Three Shades of Embeddedness, State Capitalism as the Informal Economy, Emic Notions of the Anti-Market, and Counterfeit Garments in the Mauritian Export Processing Zone

Purpose This paper furthers the analysis of patterns regulating capitalist accumulation based on a historical anthropology of economic activities revolving around and within the Mauritian Export Processing Zone (EPZ). Design/methodology/approach This paper uses fieldwork in Mauritius to interrogate and critique two important concepts in contemporary social theory – “embeddedness” and “the informal economy.” These are viewed in the wider frame of social anthropology’s engagement with (neoliberal) capitalism. Findings A process-oriented revision of Polanyi’s work on embeddedness and the “double movement” is proposed to help us situate EPZs within ongoing power struggles found throughout the history of capitalism. This helps us to challenge the notion of economic informality as supplied by Hart and others. Social implications Scholars and policymakers have tended to see economic informality as a force from below, able to disrupt the legal-rational nature of capitalism as practiced from on high. Similarly, there is a view that a precapitalist embeddedness, a “human economy,” has many good things to offer. However, this paper shows that the practices of the state and multinational capitalism, in EPZs and elsewhere, exactly match the practices that are envisioned as the cure to the pitfalls of capitalism. Value of the paper Setting aside the formal-informal distinction in favor of a process-oriented analysis of embeddedness allows us better to understand the shifting struggles among the state, capital, and labor.

The World of Indicators. The Making of Governmental Knowledge through Quantification

The twenty-first century has seen a further dramatic increase in the use of quantitative knowledge for governing social life after its explosion in the 1980s. Indicators and rankings play an increasing role in the way governmental and non-governmental organizations distribute attention, make decisions, and allocate scarce resources. Quantitative knowledge promises to be more objective and straightforward as well as more transparent and open for public debate than qualitative knowledge, thus producing more democratic decision-making. However, we know little about the social processes through which this knowledge is constituted nor its effects. Understanding how such numeric knowledge is produced and used is increasingly important as proliferating technologies of quantification alter modes of knowing in subtle and often unrecognized ways. This book explores the implications of the global multiplication of indicators as a specific technology of numeric knowledge production used in governance. Combination of insights from anthropology of law, history of science, science and technology studies, sociology of quantification, economics and geography will appeal to those who are uncomfortable with the separation between 'theoretical' and 'empirical' approaches and with the current weakness of critique that address the main trends shaping the relations between capitalism, markets, law and democracy Theoretical discussion of the nature and historical formation of quantification will appeal to those who ask questions such as, 'What is new or different about our contemporary reliance on quantitative knowledge?' Groundbreaking empirical case studies uncover the social work and politics that often go into the making of indicators and explore the far-reaching effects and impacts of these numerical representations in specific settings

Musical Training Induces Functional Plasticity in Human Hippocampus

Training can change the functional and structural organization of the brain, and animal models demonstrate that the hippocampus formation is particularly susceptible to training-related neuroplasticity. In humans, however, direct evidence for functional plasticity of the adult hippocampus induced by training is still missing. Here, we used musicians' brains as a model to test for plastic capabilities of the adult human hippocampus. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging optimized for the investigation of auditory processing, we examined brain responses induced by temporal novelty in otherwise isochronous sound patterns in musicians and musical laypersons, since the hippocampus has been suggested previously to be crucially involved in various forms of novelty detection. In the first cross-sectional experiment, we identified enhanced neural responses to temporal novelty in the anterior left hippocampus of professional musicians, pointing to expertise-related differences in hippocampal processing. In the second experiment, we evaluated neural responses to acoustic temporal novelty in a longitudinal approach to disentangle training-related changes from predispositional factors. For this purpose, we examined an independent sample of music academy students before and after two semesters of intensive aural skills training. After this training period, hippocampal responses to temporal novelty in sounds were enhanced in musical students, and statistical interaction analysis of brain activity changes over time suggests training rather than predisposition effects. Thus, our results provide direct evidence for functional changes of the adult hippocampus in humans related to musical training.

Emotions, Arousal, and Frontal Alpha Rhythm Asymmetry During Beethoven's 5th Symphony

Music is capable of inducing emotional arousal. While previous studies used brief musical excerpts to induce one specific emotion, the current study aimed to identify the physiological correlates of continuous changes in subjective emotional states while listening to a complete music piece. A total of 19 participants listened to the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's 5th symphony (duration: ~7.4 min), during which a continuous 76-channel EEG was recorded. In a second session, the subjects evaluated their emotional arousal during the listening. A fast fourier transform was performed and covariance maps of spectral power were computed in association with the subjective arousal ratings. Subjective arousal ratings had good inter-individual correlations. Covariance maps showed a right-frontal suppression of lower alpha-band activity during high arousal. The results indicate that music is a powerful arousal-modulating stimulus. The temporal dynamics of the piece are well suited for sequential analysis, and could be necessary in helping unfold the full emotional power of music.

Brain activation during string playing

This chapter attempts to integrate data from both functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to elucidate the activation of the cortical areas in musical performance for both execution and imagination of music during string playing. In both fMRI and EEG experiments, playing the music was compared with imagining the music. This allowed separation of the areas mainly involved in motor execution from those involved in imagining, planning, and working memory, thus differentiating musical from purely motor areas.

Musiktraditionen im Kontext moderner Globalisierungsprozesse und globaler Denkkonzepte

The documentation of music cultures and the research in and on “classic” regions like India, Indonesia, and Sub-Saharan Africa still plays a central role within ethnomusicological research. However, given the increasing impact of global processes, the central guiding questions of the discipline have undergone profound changes in recent years. Approaches towards globalization are highly varied: One dominant perspective – which can be described as “skeptical” – has equated globalization with musical homogenization. This perspective is still apparent in approaches in European folk music research, which focus on the preservation of “traditional” cultures. Besides hyperglobal perspectives, which perceive the emergence of global networks (hypermedia, mass media, cultural organizations) as a positive development, one can predominantly observe the emergence of transformationalist approaches in recent decades: Global interconnectedness is viewed as a (neutrally perceived) basis for the emergence of new musical structures here. The transformation of the discipline is also apparent in the shift of the historical perspective. Comparative Musicology had already developed a global-historical perspective, which, however, became problematic due to the lack of contextualization. This might explain the subsequent distanced stance taken towards global concepts. Yet the focus on oral cultures also neglected deeper analysis of the historical dimension. At present, one can observe the emergence of a – albeit highly differentiated – change of perspective. While the Anglo-American approaches encourage the development of a specifically ethnomusicological-historical methodology, this separation between ethnomusicological and historical topics is perceived as racist in countries like South Africa. Starting out with an analysis of the concept of canonization in ethnomusicology, this article not only provides an overview of the aforementioned approaches and developments, but also discusses the integration of these processes into ethnomusicologically informed music pedagogical teaching material – within both a school and university context.

John Garstang at Sirkeli Höyük, Cilician Plain, in 1936-1937: Old Photographs and New Evidence from the Renewed Excavations

During the winter of 1936-1937, British archaeologist John Garstang (1876-1956) excavated several trenches at the site of Sirkeli Höyük, located in the Plain of Cilicia (18 km west of modern-day Ceyhan). After a single campaign, however, he left the site and his interest shifted to site of Yumuktepe/Mersin, where he then excavated for a number of years. Apart from two very brief preliminary reports of his excavations at Sirkeli Höyük, which were published in the journal 'Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Liverpool', not much is known about the trenches and their associated finds. Unpublished photographs kept in the Special Archives of University College London shed new light on the location and orientation of some of Garstang’s trenches at the site. Furthermore, in the 2012 campaign of the renewed Turkish-Swiss excavations at the site, a trench was found in the western part of the northern terrace that most probably was excavated by Garstang, but was not mentioned by him in his reports. This hitherto unknown trench may be related to his discovery of a lion-shaped column base made of basalt that is now kept in the collections of the Archaeological Museum of Adana.

Giorgio Vigolo – Quali musiche suonò Hölderlin? (28 aprile 1966)

Giorgio Vigolo’s lecture Quali musiche suonò Hölderlin? (Which Pieces of Music Did Hölderlin Play?), which the Italian poet held in Rome on April 28th 1966, here edited for the first time, with notes, by Giovanna Cordibella.