The power of music to influence mood, create scenes, routines and occasions is widely recognised and this is reflected in a strand of social theory from Plato to Adorno that portrays music as an influence on character, social structure and action. There have, however, been few attempts to specify this power empirically and to provide theoretically grounded accounts of music's structuring properties in everyday experience. Music in Everyday Life uses a series of ethnographic studies - an aerobics class, karaoke evenings, music therapy sessions and the use of background music in the retail sector - as well as in-depth interviews to show how music is a constitutive feature of human agency. Drawing together concepts from psychology, sociology and socio-linguistics it develops a theory of music's active role in the construction of personal and social life and highlights the aesthetic dimension of social order and organisation in late modern societies.

"...Original in conception and based on years of research, this book offers interpretive and cultural sociologist a novel point of entree into the study of embodied lived meaning." Daniel Thomas Cook, American Journal Of Sociology

"With Music in Everyday Life, DeNora has crafted an important cultural analysis of the consumption of music....Music in Everyday Life is a thoughtful, well-written book that contains important theoretical and substantive contributions. It should be well received by sociologists of popular music, sociological social psychologists, and ethnomusicologists alike." Contemporary Sociology