What is Music For?: Utopian Ecomusicologies and Musicking Hornby Island

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dc.contributor.advisorTimmerman, Peter
dc.creatorMark, Andrew Christopher Whitton
dc.date.accessioned2015-12-16T19:29:43Z
dc.date.available2015-12-16T19:29:43Z
dc.date.copyright2015-08-28
dc.date.issued2015-12-16
dc.date.updated2015-12-16T19:29:43Z
dc.degree.disciplineEnvironmental Studies
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation concerns making music as a utopian ecological practice, skill, or method of associative communication where participants temporarily move towards idealized relationships between themselves and their environment. Live music making can bring people together in the collective present, creating limited states of unification. We are “taken” by music when utopia is performed and brought to the present. From rehearsal to rehearsal, band to band, year to year, musicking binds entire communities more closely together. I locate strategies for community solidarity like turn-taking, trust-building, gift-exchange, communication, fundraising, partying, education, and conflict resolution as plentiful within musical ensembles in any socially environmentally conscious community. Based upon 10 months of fieldwork and 40 extended interviews, my theoretical assertions are grounded in immersive ethnographic research on Hornby Island, a 12-square-mile Gulf Island between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island, Canada. I describe how roughly 1000 Islanders struggle to achieve environmental resilience in a uniquely biodiverse region where fisheries collapsed, logging declined, and second-generation settler farms were replaced with vacation homes in the 20th century. Today, extreme gentrification complicates housing for the island’s vulnerable populations as more than half of island residents live below the poverty line. With demographics that reflect a median age of 62, young individuals, families, and children are squeezed out of the community, unable to reproduce Hornby’s alternative society. This dissertation begins with theorization that connects music making to community and environmental thought. I then represent the challenges Islanders set for themselves and the struggles they face, like their desire for food sovereignty, off-grid energy, secure housing, protection of their aquifers, affordability of ferry transportation, ecological waste-cycles, and care for each other’s mental health. I bring attention to unique institutions that Islanders have created to better manage their needs and desires. In response to the island’s social and environmental dynamics of justice, I argue and demonstrate through ethnography that music making is an essential communal process that brings people together to dialogue about their needs and advance their goals to establish a more equitable and environmentally responsible community.
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/30738
dc.language.isoen
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.
dc.subjectEnvironmental studies
dc.subjectMusic
dc.subjectCultural anthropology
dc.subject.keywordsEcomusicology
dc.subject.keywordsParticipatory Theory
dc.subject.keywordsRural Environmentalism
dc.subject.keywordsCommunity Solidarity
dc.subject.keywordsUtopian Movements
dc.subject.keywordsEthnography
dc.subject.keywordsSemiotics
dc.subject.keywordsCybernetics
dc.subject.keywordsIsland Studies
dc.subject.keywordsSymbolic Interactionism
dc.subject.keywordsAuthenticity and Transnationalism in Music
dc.subject.keywordsEthnomusicology
dc.subject.keywordsEnvironmental Sociology
dc.subject.keywordsEnvironmental Anthropology
dc.subject.keywordsUtopia
dc.subject.keywordsHornby Island
dc.subject.keywordsGulf Islands
dc.subject.keywordsSalish Sea
dc.subject.keywordsHornby
dc.subject.keywordsBritish Columbia
dc.subject.keywordsCanada
dc.subject.keywordsMusicking
dc.subject.keywordsEcocritical humanities
dc.subject.keywordsEcocriticism
dc.subject.keywordsEcocritical Musicology
dc.subject.keywordsUtopian Studies
dc.subject.keywordsGentrification
dc.subject.keywordsRural Gentrification
dc.subject.keywordsParticipant Observation
dc.subject.keywordsThick Signification
dc.subject.keywordsDense Semiotics
dc.subject.keywordsIslands Trust
dc.subject.keywordsPerforming Arts
dc.subject.keywordsCultural Sustainability
dc.subject.keywordsSocial Reproduction
dc.subject.keywordsEnvironmental Justice
dc.subject.keywordsSomatics
dc.subject.keywordsSite Specific
dc.subject.keywordsPDs
dc.subject.keywordsParticipatory Discrepancies
dc.subject.keywordsCharles Keil
dc.subject.keywordsThomas Turino
dc.subject.keywordsChristopher Small
dc.subject.keywordsJohn Shepherd
dc.subject.keywordsSociomusicology
dc.subject.keywordsSociology of Music
dc.subject.keywordsMusic Sociology
dc.subject.keywordsMaking Music
dc.subject.keywordsParticipation
dc.titleWhat is Music For?: Utopian Ecomusicologies and Musicking Hornby Island
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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