Seite - (000154) - in Knowledge and Networks

147 can envisage a social system in which tiers of players relate to each other. Dominant musicians (with a high centrality and a long period in the field) recruit musicians from a surrounding tier (mid-periphery players, with long periods in the field). The latter, in turn, recruit players, but having fewer opportunities than dominant players, they are only able to secure shorter-duration performance gigs for their recruits. As a result, some of these more peripheral sidemen will have to leave the field to earn an adequate income from other sources. By contrast, when a field migrates from a normative to a competitive configura- tion, new elites challenge previous ones in order to establish new paradigms. From this perspective, artists who start their trajectory as avant-garde challengers to the established artistic idiom strive for recognition among peers and critics. If this rec- ognition is granted, these individuals are likely to attain a dominant position in the field (Bourdieu, 1993, 1996). What effect does this type of disruption have on the fate of individual trajectories? Taking trajectory as a key analytical concept again, how do individuals with different trajectories relate to each other? If all that is being observed is a turning point, whereby one paradigm is displaced by another (i.e., the field remains normative and only a change of stylistic paradigm occurs), then it could be suggested that an established elite is replaced by a new one. Concretely speaking, the new elite would have strong presence at the field’s core and also demonstrate a long period in the field, like the previous elite. Nonetheless, distinct apex moments may be found from one generation to the next. However, when a field migrates from a normative to a competitive configuration, dominant actors are less able to maintain hegemony, and new elites displace exist- ing ones over shorter temporal cycles. As a consequence, musicians with a history of presence at the field’s core may also present shorter permanence in the dominant position. But what happens to the “fallen” elite? Do they become obsolete, as though musicians were similar to technologically outdated pieces of machinery? Are they able to reconnect with other musicians outside of the new elite? Displaced musi- cians might be compelled to play with peripheral musicians. If so, it should be pos- sible to observe a higher level of social intercourse between musicians from different trajectories in competitive fields. This discussion leads me to ask how competitive fields impact the length of musicians’ occupation of dominant positions. The main goal of this preliminary discussion is to identify the initial challenges to understanding the evolution of a field vis-à-vis its embedded trajectories, while evoking a set of basic building blocks in order to construct its narrative. Data Collection Source of Relational Data Musicians establish various types of relationships, from friendships to romantic affairs, in contexts ranging from joint session recordings to non-recorded jam sessions. Innovations can, of course, emerge as a result of all of these interactions. Nonetheless, 8 Trajectory Types Across Network Positions: Jazz Evolution from 1930 to 1969