Stance
Ideas about Emotion, Style, and Meaning for the Study of Expressive Culture
Series: Music / Culture
Sales Date: 2010-02-28
How we find and make meaning through music and performance
Why does music move us? How do the immediate situation and larger social contexts influence the meanings that people find in stories, rituals, or films? How do people engage with the images and sounds of a performance to make them come alive in sensuous, lived experience? Exploring these questions, Stance presents a major new theory of emotion, style, and meaning for the study of expressive culture. In clear language, the book reveals dimensions of lived experience that everyone is aware of but that scholars rarely account for.
Though music is at the heart of the book, its arguments are illustrated with a wide range of clear examples—from the heavy metal concert to the recital hall, from festivals to dance, stand-up comedy, the movies, and beyond. Helping ethnographers get closer to the experiences of the people with whom they work, this book will be of immediate interest to anyone in ethnomusicology, folklore, popular music studies, anthropology, or performance studies.
Acknowledgments
PREFACE
What Phenomenology Can Do for the Study of Expressive Culture
CHAPTER 1
Locating Stance
CHAPTER 2
Structures of Stance in Lived Experience
CHAPTER 3
Stance and Others, Stance and Lives
CHAPTER 4
The Social Life of Stance and the Politics of Expressive Culture
Works Cited
HARRIS M. BERGER is associate professor of music and performance studies at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Metal, Rock, and Jazz (1999) and coauthor of Identity and Everyday Life (2004). He has served as the president of the U.S. branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and is the coeditor of the Journal of American Folklore.
"An excellent book for those interested in ethnomusicology, popular music studies, or related fields. Highly recommended."
~B.J. Murray, Choice
""An excellent book for those interested in ethnomusicology, popular music studies, or related fields. Highly recommended.""
~B.J. Murray, Choice
""Berger offers both an argument and a methodology for the detailed phenomenological analysis of expressive culture within all humanistic disciplines.""
~Mack Hagwood, Journal of Folklore Research
"Stance is a fascinating study that challenges conventional thinking about cultural experience. It presents the rare combination of high-level philosophical theory and a serious engagement with a wide range of cultural practices in everyday life—from heavy metal guitar performance to undergraduate recitals, and beyond to mass media entertainment."
~Fabian Holt, author of Genre in Popular Music
"Stance is a fascinating study that challenges conventional thinking about cultural experience. It presents the rare combination of high-level philosophical theory and a serious engagement with a wide range of cultural practices in everyday life—from heavy metal guitar performance to undergraduate recitals, and beyond to mass media entertainment."
~Fabian Holt, author of Genre in Popular Music
"In this extremely well-written book, Berger provides a rich vocabulary to discuss performance. He consistently makes difficult philosophy accessible and demonstrates the importance of phenomenology to understanding the creative process.""
~Deborah Kapchan, author of Traveling Spirit Masters
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