New Directions in Music and Sustainability Research

2015年9月，来自世界各地的领导人在纽约举行会议，正式同意联合国的可持续发展目标，该目标旨在支撑联合国未来15年(直到2030年)的社会政治议程。“可持续性”是21世纪初的一个口号，活动家、学者和政治家都在努力平衡“可持续性”的广泛含义和解释，以应对地球面临的紧迫的经济、环境和人道主义挑战。艺术和人文学科在这样的辩论中扮演着重要的角色，这个领导力研究员项目的目的是想象通过艺术应对当前环境挑战的新方法，重点是音乐和可持续发展的主题。我的第一个任务是比较和批评“可持续性”、“生态学”和其他环境研究术语等概念现在如何、为什么以及如何影响音乐学术中的各个子学科，以期鼓励这一领域的跨学科对话。我还将研究学院外的音乐专业人员如何应对环境可持续性的挑战，以及在数字经济中维持他们的生计的挑战。该项目利用可持续行为变化的社会学模型来探索三个案例研究领域。首先，它调查了音乐制作和音乐收听技术。我将以鼓包的历史为镜头，探索乐器制造业的增长，并发展乐器和音乐消费研究的生态转向的论点。通过参与者观察和采访，我将探索全球DIY音乐“Maker”运动的成员如何通过制造自己的乐器和其他音乐技术来解决音乐技术的可持续消费问题。这两项研究都将揭示音乐的隐藏成本--无论是经济、社会、劳动力还是环境成本--以及它们是如何变化的。第二，该项目建立在之前AHRC合作研究的基础上，开发一种理解现场音乐的生态方法，重点关注组织者、艺术家和观众目前如何平衡英国现场音乐行业的经济和环境可持续性问题。我将与现场音乐领域相关组织的利益相关者合作，(A)评估现场音乐在英国的基础设施和环境后果，(B)在现场音乐组织中培养一个新兴的实践社区，寻求采用环境可持续的制作做法，并鼓励可持续的观众行为。第三，该项目将借鉴对音乐和艺术可持续发展研究的最新研究，以设想什么是“绿色文化政策”。我将分析全球绿党(一个连接世界各地绿色政党的网络)现有的文化政策与英国其他政党的文化政策的关系，并介绍绿色文化政策的现状，以及对其未来如何有效发展的建议。最后，除了通过上述案例研究探索音乐和可持续发展研究的新方向外，我的目标是在音乐学者和相关的跨艺术和人文学科(如环境人文、能源人文、和岩石文化研究)，以期提高艺术和人文研究在整个可持续发展研究中的影响。

In September 2015, leaders from around the world met in New York to formally agree the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, which are designed to underpin the UN's socio-political agenda for the next fifteen years (until 2030). "Sustainability" is a watchword of the early twenty-first century, with activists, academics, and politicians all struggling to balance the wide-ranging meanings and interpretations of "sustainability" to address the urgent economic, environmental, and humanitarian challenges facing the planet. The arts and humanities have an important role to play in such debates, and the aim of this Leadership Fellow project is to imagine new ways of addressing current environmental challenges through the arts with a focus on the theme of music and sustainability. My first task is to compare and critique how, why, and to what effect such concepts as "sustainability," "ecology" and other environmental studies terminology are now being deployed across various sub-disciplines within music scholarship, with a view to encouraging interdisciplinary dialogue in this area. I will also examine how music professionals outside the academy navigate the challenge of environmental sustainability against challenges of the sustaining their livelihoods in the digital economy.The project draws on a sociological model of sustainable behaviour change to explore three case study areas. First, it investigates music-making and music-listening technologies. I will use the history of drum kit as a lens to explore the growth of the musical instrument manufacturing industry, and develop the argument for an ecological turn in both musical instrument and music consumption research. Through participant-observation and interviews, I will then explore how members of the global DIY music "maker" movement addresses sustainable consumption of music technologies through building their own instruments and other music technologies. Both of these studies will shed light on the hidden costs of music - be they economic, social, labour, or environmental - and how they change.Second, the project builds on previous collaborative AHRC research to develop an ecological approach to understanding live music, focusing on how organizers, artists, and audiences currently balance issues of economic and environmental sustainability across the British live music sector. I will work with stakeholders from relevant organizations in the live music sector to (a) assess the infrastructure and environmental consequences of live music in the UK and (b) foster an emerging community of practice across live music organizations that seeks to adopt environmentally sustainable production practices and encourage sustainable audience behaviours.Third, the project will draw from new research into music and arts sustainability research to envision what a "green cultural policy" might look like. I will analyze approaches from existing cultural policies across the Global Greens (a network linking Green political parties from around the world) in relation to the cultural policies of other political parties within the UK, and create an account of the current state of green cultural policy - as well as recommendations for how it could fruitfully develop in future.Finally, in addition to exploring new directions in music and sustainability research through the case studies above, I aim to build new links between music scholars and relevant wider networks across the arts and humanities (e.g. environment humanities, energy humanities, and petrocultural studies) with a view to enhancing the impact of arts and humanities research in sustainability development studies as a whole.