Salsa and its transnational moves : the commodification of latin dance in Montreal
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In Montreal, salsa dancing is both an expression of Latin identity and a cultural commodity. Many Montrealers of Latin descent adopt salsa dance as part of their cultural heritage only after arriving in Canada, connecting, through salsa, to a transnational Latin identity that crosses the Americas. This situation illustrates how cultural affiliations are not necessarily fixed, but can be acquired in response to changing circumstances. Since salsa is not indigenous to the city, residents of Montreal can only access it through cultural institutions and community media outlets. This commodification influences the manner in which salsa expresses Latin identity in the city. At the same time that salsa dancing proclaims Latin identity for certain individuals in the city, the practice thrives in a multicultural context: the Montreal salsa scene comprises diverse individuals who promote, teach, and dance salsa. This dissertation addresses points of division and cooperation among diverse cultures, ethnicities, races, and both sexes, as they are played out in aspects of salsa dancing in the city. The unfolding of these relationships is influenced by both the commodification of salsa dancing and its link to Latin culture. This analysis seeks to provide a theoretical account of the tension between salsa's expression of identity and its status as a commodified cultural practice. This perspective integrates various approaches to the study of dance and culture stemming from anthropology, sociology and cultural studies. Analyzing the Montreal salsa scene, I draw from in-depth interviews with individuals involved in the promotion of Latin dance and music, as well as participant observations in salsa dance classes, clubs and events. The methodology of this research combines ethnography with various areas of concern: the history of salsa, Latin immigration patterns in Montreal, theories of multiculturalism, transnationalism and diaspora, the Latin influence in ballroom dance, Europe
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".