Alternative music scene in Turkey: Negotiations with authoritarian approaches and mainstream music within the context of new media

This study attempts to construe how the labor of hope is generated in the alternative music scene within the context of new media under the authoritarian tendencies predicated upon a Neo-Ottomanist vision. In order to carry out this analysis, the concept of emotional labor coined by Hardt and Negri is instrumentalized and the emotional labor of alternative music actors that differentiates them from mainstream music practices is examined. The social tension between the Neo-Ottomanist vision resonating in public life and the scene actors is considered as the source of this emotional labor. Results of the study indicate that the emotional labor of alternative music actors is linked to a culture that refuses the Neo-Ottomanist vision and mainstream music practices. This refusal culture functions in both defusing the social identity crisis that the scene actors experience and in fulfilling the career aspirations of the secular urban middle class that are based on economic stability.