The sound of music heritage: curating popular music in music museums and exhibitions

A significant amount of previous academic research into popular music museums centres on critiques of the content, design and layout of predominantly authorised institutions. Throughout much of this research, authors consistently criticise the use, or rather, the perceived misuse, of music played within music museums, arguing that the music itself, rather than artefacts, constitutes the most significant part of popular music exhibition. This article seeks to counter this trend by exploring the challenges of incorporating recorded sound into popular music exhibits as understood by curators and exhibit designers. Utilising interviews conducted within 14 authorised and DIY museums devoted to popular music, the researchers demonstrate a distinct contrast between current academic critiques of music use in these museums and the attitudes of the people who create them. The result is a varied discussion surrounding sound in the museal space, including issues of sound bleed, technology and the creation of balance between artefacts and sound. This account draws attention to curators’ intentions of telling the story of popular music history by engaging with both the visual and aural memories of museum patrons, and suggests a new understanding of the purpose underpinning popular music museums in modern contexts.     

A walk of art: the potential of the sound walk as practice in cultural geography

Some of the most experimental and exciting work using sound and spatiality has come from the art world. This essay traces how an exciting hybrid of sound art and walking – the sound walk - has evolved over the last century. Examining the latest examples of sound walks in London and New York, and reflecting on the author's experience of creating a sound walk route, this essay focuses on the potential of this medium to create flowing, multi-sensory and embodied ways for social and cultural geographers to research the outside environment. The essay concludes that the medium could also be useful for presenting site-specific cultural geography to the public in an accessible and inclusive way.     

Voice: sonic geographies of childhood

This article uses the sonic geographies of childhood as an entry point into long-standing and important debates in the sub-discipline on ‘voice’. The article uniquely explores children’s voices from the past through considering a different type of research material – archival audio recordings. It argues that literally listening to past children’s voices (and noises, sounds and silences) can offer fresh insights into the concept of voice that tends to be associated with contemporary contexts. Drawing on archival encounters with ‘second hand’ field recordings of children across different schools and playgrounds in London in the 1960s, this article engages and extends wider theoretical debates about childhood, voice and memory. The article calls for more attention to the unique characteristics of sound and wider soundscapes of childhood. The article critically reflects on the possibilities and tensions associated with such work.     

Conserving Rainforest 4: aural geographies and ephemerality

Works of installation sound art are inherently spatial. Documentation of this form, which dates from the 1950s, involves an engagement with diverse histories of geographical knowledge and oral-historical methodology. David Tudor's Rainforest 4 (1973) is a performed sculptural sound installation which remains the best-known of his pieces. Its durability—when most other of his works remain unperformed, partly because they are too hermetic to decipher or depend on unavailable technologies—belies its “score” which consists of a simple diagram and a few words. Oral history, formal and informal, is not only key to understanding the history of the piece, but is integral to its performance. This paper explores some historical geographies of Rainforest 4 and the aesthetic of ephemerality in live electronic music, for which documentation of performance is secondary. In examining the paradoxes of Rainforest 4's conservation, we explore Tudor's engagement with particular notions of nature and spirituality as well as the social hierarchies and conservative impulse which keep the piece alive.     

Being Bashed: Western Samoan women's responses to domestic violence in Western Samoa and New Zealand

Given the large impact that domestic violence has on many women's lives, it is surprising that research in this area has largely neglected the ways in which women respond to this problem in different cultural contexts. This article examines variations in Western Samoan women's responses to domestic violence in three different contexts, in rural and urban Western Samoa and in Christchurch, New Zealand. The authors find that processes relating to the individualisation of social relations, changes in women's economic independence, and political mechanisms that provide formal support for battered women go some way to explaining variations in women's responses to abuse in the three contexts. However, the findings rule out any simple link between context and responses to physical abuse and caution us against the naive hope that changes in a single variable will reduce women's vulnerability to violence.     

Sound recordings and cultural heritage: the Fonck Museum,the Felbermayer collection,and its relevance to contemporary Easter Island culture

Sound recording plays a prominent role in cultural heritage work in the Pacific region, supported by sound archives and institutional collections that serve to preserve this intangible cultural heritage. While it has long been a standard practice for field recordings to be lodged in institutions of learning, recent developments in Pacific research have emphasised the ethical and social benefits that can result from the repatriation of sound recordings to their communities of origin, and from the development of field recording practices in which cultural stakeholders are more directly involved. Meanwhile, the digitisation of historical sound recordings and the use of digital domains for dissemination have become matters of theoretical and methodological inquiry in their own right. This article seeks to contribute to the discourse surrounding the repatriation of historical field recordings through the presentation of findings from a recent Chilean government-funded digitisation and repatriation project involving previously undocumented recordings of Easter Island (Rapanui) music from the Fonck Museum, Viña del Mar. It will explain the circumstances under which the project developed, the strategies pursued in bringing it to fruition, and the reception of the project by the Rapanui community.     

蔡元培的博物馆美育思想研究

著名的教育家、思想家蔡元培先生非常重视美育对培养健全人格以及促使人的全面发展的重要作用。他认为,在实施美育教育中,博物馆丰富的艺术藏品为美育教育提供了重要的物质基础;藏品的直观性成为美感的最佳培养形式;具有强烈融入感的博物馆陈列语言以及博物馆教育的公众性特征与美育教育的特点相得益彰。由此进一步认为博物馆是美育教育的重要媒介和载体之一。关注博物馆建设,既是关注社会美育教育的具体表现,同时也符合美育发展之公例。     

Anthropologists,Education, and Autoethnography

Autoethnographies place personal experience within social and cultural contexts and raise provocative questions about social agency and socio-cultural constraints. Several authors are discussed who write about educational settings that are quite familiar to them, thereby positioning themselves as insiders to the milieus studied. At the same time, each book considered here poses dilemmas for the construction of an insider/outsider divide, leading to questions about how to evaluate an insider perspective. For the wider discipline of anthropology, these texts remind us that our scholarly production takes place in the context of particular social fields within which we negotiate as social actors.     

Sonic geography in a nature region

This paper considers the sonic geography of a region since the late nineteenth century, taking material from the Norfolk Broads, a wetland region in eastern England. This area has been defined through competing cultures of nature and leisure, with the presence, absence and nature of sound a key concern. The theme of sonic geography is set within debates concerning the nature of regional identity, moral geographies of conduct in landscape, and uses of the term ‘soundscape’. The paper draws on surveys of sound, travel guides, press reports, private journals and fictional accounts, showing how in the contested valuation of a regional landscape the aesthetic, ecological and social are enfolded through sonic geography.     

Inequality and the return to structure in anthropology

The four books under review are all more or less explicitly critical of the impact of post-modernism on socio-cultural anthropology and archaeology. They all call for the building of anthropology by reconnecting to the earlier traditions of structural and comparative analysis. Although spanning both socio-cultural anthropology and archaeology, they set the focus clearly on the pervasive influence of inequality on social processes. The different authors demonstrate the explanatory power of concepts such as class, surplus, inequality, and structure for a multitude of contexts from prehistoric foragers to neo-liberal market ideologies.     

Sound maps matter: expanding cartophony

In this article I investigate online sound mapping practices, taking cartophony – the coming together of cartographic and sonic activities – as an important contribution to emerging ways of thinking and practicing mapping. I first develop a typology of approaches to cartophony, before moving on to reveal the normative tendencies of online combinations of sound and mapping through an analysis of three platforms: Freesound; audioBoom; and Radio Aporee. Showing how in different ways each of these platforms supports an approach to sound mapping that favours pinning high fidelity, indexical audio-recordings to a seemingly neutral base layer, I question what is glossed over through this approach, while also considering how visual and sound-based strategies for communicating about places illuminate and resonate with one another. Discussing some more experimental online sound maps, I highlight the value of such projects in their current form, and argue for the continued expansion of cartophonic practice.     

Is promoting war trauma such a good idea?

A well-known medical journal, The Lancet, recently published an important systematic review and meta-analysis of mental disorder estimates in conflict settings, advocating for the scaling up of mental health interventions in such contexts. However, there is an assumption that the introduction of such treatments has no significant impact, except from a therapeutic one, in the settings they have been imported to. The authors' research in post-conflict northern Uganda analyzed the social impact of mental health interventions addressing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and showed that promoting trauma has had considerable socio-economic ramifications on the wider society. The introduction of trauma narratives has created a market where some are able to thrive, but many deeply troubled individuals remain invisible. The authors found no social benefits from promoting trauma, and few positive effects for individuals. Arguments for urgently upscaling mental health interventions of the kinds highlighted by the review in The Lancet, and which the authors have observed on the ground, should be treated with caution.     

Exploring socioeconomic relationships from surface survey ceramics: New methodologies from Bronze-Age Benta Valley,Hungary

A Phase II survey team collected samples of ceramics from the Benta Valley in the western Carpathian Basin of Hungary to identify secondary (rural) sites, determine their extent and density, and investigate everyday economic and social routines. By comparing ceramic attributes such as function, decoration, and exterior finish, the authors argue that studies of ceramics from plow zone contexts can address nuanced questions of social and economic behavior played out on the landscape beyond what can be investigated in traditional excavations, which are principally focused on tell centers. The efficient, low-cost survey demonstrates the potential of plow zone archaeology in studies of socioeconomic relations within settlement systems. This micro-regional approach and the methods involved can be employed on other survey projects in Hungary and beyond, as rescue excavations across the region are becoming standard practice.     

多情境下城市时空间行为的社会分异——以北京不同住房来源居民为例

近年来,居民时空间行为的社会分异已成为学者们广泛关注的话题。然而,已有关于居民时空间行为的社会分异研究中,缺少对于居民活动情境的社会分异的研究。因此,本研究基于时间地理学中对人类活动的情境嵌入性与情境的不同维度的相关理论,以北京清河街道为例,分析不同住房来源居民在日常情境、地理情境和社会情境下的时空间行为的社会分异,尝试从多个情境维度拓展对时空间行为社会分异的理解。研究发现,市场性住房居民“朝九晚五”的活动特征明显,活动同伴选择外向性突出;单位性住房居民职住相对接近,在社区空间内分配时间最长且活动目的多样;安置性住房居民活动较为分散,地理情境与社会情境都呈现出“家庭内向性”特征;保障性住房居民非工作活动的“滞后性”明显,对社区空间的时间分配总体较低。除住房来源因素与个人社会经济因素外,建成环境因素对于居民对社区空间的使用有显著影响。     

论颜师古对音义关系的认识

词是音义的结合体,音义关系是词汇研究中的一个重要问题。我国历代语言学家都十分重视对音义关系的探索与研究,唐代初年名语言学家颜师古就是其中一位,他在其《汉书注、《匡谬正俗》等作中充分运用音同,音义同,声相近,声之转等方法来辨通假,推求事物命名之意,贯通异形词。其因声求义的观念是明确的,方法是科学的。可以说,颜师古的因声求义已开清代以声音通训诂方法的先河。了解并研究颜师古因声求义的实践与理论,对汉语词汇史以至中国语言学史,都有重要意义。     

Interventions in the political geography of ‘libertarian paternalism’

Contributions from political, health and economic geography, social policy and environmental policy studies are brought together here in order to examine the implications of a ‘libertarian paternalist’ political ‘project’ which seeks to react in pragmatic and ideological terms to the excesses and limitations of neoliberalism in liberal democratic contexts. The authors explore the contemporary relevance and historical antecedents of so-called ‘nudge’ tactics of governing, and draw attention to the political geographies encountered in this popular political programme in specific cases.     

Watch out for the neighborhood trap! A case study on parental perceptions of and strategies to counter risks for children in a disadvantaged neighborhood

Neighborhood is seen as one of the many social contexts that shape children's cognitive, emotional and social development. However, the neighborhood context does not simply ‘imprint’ itself on children, but can be mediated or moderated by other social contexts, in particular the family context through parenting practices. Based on a case study in a low income neighborhood in The Hague, The Netherlands, this paper addresses the question of how living in a disadvantaged neighborhood context constitutes a risk for children and which strategies parents develop in response to the perceived negative neighborhood influences.     

What Happened at the First Meeting of the World Archaeological Congress Committee of Ethics?

Herrera reflects on the committee’s deliberations in how to approach developing a framework for ethics in tune with the aims and ethos of WAC. He points out the importance of a foundation of meaningful principles, embedded in the thread of the actions of individuals acting in specific cultural and historical social contexts and based on core values that at the same time acknowledge the contradictions inherent in diverse standpoints. The committee faces major questions of how to define social justice and appropriate ethical behaviour for people and institutions embedded in different social and historical contexts across the globe.     

Home sounds: experiential practices and performativities of hearing and listening

We argue that a closer attention to the everyday visceral experiences of hearing and listening offers new insights into geographies of home and practices of sustainability. We suggest that this approach is significant to understanding how sound helps to assemble and reassemble the relationships that comprise home. We concentrate on a group of 10 amenity-led migrants in their ‘new coastal home’ in Bermagui, New South Wales, Australia. Each participant recorded a sound diary composed of their everyday sounds. Our interpretation explores the visceral connections in the processes of making bodies feel ‘at home’. First, we discuss how the rhythmic affordances of both human and non-human sounds help configure and reconfigure the spatiality and temporality of home. Second, our interpretation explores how sound is bound up with sustainability politics of homemaking. We investigate experiential practices and performativities of listening and hearing that may help constitute and reconstitute ‘a’ subject. This approach extends current thinking that encourages engagement with the corporeal, affective and emotional dimensions of home.     

Collapsing contexts: social networking technologies in young people’s nightlife

In the latest discussions of children and young people’s new geographies of leisure and pleasure, one controversial issue has been how digital technologies co-produce and reconfigure young people’s everyday worlds. This article draws on semi-structured interviews with 40 young people who regularly use social networking technologies in their nightlife experiences in Zurich and Lausanne, two nightlife hubs in Switzerland. Informed by Danah Boyd’s concepts of ‘collapsing contexts’ and ‘imagined audiences’, this article enables a critical engagement with young people’s emerging understanding of their nightlife contexts, which are increasingly permeated by networking technologies. I show how social networking spaces facilitate the coming together, or collapse, of various social contexts which induce young people to imagine multiple audiences, including authority figures, in their nightlife practices. These collapsing contexts and imagined audiences, I argue, present new perspectives on debates about control and surveillance in young people’s contemporary urban nightlife.