Categorical ambiguity in cultural fields: The effects of genre fuzziness in popular music

Abstract Recent studies find that objects that do not clearly fit within the categories of their field are penalized by relevant audiences. We examine whether this ‘categorical imperative’ is dependent on the symbolic and institutional structure of fields by comparing the effects of genre ambiguity across two popular music subfields. The results show that genre ambiguity has a negative effect within the commercial subfield, but not in the artistic subfield. The effects of genre fuzziness on the reception of popular music are also contingent on the producing organization (major vs. independent) and the types of media outlets that review an album. We find that certain forms of ambiguity can enhance the critical reception of a popular music album. In general, our findings support DiMaggio’s theory regarding variation in the boundary strength of classification systems.