ABSTRACT
The chapter approaches metal, rap, and electro through the angle of social difference in Tunisia. It applies to Tunisia the framework of lifestyles, as it well describes some interactions between cultural narratives and the social structure in the country. While the Ben Ali regime had built its ideology on the denial of class difference, claiming that Tunisian was, for the most part, a middle-class country, and managing to create such a middle-class population, a folklore of narratives about social difference permeated the local ethos. Music scenes interacted with such a tension between the social structure and its imaginaries. They elaborated “ethnosociologies” that made sense of social difference in the country; at the same time, they offered their participants instruments to increase their cultural capital through the play with such social imaginaries, The chapter goes on by presenting the different ways in which metal, rap, and electro articulated social difference and exclusion.
