Exploring Music in a Globalized World

Beyond the simple fact that many people enjoy music, as a social act music is also related to a wide range of emotions, associations, politics, and identifications that draw people to making, playing, and listening to music. To explore the interactions between music and various social phenomena, we have invited a number authors and musicians to share their thoughts on music for this issue. They present us a variety of perspectives on and of music practices, how music is lived and experienced in a range of settings, and why music has such an important role in the lives of people and societies around the world

Garments in exchange - changing clothes around the world

Clothing and dress are among the most central and common aspects of social and cultural life around the world. Dress may be used to represent a person’s or a group’s identity, and to create similarity or difference. Clothes are deeply social as they are commonly handed on in families, among friends and in transnational communities. They may be changed over the course of a day and their styles change over time in response to global and local fashion trends. To explore the significance of clothing in identity formations, we have invited authors from around the world to reflect on this topic

Social Water

We encounter water every day. It is a vital substance biologically as much as socially. We may notice this in art exhibitions and university courses communicating submersed and subversive facts about water; the rhythms of floods and tides resonating with fishing techniques and conflict patterns; inundations carrying moral and political weight as much as water and pollution; and particular mixtures of water and land generating wealth, anxieties and memories. In short, wherever people deal with water, they are involved not only with a physical element, but also with social relations. In fact, whenever we pretend that water is foremost the molecule H2O, we ignore all the political, economic, infrastructural, emotional and legal aspects of this element without which water would not be what it is for us today. This issue explores some of the ways in which water is profoundly social, both in the sense of being co-produced by social life, and by being a core constituent of it. Some contributions to this issue do this through the examples listed above. Others illustrate the way water positions people and their perspectives. A few show how large water infrastructures reshuffle social lives. And some suggest that water may sometimes be better imagined as a word in the plural, rather than a singular, universal substance

Concepts of the Global South

Where and what is the Global South? If you ask people on the street, many would probably not have the faintest idea. In everyday parlance and mass media, Global South has hardly become a household term. In academic and (global) policy circles, though, the term is used with much more gusto. Politicians refer to it. The United Nations organize their statistical data in accordance with the term. Academics write books about it - or, as in our case, explicitly include the term in the name of a research center: Global South Studies Center (GSSC). But what does the term entail? Who uses it and why? And what are the implications of marking distinctions between the Global South and the Global North? We thought it relevant to address these questions in more detail – after all, we work for a recently established research institute featuring the term in its name. Accordingly, we asked a number of academics, journals and academic institutions to reflect on the term. In this online issue, we share their various perspectives and critical reflections on the notion of the Global South – see also a short discussion on a number of YouTube videos we have included

Reflections on migration in the global south

How can we achieve a better understanding of the variations in international migration to, from, and within the Global South? To facilitate a dia-logue about this topic, we asked a number of contributors to write or to provide a video statement about their region of expertise. To some we explicitly posed the following question: Is it possible to distinguish current or historical experiences or patterns of migration in the Global South that differ from patterns in the Global North

Global Modernities and the (Re-)Emergence of Ghosts

Are ghosts modern? It seems that modernization and spirituality do not contradict each other in most parts of the world. Animist beliefs and ghost rituals often form part of people’s everyday lives vis-à-vis a globalized economy. For them, the unpredictable forces of ‘the market’ correspond with the elusive world of spectral entities. Facing economic risk, flexibility, and precarity, people address the ghosts for protection and luck. This issue of “Voices” will explore the interplay of economic and ritual practice, of everyday uncertainties and ghostly agency, of emerging modernities and (re-)emerging spiritualities

Controlling Knowledge and the Role of Engaged Intellectuals

Has there been a major (epistemic) transformation towards more balanced global knowledge production or have inequalities been intensified? How are terms defined or what do we understand by ‘global knowledge production’ or ‘epistemic inequality’? How can we adapt our research topics or methods to shape a more egalitarian (global) kind of knowledge? Can we identify the (conscious) ‘gatekeepers’ of epistemic exclusion; for example, disciplinary conventions, modi operandi of publication and funding schemes, or interiorized ‘colonial’ practices? And if so, what can we do about them at conferences, in the publishing and funding sectors? How can privileged scholars engage in critical self-reflection of their academic practices – both at a theoretical and methodological level but also in everyday practices? By means of addressing these questions in a variety of ways, the aim of the issue is to investigate to what extent, how and why institutional, financial and ideological factors restrain the manoeuvring spaces, and how scholars, artists and civil society institutions can sensitise for, unmask, and resist them