reference material at that point as it was a kind gesture, from a kind man.

Filed under: academia  Richard Peterson