Rappers em S o Paulo: conex es, disconex es e transgress es

An “organizational field” might be depicted as a social network of actors who are engaged in reciprocal monitoring. Our major goal is to probe the extent that social actors devote similar cognitive attention depending on the social categories they share. We interviewed 35 rappers in the city of S o Paulo, Brazil. Throughout the interviews, we showed to our respondents a list of 246 prominent rap groups in Brazil. For each group, we asked our interviewees who could play with that group at the same concert. As a result, we obtained a list of possible (cognitive) ties among rappers. Our analysis generated a consensus network, along with the analysis of similarities among interviewees vis-à-vis their answers. We collected the rap style that best represented each interviewee. In addition to the rap category, we collected control variables like age, time in the field, formal education, income, and repertoire. Formal education, income, and repertoire were significant, regardless of the respondent’s affiliation. Affiliation to Pentecostal churches and to the Underground rap style were positive and significant. Partial aggregated answers based on these categories were generated in order to further explore how respondents’ groups differ in their associational patterns.