Ecojustice, Religious Folklife and a Sound Ecology

Folk, traditional, and indigenous ecological knowledges have a significant role to play in ecojustice. A case study in the traditional ecological knowledge among one of the religious communities with whom I have spent several decades illustrates how they embody the main principle and three fields of an ecological rationality: the community of inter-related beings; the ways the beings participate in that community or place; and the relations of nature and the nonhuman world to humans and human nature. Ecological rationality stands in contrast to economic rationality, a branch of instrumental reason exemplified by what economists call rational choice theory. An ecological rationality is based in the principles of connection, relation, engagement, cooperation and interdependence, in contrast to the economic rationality of separation, distance, individualism, and self-interest. I conclude with a gesture to my current project of a sound ecology, a thought experiment in which sounds rather than texts or objects enable the connections that lead to sound experience, sound communities, sound economies, and a sound ecology. A sound ecology embodies an ecological rationality aimed at who we think we are, how we know what we know, and what we can do to bring about ecojustice in a sustainable world

A Conversation with Jeff Todd Titon

Culture and Commerc

Svanibor Pettan: an Appreciation

Svanibor Pettan is that rare kind of gentleman who immediately puts his acquaintances at ease and encourages them to feel as if they'd known him for a long time. These qualities have enabled him to succeed in helping to make the world a better place through music, and in helping his colleagues in Europe and abroad to mobilize around the field of applied ethnomusicology. For Svanibor, this has meant taking ethnomusicology beyond mere scholarship – that is, beyond the accumulation of knowledge and its dissemination within the community of scholars – to the application of that ethnomusicological knowledge in service to a deliberate intervention into the ethnic groups under study, to resolve conflicts that may lead to violence and instead to promote peace among them