ABSTRACT
The networks that carry musical instruments around the world are complex and multifaceted. They extend the power and agency of musical instruments. This chapter presents a case study to draw attention to the ways in which meaning is constructed around and through the guitar in a particular social and cultural context. It discusses some of the ways in which the guitar is made meaningful within a range of cultural and artistic domains normally seen to lie outside of musical performance. The guitar can be the basis of significant individual or group investment — that is, financially, especially in terms of vintage guitars and those owned by famous guitar players, but also in terms of creative investment. A guitar gains interest and provides collateral, in both symbolic and economic terms. Musical instruments are a part of this profound 're-ordering and re-contextualisation' of objects in what Pierre Bourdieu has called 'the field of cultural production'.
