Call for Articles – norient academic online journal

The Independent Network for Local and Global Soundscapes norient just launched the following Call for Articles for a new online journal which focuses on popular music ethnographies from around the world:

Call for Articles – norient academic online journal

With the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) approaching its 30th birthday norient wants to contribute to this anniversary by dedicating its first issue of the norient academic online journal to popular music ethnographies – with a twist. While IASPM has been a major force in contributing to the study of popular music using a methodologically broad approach these studies have to a large extent been focused on a North American and British/European popular music legacy.

This call for articles which will result in the first volume and issue of the norient academic online journal aims to show the diversity of popular music throughout the world by focusing on popular music in a broad sense from outside the European and North American canon of popular music. This not only includes popular music from Asia, Africa and South America but also the popular music of immigrant communities throughout Europe and the world. Besides providing a geographically diverse overview of popular music another central issue for this first call for articles is a reflexive account of the ethnography itself. Here we are looking for articles which not only critically reflect on the material presented but also on the interaction between the researcher and the researched.

Articles can be submitted in any language the editors can read (currently English, German, French, Spanish, Scandinavian, Russian, Dutch, Esperanto) but must include an abstract in either English or German.

Deadline for abstracts (maximum 200 words) is February 28th, 2011.

Please submit your abstracts to
journal_submission at norient.com

For inquiries regarding the journal you can contact the editor-in-chief David-Emil Wickström (dew at norient.com).

Tentative schedule:

By April 2nd, 2011: Decision if abstract is accepted
September 19th, 2011: Deadline for articles (maximum 6000 words, Chicago Manual of Style with the author-date system and endnotes)
December 2011/Early 2012: Articles published

This call for articles can also be found at
norient.com/academic/callforarticles2011

Inspirational literature:

Barz, Gregory; Timothy J. Cooley (eds.): “Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology”, 2nd revised edition, Oxford (Oxford University Press), 2008
Marcus, George E.: “Ethnography in/of the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography”, Annual review of anthropology 24 (1995), p. 95-117
Terkessidis, Mark: “Distanzierte Forscher und selbstreflexive Gegenstände. Zur Kritik der Cultural Studies in Deutschland”. In: Jacke, Christoph; Kimminich, Eva; Schmidt, Siegfried J. (eds.): “Kulturschutt. Über das Recycling von Theorien und Kulturen”, Bielefeld (Transcript) 2006
Willis, Paul: “Profane Culture Rocker, Hippies: Subversive Stile der Jugendkultur”, Frankfurt am Main (Syndikat) 1981

About the norient academic online journal

The norient academic online journal is a peer-reviewed academic journal focusing on the study of popular music from an ethnographic perspective. The journal has one yearly issue which is conceived around a theme. While it is part of the norient network and website the journal works as an independent section with its own editors and (mostly) different authors.

The journal offers cross-cultural (case) studies of the diversity of aesthetical approaches in our increasingly transnational and digitalised world. It analyzes contemporary musical aesthetics and observes how musicians interact and situate themselves musically in local, regional, and transnational contexts. norient works with a broad definition of music that includes phenomena like soundscapes, the sonic, noise, and sound.

The journal also favors cross-cultural approaches and collaborative and transdisciplinary work. In this way, the journal hopes to put forward far-ranging theses without ignoring the complexity, ‘messiness’ (cf. Taruksin) and the process-oriented nature of human (and artists’) behaviour and strategies. Its aim is to put forward a detailed analysis of music, musicians and musical communities and to reflect on the ruptures and flows of the 21st Century on various levels.

The name norient implies that this network (and the journal) reaches beyond orientalist ideas and essentialist views of the world and the world of music. norient looks at musicians as individual human beings first. They interact with local and global social and political realities, but are not “determined” by their culture of origin, if at all one such culture of origin can be determined.

The journal’s editorial board consist of Shin Hyunjoon, Jesse Wheeler, Birgit Abels, Violeta Mayer, Jeroen de Kloet, Kristine Ringsager, Oliver Seibt, Thomas Burkhalter and David-Emil Wickström.

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