ABSTRACT
Metal studies presents the fundamental question to sociology: how is metal studies possible, how is metal studies constituted? Metal studies is not organized according to some paradigm or a particular method or, like economics, the abstraction of an activity. Metal studies is multidisciplinary, composed of disparate approaches based in different disciplines, and includes interdisciplinarity and attempts at transdisciplinarity. The Internet made metal irreversibly global by the turn of the 21st century. The maturity of metal studies as an academic field is evinced by the appearance of a meta-discourse commenting on the field itself. Metal studies is an exemplar of the postmodern intellectual phenomena of which these theorists of decentered structures point to.
