Invisible republics and secret histories: A politics of music

Abstract

How does music ‐ or any cultural artefact ‐ assume significance for those who encounter it? Why does one sound or image come to matter, while others are overlooked or forgotten? The answer is not to be found in the sounds alone, but in the context and conditions in which they are heard. This article explores this argument by considering the case of The Anthology of American Folk Music, a set of recordings from the 1920s and 1930s, which has exercised an extraordinary power over popular music since its release in 1952. Using the arguments expounded by Robert Cantwell and Greil Marcus, and pointing to the uses of music in establishing national identities and mobilising social movements, the article argues for an understanding of music's significance that links social experience, aesthetic pleasure and political values.     

Using E-Health Programs to Overcome Barriers to the Effective Treatment of Mental Health and Addiction Problems

E-Health programs for mental illness and addictive behaviors have recently emerged as potentially useful self-help resources. Health care professionals will soon have the option of referring clients to free-to-end-user online, expert-moderated e-health programs as complementary means of assisting clients. Such programs will have significant implications for developing improved stepped models of care. This article describes various e-health programs and lessons learned related to access, promotion, user demographics, and patterns of use. In addition, validation procedures, effectiveness and attrition rates, fitting and tailoring, and qualitative analyses of social networks are described. It is difficult to validate e-health programs that are completely anonymous and do not require registration, personal interaction, or membership fees. As competition emerges in the budding e-health industry, best practice guidelines will need to be developed for collecting data and evaluating the utility of these programs.     

Technology and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: An Interactive Self-Help Website for OCD

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a neurobiological illness characterized by unwanted thoughts and/or images followed by repetitive rituals. About 5 million Americans live with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. OCD is a manageable illness when proper interventions are utilized. Treatment for OCD is limited due to the lack of adequately trained professionals and the high costs of treatment. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in conjunction with exposure with response prevention (ERP) is the most effective intervention modality available for OCD. To address the treatment gap, an online, interactive self-help website was developed for those living with OCD without access to an effective intervention. This report will explore development of the OCD Challenge website and future implications of its use.     

Parental Speech at 6 Months Predicts Joint Attention at 12 Months

In a prospective longitudinal study of a representative community sample (N = 264), mothers' references to infants' mental states were coded during a topic‐sharing task in the home at 6 months. Joint attention behaviour was assessed in the laboratory at 12 months. Individual joint attention skills (gaze following, gaze alternating, and declarative pointing) were significantly inter‐correlated, with a single factor accounting for 68% of the variance. Mothers' references to infants' mental states at 6 months predicted infants' joint attention at 12 months. The association was not explained by sociodemographic characteristics of the family, the mother's mental state, or by the quantity or acoustic properties of her speech. However, variability in pitch of maternal speech was an independent predictor of the infants' later joint attention skills. Taken together, these findings suggest that mothers' infant‐directed speech fosters infants' attentive participation in topic‐sharing interactions, which in turn provide an important arena in which joint attention skills develop over the first year of life.     

“It's About Us”: Marital Adjustment and Marital Adaptation in Couples Who Adopt Children From the Child Welfare System

This article examines, using grounded theory methodology, the marital relationships of couples who adopted children from the child welfare system. Twenty-two spouses in four focus groups reported initial marital adjustment that featured husbands' support of their wives' initiation of adoption and management of child needs. About one half of these couples also developed time together and mutual influence to achieve a state of marital adaptation characterized by deeper intimate connection. Professionals are encouraged to understand the potential course of development of these marital relationships and to integrate attention to marital development into service throughout the entire adoption process.     

Family Capital: Implications for Interventions with Families

Social capital has been extensively discussed in the literature as building blocks that individuals and communities utilize to leverage system resources. Similarly, some families also create capital, which can enable members of the family, such as children, to successfully negotiate the outside world. Families in poverty confront serious challenges in developing positive family capital, because of lack of resources. For those families that are successful in developing positive family capital, family capital can help to create positive outcomes for family interactions. Thus, family capital can provide information about opportunities, exert influence on agents who make decisions involving the actor, provide social credentials that indicate a connection to a social network, and reinforce the actor's identity and recognition, which maintains access and entitlement to these social resources.     

A Social Comparison Perspective of Treatment Seeking by the Homeless

The homeless will readily list ailments they claim to have, yet they will also claim that such ailments are not a problem and do not warrant treatmente In an attempt to understand this apparent paradox, data from a sampLe of homeless individuals were re-analyzed from a social comparison perspective. It was hypothesized that increased entrenchment in homelessness (increased isolation from “nonhomeless” environments and further involvement in the homeless environment) — operationalized by longer time spent on the street and a greater number of street friends — would lead homeless individuals to alter their perceptions of what constitutes a problem worthy of treatment. Results supported this hypothesis, in direction, and in almost all tests conducted. The involvement of adaptation level theory in such a social comparison process and the implications for intelVention and treatment are discussed.     

Contingent Hybridity: The Cultural Politics of Tepoztl‡n's Anti-Golf Movement

In order to maintain some level of local control over both ideological and material resources, local social activists construct hybrid cultures that reflect their simultaneous insertion into local, national, and global cultural discourses. Theirs is a contingent hybridity in that it reflects the specificities of their experience as well as the conscious attempts to resist the homogenizing tendencies of global discourses while not isolating themselves from those discourses. This article analyzes the conflict in the town of Tepoztl?n, Morelos, Mexico, over the construction of a golf course and the ensuing movement against the project. While emphasizing local practices and making use of local communicative networks, movement leaders were also quite adept at moving between the cultural realities of Tepoztl?n and their own experiences outside of the town in order to forge alliances with transnational organizations. As a result, many Tepoztecos now make use of such labels as "environmentalist," but do so within the embedded social and cultural structures of their community.     

The Relationship Between Self and Activity in the Context of Artists Making Art

Art is an activity that has historically invited self-reflection, self-immersion, and self-exploration—for example, in self-portraits, exhibitions, experimentation with media—and that as such may open a window onto the relationship between self and activity. In this article, we describe two cases studies involving observation of and interviews with two artists to explore what it feels like to invest oneself in an activity emotionally, cognitively, sensuously, and reciprocally to “make oneself” through this activity. These case studies highlight the importance of authenticity in both the activity of making art and the making of self through making art. The implications for agency, emotion, and ethical activity are analysed and some of the implications for a sociocultural approach to activity discussed.     

Social Stigma and Homelessness: The Limits of Social Change

We examine the issues around the stigmatization of homelessness and how it links to capitalism. Society focuses on the individual as the cause of his or her own state of homelessness, blaming the victim rather than focusing on the larger antecedent social and economic forces, such as unemployment, limited affordable housing, and breakdowns in kinship networks. Social stigma occurs in situations where there is unequal social, economic, and political power and there is an opportunity to label, stereotype, separate (us versus them), lose status, and discriminate. Stigmatization is due, in part, when people feel threatened by another group. Society categorizes people who are homeless as no longer “useful” and/or “functional” members of capitalism, since they do not actively work and support the system. The paper ends on a discussion of the limits of social change in a capitalist society.