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.

Popular Music in India: 1901–86

Popular Music ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Manuel
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
South Asians ◽  
Commercial Music ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Social Transitions ◽  
The Social

The dramatic development of popular music in India illustrates some of the complex and varied ways that South Asians have used art and entertainment as a means of adapting and relating to the social transitions accompanying modernisation. Indian popular music, nevertheless, has been all but ignored in scholarly literature, whether musicological or sociological; this article endeavours to provide a basis for future inquiries by providing a descriptive outline of the development of modern Indian commercial music in the twentieth century.

Global Commodity Chains and Global Value Chains

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joonkoo Lee
Keyword(s):  
Global Economy ◽  
Global Value Chains ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Commodity Chain ◽  
Commodity Chains ◽  
Specific Product ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Global Commodity Chains ◽  
The Social ◽  
Organizational Linkages

A commodity chain refers to “a network of labor and production processes whose end result is a finished commodity.” The attention given to this concept has quickly translated into an expanding body of global chains literature. Research into global commodity chains (GCC), and later global value chains (GVC), is an endeavor to explain the social and organizational structure of the global economy and its dynamics by examining the commodity chains of a specific product of service. The GCC approach first emerged in the mid-1980s from world-system research and was reformulated in the early 1990s by development scholars. The development-oriented GCC approach turned the focus of GCC analysis to actor-centered processes in the global economy. One of the initial criticisms facing the GCC approach was its exclusive focus on internal conditions and organizational linkages, lacking systemic attention to the effect of domestic institutions and internal capacity on economic development. Other critics pointed to the narrow scope of GCC research. With the huge expansion in global chains literature in the past decade—not only in volume but also in depth and scope—efforts have been made to elaborate the global chains framework and to render it industry neutral, as partly reflected in the adoption of the term “global value chains.” Three key research themes surround these recent evolutions of global chains literature: GVC governance, “upgrading,” and the social construction of global value chains. Existing literature, however, still has theoretical and methodological gaps to redress.

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.

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 Inter-cultural communications and power relations in international tourism commodity chains

2006 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolai Scherle ◽  
Tim Coles
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
International Tourism ◽  
Commodity Chains ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Tourism Product ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Different Cultures

The internationalisation of tourism has resulted in the mediation of spatially-stretched commodity chains which often transcend international frontiers and which in businesses from different cultures come into contact with one other. This paper examines the social relations in bilateral business co-operations between Moroccan and German enterprises. As a central concept in the social sciences, there are multiple contested theorizations of power and in this paper we adopt a Lukesian starting point. A more precise naming and locating of power is vital to enhancing our understanding of the way in which the tourism product is commodified.

scholarly journals Postmodern culture as a social logic of neoliberal capitalism

Kultura ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 39-54
Author(s):  
Milan Urošević
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Sphere ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Social Logic

The aim of this paper is to explore the relation between changes in the economic sphere and the emergence of postmodern culture during the twentieth century. After examining Jameson's and Harvey's (neo)Marxist attempts at explaining the emergence of postmodern culture, the paper will focus on Foucault's contribution to the analysis of neoliberalism. Using Foucault's analysis of neoliberalism as a "governmental regime" that creates systems of power relations to govern subjects, the paper further explores the postmodern culture as a cultural dimension of this regime. In conclusion, postmodern culture can be viewed as a cultural dimension of neoliberalism because it contributes to the creation of subjects that correspond to the needs of the regime. Therefore, postmodern culture will be called "the social logic of neoliberalism".

Disciplining Polenta: A Parody on the Politics of Saving Food

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Zachary Nowak ◽  
Bradley M. Jones ◽  
Elisa Ascione
Keyword(s):  
Food Products ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Traditional Food ◽  
Traditional Foods ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Identity Creation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social

This article begins with a parody, a fictitious set of regulations for the production of “traditional” Italian polenta. Through analysis of primary and secondary historical sources we then discuss the various meanings of which polenta has been the bearer through time and space in order to emphasize the mutability of the modes of preparation, ingredients, and the social value of traditional food products. Finally, we situate polenta within its broader cultural, political, and economic contexts, underlining the uses and abuses of rendering foods as traditional—a process always incomplete, often contested, never organic. In stirring up the past and present of polenta and placing it within both the projects of Italian identity creation and the broader scholarly literature on culinary tradition and taste, we emphasize that for so-called traditional foods to be saved, they must be continually reinvented.

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.

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