The Re‐Branding of Salsa in London’s Dance Clubs: How an Ethnicised Form of Cultural Capital was Institutionalised.

This paper explores how participants in a popular dance scene renegotiate the aesthetics used to judge the acceptability of dances performed in those spaces. These issues are explored with reference to Bourdieu’s (1977) concepts of social fields and cultural capital and to ethnographic data collected in London’s Salsa clubs. The main argument is that Salsa dancing can function as a form of cultural capital that has with an ethnic dimension. This paper, based on participant observation in London’s clubs and the accounts of 31 of London’s Salsa club dancers, DJs and dance teachers, suggests that London’s Salsa dancers have competed with each other to establish a local de‐ethnicised interpretation of Salsa which refers to the forms of cultural capital to which they have access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]