The technological era of ‘sound’: a challenge for musicology and a new range of social practices

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Delalande
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Technological Revolution ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Analysis Society ◽  
The Aesthetic

AbstractThe ‘technological revolution’ that took place in music during the twentieth century is equivalent to the revolution that took place between the twelfth and fourteenth century, which transformed musical notation into applications of technology related to creation. This second revolution, as well as the first one, concerns not only musical form, but also the social organisation related to music. The aesthetic of sound is the key factor (in all the genres of contemporary music), which is a major challenge for musical analysis. Society is reorganising itself, favouring the appropriation and amateur practices within musical creation. Musical research institutions – and particularly the GRM – develop new forms of collaboration with their audience and contribute to the constitution of a ‘horizontal’ society, based on exchange, in frank opposition with the ‘vertical’ society, based on a reduced number of producers and a large amount of consumers.

Timber to Timbre

2021 ◽  
pp. 93-116
Author(s):  
José E. Martínez-Reyes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Commodity Chains ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Forest Sustainability ◽  
Global Commodity Chains ◽  
The Social ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
Electric Guitars ◽  
The Aesthetic

The Gibson Les Paul is one of the most iconic electric guitars ever made. Although there is a vibrant scholarly literature surrounding the Les Paul’s symbolic entanglements with issues of race, gender, and class, few have considered the ecopolitical entanglements involved in producing a key material dimension of that guitar’s signature sound: Honduran mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla). Fiji is one of the main harvesting sites of Honduran mahogany, and this chapter charts the social and environmental transformations that occurred following this wood’s introduction to Fiji in the 1880s, considering especially the increasing demand for mahogany as it has been driven by the popularization of the Les Paul since the mid-twentieth century—an issue that, to this day, continues to define forestry in the region. By examining the global commodity chains and infrastructures underlying Les Paul production, this chapter focuses on the role that Honduran mahogany, or the “White Man’s timber,” as it is called by some locals, has played in reconfiguring Fijian landowners’ definitions of what constitutes a forest, sustainability, and justice. In doing so, the chapter interrogates the power relations and ontological politics in which different actors, species, and things are enmeshed. Ultimately, the chapter shows that the aesthetic investments of musicians in particular timbres are rooted in broader legacies of timber-driven colonialism and plantation capitalism.

scholarly journals Farming practice, ecological temporality, and urban communities at a late Iron Age oppidum

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Lodwick
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
Annual Rhythms ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
The Social ◽  
Urban Settlements ◽  
Vital Component

Agriculture is a vital component of social practice, yet it is often overlooked as a key aspect in the social organisation of the communities resident at urban settlements. This paper uses the example of late Iron Age oppida, a type of settlement at the intersection of the Iron Age and Roman worlds where research has focussed upon elites rather than community. Drawing upon studies of human–plant relationships, particularly that of ecological temporalities, this paper shows that considering the capacity of plants to affect people through ‘planty agency’ renders annual rhythms of human–plant relationships perceptible. The utilisation of archaeobotanical data in this novel way provides new insights into social practices and the formation of communities at late Iron Age oppida.

scholarly journals Hungarian Ethnomusicologist Oszkár Dincsér (1911–1977) as a Pioneer of Musical Anthropology

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 79-97
Author(s):  
Dániel Lipták
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Anthropology Of Music

There are marked differences between Hungarian and American ethnomusicology in incentives, aims, interests, and methods. Hungarian research was based in the early twentieth century on study of musical form, while the Americans approached music in terms of social context and functions. However, Hungarians from the mid-1930s onward moved toward an increasing interest in the social aspects of folk music. Oszkár Dincsér, a lesser known researcher of Kodály's school, exemplifies this trend in his 1943 study of chordophone instruments in the Csík (in Romanian: Ciuc) County region of Transylvania Két csíki hangszer. Mozsika és gardon (Two instruments from Csík. Fiddle and gardon). A comparison with Alan P. Merriam's fundamental work The Anthropology of Music (1964) reveals that Dincsér's study includes almost every topic and approach set out by Merriam twenty years later. Although Dincsér's scholarly career ended with his emigration in 1944, he remains an important forerunner of musical anthropology.

A Field Pioneered by Amateurs: The Collecting and Display of Islamic Art in Early Twentieth-Century Boston

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedict Cuddon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Islamic Art ◽  
Aesthetic Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
The Aesthetic

This article examines the formation and display of collections of Islamic art in Boston-area museums over the first half of the twentieth century. It focuses on the holdings of three main institutions: the Museum of Fine Arts, the Fogg Art Museum, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It explores some of the key personalities involved in the formation of collections, such as Denman Waldo Ross, Hervey Wetzel, Joseph McMullan, and Stuart Cary Welch. It also looks at early curators of the collections, in this era a largely amateur pursuit. Through these considerations it traces changing approaches to the study of Islamic art and discusses the various local and international forces (including the Aesthetic Movement, emerging nationalist discourses and ethno-racialist interpretations of art, and the growing American hegemony in the Middle East) that shaped the social and political context in which Islamic art was received and interpreted in this period.

scholarly journals Putting Stress in Historical Context: Why It Is Important That Being Stressed Out Was Not a Way to Be a Person 2,000 Years Ago

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Hutmacher
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Stress Response ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Scientific Concept ◽  
Psychological Responses ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
The Social ◽  
As Stress ◽  
Universal Mechanism

It was not until the middle of the twentieth century that scientists and Western societies began to label the combination of physiological and psychological responses that people display when things are getting too much and out of balance as “stress.” However, stress is commonly understood as a universal mechanism that exists across times and cultures. In a certain sense, this universality claim is correct: the physiological and endocrinological mechanisms underlying the stress response are not a modern invention of our body. In another sense, the universality claim is potentially problematic: stress has become, but has not always been, a way to be a person. That is, the social practices, in which the physiological and endocrinological stress mechanisms are embedded, are not the same across times and cultures. Crucially, these social practices are not a negligible by-product, but form an essential part of the way stress is commonly understood and experienced. Against this background, one may still decide to use the word “stress” when speaking about other times and cultures. Nevertheless, one should at least be cautious when doing so for three reasons. First, using the word “stress” when referring to societies different from our own may create the impression of a similarity between then and now, which does not actually exist. Second, it may blind us to the nature of the differences between times and cultures. Third, it naturalizes a contemporary scientific concept, which is more adequately viewed as the result of complex social, historical, and societal processes. Putting the stress concept in historical context and acknowledging that its use emerged in a specific historical environment enables us to take a step back and to think about the ways that stress shapes our lives. In other words, viewing stress as a culture-bound concept can give us the possibility to reflect upon our modern societies, in which the concept emerged.

Addressing the Social Determinants of Health

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saty Satya-Murti ◽  
Jennifer Gutierrez
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Social Determinants Of Health ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Determinants Of Health ◽  
Medical Attention ◽  
Community Center ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social

The Los Angeles Plaza Community Center (PCC), an early twentieth-century Los Angeles community center and clinic, published El Mexicano, a quarterly newsletter, from 1913 to 1925. The newsletter’s reports reveal how the PCC combined walk-in medical visits with broader efforts to address the overall wellness of its attendees. Available records, some with occasional clinical details, reveal the general spectrum of illnesses treated over a twelve-year span. Placed in today’s context, the medical care given at this center was simple and minimal. The social support it provided, however, was multifaceted. The center’s caring extended beyond providing medical attention to helping with education, nutrition, employment, transportation, and moral support. Thus, the social determinants of health (SDH), a prominent concern of present-day public health, was a concept already realized and practiced by these early twentieth-century Los Angeles Plaza community leaders. Such practices, although not yet nominally identified as SDH, had their beginnings in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century social activism movement aiming to mitigate the social ills and inequities of emerging industrial nations. The PCC was one of the pioneers in this effort. Its concerns and successes in this area were sophisticated enough to be comparable to our current intentions and aspirations.

D?r al-?arb as the Motherland? The Muslim Tatars of (the Grand Duchy of) Lithuania and Social Contract

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Egdūnas Račius
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Social ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Grand Duchy

Muslim presence in Lithuania, though already addressed from many angles, has not hitherto been approached from either the perspective of the social contract theories or of the compliance with Muslim jurisprudence. The author argues that through choice of non-Muslim Grand Duchy of Lithuania as their adopted Motherland, Muslim Tatars effectively entered into a unique (yet, from the point of Hanafi fiqh, arguably Islamically valid) social contract with the non-Muslim state and society. The article follows the development of this social contract since its inception in the fourteenth century all the way into the nation-state of Lithuania that emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century and continues until the present. The epitome of the social contract under investigation is the official granting in 1995 to Muslim Tatars of a status of one of the nine traditional faiths in Lithuania with all the ensuing political, legal and social consequences for both the Muslim minority and the state.

The Samarin Family and the Parish Question in the Russian Empire. 1860s–1910s

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 235-246
Author(s):  
Alexey L. Beglov
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church Life ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Church ◽  
Do So

The article examines the contribution of the representatives of the Samarin family to the development of the Parish issue in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The issue of expanding the rights of the laity in the sphere of parish self-government was one of the most debated problems of Church life in that period. The public discussion was initiated by D.F. Samarin (1827-1901). He formulated the “social concept” of the parish and parish reform, based on Slavophile views on society and the Church. In the beginning of the twentieth century his eldest son F.D. Samarin who was a member of the Special Council on the development the Orthodox parish project in 1907, and as such developed the Slavophile concept of the parish. In 1915, A.D. Samarin, who took up the position of the Chief Procurator of the Most Holy Synod, tried to make his contribution to the cause of the parish reforms, but he failed to do so due to his resignation.

Narrative as active inference

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nabil Bouizegarene ◽  
maxwell ramstead ◽  
Axel Constant ◽  
Karl Friston ◽  
Laurence Kirmayer
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Human Adaptation ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Future Projection ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
The Social ◽  
Parsimonious Model ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Theory Research

The ubiquity and importance of narratives in human adaptation has been recognized by many scholars. Research has identified several functions of narratives that are conducive to individuals’ well-being and adaptation as well as to coordinated social practices and enculturation. In this paper, we characterize the social and cognitive functions of narratives in terms of the framework of active inference. Active inference depicts the fundamental tendency of living organisms to adapt by creating, updating, and maintaining inferences about their environment. We review the literature on the functions of narratives in identity, event segmentation, episodic memory, future projection, storytelling practices, and enculturation. We then re-cast these functions of narratives in terms of active inference, outlining a parsimonious model that can guide future developments in narrative theory, research, and clinical applications.

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