Maria Agustina Checa

This dissertation is a multi-sited ethnographic study of current cassette production and circulation in Argentina. It analyzes the work of independent labels that record music available online onto cassette tapes, incorporating a variety of music styles. This research project examines practices of production, circulation, and exchange, and the alternative economies performed around cassettes with particular attention to the materialities constituting these processes. Through cassettes, it conceptualizes and traces "relational values," a notion to understand objects with different kinds of social agencies valued for their abilities to generate connections. This work discloses how cassettes, and the practices of valuation around them, constitute social worlds, add significance to them, and generate social relations around music.