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Chapter 1 provides the readers an overview of the definitions of culture, a brief discussion of cross-cultural research backgrounds in anthropology, psychology, sociology, and political science, and the influences of these fields on social work. These cross-cultural research fields offer social work both theoretical and methodological resources. The chapter shows that all cross-cultural research fields share the same concern—that is, the equivalence of research instruments. One cannot draw meaningful comparisons of behavioral problems, social values, or psychological status between or across different cultural groups in the absence of cross-culturally equivalent research instruments.

The act of cross-cultural musical comparison itself is fraught and in many ways forbidding due to the bewildering complexity of linking aspects of our inner selves with seemingly untranslatable and disparate musical experiences. After honing in on some of the challenges raised by these issues the chapter engages in analytical juxtaposition of outwardly dissimilar works that have been extensively primed for comparison in the author’s own inner life: two compositions in the Balinese gamelan’s lelambatan repertoire, and Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet in Eb Major. Methodology and a suitable structural context for analysis are first established, and then the works are examined side-by-side for synonymous as well as mutually incompatible features. In the conclusion, the results of the comparison are set in relief against the analyst’s own cultural and historical milieu, viewed at several orders of magnitude.

The growing interest in music of diverse cultures, and the growing awareness of the methods and approaches that are needed to compare it, motivate this collection of more analytical studies in world music. This introduction explains how the book is organized to juxtapose studies of music from divergent cultures that nevertheless share important features, bringing out some recurring themes. Methodological questions about music representation and the purview of music analysis are considered. It is argued that comparison of different musics is most appropriate when made with reference to basic perceptions of musical temporality—grouping, meter, and periodicity—that seem to be universal. Such rhythmically oriented analysis brings out both similarities and differences, and helps explain the role of music in defining the identity of the culture and of the groups and individuals that it comprises.

This essay marshals the twenty disparate musical selections comprising the core repertoire analyzed in the current volume plus its predecessor Analytical Studies in World Music (M. Tenzer, ed., Oxford Press 2006). It orders them along a hermetic continuum of musical structure (a “topology”) formulated by integrated consideration of each item’s structures of time organization, sound configuration (or grouping), and formal continuity (aspects of stasis, transformation, or rupture). Subsequent description of each selection’s place on the continuum reveals unsuspected similarities and discontinuities between the musics’ features, and places each among the family of human musical structures in a fully global perspective.

This concluding section explores the interactions of constraints, freedom, and style in improvisation, drawing on all of the materials discussed in previous chapters. These ideas are presented in cross-cultural context, as well as with respect to the music-language comparisons developed in previous chapters. In conclusion, improvisation is explored as an evolutionarily adaptive feature of everyday cognition and neurobiological development.

This chapter explores learning to improvise from the perspective of the improviser, presenting accounts drawn from interviews with pianists Robert Levin and Malcolm Bilson about how they learned to improvise in the classical style. Their experiences are compared with accounts of improvisers from a wide variety of musical cultures. Three aspects of the learning process are explored: incubation/internalization/assimilation, rehearsal, and further development of improvisational skill through the act of performance.

This chapter explores the experience and psychology of improvised performance from performers' perspectives. It presents interviews about improvisation with classical pianists Robert Levin and Malcolm Bilson alongside accounts from a wide variety of musical cultures. The phenomenon of the ‘creator-witness’, an improvising performer who simultaneously generates music and responds to the music that is created, is described in a cross-cultural context. A neuropsychological basis for this phenomenon is sought through discussion of a case of a musician who developed severe amnesia, but has retained the ability to improvise.

This chapter critically examines elements of Arnett’s “theory”. As has been demonstrated the concept of emerging adulthood is not relevant for many young people globally. Even in Western societies, simply presenting a concept, which selectively focuses on young people who have a lengthy early adulthood without having to assume adult roles and responsibilities, reduces the numbers for whom this new framework is valid. Many of those with a prolonged moratorium are forced to remain within their parents’ household, having neither access to university education nor to well-paid jobs. They are neither happy nor optimistic of their future and are not archetypes of Arnett’s “emerging adults”. This is equally true for those who have married young and have their own families or for young professionals. The aim of a good theory should be to explain developmental variability instead of trying to explain it away!

The concepts associated with what English speakers recognize as music and dance are not shared cross-culturally. In some societies there are no general terms for music and dance; instead, specific names describe different performances that involve music and dance. In other societies the same word is used to refer to music-making, singing, dancing, and often to ceremony or ritual as well. Despite such differences, every social group has its music, and this music is somehow emblematic of a group’s identity. This chapter explores how this observation can be explained from a cross-cultural perspective: What do music and dance do for human social groups? Why are music and dance so universally central to a group’s self-definition? It is suggested that participation in music and dance activities provides experiences of aesthetic principles which in turn may influence “foundational cultural schemas” affecting multiple cultural domains: from cosmology to architectural style, from hunting and gathering techniques to political organization. Such dance and musical participation inculcates culture not as a text or set of rules, but as a profound aesthetic orientation. Foundational cultural schemas may thus be better understood as aesthetic orientations that influence our everyday decisions and behavior by seducing us to conform to them using our aesthetic sense, enjoyment of harmony, desire to cooperate, curiosity, and pleasure-seeking propensities. Musical foundational schemas may have extraordinary resilience, and this resilience is likely due to their special aesthetic, incorporative, adaptive, and stylistic qualities that ensure continuity with change. Published in the Strungmann Forum Reports Series.

Abstract ritual is a universal feature of human culture. A decade of psychological research provides new insight into the early emerging propensity for ritual learning. Children learn the ritual practices and instrumental skills of their communities by observing and imitating trusted group members such as adults and peers. They use social and contextual cues to determine when an action is an instrumental skill versus a ritual, and they modify their behavior accordingly. When behavior is interpreted as a ritual, children imitate with higher fidelity, engage in less innovation, are more accurate when detecting differences, and display more functional fixedness than when behavior is interpreted as instrumental. Children and adults also transmit ritual behavior to others with higher fidelity than they do instrumental behavior. The authors propose that affiliation with social groups motivates imitative fidelity of ritual. Species-specific social learning mechanisms facilitate the transmission of instrumental skills as well as rituals intergenerationally and enable cumulative cultural learning.

The final chapter returns the analysis back to mindfulness in the United States, and the lessons learned about how mindfulness is understood differently in Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka compared with its popular meanings in the United States. Drawing from the experiences of over 100 informants in the Pacific Northwest, the concluding chapter shows how the TAPES of temporality, affect, power, ethics, and selfhood are articulated in different ways by people in the different regions. The chapter includes a concluding discussion of how authoritative discourses about mindfulness move through space and time, and how these lessons may inform larger questions about the role of culture in mental processes around the world.

How did John’s court compare to those of other rulers in his own period and with earlier and later courts? Variation in the quality and quantity of sources makes precision difficult. Nonetheless, what we know about court culture in other European countries in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries suggests that many aspects of court culture were similar across a wide range of territories. Indeed, one can even find similarities with Byzantine and Islamic courts. The evidence also indicates a great deal of continuity across the long historic arc of court culture in Western Europe. However, this continuity was combined with gradual but cumulatively radical change, so that by the early modern period, courts had become much larger and more complex, and very different in other respects as well.

Humans use natural and supernatural explanations for phenomena such as illness, death, and human origins. These explanations are available not just to different individuals within a society, but to the same individual, coexisting within a single mind. This chapter proposes that understanding the coexistence of qualitatively different explanations is fundamentally a cognitive–developmental endeavor, speaking to general questions of knowledge acquisition, socialization, and the interaction of cognition and culture. The chapter first reviews research demonstrating that coexistence of natural and supernatural explanations is not a short-lived, transitional phenomenon that wanes in the course of development, but is instead evident (and widespread) among adults. It then speculates on the psychological origins of coexistence and discusses implications for metacognition. Finally, directions are proposed for future research to inform understanding of how individuals incorporate natural and supernatural explanations across content domains, development, and cultures.

This final chapter summarizes the key results outlined in this book. Key recommendations that may help to address the inequalities experienced by individuals with ADHD are put forward. The main results concerning the private and social costs of ADHD are discussed and put into a national and international context. Results from existing cost analyses of ADHD in the literature are juxtaposed to the present findings. The extent to which the present findings can be generalized beyond a Danish context is discussed. Particular reference, in that context, is given to the mental-health sector and to other sectors of the economy, including the labour market and the education sector. Finally, the limitations and strengths of the study are discussed.