scholarly journals The Matter of Timbre

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Villegas Vélez
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
General Category ◽  
Embodied Perception ◽  
Secondary Parameter ◽  
With Memory

This chapter offers a critique of traditional Western accounts of timbre to propose that, instead of a secondary parameter subordinated to pitch and rhythm, timbre is a general category—a condition of possibility for listening—that depends on embodied perception and makes difference audible. The chapter draws from phenomenology as well as psychoacoustic and ethnographic research, focusing on case studies ranging from Fatima Al Qadiri to Julius Eastman, alongside ethnographic analyses of Barundi Whispered Inanga, sonic encounters in nineteenth-century Colombia, and readings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Eduard Hanslick, and Guido Adler, to provide a broader account of timbre that encompasses the imbrication of acoustic components with memory, affect, and language. In this respect, timbre emerges as an important critical and musicological category that helps us address issues of embodied difference and culturally dependent forms of listening, while reassessing the prominence of Eurocentric conceptions of musical values.

Embodying the Field

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Hoel
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
South African ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Research Relationships ◽  
Embodied Practice

This article focuses on the various ways in which research relationships evolve and are negotiated by paying particular attention to the embodied nature of ethnographic research. By drawing on my own research experience of interviewing South African Muslim women about sexual dynamics, I critically engage debates concerning power dynamics in research relationships as well as researcher positionality. I argue that researchers should pay increasing attention to the multiple ways in which doing research always is an embodied practice. I present three case studies that highlight the complex ways in which research encounters speak to notions of intimacy, vulnerability and affect. In this way I argue that research encounters forge primary human relationalities that are marked by moments of convergence, conflict and despondency.

Contemporary Shamanisms in Norway

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trude Fonneland
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Local Manifestation

This book examines Sámi shamanism in Norway as a uniquely distinctive local manifestation of a global new religious phenomenon. It takes the diversity and hybridity within shamanic practices seriously through case studies from a Norwegian setting and highlights the ethnic dimension of these currents, through a particular focus on Sámi versions of shamanism. The book’s thesis is that the construction of a Sámi shamanistic movement makes sense from the perspective of the broader ethno-political search for a Sámi identity, with respect to connections to indigenous peoples worldwide and trans-historically. It also makes sense in economic and marketing terms. Based on more than ten years of ethnographic research, the book paints a picture of contemporary shamanism in Norway in its cultural context, relating it both to the local mainstream cultures in which it is situated and to global networks. By this, the book provides the basis for a study revealing the development of inventiveness, nuances, and polyphony that occur when a global religion of shamanism is merged in a Norwegian setting, colored by its own political and cultural circumstances.

Veiling Esther, Unveiling Her Story

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam J. Silverstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Religious Background ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Selection Of

This book examines the ways in which the biblical book of Esther was read, understood, and used in Muslim lands, from ancient to modern times. It zeroes-in on a selection of case studies, covering works from various periods and regions of the Muslim world, including the Qur’an, premodern historical chronicles and literary works, the writings of a nineteenth-century Shia feminist, a twentieth-century Iranian dictionary, and others. These case studies demonstrate that Muslim sources contain valuable materials on Esther, which shed light both on the Esther story itself and on the Muslim peoples and cultures that received it. The book argues that Muslim sources preserve important, pre-Islamic materials on Esther that have not survived elsewhere, some of which offer answers to ancient questions about Esther, such as the meaning of Haman’s epithet in the Greek versions of the story, the reason why Mordecai refused to prostrate himself before Haman, and the literary context of the “plot of the eunuchs” to kill the Persian king. Furthermore, throughout the book we will see how each author’s cultural and religious background influenced his or her understanding and retelling of the Esther story: In particular, it will be shown that Persian Muslims (and Jews) were often forced to reconcile or choose between the conflicting historical narratives provided by their religious and cultural heritages respectively.

Bandstands and Modernity: Constructing Spanish Cities Musically

2021 ◽  
pp. 009614422097612
Author(s):  
Gloria Araceli Rodriguez-Lorenzo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Urban Modernity ◽  
Sonic Environment

This article analyses the interplay between sound and urban spaces in Spain, from the end of nineteenth century until 1936. Free outdoor concerts performed by bands in public urban spaces offered a new aural experience audience from across an increasing range of very diverse social groups, almost ritualizing both the practice of listening to music and the spaces in which that music was heard—all at a time when those very spaces were changing, in a way which mirrored the wider reconfiguration and modernization of Spanish cities. Case studies focusing on political, social, and cultural changes in urban spaces are analyzed, in order to understand how cities developed new spaces for social interaction, the modern sonic environment, and the ways in which those cities have appropriated culture for their citizens, as a symbol of urban modernity.

Households and ‘hidden’ kin in early-nineteenth-century England: four case studies in suburban Exeter, 1821–1861

1995 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Di Cooper ◽  
Moira Donald
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Xixe Siecle ◽  
Xixe Siècle

Cet article étudie la parenté entre les chefs de ménage et leurs serviteurs domestiques, dans la banlieue d'Exeter. On se concentre particulièrement sur les cas où le recensement ancien n'enregistre pas de lien familial et où le nom de famille du chef de menage est different de celui de son employé, homme ou femme. On a cependant réussi à prouver une parenté de sang entre maître et domestique. La méthode adoptée pour ce travail est inhabituelle, d'autant plus qu'on a tracé aussi bien les lignées féminines que masculines, ce qui a mené à des conclusions intéressantes et nouvelles en ce qui concerne d'une part les proportions de membres de la famille qui résident dans les ménages au début du XIXe siècle et d'autre part la nature du service domestique durant cette période.

“Not an Environmentalist”: Strategic Centrism, Cultural Stereotypes, and Disidentification

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 755-772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Cherry
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Environmental Activism ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Cultural Stereotypes ◽  
Citizen Scientist ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Depth Interviews

Birding has long been associated with environmental activism, from its origins as a scientific hobby in the nineteenth century to today’s citizen scientist birders. My research with birders shows that despite their political activism, personal actions, and ecological beliefs, many disidentify as activists or environmentalists. Using data from 30 in-depth interviews and three years of ethnographic research with birders, I argue their disidentification comes from two interrelated sources. First, these birders followed the Audubon Society’s approach of strategic centrism, espousing a centrist identity and strategy of conservation. Second, these birders disidentified with the identity of “environmental activist” because of negative cultural stereotypes about environmental activists, which was bolstered by the Audubon Society’s strategic centrism. These mutually reinforcing phenomena create a situation that doubly discourages these birders from identifying as environmental activists. This paper contributes to sociological understandings of the interplay between culture, identity, and environmental activism.

The Old Cuba Trade: Highlights and Case Studies of Cuban-American Interdependence during the Nineteenth Century

1964 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 456-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland T. Ely
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Cuban American ◽  
Sugar Trade ◽  
Cuban Sugar

The profitability and the mechanisms of the old Cuban sugar trade are illustrated through Professor Ely's study of the leading businessmen involved.

scholarly journals The Secret of the Celts Revisited

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 130-155
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Borsje
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Irish Literature ◽  
Traditional Society ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Old Irish ◽  
Celtic Revival ◽  
Celtic Languages ◽  
Celtic Culture ◽  
Way Of Thinking

What makes the Celts so popular today? Anton van Hamel and Joep Leerssen published on the popularity of imagery connected with pre-Christian Celts, Van Hamel seeing the holistic worldview and Leerssen mysteriousness as appealing characteristics. They explain waves of ‘Celtic revival’ that washed over Europe as reaction and romanticising movements that search for alternatives from contemporaneous dominant culture. Each period has produced its modernized versions of the Celtic past. Besides periodical heightened interest in things Celtic, Van Hamel saw a permanent basis of attraction in Celtic texts, which accommodate ‘primitive’ and romantic mentalities. This article also analyses Celtic Christianity (through The Celtic Way by Ian Bradley and The Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther de Waal) on the use of Celtic texts and imagery of Celtic culture. Two case studies are done (on the use of the Old-Irish Deer’s Cry and the description of a nineteenth-century Scottish ritual). Both the current search for ‘spirituality’ and the last wave of ‘Celtic revival’ seem to have sprung from a reaction movement that criticizes dominant religion/culture and seek inspiration and precursors in an idealized past. The roots of this romantic search for a lost paradise are, however, also present in medieval Irish literature itself. Elements such as aesthetics, imaginative worlds and the posited lost beauty of pre-industrial nature and traditional society are keys in explaining the bridges among the gap between ‘us’ and the Celts. The realization that Celtic languages are endangered or dead heightens the feeling of loss because they are the primary gates towards this lost way of (thinking about) life.

scholarly journals Commercial Foot Soldiers of the Empire: Foreign Merchant Politics in Tampico, Mexico, 1861-1866

1990 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-314
Author(s):  
John D. French
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Port Cities ◽  
Detailed Case ◽  
Central Arena ◽  
Foreign Merchants

During the period from Mexican independence in 1821 to the end of the French intervention in 1867, Mexico's primary tie to the outside world was based on trade. The foreign merchants, who monopolized this activity, played a crucial role in the economic, diplomatic, and political life of Mexico. The current literature on these nineteenth century merchants includes studies of foreign groups, such as the French, detailed case studies of individual entrepreneurs, firms and merchant families, and one work that provides a unique state-centered perspective on the Mexican/merchant nexus. None, however, have tried to conceptualize the role of foreign merchants as a whole, across national lines and individual rivalries, in the port cities that were the central arena of contact and conflict with the outside world.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document