Sound Studies and Cultural Performance

Sound Studies

• Interdisciplinary research field encompassing humanities, social sciences, and hard sciences.
• Examines how sound shapes and is shaped by social life.

Acoustic Architecture

• Music's integration into a social space, organizing how people respond to and navigate it.

Cultural Performance

• Set of actions within a culture, significant to the group.
• Different from rituals as it doesn't require spirituality or mysticism.
• Popularized in relation to sports by Victor Turner.

Habitus

• Ingrained habits, behaviors, and dispositions, learned through social and cultural experiences.
• Guides individual actions and interactions in diverse situations.

Body

• Dr. Chudakova views the body as open to diverse influences (cultural and environmental).
• The way we discuss our bodies is learned behavior, partially influenced by enculturation.

Health and Sickness

• Viewed as a spectrum, not mutually exclusive binaries.
• Most individuals fall into an in-between state.

Adaptogens

• Product category promoting the body's adaptation to stressors.
• Officially recognized term often used in the Russian pharmaceutical market.

Medical Anthropology

• Investigates how societal and cultural factors influence healthcare and healing practices.

Disease

• Medical condition diagnosed by a doctor (e.g., flu, diabetes).
• Focuses on the physical changes within the body.

Illness

• How individuals experience and perceive illness, including its impact on daily life, emotions, and relationships.

Medical Pluralism

• Coexistence of multiple healthcare systems (traditional, alternative, biomedicine).
• Individuals select healthcare based on different factors (beliefs, preferences, access).
• Promotes a holistic approach by embracing diverse healing traditions.

Epistemology

• The study of knowledge, how we know.

Ontology

• The essence of who we are.

First Nature

• Ecological relationships, including humans.

Second Nature

• Capitalist transformations of the environment.

Third Nature

• Aspects of life that persist despite capitalism.

Anthropocene

• Geological epoch where human activities have significantly altered Earth's geochemical processes.
• Likely began with the Industrial Revolution.

Anthropogenic

• Environments and pollutants caused by human activities.

Cultural Ecology

• Subfield of cultural anthropology, exploring the relationship between human culture and ecosystems.

Race

• Attempt to categorize humans based on observed physical differences.

Multiculturalism

• Maintenance of multiple cultural traditions within a single society.

Racial Formation

• The processes of defining and redefining racial categories.

Reified

• When an inaccurate concept is accepted as truth.

Socially Constructed

• Concepts developed through social interactions perceived as real.

Ethnicity

• Degree of identification with a particular ethnic group.

One-Drop Rule

• Practice of excluding individuals with non-white ancestry from the white category.

Reciprocity and Repatriation

• Process negotiating encounters and relationships, impacting recipient communities.

Androgyny

• Cultural definitions recognizing gender differentiations, allowing gender bending and role crossing.

Binary Model of Gender

• Cultural definitions including only two gender identities (male and female).

Biological Sex

• Male and female identities based on sex organs and chromosomes.
• Includes intersex individuals with varying characteristics.

Hijra

• Example of a non-binary gender system, individuals adopt female roles and rituals in India.
• Engage in practices separate from traditional male/female categories.

Sex/Gender System

• Gayle Rubin's term for arrangements transforming biological sex into social products and satisfying these transformed needs.
• More flexible than "patriarchy", emphasizing oppression as product of social relations, not an unchangeable reality.

Biological Determinism

• Incorrect theory that biological differences cause varying capacities and behaviours.
• Argues gender roles are biologically determined, not culturally influenced.

Cisgender

• Individuals identifying with the sex and gender assigned at birth.

Dyads

• Socially approved pairings of two individuals (e.g., married couple).

Gender

• Culturally and historically constructed beliefs and expectations about gender roles.
• Learned and performed, with varying levels of pressure for conformity across societies.

Gender Ideology

• Beliefs about gendered capacities and behaviours, acquired through enculturation and varying across cultures.

Heteronormativity

• System of rights and privileges associated with common sexual choices and family formations.

Legitimizing Ideologies

• Belief systems (often by those in power) used to rationalize and perpetuate inequality.

Matrifocal

• Family structure centered on related females.

Matrilineal

• Kinship transmission through women from mothers to their children then to daughters.

Matrilocal

• Woman-centered kinship group with marriage arranging living around women household.

Patriarchy

• Society with male-dominated authority and ideology.

Patrifocal

• Family structure centered on related males.

Patrilineal

• Kinship transmission through men from males to their children then to sons.

Patrilocal

• Male-centered kinship group with marriage arrangements around male households.

Third Gender

• Gender identity separate from male and female in non-binary systems.

Transgender

• Identifying as a different gender than assigned at birth, possibly including social/physical transition.

RSA

• Repressive State Apparatus (Althusser).

ISA

• Ideological State Apparatus (Althusser).

Steven Feld

• Coined the term "anthropology of sound."

Anthropology of Sound

• Extends the study of music and language, focusing on voice, poetics, all-species sound interactions, and environmental acoustics and media.

Acoustemology

• Sound as a means of knowing and being in the world.

Pak Duri

• Song play mediates life between cultural constraints and individual expression.

Baka People of Cameroon

• Music and dance involved in female preparation, providing knowledge for adult life.

Fundamental Aspects of Musicology

• Global approach to music.
• Music viewed as social practice.
• Ethnographic and historical research.

Ethnomusicology

• Study of how expressive sonic phenomena inform understanding of humanity.

Explore the interdisciplinary field of Sound Studies and its implications in cultural performance. This quiz delves into how sound shapes social life and the role of music and the body in different cultural contexts. Test your understanding of how habitus influences individual actions within society.