David Hesmondhalgh Books

To understand why music has such power over us, I begin by revisiting some of the deepest theoretical roots of affect, emotion, and aesthetics. The study of affect involves tracing the flows of feeling that move between people, ideas, and practices; it is not merely psychology but a way of thinking ...

From Sound Affects: Social Relations, Aesthetics and the Power of Music

The emotional power of music is both universal and profoundly individual. Here, I explore how musical listening shapes personal identity and how our emotional responses to music become ways of understanding who we are. We do not simply 'feel' music; we use it to imagine ourselves, to explore moods, ...

From Sound Affects: Social Relations, Aesthetics and the Power of Music

The cultural industries are not timeless entities; they emerged from specific conditions within capitalist modernization. In tracing their history, I begin with the birth of mass media—newspapers, radio, and cinema—which transformed the landscape of culture by detaching creative work from local, com...

From The Cultural Industries

To make sense of cultural industries, I draw upon two core intellectual traditions: the political economy of communication and cultural studies. The political economy perspective foregrounds power, ownership, and the economic organization of media production. It reminds us that cultural goods are co...

From The Cultural Industries