Music, Sound and Wellbeing Course Resources
Definitions
Wellbeing
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Wellness
Key concepts for this class
- "Culture" as an uncountable noun (but treated, for convenience, as if countable, like languages (sort of) are.
- phonemic and phonetic distinction from linguistics, e.g.:
- t and ṭ are equivalent ("2 allophones") in English, but differentiate (2 phonemes) mutrib (dusty) and muṭrib (singer) in Arabic;
- p and b are equivalent ("2 allophones") in Arabic, but differentiate (2 phonemes) park and bark in English
- the idea of local cultural/subjective perspective or standpoint: "local knowledge" (Geertz), cosmology, ethos/eidos (Bateson) (the way "a culture" views the world, following the traditional anthropological notion of culture as a countable noun, which was admittedly truer in the past than in the globalized present), "idioknowledge", personal experience: the "emic" perspective of a particular culture bearer - local/individual distinctions and meanings). Ethno as a prefix indicating a local knowledge system (e.g. "ethnobotany"). Usually the "emic" is inferred from language and the way it divides reality in a conceptual ontology. Example: the color spectrum is physically continuous, but each language divides it into named colors.
- the idea of a global/bird's eye/neutral/objective perspective: "scientific knowledge", the "etic" perspective [but: does such a perspective really exist?]
- if there is no objective reality, what is our shared reality? Perhaps: an "intersubjective" space.
- the difference between the emic/etic distinction and the insider/outsider distinction (the outsider does not necessarily bring an "etic" perspective at all!)
- emic and etic applied to music: we may contrast the word "music" used emically (where it may vary in meaning depending on context: in the university, vs in the street) and etically. E.g. "music" as etic vs emic or outsider vs insider. For example: how would you classify this? For a Muslim: it's qira'a or tilawa, and definitely not music or singing (or that word's cognates in local languages), but for an Egyptian Muslim it might sound strangely foreign due to the unusual tonality (it's from Niger). For a non-Muslim it might sound like music or singing. With a suitable etic definition of "music" perhaps it is music, but one has to be careful here, lest the "etic" definition be confused with an "emic" one.
- discourses: emergent structures of communication, operating within the lifeworld.
- source (any object) vs reference (a set of objectively true statements). Nothing is a pure reference, though many claim to be. Critique defined as adding a layer of commentary to a source in order to move it towards reference. (Metaphorically and practically: critique as marginal notes as in this Arabic manuscript.
- Phenomenology: a philosophical position within the "Continental" tradition, starting from observation of and reflection upon the structures of experience, meaning and consciousness (through introspection or -- in the social sciences -- interview), as the basis for metaphysics, leading to concepts such as intersubjectivity and the notion of the lifeworld
- Analytic philosophy: a philosophical position starting from rigorous analysis of language, combined with mathematics, and logical positivism
- Empiricism, logical positivism: deriving fact from experimentation with observables, combined with statistical inferences
- lifeworld (locus of human meaning) vs system (emergent structures of control, beyond anyone's knowledge or capacity, operating according steering media of power/wealth capital, including economic, political, and legal systems), tending to maximize short-term gains. The system emerges out of the lifeworld, on which it depends, in a potentially mutualistic or (in recent history) parasitic relationship; in the latter case the system may (ironically) destroy the lifeworld, and hence itself (e.g. environmental destruction)
critical theory is a way of situating within the system life world frame • critical theory: showing how all knowledge, theory, and practice respond to individual and collective interests, situated, constrained, and shaped within a broader system evolving over time
- disciplinary directions (and rough alignments) - all of which may be interpreted as continua/axes rather than clearcut distinctions (and there are many exceptions to the implied "rules")
- humanistic vs. scientific [vs critical vs action]
- humanities vs sciences
- emic vs etic
- meaning/value vs fact
- qualitative (no variables) vs quantitative (discrete variable based...not numeric)
- lifeworld focus vs system focus
- hermeneutic vs empirical (inductive)
- phenomenological/(inter)subjectivity vs. logical positivism/empiricism/objectivity
- idiographic (depth - case) vs nomothetic (breadth - law) (Kant -> Wilhelm Windelband; the latter formulated the terms holding that they are 2 integrating points of view, the former more typical of humanities; the latter of sciences). Nomothetic stems from our tendency to generalize towards law, i.e. in the natural sciences. Idiographic stems from our tendency to specify, and is typical for the humanities, in search of meaning.
Research methods
See especially the Sage methods map, and the following subcategories: