Music As Social Life

LSP 200
Chapter 4, Habits of Self, Identity, and Culture
Habits of Self, Identity, and Culture
This is a dense chapter how do you get through all the terms in a way
that they can be applied?
Emphasize that these terms come into play in the fields of
anthropology and ethnomusicology and tend to be employed without
much discussion in texts. Important to understand what scholars are
talking about and what we mean when we discuss ideas about culture
and how music figures in their concepts of identity
Discussion 1:
Nature vs. Nurture Debate:
What determines musicality? What roles does nature and nurture play?
How do notions of musicality shift across cultures? (Play examples of
Blackings field recordings of the Venda and an example of Mozart)
Do you agree with Turinos assessment of musicality in North American
cultures? Based on your own experience, how do you think nature and
nurture influenced your own musicality?
What is this chapter about?
(94) One example of the ongoing dialectics through which individual
dispositions are shaped by the social environment while broader
cultural patterns are in turn shaped by the practices, values, and ideas
of individuals who are active, creative members of the social world.
Turino is interested in the interplay between how people shape their
environment and in turn are shaped by it. He starts here because he is
interested in how peoples experience of music both shapes and is
shaped by cultural phenomena.
Turino argues that you have to start with the individual and his or her
experience before you can make any larger assumptions about broader
levels of human organization shape taste, experience, and identity.
BUT! You might say, ok, in that case how can you know anything about
society at large? Thats where, I saw thats why research takes time.
Thats true you cant make assumptions about a whole culture based
on one experience or one person. You may start with individuals, but
you talk to many of them; look for patterns; observe behaviors;
research the history of a given activity; and place it into the context of
what you already know. That way the observations that you make are
grounded in what you actually know and experience.)

Music As Social Life

LSP 200
(95) Any general theories about artistic processes and expressive
cultural practices would do well to being with a conception of the self
and individual identity, because it is in living, breath individuals that
culture and musical meaning ultimately reside * This means that
you must take into account how concepts of self are culturally
influenced before you can really start to understand music
making and identity*
(pg. 95 provides a summary of key terms for this chapter)
Go through definitions that are key to this chapter:
Self: comprising a body plus the total sets of habits specific to an
individual that develop through ongoing interchanges of the individual
with her physical and social surroundings
Identity: partial selection of habits and attributes used to represent
oneself to oneself and to others by oneself and by others; emphasis on
certain habits and trains is relative to specific situation (in other words,
identity can also be contingent on frames of reference)
Culture: habits of thought and practice that are shared among
individuals
Cultural cohorts: shared binds people into social groups
according to specific aspects of the self (gender, age, class,
occupation, etc)
Cultural formation: broader more pervasive patterns of shared
habits give rise to cultural formations
Habit (following Peirce): repetition of any particular behavior, thought,
or reaction in similar circumstances or in reaction to similar stimuli in
the present and future based on such repetitions in the past; people
learn habits through socialization and can change over the course of
time. Habits influence practices (one might say practices are
constituted by collections of habits) and these in turn influence
individual lives in the social world.
(102) Self: Composite of all habits that determine the tendencies for
everything we think, feel, experience, and do.
(102) Identity: partial and variable selection of habits and attributes
that we use to represent ourselves to ourselves and to others People
typically shape their self-presentation to fit their goals in particular
situations and rarely reveal all the habits that constitute the self

Music As Social Life

LSP 200
How does identity operate:
Key concepts:
Social identities are based on some kind of iconicity: people recognize
similar habits or features that allow them to group themselves and
group others; this often conditions what we view as being important
about ourselves (for instance, people in the US are often seen by
people outside the US as being overly interested in race and ethnicity,
which often have visual markers; on the other hand, we tend not to
focus on peoples class status; contrast with Northern Ireland all
about religion, which struck me as an American as being very strange,
especially as one couldnt easily distinguish between Protestants and
Catholics by looking of them)
Discourse: relatively systematic constellation of habits of thought and
expression which shape peoples reality about a particular subject or
realm of experience
These things often operate below the surface, but may have profound
effects on the way we view ourselves and others or what we judge to
be important. Keep in mind that discursive categories are not objective
but rather the result of accrued social meaning and therefore subject
to social analysis.
Identity: used to both differentiate and unite ourselves can be used
strategically
Essentialism: can be employed strategically for political or social
power or can be imposed by others, often with higher social status
Thinking about Culture and Society:
(109) Culture: habits of thought and practice shared among individuals
within social groups of varying sizes and specificity and along different
lines of common experience and identification
Culture is not specific to one country, and peoples cultural identities
can overlap (i.e. someone may identify with American culture, Latino
culture, student culture, and Chicago culture, and choose what aspect
of their identity given the circumstances)
Culture Society
Society: networks and institutions of existing social roles and relations
unified by structures of governance and/or common patterns of social
organization
(110) We belong to social groups and are part of a society, but cultural
phenomena are part of and belong within us

Music As Social Life

LSP 200
Cultural cohorts: social groupings that form along the lines of specific
constellations of shared habit based in similarities of parts of the self
(i.e. Woodstock generation; Generation X, Millennials)
Cultural formation: Cultural groups on a variety of nested levels,
ranging from the family to transstate formations, that are united by the
primary models for socialization and shared habits among members
What distinguishes a cultural cohort from a cultural formation?
Pervasiveness and influence over time-depth
Formation shapes shared habits of cohort habits of thought and
practice operate across cohorts and create the condition for the
emergence of cohorts
(116) Explanation that the difference is a matter of degree is
explained on page 116: What might begin as a cohort can morph into a
formation over time?
(120) A summary of socialization (following Pierre Bourdieus theory of
habitus)
A persons internalized dispositions and habits (habitus) are products
of relations to the conditions around her and her concrete experiences
in and of the environment. Habits and dispositions guide what we
think, do, and make (practices).
If time: Discussion 5: Mini group research project where students
have to design a project that would look at some of these issues
among DePaul University students? (students wouldnt actually do the
research project, but come up with a research design that looks at
some of these issues)