Was there ever any doubt that music existed in a social context? I'm sure no educated person would debate the fact. I would be willing to go out on a limb however and say that current musical trends have desocialized music in several ways. North and Hargreaves address several examples including portable musical devices and the subsequent miniaturization thereof, downloading music, and programs that enable anyone to compose music. In contrast to previous musical trends, many of these devices allow the listener to isolate themselves. However, if I were to adopt Kuhn's paradigm shift and Huron's evolutionary adaptation ideas, perhaps I could view these developments as necessary survival/evolutionary advancements.
Nonetheless, whether one decides to view social and applied psychology from either perspective, it is evident that research and development in the field is constantly advancing and changing. Sub-disciplines of music psychology have developed including :
1) Sloboda's 1985 The Musical Mind that followed a more mainstream approach with links to neuroscience and computer science in the field of musical syntax, sight reading, and music memory (p. 2)
2) Hargreave's The Developmental Psychology of Music that focuses on informing educational policy through research in preschool and preference studies
Social psychology follows similar divisions by including:
1) macro sociology that include larger sociological institutions and trends
2) micro sociology that include interactional processes
These divisions all provide lines for research which don't seem to be crossed very often. Doise's 'Four levels of analysis' in social psychology is a good example of thes, viz:
1) Intraindividual analysis - investigates cognitive, perceptual, biological processes by which people organize their social environment eg. impact of personality on musical preference
2) Interindividual/situation analysis - eg. the use of body language in ensemble playing
3) Socio-positional analysis - relationships between individual eg. gender stereotyping regarding instrument choice
4) Ideological analysis - broad cultural systems of beliefs
According to North and Hargreaves, the predominant features of social psychology's approach includes Doise's 'Levels of analysis', topics based research, the application of research to 'real' world problems, and research into what music is actually used for.
P.s
The picture, if you're not familiar with it, is Kuhn's duck-rabbit optical illusion. I think it is a perfect representation of how anyone including researchers can view things from a different perspective - perhaps consider a cross-pollination of topics???
This is my second attempt to post a comment. The first try – which was quite lengthy – was met with an error message and a loss of my work. Now I’ll write in Word and paste into the blog! I suppose I learned the hard way.
ReplyDeleteNicola, it looks like you’ve done an excellent job again of distilling the important concepts from this introductory chapter. I will try not to repeat too much of what you’ve presented.
The chapter begins with a discussion of downloadable music, iPods and readily available music-editing software. I found that excellent, though I must admit that most of my adult life (or at least “18+” life!) has been during a time when these technologies were the norm. As a teenager, I had a walkman and cassette tapes. I remember when CDs became mainstream: it was quite excellent because the public library bought a new collection of music! I was probably in 6th grade or so at that point and was learning to play the trumpet in the school band.
I still use iPods to “consume” music, though I do so with some reservation. I find it somewhat disorienting that the sound from an iPod enters directly into the ear. Part of the musical experience, for me, is the physicality of sound – feeling the vibrations in my body be in-tune with the sounds I perceive. iPods ignore this: I have tried to listen to my iPod on the subway more than once when the train was humming along with a stable frequency that was not very harmonious with the sound I was listening to on the iPod. The conflicting frequencies make the music feel much less potent to me.
I am happy to be studying the “social” – music is generally a social endeavor, and that needs little comment – and the “applied” – this needs a bit more explanation – psychology of music. As a “classically trained” musician, I feel that what I know about music may not always be applicable to others. There is a divide between what we are taught in music school, as people who put music in the foreground of our lives, and what most people understand about music. This chapter promises a book based on pop music when possible and naturalistic research methods when pragmatic. Such an approach will allow a bridge between my understanding and music in the daily life of “non-musicians” (if such a label has any meaning).
Doise’s levels of analysis is a useful tool for evaluating and designing research studies. Though it is not realistic for all studies to address all levels put forth by Doise, it gives us a tool to stretch our viewpoint to become more expansive. Too often researchers value internal validity very highly while oddly seeming to ignore external validity of their study. I say this not particularly as someone who is a die-hard pragmatist regarding research, but as someone who appreciates research that can be used.
The authors discuss the lack of cross-pollination of research within music psychology and related fields. Indeed, even “cross-topic” research seems less the norm than sticking with a single-topic oriented approach. I look forward to reading more of this text, especially since the methods used for investigation within this book are reportedly naturalistic (and keen to the ideas of Harré).
Nicola -- I am curious about your prior experience with Kuhn's ideas. Your post seems to imply that you have had some exposure to him in the past.
[Again – this was my second attempt to write this, and I wrote freely. Please let me know of any mistakes or blind spots!]
I always try to do a little 'investigating' when I come across a name I'm unfamiliar with. Kuhn was one of the. It seems his approach, although originally only applied to the sciences, is now highly regarded in the humanities. There are several articles about his work but a simple summation of his 'paradigm shift' can be found in Chapter 10 of his 'The Structure of Scientific Revolution' http://www.taketheleap.com/define.html
ReplyDeleteWonderful. Thanks for sharing this link, too. Feel free to share any notes or the like with me that you don't mind sharing. It is helpful!
ReplyDelete