An intensive perinatal mentalisation-based intervention for women at risk of child removal and the role of restorative relationships

Pregnant women with a history of child removal are at greater risk of being found unsuitable to care for their new babies. Neglect, showing a lack of capacity to provide for the child's physical and/or emotional needs, is the most frequent reason why infants are removed from their parents' care. Parents with a history of child removal have often been themselves subject to maltreatment as children and suffer the sequelae of relational trauma which then becomes a barrier to establishing nurturing relationships with their own children. Attachment, and particularly mentalisation-based, parenting interventions focus on restoring relationships by developing parents' capacity to reflect upon their own internal mental experiences as well as those of the child, helping them to better understand themselves and their children. The DAISY programme is an intensive perinatal attachment and mentalisation-based intervention for pregnant women with a history of child removal, aiming to improve mothers' mentalising capacities and care proceeding outcomes. This article uses a case study to describe the programme's model and mechanisms of change. Additionally, we present preliminary observations about the programme's delivery and impact from the perspective of one of its practitioners.     

The sound of liminality: MHD's afro trap,affective listening,and the (re)invention of Afropean identities in France

This article is an exploration of the world making capacities of afro trap. Through an extended case study of MHD's discography, I ask what can be learnt about the liminal experiences of postcolonial black citizens, or Afropean citizens, in France, by listening to popular music. I argue that through embracing, reinventing, and (re)producing familiar Afropean soundscapes, MHD claims and creates from his liminal subject position. Going against the assumption that Frenchness and blackness are always mutually exclusive and in tension, this music sonically proposes a way of being otherwise in France, stemming from this liminality. I see in what I call ‘the sound of liminality’ an instance of ‘queering ethnicity,’ one which channels the affective capacities of sound. I propose affective listening as a method that, incorporating autoethnography to consider critical listening positionality, facilitates a renewed attention to sound as an object of sociological inquiry.     

Affective Interaction as a Determinant of Musical Involvement*

Music may be understood as a structural representation, or symbolic “model,” of social interaction processes. Since music is a readily available expressive system in our society, individuals may use it as a socially meaningful symbolic medium within which they manage conflicting affective associations with interaction. Music listening then becomes one means by which individuals may maintain psychological well-being while adapting to complex social structures. Three initial points in this argument were examined, using high and low music listeners. High listeners were found to have more conflicting positive and negative affective associations with interaction than low or medium listeners, as measured by a TAT-type technique. The effect of role playing an affective interaction situation in an experimental design increased listening absorption in music for high but not for low listeners. High listeners were also more likely to describe musical effects in terms of symbolic participation in group processes.     

What the digitalisation of music tells us about capitalism,culture and the power of the information technology sector

This article examines a striking but under-analysed feature of culture under capitalism, using the example of music: that the main ways in which people gain access to cultural experiences are subject to frequent, radical and disorienting shifts. It has two main aims. The first is to provide a macro-historical, multi-causal explanation of changes in technologies of musical consumption, emphasising the mutual imbrication of the economic interests of corporations with sociocultural transformations. We identify a shift over the last twenty years from consumer electronics (CE) to information technology (IT) as the most powerful sectoral force shaping how music and culture are mediated and experienced, and argue that this shift from CE to IT drew upon, and in turn quickened, a shift from domestic consumption to personalised, mobile and connected consumption, and from dynamics of what Raymond Williams called ‘mobile privatisation’ to what we call ‘networked mobile personalisation’. The second aim is to assess change and continuity in the main means by which recorded music is consumed, in long-term perspective. We argue that disruptions caused by recent ‘digitalisation’ of music are consistent with longer term processes, whereby music has been something of a testing ground for the introduction of new cultural technologies. But we also recognise particularly high levels of disruption in recent times and relate these to the new dominance of the IT industries, and the particular dynamism or instability of that sector. We close by discussing the degree to which constant changes in how people access musical experiences might be read as instances of capitalism’s tendency to prioritise limiting notions of consumer preference over meaningful needs.     

Translocality,Network Structure,and Music Worlds: Underground Metal in the United Kingdom

Translocal music worlds are often defined as networks of local music worlds. However, their networked character and more especially their network structure is generally assumed rather than concretely mapped and explored. Formal social network analysis (SNA) is beginning to attract interest in music sociology but it has not previously been used to explore a translocal music world. In this paper, drawing upon a survey of the participation of 474 enthusiasts in 148 live music events, spread across 6 localities, we use SNA to explore a significant “slice” of the network structure of the U.K.'s translocal underground heavy metal world. Translocality is generated in a number of ways, we suggest, but one way, the way we focus upon, involves audiences traveling between localities to attend gigs and festivals. Our analysis of this network uncovers a core‐periphery structure which, we further find, maps onto locality. Not all live events enjoy equal standing in our music world and some localities are better placed to capture more prestigious events, encouraging inward travel. The identification of such structures, and the inequality they point to, is, we believe, one of several benefits of using SNA to analyze translocal music worlds.     

Evil as Indexical: The Implicit Objective Status of Guns and Illegal Drugs

We use C.H. Mead's perspective on the meaning of social objects and his theory of the past and Harold Garfinkel's application of indexicality to describe how people respond to social objects as evil. Mead's notion of an implied objective past illuminates how social actors not only connect objects to past evils but also invoke an objective past to index evil in the future. Focusing on guns and illegal drugs, we maintain that responses to each draw on conceptions of the past in ways that attempt to make their connection to evil in the past and future justifiable. Such responses create meaningful categories that actors then use to anticipate future responses to objects. We note that while people appear to be comfortable using pasts and indexical expressions to define Schedule I drugs as evil in themselves, the attempt to make guns into evil objects has met with strong resistance and requires elaborate contextualization.     

The Aural and Moral Idylls of “Englishness” and Folk Music

The idea of “Englishness” is explored as an historical social construction that is subject to ongoing negotiation. Important features of “Englishness” are embedded in the sacralized symbolism of the “rural idyll,” which represents traditional English values. “Landscapes” and “soundscapes” are utilized to construct personal and national identities in periods of “revivalism.” By viewing English folk music through an interactionist framework, responses to the music build upon earlier collective works that have shaped traditional song. “Englishness” is problematized as either an inclusive, or exclusive, identity. Ideational artifacts thus provide a foundation for social action.¹     

SUBJECT AND SUBSTRATUM : ON JAPANESE IMPERIAL NATIONALISM

This paper addresses the theoretical and philosophical questions concerning how an individual identified him/herself as a member of an ethnic, racial, or national community in the context of Japanese Imperialist discourse during the 1930's. The central focus is Tanabe Hajime. Together with his mentor Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe established the so-called Kyoto School of Philosophy in the 1920's. With his background in the philosophy of sciences and mathematics, and modern European metaphysics, Tanabe created a philosophical argument for the multi-ethnic nation-state, and proposed the universalistic concept of Japanese national identity which positively evaluates and integrates individuals of different ethnic backgrounds into one. He constructed the Logic of Species (Shu no Ronri) according to which a member of the Japanese Empire could identify with Japan precisely because she or he can participate in the Japanese State which represents the whole, inclusive of all the ethnic groups. Relying upon the Hegelian concept of negativity, he explained the two different levels of belonging: particularistic belonging to the specific identity (shu) such as ethnicity, and universalistic belonging to the generic identity (rui). And he further demonstrated that ethnic identity is far from fixed, and is brought into the subject's self-awareness only insofar as the subject negates it and is free from it. In other words, the subject becomes aware of her/his ethnic origin only when s/he negates it thereby participating in a higher order of social formation, the State, under which ethnic multiplicity is subsumed. Thus the species of ethnicity is constituted only insofar as it is negatively mediated by the genus, that is, the State. Tanabe saw the essential form of human freedom in this negative relation of the subject to his ethnicity, and understood a subject's belonging to a nation as a dialectic and negative process of mediation between the species and the genus. While postwar Japan was built upon the premises of ethnic nationalism, Japanese imperial nationalism of the pre-war period was afraid of ethnic nationalisms which could challenge the Empire's rhetoric of multiethnicity and pluralism. Tanabe's Logic of Species was a response to such needs of Japanese Imperialism and it represented a philosophical attempt to undermine ethnic nationalism. Not surprisingly, it served as a metaphysical foundation for the idea of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere.     

Struggles with Time: the careers of parents with adult sons and daughters with learning disabilities

The experiences of parents with adult offspring with learning disability and the meanings their parental careers have for them, has been the subject of very little empirical research. In this paper we describe and examine some of the features that gave shape and meaning to the day to day lives of parents of 33 co-resident adults with learning disabilities. Their accounts of their situations revealed that 'time' was a factor of some importance. Participants suggested that socialisation into the parental role was one that continued over the life course. In addition, they also felt that the services they received were based upon an inadequate and too narrow an understanding of how they experienced 'time'. The data reveal that both 'over time' and 'in time', parents struggled to maintain a set of aspirations for a typical life. The data show that for many parents there was a slow accommodation to the constraints of service provision and, as a result, their needs for service support became less extensive.     

The sociology of popular music, interdisciplinarity and aesthetic autonomy

This paper considers the impact of interdisciplinarity upon sociological research, focusing on one particular case: the academic study of popular music. 'Popular music studies' is an area of research characterized by interdisciplinarity and, in keeping with broader intellectual trends, this approach is assumed to offer significant advantages. As such, popular music studies is broadly typical of contemporary intellectual and governmental attitudes regarding the best way to research specific topics. Such interdisciplinarity, however, has potential costs and this paper highlights one of the most significant: an over-emphasis upon shared substantive interests and subsequent undervaluation of shared epistemological understandings. The end result is a form of 'ghettoization' within sociology itself, with residents of any particular ghetto displaying little awareness of developments in neighbouring ghettos. Reporting from one such ghetto, this paper considers some of the ways in which the sociology of popular music has been limited by its positioning within an interdisciplinary environment and suggests two strategies for developing a more fully-realized sociology of popular music. First, based on the assumption that a sociological understanding of popular music shares much in common with a sociological understanding of everything else, this paper calls for increased intradisciplinary research between sociologists of varying specialisms. The second strategy, however, involves a reconceptualization of the disciplinary limits of sociology, as it argues that a sociology of popular music needs to accept musical specificity as part of its remit. Such acceptance has thus far been limited not only by an interdisciplinary context but also by the long-standing sociological scepticism toward the analysis of aesthetic objects. As such, this paper offers an intervention into wider debates concerning the remit of sociological enquiry, and whether it is ever appropriate for sociological analyses of culture to consider 'internal' aesthetic structures. In relation to the specific case study, the paper argues that considering musical specificity is a necessary component of a sociology of popular music, and some possibilities for developing a 'materialist sociology of music' are outlined.     

Planning from below: using feminist participatory methods to increase women's participation in urban planning

Women have been often invisible in urban planning. Col·lectiu Punt 6, a feminist organisation of women architects and urban planners based in Barcelona, Spain, has developed planning techniques and tools to include women both as objects and subjects of urban planning, and as experts of everyday life. The article focuses on the participatory tools that Col·lectiu Punt 6 has developed that can be used in the different stages of planning, from assessing to evaluating planning policies and interventions, as well as tools of women's empowerment with the goal of promoting bottom-up models of planning. Evidence is shown of how, using these tools, planning becomes more inclusive not only of women in their diversity, but also of children, youth, the elderly, as well as people of different race, ethnicity, income, sexual and gender identities, and capacities. Examples from different contexts are provided, from Spain and Latin America.     

Language Generativity,Response Generalization,and Derived Relational Responding

Language generativity can be described as the ability to produce sentences never before said, and to understand sentences never before heard. One process often cited as underlying language generativity is response generalization. However, though the latter seems to promise a technical understanding of the former at a process level, an investigation of definitions and approaches to the term “response generalization” that appear in the literature suggests that it does not do so. We argue that a more promising candidate for the role of key process underlying language generativity is derived relational responding. We introduce the latter concept and describe empirical research showing its connection with language. We subsequently present a relational frame theory (RFT) conceptualization of derived relations as contextually controlled generalized relational responding. We then review a series of recent studies on derived manding in developmentally delayed children and adults that arguably demonstrate the applied utility of a derived relations-based approach with respect to the phenomenon of generative language.     

Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Consumption: A Critical Assessment of Recent Developments

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has been an extraordinarily influential figure in the sociology of music. For over three decades, his concepts have helped to generate both empirical and theoretical interventions in the field of study. His impact on the sociology of music taste, in particular, has been profound, his ideas directly informing our understandings of how musical preferences reflect and reproduce inequalities between social classes. But, recently his legacy has been under question and newer approaches to the music/society problematic have emerged. These have made important claims about the nature of the sociological enterprise when confronted with the specificity of cultural works, as well as how social change impacts on our relations with musical forms. This paper takes stock of the impact of Bourdieu’s ideas on the sociology of music, the debates sparked in their wake and the attempt at something like a “post‐Bourdieusian” sociology more faithful to music’s material properties. It will ask to what extent Bourdieu’s claims about social stratification and music consumption are still relevant and whether they are sophisticated enough to deal with the specific ways that we interact with musical forms.     

Essentialism, social constructionism, and beyond

Anti-essentialism has criticised a range of targets, from cultural essentialism and biological reductionism to causal explanation and foundationalism, and concerning topics ranging from markets to ‘race’, identity and sexuality. The paper assesses these diverse lines of critique. Some social phenomena, like identities, clearly do not have essences, but it does not follow from this that other phenomena we study do not have essences or something like them. While a strong, or deterministic essentialism is always wrong and often dangerously misleading, a moderate, non-deterministic essentialism is necessary for explanation and for a social science that claims to be critical and have emancipatory potential. The concept of essence is problematic, but not for some of the epistemological and ontological reasons put forward by anti-essentialism. Strong variants of social constructionism are liable to invert rather than resolve the problems of strong essentialism, including those of its biological reductionist guises. While it may be best to avoid concepts of essences which assume that the distinguishing and generative properties of objects must coincide, we still need to distinguish classes of objects and identify causal powers which enable and constrain what those objects can do.     

TUNE OUT: MUSIC, SOUNDSCAPES AND THE URBAN MISE-EN-SCÈNE

This paper focuses upon the intersection between the MP3 player and the city. In particular it takes issue with arguments concerning the ways in which mobile music devices enable a 'recomposition' of the urban soundscape. Drawing upon Michael Bull's work on the management of the experience of the time and space of the city, as facilitated through various mobile music reproduction devices, this piece questions Bull's central claim that these devices may be used to screen out the urban soundscape. Here it is argued that these mobile music systems merely enable users to tune out of the immediate soundscape - by prioritizing the musical information overlay over the physicality of the urban environment - but that this is often interrupted by the complex imbrications of the pervasive sounds of the city.     

The Sublime and Contemporary Popular Culture: The Radical Text in a Post‐Political Era

This paper attempts to re‐examine the question of to what extent is it possible in the contemporary cultural situation for popular media texts such as music videos, mainstream films or television programmes, for example, to embody notions of the radical. Many, now conventional, variants of postmodern theory would seem to suggest the very notion of “the radical” has become an anachronism in a media landscape where the sphere of popular culture has become little other than a generally uncritical, depoliticised and hyper‐commodified terrain, and within which attempts to radicalise this sphere in ways suggested in previous periods are doomed to failure. Drawing upon the ideas of commentators such as Lyotard, Jameson and ?i?ek, the paper revisits the notion of the sublime in an attempt to argue for a critical postmodernism, rather than a more conventional and conservative interpretation of the term, as a means to begin to conceive of new, radical media production.     

A ‘desi’ diaspora? The production of ‘desiness’ and London's Asian urban music scene

Increasingly, the term ‘desi’ amongst British Asians has been commonly used to describe South Asian diasporic cultural forms and practices, particularly regarding musical genres and styles. This article opens up debate on its contested meanings and usage within the London Asian urban music scene. In unpacking the complex and contradictory meanings and uses of ‘desi’ across time, space and place, ‘desiness’ becomes exemplary of the ambivalent spaces of youthful diasporic identities in process. I argue that cultural practices, such as music production and consumption, provide critical tools to critique one-dimensional notions of ‘Britishness’ and ‘Asianness’, as well as to reassert normative notions of belonging and diaspora. The exploration of diasporic identities in the making within the spaces of London Asian cultural production highlights the importance of everyday forms and practices and fosters a better understanding of multiculture and new modes of belonging in London.     

FRACTURED RESISTANCES:

This article analyzes the arguments of two of the central positions in the debate over assimilationism in the gay and lesbian community as a means of exploring the meaning of resistance, opposition, struggle, and agency within the context of a dominant and generative field of power. Instead of debating which position is better or most effective, or which involves "true resistance," we use Foucault's formulations to suggest that each represents but one among a multiplicity of strategies, all existing simultaneously in a field of power. Because this field is composed of a plurality of dissonant, multi-layered, multidimensional relations of power, we argue that no single form of resistance can be identified and uniquely practiced. Instead, each struggle contributes its own partial modification to the overall transformation of the field of power, and simultaneously highlights the inconsistencies faced by agents who attempt to present a coherent identity in opposition to structures of domination.     

Targeted harassment,subcultural identity and the embrace of difference: a case study

This paper examines the significance of experiences and understandings of targeted harassment to the identities of youth subcultural participants, through case study research on goths. It does so against a context of considerable recent public discussion about the victimization of alternative subcultures and a surprising scarcity of academic research on the subject. The analysis presented indicates that, although individual direct experiences are diverse, the spectre of harassment can form an ever‐present accompaniment to subcultural life, even for those who have never been seriously targeted. As such, it forms part of what it is to be a subcultural participant and comprises significant common ground with other members. Drawing upon classic and more recent understandings of how subcultural groups respond to broader forms of outside hostility, we show how the shared experience of feeling targeted for harassment tied in with a broader subcultural discourse of being stigmatized by a perceived ‘normal’ society. The role of harassment as part of this, we argue, contributed to the strength with which subcultural identities were felt and to a positive embrace of otherness.