Since the beginning of the 2010s, the notion of cultural fields as ecosystems has been increasingly gaining popularity – especially in terms of cultural policy and creative industries analyses (Holden 2015), but as well within research on urban (live) music cultures (Behr et al. 2016; v.d. Hoeven et al. 2020). While cultural ecosystems so far have primarily been understood as an integrative perspective for identifying beneficial factors and to emphasize aspects of social and cultural value creation, at the level of a more detailed theoretical understanding, the concept still appears little elaborated and ‘black boxed’.
In order to initiate a more theory-based discourse, this paper critically discusses opportunities and possible ways of how cultural ecosystem might be a valuable approach to further conceptualize alternative cultural production and in which way the historical use of ecological language in social science and humanities might be helpful for this. Against the backdrop of growing complexity and multi-layered facets and spaces within the spheres of cultural production and distribution, the conceptual base of ‘cultural ecosystem’ will be further traced by also taking a closer look at its current weaknesses and blind spots.
As an exemplifying case of applying ‘ecosystem’ and alternative cultural production, the relationship of ‘music scene’ and ‘cultural ecosystem’ will be explored by questioning different aspects of compability and combinability. In which way the scene perspective might be a valuable approach to further conceptualize music ecosystems? Can scenes be considered as more or less self-reliant entities or ‘biotopes’ within a greater ‘music ecosystem’?