Soundscapes Of Wellbeing In Popular Music

Unearthing the messy and sprawling interrelationships of place, wellbeing, and popular music, this book explores musical soundscapes of health, ranging from activism to international charity, to therapeutic treatments and how wellbeing is sought and attained in contexts of music. Drawing on critical social theories of the production, circulation, and consumption of popular music, the book gathers together diverse insights from geographers and musicologists. Popular music has become increasingly embedded in complex and often contradictory discourses of wellbeing. For instance, some new genres and sub-cultures of popular music are associated with violence, drug-use, and the angst of living, yet simultaneously define the hopes and dreams of millions of young people. At a service level, popular music is increasingly used as a therapeutic modality in holistic medicine, as well as in conventional health care and public health practice. The genre of popular music, then, is fundamental to human wellbeing as an active and central part of people’s emotional lives. By conceptually and empirically foregrounding place, this book demonstrates how - music whether from particular places, about particular places, or played in particular places ” is a crucial component of health and wellbeing.

This interdisciplinary volume enters the scholarly conversation about Bruce Springsteen at the moment when he has reinforced his status of global superstar and achieved the status of social critic. Covering musical and cultural developments, chapters primarily consider work Springsteen has released since 9/11—that is, released during a period of continued global unrest, economic upheaval, and social change—under the headings Politics, Fear and Society; Gender and Sexual Identity; and Toward a Rhetoric of Springsteen. The collection engages Springsteen and popular music as his contemporary work is just beginning to be understood in terms of its impact on popular culture and music, applying new areas of inquiry to Springsteen and putting Springsteen fan writing within the same binding as academic writing to show how together they create a more nuanced understanding of an artist. Established and emerging Springsteen scholars approach work from disciplines including rhetoric and composition, historical musicology, labor studies, American history, literature, communications, sociology, theology, and government. Offering context, critique, and expansive understanding of Springsteen and his work, this book contributes to Springsteen scholarship and the study of popular music by showing Springsteen’s broadening academic appeal as well as his escalating legacy on new musicians, social consciousness, and contemporary culture.

The places of our daily life affect our health, well-being, and receipt of health care in complex ways. The connection between health and place has been acknowledged for centuries, and the contemporary discipline of health geography sets as its core mission to uncover and explicate all facets of this connection. The Routledge Handbook of Health Geography features 52 chapters from leading international thinkers that collectively characterize the breadth and depth of current thinking on the health–place connection. It will be of interest to students seeking an introduction to health geography as well as multidisciplinary health scholars looking to explore the intersection between health and place. This book provides a coherent synthesis of scholarship in health geography as well as multidisciplinary insights into cutting-edge research. It explores the key concepts central to appreciating the ways in which place influences our health, from the micro-space of the body to the macro-scale of entire world regions, in order to articulate historical and contemporary aspects of this influence.

This book pursues an interdisciplinary approach to open a discourse on innovative methodologies and practices associated with narrative and metaphor. Scholars from diverse fields in the humanities and social sciences report on how they use narrative and/or metaphor in their scholarship/research to arrive at new ways of seeing, thinking about and acting in the world. The book provides a range of methodological chapters for academics and practitioners alike. Each chapter discusses various aspects of the author’s transformative methodologies and practices and how they contribute to the lives of others in their field. In this regard, the authors address traditional disciplines such as history and geography, as well as professional practices such as counselling, teaching and community work.

Health geography makes critical contributions to contemporary and emerging interdisciplinary agendas of nature-based health and health-enabling places. Couched in theory and critical empirical work on nature and health, this book addresses questions on the relationships between water, health and wellbeing. Water and blue space is a key focus in current health geography research and a new hydrophilic turn has emerged with a particular focus on the aspects of water which are affective, life-enhancing and health-enabling. Research considers the benefits and risks associated with blue space, from access to safe and clean water in the Global South, to health promoting spaces found around urban waters, to the deeper implications of climate change for water-based livelihoods and indigenous cultures. This book reflects recent theoretical debates within health geography, drawing from research in the public health, anthropology and psychology sectors. Broad thematic sections focus on interdisciplinary, experiential and equity-based elements of blue space, with individual chapters that consider indigenous and global health, water’s healing properties, leisure and blue yogic culture, coastal landscapes, surfing, swimming and sailing, along with more contested hydrophobic dimensions. The interdisciplinary lens means this book will be extremely valuable to human geographers and cultural geographers. It will also appeal to practitioners and researchers interested in environmental health, leisure and tourism, health inequalities and public health more broadly.

Music has a universal and timeless potential to influence how we feel, yet, only recently, have researchers begun to explore and understand the positive effects that music can have on our wellbeing.This book brings together research from a number of disciplines to explore the relationship between music, health and wellbeing.

Health Geographies: A Critical Introduction explores health and biomedical topics from a range of critical geographic perspectives. Building on the field’s past engagement with social theory it extends the focus of health geography into new areas of enquiry. Introduces key topics in health geography through clear and engaging examples and case studies drawn from around the world Incorporates multi-disciplinary perspectives and approaches applied in the field of health geography Identifies both health and biomedical issues as a central area of concern for critically oriented health geographers Features material that is alert to questions of global scale and difference, and sensitive to the political and economic as well sociocultural aspects of health Provides extensive pedagogic materials within the text and guidance for further study

Health geographers are increasingly turning to a diverse range of interpretative methodologies to explore the complexities of health, illness, space and place to gain more comprehensive understandings of well-being and broader social models of health and health care. Drawing upon postmodernism, many health geographers are concerned with issues of representation, the body and health care policy. Also related to an emphasis on the body is the growing literature in feminist health geography that investigates the metaphorical, physical and emotional challenges of the body and disease. Reflecting these interests, the chapters in this book set out the host of creative qualitative methods being used to explore the psychosocial experiences of individuals more directly, using such traditional methods as in-depth interviews and group discussions, participant observation, diaries and discourse analysis, but also more novel techniques such as 'go-along interviews’, reflexive writing, illustrations, and photographic techniques. There are several areas of qualitative research unique to geographers which figure prominently in this volume including: health and place, comparative case study analysis, and qualitative approaches to the use of geographic information systems (GIS). This collection brings together a wide range of empirical concerns related to questions of health and shines a light on the diversity of qualitative methods in practice. Illustrating how qualitative methodologies are used in diverse health contexts this book fills an important niche for health geographers but will have wide appeal to health and geographic researchers.