ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question of what is meant by 'the sociology of music education', and what, believe, ought to be meant. It considers what the group of people who attended Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education (SoME) may collectively mean, or have meant, by the term, according to the topics in the 80 or so abstracts that were submitted, in the English language from many countries across the world. The chapter delivers as a keynote address to the Sixth International SoME at the University of Limerick, Eire in 2009. Today, sociological investigations of music education are adding new dimensions to the already-existing, and much greater amount of music-education research which has traditionally taken a philosophical, and in the last hundred years, a psychological lens to the subject. As a major part of the above areas of enquiry, sociologists have considered the nature of social groups.
