bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Harrison’s Hecubas
Authors: Brodie Geraldine
Published: January 2022

Harrison’s Hecuba provides an opportunity to examine his engagement with the centrality of a significant female role from the perspective of his persona as a political activist. Harrison’s collaboration with Vanessa Redgrave enabled him to craft a production criticizing the intervention of the USA and its allies in Iraq, and to take his critique to the geopolitical centre of the policies he condemns through his portrayal of Hecuba’s interaction with her Greek victors. Harrison’s introduction to the published text addresses the contradictory attitude whereby the public weeps for one Hecuba but allows the war zone to be flooded with many Hecubas. This multiplicity of Hecubas provides a further insight to Harrison’s approaches to translation, performance, and activism through its reoccurrence in Harrison’s original play Fram. Fram has an international agenda, moving from Fridtjof Nansen’s polar exploration in 1895 to contemporary protests by Kurdish poets and frozen African stowaways. Fram also resurrects the classicist translator Gilbert Murray and his regular actor Sybil Thorndike, ‘who portrayed Hecuba’. This chapter reads Fram as Harrison’s commentary on his role as an activist writer in relation to his production of Hecuba. It investigates the intersection of Harrison’s activities of poet, translator, adaptor, and director and examines Harrison’s conviction of the relevance of Classical drama for contemporary issues and the persuasive role of performance as activism.
‘Illuminated by the light of the sun’
Authors: Eastman Helen
Published: January 2022

Harrison’s engagement with ancient drama is not just textual and thematic; Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, The Labourers of Herakles, and The Kaisers of Carnuntum strove to re-create elements of original fifth-century Athenian performance conditions with one-off, ephemeral productions and open air-settings. This was a deliberate progression from Harrison’s Oresteia, directed by Peter Hall, which had explored the use of masks and an all-male ensemble, but in a conventional indoor setting, across a longer run. This chapter considers the stagecraft of Harrison’s early work, from the material setting of the productions to the performance style developed by the actors, including their vocal style, direct address, and the use of dance (particularly clogging). Drawing on interviews with original company members, including the subsequent work of director Barrie Rutter at Northern Broadsides, and the experience for actors of being involved in such ground-breaking work, it looks at the development of Harrison’s stagecraft, particularly when he began to direct his own productions. The political dimension of Harrison’s stagecraft, including the visibility of the audience, is explored. Inevitable compromises, such as the extended run of Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, initially designed as a one-off event, are considered, as are the tensions between Harrison’s artistic and intellectual project and the wider theatre community.
Lyres, Liars, Repetition, and Prophecy
Authors: Huk Romana
Published: January 2022

This chapter looks at the future-oriented nature of Harrison’s drive, which in this reading is always towards ‘coming’ life. Harrison looks for ‘signs’ of it in times of its ending (as at the end of ‘The Mother of the Muses’); he imagines its extinction. More than witnessing, he tells us of ‘the worst thing that our imagination can, and [he’s] afraid, must conceive’ so that we ‘face up to the Muses’ as did Hecuba, and still say ‘life’ at the last, as she does in Euripides’ play, affirming it rather than averting her gaze from it, or going silent before horror. Classical sources not only provide precedents for staging the unspeakable to be spoken about, and faced up to, but also much else besides. Although Harrison is not a backward-looking artist, culture’s receding memory of founding conflicts and violence affords his deep double-vision a new kind of believability when he hears the furies coming for us out of that past in new/old forms of self-destruction. The chapter considers the roles played by classical references in his forward-looking poetry written in response to war, violence, and escalating destruction in the age of mechanical reproduction. Fine lines between prophecy and pretence, revelation and deadening repetition as witness, make the venture one of risk-taking toward ‘righting,’ as one early Harrison poem put it. Tony Harrison’s poetics of seeing by paying attention to a number of poems are explored, especially those of his collection, The Gaze of the Gorgon.
Fire, Fennel, and the Future of Socialism
Authors: Stead Henry
Published: January 2022

This chapter is about the electric presence of ancient Greek and Roman culture in the film poetry of Tony Harrison. It examines the use of the classical broadly in his film poetry, including The Big H, Loving Memory, and A Maybe Day in Kazakhstan, but will discuss Harrison’s classicism in closer detail by focusing on three poems made between 1992 and 2000 which each overtly centre around classical texts, figures, and concepts: The Gaze of the Gorgon, Prometheus, and Metamorpheus. It includes unpublished archival findings, drawn from the poet’s notebooks, and will examine the many mediating texts between ancient source and new poem, and interjecting transhistorical parallels which are fiercely pulled into the creative and hermeneutic processes by the poet. The chapter argues that the coupling of Harrison’s intensive research of, and creative close reading into, his classical sources, with a determined and wilful presentism, brings about a uniquely caustic mythopoeic virtuosity rarely encountered outside of the works of the classical authors themselves. It is not concerned with bringing the ancient back to life, re-enactment, or anything like that: Harrison’s classicism is concerned with using the uniquely flexible diachronic narrative framework provided by looking back to an imagined and highly symbolic mythical past, through exemplary performance texts in which the spoken word is primary, in order to face up to contemporary reality, and then crucially asking ‘What next?’ It is quite as much a recipe for the extension of hope as it is for dissent.
The Sound of the Oresteia
Authors: Latham Caroline
Published: January 2022

This chapter considers Harrison’s choice of pseudo-Anglo-Saxon for the Oresteia, looking at the reasons Harrison himself cited, recorded in interviews, programme notes, and jottings in the Brotherton Library archive. This would include his familiarity with Michael Alexander’s translations of Anglo-Saxon poetry and evidence that he had both read the poems and been in conversation with Alexander. The chapter argues that not only the kennings in these poems but also Alexander’s tone in the elegies influenced Harrison in his treatment of the character of the watchman. Another vernacular poet, William Barnes, is also cited as an influence, since his attempt to create English alternatives to Latinate words interested Harrison as he created his hyphenated, punchy vocabulary. The chapter considers Aeschylus’s reputation for ‘cragginess’, drawing on translations of the adjective ‘Hippocrene’ in Aristophanes’ Frogs in a discussion as to whether the word really refers to the mountainous nature of Aeschylus’s language or its highly coloured, poetic qualities which Aristophanes suggests are muse-inspired rather than rugged. Accepting Harrison’s interpretation, there follows a mapping of his sounds in the Oresteia onto the original Greek.
Political Catharsis? The Example of Harrison
Authors: Bentley Paul
Published: January 2022

This chapter places Harrison’s handling of classical Greek tragedy, and his notion of the function of the audience’s emotional experience in classical tragedy, in relation to the particular tradition of understanding and criticizing the idea of tragic catharsis, which informs and shapes his drama. Brecht’s rejection of Aristotelian theatre, and a tradition of Marxist criticism of tragedy, which is contemporary with Harrison’s ventures into classical tragedy in the 1970s—most notable with his Oresteia—are key to understanding Harrison’s politicized engagement with classical tragic form, and with the ways in which this form engages audiences emotionally. The notion of catharsis as emotional purgation—the idea that, upon watching a tragic performance, the audience feels pleasurably relieved of built-up feelings of pity and fear—is inimical to Brechtian theatre, as well as to Marxist aesthetics, both of which demand a more critical engagement with the meaning of tragedy. Much in dispute today, the purgatio model of catharsis, as it is assumed and rejected by the Left, shapes Harrison’s classical–political dramaturgy, which also resists this model. Though the function of pity in tragic theatre exercises Harrison, direct discussion of catharsis is virtually absent from his introductions and essays, which might suggest a degree of sceptical distance from what he takes Aristotle to mean by this vexed term. The chapter clarifies the implications of Harrison’s dramatic use of, and critical reflections on, pity and fear, and considers how Harrison’s tragedies might be understood in relation to contemporary debates about the meaning and import of Aristotle’s notorious formulation.
Bardcards
Authors: Taplin Oliver
Published: January 2022

Tony Harrison has always been a prolific correspondent. There are literally thousands of his postcards surviving in various collections and archives, many of which detail the ideas, plans, and progress of his creative endeavours. Professor Oliver Taplin, friend, collaborator, and critic of Harrison’s work, has taken this opportunity to review and sift his own extensive personal cache, identifying those that reveal the relationship between Harrison’s work in the classics and his creative progression. The most prolific and revealing of this collection of ‘Bardcards’ are those written about Harrison’s imagining of Sophocles’ Ichneutae, The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, which was composed in an extraordinary twelve months of creative fervour in 1987–88. Those insights are shared in this chapter, which provides vivid photographs of the innovative and exciting premier of Trackers in rehearsal.
Strategies for Distributed and Collective Action
Authors: Kornberger Martin
Published: January 2022

The premise of this book is that the well-worn modes of collective action – from markets to hierarchies, from institutions to movements – provide a limited vocabulary to investigate, let alone invent new forms of open, networked and transsectoral collaboration. The promise of this book is to introduce a novel set of concepts – including shared concerns, symbols, interface designs, participatory architectures, evaluative infrastructures, network strategy and leading as diplomacy – that represent figures of thought which combine goal-orientated, purposeful action with scale, openness and creativity. The practical implication is that these new forms of distributed and collective action might help to address challenges and crises of our times.
Visible Hand Explanations
Authors: Kornberger Martin
Published: January 2022

This chapter introduces visible-hand explanations of collective action. It focuses on hierarchy as the main form of visible-hand explanations. Theoretically it starts with Taylor’s scientific management and explores the paradoxes and puzzles of management theory.
Institutional Explanations
Authors: Kornberger Martin
Published: January 2022

This chapter focuses on institutional explanations of collective action. Starting with Olsen, Hardin, and Ostrom, the chapter explores how institutions are defined and work to coordinate collectives. It explores a variety of key concepts of institutional theory and critically engages with their ability to explain collective action.
Organizing the Open
Authors: Kornberger Martin
Published: January 2022

This chapter asks the question: How is collective action in the open organized? How are communication, collaboration, and control accomplished? The figures of thought that are introduced include interface design, architectures of participation, and evaluative infrastructures. The aim of this chapter is to provide a fresh organizational vocabulary to understand how structure and openness are combined and shape distributed and collective action.
Introduction
Authors: Bocksberger Sophie Marianne
Published: January 2022

– τίς τὰρ ὅδ᾿ ἄλλος Ἀχαιὸς ἀνὴρ ἠΰς τε μέγας τε‎

ἔξοχος Ἀργείων κεφαλήν τε καὶ εὐρέας ὤμους‎;

τὸν δ᾿ Ἑλένη τανύπεπλος ἀμείβετο‎, δῖα γυναικῶν·‎

– οὗτος δ᾿ Αἴας ἐστὶ πελώριος ἕρκος Ἀχαιῶν‎.

Γ‎ 226–9

Who is this noble and huge man that surpasses the Argives with his head and wide shoulders? Like Priam, I have always been seized by wonder, when encountering Ajax. Helen answers: ‘This is the mighty Ajax, bulwark of the Achaeans’. It is a succinct answer that she gives, but one that is characteristic of Ajax’s portrayal in the ...
Ajax from Salamis
Authors: Bocksberger Sophie Marianne
Published: January 2022

This chapter focuses on the representations of Telamonian Ajax in early Greek hexameter poetry and in archaic art. It broaches the question of the emergence of early Greek hexameter poetry and the way its various traditions relate to one another before focusing on Ajax per se. Various motifs pertaining to Ajax are analysed. First, elements are discussed which might have been inherited from Mycenaean times, such as his shield made of seven bulls’ hides (often identified as a tower shield), his connection with ancient Salamis, or the use of the formula Αἴαντε‎ to refer either to him and Locrian Ajax together or to him and his brother Teucer. The other elements of Ajax’s gesta that are closely examined comprise his genealogy, his supposed invulnerability, his role as ἕρκος Ἀχαιῶν‎ (‘bulwark of the Achaeans’), his conflictual relationship with the goddess Athena, the episode of the ὅπλων κρίσις‎, his madness, his suicide, and finally his connection with his homonym, Locrian Ajax. As a result, the chapter establishes the outline of what constituted the pre-Homeric myth(s) of Ajax, and discusses how the poet(s) of the Iliad received and adapted traditional material pertaining to the hero in the poem.
Internal Migration
Authors: Obeng-Odoom Franklin
Published: January 2022

Internal migration is usually neglected, but it is increasing and sometimes linked to international migration. What work exists on the motivation of migrants and their conditions of life is usually cast in the push-pull model or variants of it such as the Harris-Todaro model. In most cases, too, internal migration is cast in populationist terms, implying that this internal migration is occasioned by population explosion. Yet, as this chapter shows drawing on the experiences of urban farmers and street workers in Ghana, neither the decision to migrate nor the decision to return is based on individual calculations alone. More fundamentally, the decisions to migrate or to exit do not reflect ‘overpopulation’ or migrant policies that create a moral hazard such more migration leads to more births in the source regions. If at all, the household size in the sending regions has fallen in all of these regions, not increased, as Malthusians suggest.Exit, in fact, is not the only option available to migrants, but voice mechanisms are often compromised. That said, rural poverty does not provide a sufficient explanation for rural–urban migration, either. There are clearly circular and cumulative (Myrdal, 1944) factors that drive the process of migration, shaping exit instead of voice or loyalty to stay without exit (Hirschman, 1970), but these are institutional. If these institutions are the engines of change, land and property rights are the drivers of transformation. How land shapes internal migration by various groups warrants systematic analysis.
Economic Crises and Global Migration
Authors: Obeng-Odoom Franklin
Published: January 2022

If internal migration is complicated, global international migration is even more complex, raising questions such as: ‘What are the causes of the current refugee crisis?’, ‘What about the causes of the 2008 global economic crisis?’, ‘Are these crises interlinked and, if so, how can both be resolved?’ Previous research has pointed to ‘civil war’ in refugee-sending countries and problematic practices or policies in the US as causal mechanisms of the refugee and economic crises, based on methodologies that considered these crises separately. Publicly available data published, among others, by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), shows, however, that neither war nor financial speculation is a sufficient explanation. Instead, both crises arise from a particular inequality-based rentier systems of institutions aggressively pursued by an US-led West against a resistant Global South in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. From this explanation, existing proposals to address the so-called refugee ‘problem’, ranging from detention centres and regime change to sanctuary cities, are questionable.
Education and Experience
Authors: Obeng-Odoom Franklin
Published: January 2022

The mobility of students has become one of the most common fixtures of global migration. Yet, international student migration experiences are under-researched. When discussed, they are typically assumed. The neoclassical economics theory of human capital usually serves as a short-cut for doing so. In turn, the lived experiences of such students are hardly empirically verified, except to be read off theory as win–win. Nevertheless, their increasing numbers and the ever-increasing pace of globalization in higher education, along with reports of their stress mean that this group of migrants can no longer be caricatured. What are the socio-economic characteristics of these migrants, how are they housed where they study, what are their education and work experiences? Australia is one country where such migrants are central to both the form and funding of higher education, so this chapter analyses the results of large surveys and official reports published by student associations, housing authorities, and universities, notably the University of Sydney and the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations in the country, complemented by additional interviews with international students, university support staff, and student unions. The evidence questions the neoclassical economics human capital theory, as systemic racism against students is persistent both in their encounters with housing providers and with employers.
The Promised Land
Authors: Obeng-Odoom Franklin
Published: January 2022

The forces of global migration have intensified. Accordingly, many more studies have been conducted about internal and international migration. Yet, more research has not necessarily brought more insight. Questions about the forms, drivers, ramifications, and policies persist. This book has tried to address these questions by examining global migration in its many dimensions and intersections. This chapter summarizes the key arguments, highlights their significance, and stresses their implications for how global migration could be shaped and studied. The book started with a description of the problem, what is known and what questions remain. Next to be considered were critical reviews and reflections on existing methodologies. Found to be inadequate, I put the case for a new methodology. This approach, based on an amalgam of Georgist political economy (G), institutional economics (I), and stratification economics (S), questions both mainstream analyses of global migration and their alternatives, but also provides the grounds for developing new pathways for exposition and explanation, based on which new migration policies and politics can be developed to inform ecology, economics, and the political economy of global migration.
On Principle and Persuasion: Examining Philip Alston’s Contribution to Economic and Social Rights through the Lens of Health
Authors: Yamin Alicia Ely
Published: January 2022

Although relatively little of Philip Alston’s scholarly or other work has been directly related to health, his enormous contribution to the clarification and development of economic and social rights (ESR) norms, as well as the linkages to development paradigms and practice, have greatly contributed to the field. Moreover, patterns of health are a keen reflection of social inequality within and between countries; health has been at the centre of recent development paradigms, which also gave rise to ‘human rights-based approaches to health’; and health access and outcomes are profoundly subject to influence by non-state actors in the global economic order, both directly and indirectly. Thus, the area of health rights provides a particularly relevant lens through which to examine some of Alston’s contributions to the larger field of ESR. This chapter takes up the ‘Recognition, Institutionalization, and Accountability’ (RIA) framework Alston proposed for advancing ESR, which set out the need for: (a) legal recognition, including a minimum core content that cannot be deferred; (b) appropriate institutional arrangements, including implicitly health systems; and (c) measures that promote governmental accountability, including judicial enforcement. Each component of the RIA framework is explored in the context of evolving struggles for the health-related rights over the last three decades.
The Persuasive Authority of Philip Alston’s Work for Human Rights Regional Bodies
Authors: Tigroudja Hélène
Published: January 2022

The chapter explores the persuasive authority on Regional Courts of Human Rights of Professor Philip Alston’s reports and other contributions, while serving as member of the UN CESCR, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, and Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights. Throughout the reports and multiple general comments he authored, Alston has strongly influenced the approach to human rights. His pleading for the justiciability of economic, social, cultural, and environmental human rights is rendering more visible the connection between the economic situation of an individual, a group or a country and the ideal of universal enjoyment and exercise of human rights. This holistic philosophy centred on the socio-economic conditions of realization of human rights is being increasingly developed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, while the European Court stands a step back from this movement.
Quite Enough (Still)
Authors: Hoffmann Florian
Published: January 2022

This contribution engages with the current wave of fundamental critiques of human rights by both the populist political right and different quarters of the academy, a predicament Philip Alston has dealt with extensively in his recent interventions and which to him represents an unprecedented danger as much to human rights work as to the causes that motivate it. The chapter analyses these critiques as part of the broader crisis of the neoliberal world order and maps out their different intellectual trajectories and potential consequences not just for human rights but also for political agency and social transformation. It sets out the need to defend human rights in a way that takes these critiques seriously, yet also highlights the continuing relevance of and, indeed, necessity for human rights as one of the primary discourses for emancipation and social transformation.
Aristotle on Syllogisms ‘from a Hypothesis’
Authors: Striker Gisela
Published: January 2022

In chapters 23 and 44 of Prior Analytics I, Aristotle discusses arguments ‘from a hypothesis’ and claims that these include the reductio-arguments. His descriptions in both chapters show that what direct and indirect arguments of this group have in common is that the ‘hypothesis’ is not a part of the argument, but either an agreement to the effect that a certain proposition will be accepted as proven if another proposition has been proven, or—in cases of reductio ad impossibile—a logical principle for which no explicit agreement is needed.
Assertoric vs. Modal Syllogistic
Authors: Striker Gisela
Published: January 2022

This chapter argues that the inconsistencies in Aristotle’s modal syllogistic are probably due to the fact that he did not realize that the switch from the predication relations of the Topics to the quantitative term relations in the Analytics would lead to difficulties for the interpretation of his premises. The conversion rules regularly lead to what he calls (at An.Po. I 22.83a1–18) predication per accidens (as in ‘the white is a log’) and rules out for scientific proofs. Such cases do not affect the validity of assertoric syllogistic, but they do lead to unacceptable results in the case of de re—modalities. Aristotle notices such problems in a few places, but the solutions he offers hold only for the particular cases.
Aristotle’s Three Theories of Argument
Authors: Striker Gisela
Published: January 2022

This chapter presents a brief outline of the development of Aristotle’s theories of argument from dialectic in the Topics through the Rhetoric to formal logic in the Analytics.
Epicurean Epistemology
Authors: Striker Gisela
Published: January 2022

This chapter presents Epicurus’s theory of knowledge as a response to the epistemological pessimism of Democritus. The first section discusses the three ‘criteria of truth’—sense-impressions, preconceptions, and the feelings of pleasure and pain; and also Epicurus’s account of perceptual error, by which he tried to show that the senses do after all offer true and consistent, if sometimes fragmentary, information. The second section deals with Epicurus’s scientific method, that is, the confirmation and refutation of beliefs or theoretical hypotheses. In a final section, I briefly discuss the role of the feelings as criteria in ethics, and the kind of reasoning Epicurus used to call ἐπιλογισμός‎.
Brain Pathology and Moral Responsibility
Authors: Jefferson Anneli
Published: January 2022

Does a diagnosis of brain dysfunction matter for ascriptions of moral responsibility? This chapter argues that, while knowledge of brain pathology can inform judgments of moral responsibility, its evidential value is currently limited for a number of practical and theoretical reasons. These include the problem of establishing causation from correlational data, drawing inferences about individuals from group data, and the reliance of the interpretation of brain findings on well-established psychological findings. Brain disorders sometimes matter for moral responsibility, however, because they change an individual’s moral psychology in a way that is beyond their control. While control over psychological changes is not an excusing factor, brain disorders can mitigate moral responsibility because they confront individuals with new psychological deficits or urges for which their previous moral education and existing external and internal moral resources have not prepared them.
Discovery
Authors: Pasqualetti Martin J.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 1 illustrates the myriad influences energy has on our lives. It guides us to understand where we encounter the influences of energy, even those we do not usually recognize. It simplifies the world’s complexity by identifying energy as the single most influential driver of human actions and decisions. It outlines how intricately energy moves throughout lives and the experiences of all who share the planet. It shows how energy weaves a tapestry that includes all activities, from the most uncomplicated daily chore to the most complex international agreement, and all ideas, from every memory of the past to every dream of the future. Its role in all human interactions is as fundamental as it is overlooked.
Futures
Authors: Pasqualetti Martin J.
Published: January 2022

Chapter 14 looks to the future, explores the pros and cons of present and future energy sources, and defends the deliberative approach used in democratic societies in adjusting to global environmental threats to humanity. It identifies the impediments to the rapid growth of renewable energy in the United States and explains the role renewable energy development can play in slowing the rise in greenhouse gases and distinguishes between what the energy future will be and what it should be. It demonstrates how renewable energy development will influence your quality of life, as it compares the effects of the energy futures that might occur, according to environmentalists and politicians. Further, Chapter 14 compares the energy landscapes of traditional energy resources with renewable energy resources’ energy landscapes. It ranks the most promising steps we can take to reach more sustainable cities. It concludes with the knowledge that we have come full circle from our dependence on renewable resources before the Industrial Revolution back to the dawn of a new age of renewable energy. At the same time, it asks how this trajectory will play out in different countries. As the old saying goes, the problem with predicting the future is that it is in the future. Following the thread of energy will help get us there.
The Rushdie Affair and the British Press
Authors: Parekh Bhikhu
Published: January 2022

It is not only thuggish regimes like that in Communist East Germany that can apply overwhelming pressure―this can also come from the media and the outraged local community. This chapter describes the British response to Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel The Satanic Verses (1988), illustrating how a difficult situation was exacerbated by its inadequate treatment in the British press..It examines Rushdie’s background and motives, considers the responses of different groups, like British Jews, British Muslims and non-Muslim British Asians, to the book, and adopts a differentiated position on the question of free speech in the light of the Satanic Verses controversy.
John Betjeman, the Subversive Conservative
Authors: Beckerman Jane Dryhurst
Published: January 2022

This chapter the life-enhancing work of a conservative writer and social commentator, John Betjeman. The terms “radical” and “progressive” are often assumed, wrongly, to be epithets that can be applied only to left-wing causes. But all good writing should challenge us out of our complacency and fixed thinking, making us more alive. Betjeman was not only a highly accomplished poet―he also led an active public life as a prominent crusader for architectural conservation. After discussing the reception of Betjeman’s work, and the mixed critical response, the chapter focuses on the poet’s first collection, Mount Zion (1931), and demonstrates why this was revolutionary, thus illustrating how constructive subversion can come from the Right, as well as from the Left.
Much Ado about a Bridge
Authors: Mohankumar M.
Published: January 2022

This chapter contains a poem by M. Mohankumar. As this poem, by a former IAS official shows, nowhere is the gap between words and actions greater than in government bureaucracy.
Freedom of Expression and Values
Authors: Murugan Perumal
Published: January 2022

In a powerful account that draws on personal experience, this chapter explains how traditional “values” have relentlessly crushed freedom of expression not only in caste-ridden Tamil society but also in Indian society as a whole. It reflects on the meaning of the term, and considers how these “values” have impinged upon the chapter’s author’s own life and development. The chapter notes the lack of freedom of expression that we have in our dealings with parents, elders and teachers, and how rigid the Indian value system is with respect to caste, government, and gender relationships. The glaring inequalities in everyday life must be addressed, and the social values that underpin them, Only then will freedom of expression be possible, on the basis of equality.
If There Isn’t a Free Press Don’t Blame Modi
Authors: Nag Kingshuk
Published: January 2022

This chapter examines the relationship in modern India between the media and those in power, and comes to the conclusion that, if the press and media in India have become increasingly unfree, this can hardly be blamed on Narendra Modi. The press, it argues, have been like the proverbial three monkeys who see no wrong, speak no wrong and hear nothing wrong. But their docility is not a recent phenomenon, solely connected to the Modi government, even if Modi is not known as a champion of press freedom. It is a longstanding problem resulting from a complex of reasons, including the influence of financial factors, fear, naive faith in the government, embarrassment over the revelation that news could be “bought”, and growing dependence on income from advertisers.
Stories
Authors: David Hilda
Published: January 2022

This chapter includes a collection of short pieces by Hilda David about people (especially playwrights) who have a story to tell, stories that may be hindered, delayed, opposed, or remain ambiguous: the painter Ara, whose sad tale is “the story of art in this country”; the playwright Gangarani Gavankar, who created play, Vastraharan, that was unbelievably popular without ever achieving formal recognition; the famous Dr. Ambedkar; Michael Frayn, with his disturbing play Copenhagen about the great physicists Nils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg; the doomed playwright Tennessee Williams; a modern Chinese play, whose damning critical review was the beginning of a reign of terror; and two plays banned under the Dramatic Performances Act. “It is always the solo voices that have a story to tell.”
Where Is the Mind without Fear?
Authors: Kumar Sashi
Published: January 2022

This chapter presents an address given by Sashi Kumar to an audience mostly of young people at a South Indian university. India, Kumar tells them, has reached a defining moment, its Constitution challenged, many of its people marginalised and economically embattled, and its liberal values under attack. The difference between India and theistic Pakistan has become narrow, as the forces of Hindutva strive to achieve a hegemony and India enters an era of proto-Fascism. Referring to the famous poem by Tagore, he asks: “Where is the mind without fear?” The answer to that question, he suggests, could be: among such young people as those listening to the lecture, who will not allow their country and its traditions of secularism and toleration to be destroyed.
Rules for Display
Authors: Irvin Sherri
Published: January 2022

Contemporary artists often sanction elaborate rules for display of their works. Sometimes these rules tightly restrict the structure that must be constituted; other times they provide looser guidelines or offer a great deal of latitude to the installers. These choices about rules interact with other aspects of the work to contribute to its meanings: El Anatsui’s choice to allow installers to make extensive decisions about display has different expressive significance than Lawrence Weiner’s. Audiences often need direct information about the rules to understand and appreciate the work fully. When rules for display are violated, the work’s expressive potential may be undermined, or it may fail to be on display at all.
Rules for Conservation
Authors: Irvin Sherri
Published: January 2022

Traditionally, visual artworks persist over time through the preservation of their material elements: if the surface of a painting is irrevocably obscured, the work is destroyed. While this remains true for many artworks, in other cases artists have sanctioned custom rules that permit or require certain forms of material change. Zoe Leonard requires that her objects be allowed to decay; Sarah Sze requires that some objects in her sculptural works be periodically replaced. In still other cases, such as James Turrell’s Skyspaces, changes in environmental conditions may destroy the work even if the object fabricated by the artist remains intact. Institutions have developed detailed procedures for gathering information about how artworks should be conserved, since this information is essential to the work’s identity and the meanings it expresses.
Sight-Reading
Authors: Zhukov Katie , McPherson Gary E.
Published: January 2022

Abstract: This chapter synthesizes available information on music reading and highlights recent approaches to studying the acquisition of sight-reading expertise. We focus on factors contributing to fluent music reading: eye movement, perceptual skills, auditory skills, and memory. The eye movements of accomplished sight-readers are different from those of slow readers, with expertise measured by fewer and shorter fixations and longer saccades. Skilled sight-readers perceive larger rhythm and pitch patterns than slow sight-readers do, and base their prediction skills on their knowledge of musical styles. Strong auditory skills also play an important role in sight-reading. Fluent sight-reading involves fast retrieval of well-established motor responses from the long-term memory and suppression of irrelevant information in the working memory. We discuss a range of approaches to the acquisition of fluent sight-reading: rhythm training leads to greater rhythmic accuracy, familiarity with musical styles improves pattern recognition, and collaborative playing activities assist in maintaining pacing of a performance. A holistic training approach combining all three of these elements is described in the last section of the chapter. General and specific recommendations for ways musicians can improve their music reading skills are provided together with training strategies aimed at helping musicians become fluent music readers.
Musical Expression
Authors: Schubert Emery
Published: January 2022

“Playing with feeling” is central to music making and is referred to more formally as playing with “expression.” This chapter organizes expressive playing into three components: Knowledge (K); Performance (P—the act of making music in an expressive manner); and Affect (A—the reception of the music by the listener) (KPA). Knowledge is paramount for the musician seeking to understand and improve their capacity to play music expressively, and the chapter catalogues the scientific and psychological literature that provides insight into the knowledge component. Notation, skill acquisition, proprioception, and extramusical knowledge types are discussed. This is followed by a presentation of the sources of musical expression knowledge—individual, situational, cultural, and universal. The author then critiques key theories of musical expression, contrasting the idea of musical expression arising from deviation or modulation of the norm against the empirical but contradictory evidence that optimal musical expression is perceived when a performance is the most average (prototypical). Finally, individual differences in musical expression are discussed, with the proposal that some individuals may prefer to understand musical expression through a performance stance, while others in terms of an affect stance, with both stances being simultaneously possible. The KPA process model of musical expression presents a convenient way for the musician to better understand how to perform from a performance science perspective, without losing the nuances offered by approaches offered by philosophy, pedagogy, and intuition.
Body Movement
Authors: Davidson Jane W. , Broughton Mary C.
Published: January 2022

Abstract: Understanding the central role of body movement in the production and perception of musical performances is necessary for any musician committed to enhancing their skills. This chapter considers relevant research on motor learning and instrumental skill development, musical expression, and expressive movement. It also draws on research from speech and nonverbal communication and on studies that have employed these analytical frameworks to explain gestures and postures found in the body movements of musicians. Examples from studies of solo singers, instrumentalists, ensembles, and conductors highlight the various styles and functions of movement used for musical and extra-musical outcomes. These works include discussion of key historical treatises and individuals of world renown. In addition to performance-enhancing aspects of well-assembled bodily movement, skilled performances inhibited by physical and psychological tensions are also explored, along with techniques commonly used to alleviate such problems. Material is also offered to enable musicians to reflect upon their own performances and consider techniques they may apply to improve the functional, artistic, and communicative uses of body movement in musical performances.
Self-Regulated Learning Music Microanalysis
Authors: McPherson Gary E.
Published: January 2022

Abstract: The toolkit of strategies that help individuals adapt their behaviors to break through, feel energized, and perform successfully collectively embody the concept of being a self-regulated learner. This toolkit of strategies is what this chapter is about, and its purpose is to help musicians more skillfully infuse ideas and principles from the self-regulated learning literature within their musical development. These strategies encompass the ability to monitor one’s own thoughts and actions, navigate and control your own emotions especially when you feel frustrated or anxious, and focus your efforts to select the most efficient solutions that will enable you to perform at your personal best. Put another way, becoming self-regulated in the mastery of music involves being able to recognize a challenge, understand the scope and nature of this challenge, focusing your motivation to deal with the challenges, enacting strategies and plans to overcome the challenge, and evaluating your progress toward overcoming the challenge. Self-regulated learning is not a mental ability or skill, but instead a way of mastering musical learning by drawing on and applying a number of self-directive processes that allow musicians to transform their mental abilities into skills. Examples are provided of the self-regulated learning microanalysis technique that are designed for performing musicians who are trying to take more control of their own development and proactively work toward achieving their personal best.
Personality and Individual Differences
Authors: Hruska Emese , Bonneville-Roussy Arielle
Published: January 2022

To many people, music is the very expression of our inner selves. At the same time as it brings people together, music helps us to understand and articulate what it is that makes us unique as individuals. The psychology of individual differences refers to the study of inter-individual variability in people, including socio-demographic characteristics like age and gender, and variability in genetic and psychological factors, such as personality, motivation (including passion and grit), perfectionism, and anxiety. Many of the psychological differences have been associated with distinctive career paths and levels of attainment in music performance. Genetic differences can also play an important role in musical aptitude. While some of these individual differences are stable in musicians, others are considered to be more malleable. This chapter reviews the evidence on these differences in performing musicians from childhood through to the professional level, touching upon divergences concerning gender, and choices between musical genres and instruments. It offers practical suggestions for professional musicians, music teachers, parents, and students on how to deal with the more stable traits like personality and how to enhance the more malleable ones, such as perfectionism and anxiety, that considerably affect one’s musicianship.
Improvisation
Authors: MacDonald Raymond
Published: January 2022

Abstract: This chapter overviews the process of improvisation, emphasizing that there has been a dramatic increase of interest around improvisation over the past twenty years. Improvisation is conceptualized as a real-time compositional and decision-making process that is uniquely collaborative, creative, and universally accessible. It is also proposed as a defining aspect of music making. The chapter draws parallels between what might be called everyday improvising, such as turn taking in conversations, and the musical improvising that may take place during the performance of a jazz standard. An overview of ethnographic and cognitive studies is presented. Issues around identities and improvisation are also foregrounded alongside a series of studies investigating how musicians talk about improvising, and in particular how musicians make decisions about what to play when improvising. A case is made for broadening the definition of musical virtuosity to include new virtuosities: social, creative, collaborative, and listening virtuosities. Techniques such as graphic scores, improvised conduction, and text-based approaches are proposed as ways of developing proficiencies and confidence in improvisation. The chapter also suggests that learning to improvise fosters the development of transferable skills, the ability to collaborate, co-operate, compromise, and help reach solutions quickly.
Performing in the Studio
Authors: Slater Mark
Published: January 2022

While studio recordings can resemble live performances and draw upon similar reserves of knowledge and skill, the processes and experiences of performing in the studio are notably different from being on stage in front of an audience. This chapter situates performance within the technological trappings of the studio and its associated social and musical processes, which are now so prevalent in contemporary musicianship. The chapter draws upon ideas from ontology (in terms of how recording modifies the forms of music’s existence), sociology (in that the process of making recordings demands a consideration of the social constructs at play between collaborators), affordances (to describe how people and the material aspects of the studio and its apparatus are entwined in a productive relationship), and poetics (which relates the process of making to the specific conditions of that moment). To draw out the practical implications of the discussion, four proposals are offered, which encourage: (1) a recognition of the similarities and differences between live and recording performance contexts; (2) an understanding of the ideological underpinnings of why a recording is being made; (3) an acknowledgment of the productive effects of technology; and (4) an admission that recordings construct an illusion of some kind of reality.
High-Impact Teaching Mindframes
Authors: McPherson Gary E. , Hattie John
Published: January 2022

Abstract: This chapter provides our explanation of why certain teachers are able to leave such a positive impact on their students’ love for performing music. It draws on the work of John Hattie, whose explanation of how to make learning visible details ten mindframes that have been shown through extensive research to explain successful learning and inspirational teachers. Because this chapter is placed within a book on music performance, our adaptation of these ten mindframes relates to how they might be relevant within the context of studio instrumental and vocal teaching that are typical in many music institutions internationally. The chapter argues that teachers of music performance will be in a much better position to cater to the needs of the diverse range of student abilities we observe in music institutions internationally if they apply the mindframes outlined in this chapter. When we recalibrate our teaching to focus on questions of why as well as what and how, we position ourselves to take on a much broader and more impactful role as a performer-teacher who really cares about students, who wants to spark their interest, who encourages them to live their musical dream, and who helps developing musicians exceed what they think is their full potential.