Abstract The question of music's social effects has a venerable tradition within social theory but has rarely been explored through empirical and ethnographic work. Drawing on 52 depth interviews with women between the ages of 18 and 78 in small towns and urban metropolitan areas in the USA and UK, this study shows how music ‘gets into’ or provides a medium for forms of social agency. Focus is directed to respondents' mundane music consumption, in particular to musical reflexive practices they employ to constitute and reconstitute themselves as specific types of agents. Respondents use music as a resource for the conduct of emotional ‘work’, and for heightening or changing energy levels. They also turn to music as a device for on-going identity work and for spinning a biographical thread of self-remembrance. Music provides respondents with a scaffolding for self-constitution. Focus on specific uses of music and individuals' experiences of musical culture illuminates some of the mechanisms through which music provides organizing materials of subjectivity.
Despite the philosophical tradition from Plato onward, sociologists have not yet explored in full music's role as an active ingredient in social formation. This project has been left to environmental psychologists and market researchers who are more interested in ‘what’ music can cause than in exploring its mechanisms of operation and the implications of these mechanisms for the constitution of social agency. This paper draws upon ethnographic research in and around High Street retail outlets to...
About the book: This innovative book sets out to question what we understand by the term `new social movements'. By examining a range of issues associated with identity politics and alternative lifestyles, the author challenges those who treat new social movements as instances of wider social change while often ignoring their more `local' and `dispersed' importance. This book questions what it means to adopt an identity that is organised around issues of expressivism - and offers a series of non...
This paper draws on empirical research into the recruitment, training, and management of female flight attendants, working primarily in the transatlantic business travel sector of the contemporary airline industry. We argue that whilst the `skills' which flight attendants are required to deploy are denied, being treated as somehow inherent abilities and thus neither trained nor remunerated, they are nevertheless managed in a directive way. This management involves, in particular, a focus on a fl...
This text provides a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the social contexts in which people create, perform, perceive, understand and react to music. It represents the first attempt to define the field since Farnsworth's book of the same title published in 1969, including the newer areas of medicine, marketing, and education in which the social psychology of music has direct applications in the real world. After an opening review chapter, the remaining 14 chapters are divided into six secti...
#1Dan P. McAdams(NU: Northwestern University)H-Index: 86
As the scientific study of the individual person, personality psychology historically has struggled to provide the kind of broad conceptual framework capable of orienting theory and research around human individuality in cultural context. This article presents a new integrative framework for studying persons that brings together recent advances in the field of personality with the emerging social science emphasis on the narrative study of lives, while situating personality inquiry within the cul...
The author provides quantitative evidence of a cultural phenomenon. Using data on musical dislikes from the 1993 General Social Survey, He links literatures on taste, racism, and democratic liberalism by showing that people use cultural taste to reinforce symbolic boundaries between themselves and categories of people they dislike. Contrary to Bourdieu's (1984) prediction, musical exclusiveness decreases with education. Also, political tolerance is associated with musical tolerance, even control...
Introspection is the practice of looking inward and examining our ideas, thoughts, and feelings. It involves considering past experiences and asking questions about the future. We report on a design research inquiry that explores Artificial Intelligence (AI), combined with personal data, as a resource for introspection. We investigate how AI might offer possibilities for generating alternative perspectives on one's life to support introspection and paradoxes that this might raise. We describe ou...
The COVID-19 outbreak required diverse strategies to avoid a healthcare system crisis, and social distance and self-isolation were the most applied. However, these measures can cause anxiety and depression. Music listening was shown to reduce depression symptoms and regulate emotion. Thus, we explored how music was used during the confinement period and whether it has helped individuals, especially those with severe depression symptoms, to deal with social distancing measures. This cross-section...
#1Adam Zendel(U of T: University of Toronto)H-Index: 1
The proliferation of online streaming music has led to a loss of income from the sale of recorded music pressuring artists and technicians to find alternate avenues to earn income, particularly thr...
This article analyses findings from the Economic and Social Research Council/Arts and Humanities Research Council (ESRC/AHRC)-funded ‘Distant Voices – Coming Home’ project (ES/POO2536/1), which use...
Bipolar disorders are among the most severe mental illnesses. The onset of the disorder is frequently preceded by phases with subsyndromal symptoms. In Germany, psychiatric early detection centres ...
Whereas many research studies have discussed the impact of music programmes in a prison setting, few studies have investigated the impact of music programmes that take place outside the prison and ...
ABSTRACTThe essay outlines an alternative model of Bildung, which the authors call an evolving Bildung. Their argument for taking this perspective on Bildung builds on Heidegger’s thinking concerni...
#1Roni Y. Granot(HUJI: Hebrew University of Jerusalem)H-Index: 16
#2Daniel H. Spitz(HUJI: Hebrew University of Jerusalem)H-Index: 1
Last. Salomon Israel(HUJI: Hebrew University of Jerusalem)H-Index: 30
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Music can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance positive mood, and facilitate social bonding. However, little is known about the role of music and related personal or cultural (individualistic versus collectivistic) variables in maintaining wellbeing during times of stress and social isolation as imposed by the COVID-19 crisis. In an online questionnaire, administered in 11 countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the UK and USA, N = 5619), parti...