Meeting at the laboratory: The actor-network theory and the Pilaga music scene

Abstract

The article reflects on the strengths and weaknesses that the so-called ‘actor-network theory’ shows when it is used with ethnomusicological purposes. To carry out such reflection I do a second reading of the information I have about the Pilaga – native people of northwestern Argentina – musical practices, through a number of concepts which are central to the theory and others which are alien to it. Among the latter we can find that of ‘music scene’. This concept, of wide use within the framework of popular music studies, allows us to select one of the so many networks which the Pilaga elaborate throughout their lives and in which an associative process of a religious-musical type can be appreciated.