Considering the relational in aesthetic experience

1. Considering the relational in aesthetic experience Dr Mark Rimmer School of Film, Television and Media Studies University of East Anglia m.rimmer@uea.ac.uk

2. How to approach ‘the elusive character of aesthetic experiences and their emotional, affective side’? • Potential value of a relational perspective considered • Based on findings from a recent research project exploring the musical lives of primary school children • Work in progress…

3. To begin…about the research • 2014 AHRC’s ‘Cultural Value Project’ • Aim of exploring cultural value of the In Harmony music initiative, from young participants’ perspectives • In Harmony aims ‘to transform the lives of children, young people and their communities through the power of music making, as part of the international El Sistema movement’ (Sistema England, 2014) • El Sistema – whole class instrument learning, symphony orchestra model, ‘classical’ instruments and repertoire • 100+ interviews, primary-aged children, three deprived areas in England • RQ: How do participants understand the cultural value of their participation and how might this contribute to a more general account of cultural value?

4. Research approach • Focus on… • Variously prominent dimensions of ‘valuing’ invoked (and basis of these) • Less interest in objects of stated preference than qualities, contexts, relations and practices • Semi-structured interview sessions (‘games’ and rankings) across 3 areas • In Harmony participation • Leisure and cultural activities • Music (and related) activities • Open approach to definitions of both… • ‘Culture’: wide range of (free time & leisure) activities considered • ‘Value’: what like/enjoy, want to do more of, rank highly

5. How was In Harmony participation valued? Summary findings… • Offering challenge (and rewards) • Although figured very unevenly (many “too hard”) • Sense of autonomy and ownership (‘my’ instrument) • Novel experiences: public performances, day trips and visits • The sounds/music produced (‘calm’) • Perhaps most prominently though, when it was valued by children, In Harmony appeared to be seen as an important means of enhancing/modifying relationships with significant others…

6. Valuing participation: broad trends • Strong parental interest/encouragement (attend performances, encourage home practice, provide space and time) • “They [parents] find it quite fascinating…theywant me to be in an orchestra in front of loads of people” (Boy, age 7) • What did you enjoy about performing? “because Mum, Dad and Nan came. They took a picture of me and said I’d done well” (Girl, 8) • “I’m looking forward to playing it [instrument] at home. I just want my Mum and Dad and sister to see” (Girl, 6) • Other sibling/family musicality (‘formal’ learning, piano/violin at home) • “My older brother plays the violin too and he sometimes teaches me…he teached me ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’” (Girl, 9)

7. Disvaluing participation: broad trends • Low or weak parental interest/encouragement • And what do people in your family think about it [instrument learning and playing]? “Dunno…didn’t say nothing” (Girl, 8) • What do your parents say about it? “Nothing” (Boy, 10) • Sibling/family musicality (‘non/informal’ & popular genres) • “My [older] sister plays drums…I’d rather play drums…I’ve been playing violin since half way through year 3…its hard and boring, I don’t really like it” (Boy, 9) • “Cos I thought they would use not soothing instruments but stuff like piano, drums, the ones that can actually get beat in them. Like my brother used to have a guitar…” (Girl, 8)

8. Initial conclusions…. • Much variety in framings of ‘value’, yet also discernible links to other dimensions of children’s (cultural) lives (recalling Bourdieu on habitus) • Most interestingly, significant others emerged especially prominently within many accounts of children’s preferred culture & leisure • Ages 6-8: home environment/family-orientation (esp. baking and cooking) • Less emphasis on specific qualities of activities or experiences, more on respondents’ relations with those also involved (‘Mum’, ‘Nan’, ‘brother’, etc.) • Ages 8+: less exclusive on home/family, more on friendship and peer relations • This was reflected in children’s accounts of the place of music in their lives…

9. musical preferences examples • “Erm, me and my Mum and me, when everybody’s at school I come home sometimes early so me and Mum can listen to One Direction, cos we’re the only two” (Boy, 7) • Were you ever musical before you started learning to play an instrum…“Me and my Dad are hardcore fans” Okay. So what is it you like about that? “It’s just good music. Tiesto, Helter Skelter and that” (Boy, 11) • Is there anybody else you like any other singers or…“Erm, Rhianna” What do you like about her? “I like, me and, My Mum loves her, she loves her hair styles and everything” (Girl, 9) • So do you like the In Harmony music? [Shakes head] What don’t you like about it? “My Mum likes Bob Marley” Does she? And do you like Bob Marley as well? “I know some of them. I know Buffalo Soldier…” (Boy, 9).

10. listening activity examples • Do you listen to music? “I listen to my mum’s music on her phone…I’ve heard JLS and…I can’t remember the other English ones”…So what kind of music do you listen to at home? “Err, well we have like when my Mum puts CDs in and we listen to the music while she’s ironing” (Girl, 7) • “My Dad puts the radio on in the morning but also he’s got loads of discs and everything. The only song I really listen to is Bob Marley songs on his discs, I don’t really listen to a lot, but then my Mum’s got Will Young and do you know ‘Beautiful Monster’, I think its [by] Rihanna (Boy, 10) • Do you tend to just dance then, or do you sing along too? “Well I sometimes listen, if there’s songs I don’t know and my Mum’s been singing, I put that on to listen to and learn the words” (Girl, 8)

11. music performing activity • “I normally go to the karaoke with my Mum if it’s not school night” Do you sing? “Yes, sometimes” What do you sing? “Like Summer Holiday, Cliff Richards [sings intro]” (Girl, 10) • “My Mum says I sing loud” Do you agree with her? “Yeah” Does she sing? “All sorts” Who’s got the better voice? “Mum has best” Do you sing together? “Yeah and sometimes she sings and I dance” (Girl, 7). • “my Dad, he’s got like two guitars and one set of drums, he’s gonna get a microphone as well. We sing One Direction” (Girl, 9) • And what kind of music do you play on the violin? “Err, I can’t really remember. My Dad plays a guitar. He taught me to play a guitar…he does Postman Pat” Does he? Can you play that? “Sort of. My Dad tries to, do you know where Justin Bieber plays the guitar in the background?” Aha “My Dad tries playing that” (Girl, 9)

12. valued meanings • Do you have a favourite artist or song? “Yeah I have a favourite song. OneRepublic, Counting Stars” And why do you like that song? “Cos my Mum and Dad are having a wedding and I really like that cos it’s about stars and she’s having a black and silver starry wedding and it’s about stars, so I like that one” (Boy, 8) • Here, expressed preference reveals a strongly intersubjective dimension • As if his relationship to this song is filtered through his understanding of relationship with Mum and Dad • …just as many others’ accounts betrayed key role of affective bonds

13. Families prominent…yet variably • Across the accounts gathered, the role of parents and siblings emerged prominently (in a way that was mostly unsolicited) • Musical activity bound up with a range of child-parent interactions • Role of emotion, attachment, identification, trust, and love apparent • Furthermore, accounts of child-parent interactions varied in line with expressed level of interest in In Harmony • Lower interest  accounts of intergenerational musicking prominent • Higher interest  intergenerational less prominent and differently figured

14. Learning before pleasure • “Its really fun playing [trumpet] at home because Mum and Dad and relatives get to listen to you and get to praise you and they tell you if you’re doing good or bad, they don’t just lie [by] saying its good” (Girl, 10) • “I like listening to soft sort of music, like ones without words, with like violins” … What do your Mum or Dad think about you playing the violin? “They say they think I should be really good like my brother [violinist, age 22]” So do you think you will carry on playing violin? “Maybe” Why do you think maybe? “Because I’ve got a piano and a violin so I don’t know which one” (Girl, 8)

15. Implications • Influence of significant others was apparent in most cases • Yet nature and qualities of these ties (esp. emotional content) appeared to vary • Inflected practices and tastes (and ultimate ends) quite differently • Further, extent to which such emotional dimensions of family activity played into practices (and tastes) also appeared to vary (patterned) • Skeggs (2004): Bourdieu ‘cannot account for the nuanced practices of those who do not operate from a dominant position’ (p.30) • So, intersubjective plane appears liable to influence both genesis and expression of cultural taste and valuing – albeit variably so • Further implications for function of taste (i.e., in terms of how and why put to use by people) and its expression

16. Attending to the relational • Relationality: interactions, social ties and interpersonal transactions as central stuff of social life (Emirbayer 1997; Crossley 2011; Depleteau 2013) • Donati (2011): ‘in the beginning there is the relation’ and from this ‘subjects and objects are defined relationally’ (pp.17–18). • Coole (2005) ‘the transpersonal dimension’, with its ‘own distinctive and irreducible agentic capacity and generativity’ (p.138). • Burkitt (2015) on ‘relational agency’ - people (re-conceptualised as ‘interactants’ or ‘interdependents’) produce effects in the world and on each other through relational connections and joint actions • ‘agency appears only among people in their relational contexts…how we act, the powers we accrue or the constraints upon us, do not rest on our relation to structure but on the nature of our interdependence with others and how this shapes our mutual interactions’ (2015: 10-11)

17. But…Bourdieu’s ‘relational’ • Although Bourdieu says ‘…le réel est relationnel’ (1994: 17), his approach to the relational bears Saussure’s influence: • For Saussure, signs are first defined by their relative differences… • Similarly, B’s ‘relational logic’ sees the positions people and goods occupy as: • arbitrary significations, meaningful as a result of a play of difference (i.e., not due to any essential or intrinsic features) • So the ‘relations’ at the centre of Bourdieu’s analysis are… • ‘not interactions between agents and intersubjective ties between individuals, but objective relations’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 97) • The very title of ‘La Distinction’ seems to suggests as much • Nothing ‘natural’ about supposedly ‘distinctive’ properties – these do not exist outside the relations with other, equally arbitrary, properties

18. Problems for Bourdieu’s account? • For Bottero (2009), this creates difficulties • Bourdieu privileges relations between social positions at the expense of exploring the substance of these positions • Assumptions about the interactional properties of habitus, field and social space are left unexamined • Intersubjectivity is important because understandings on which we build our sense of belonging are not merely • ‘the result of individuals internalising their shared conditions in the same fashion’ (Bottero, 2009: 413–14) • …but are rather negotiated accomplishments • King (2000): confusing that Bourdieu seems to simultaneously confirm and deny the importance of intersubjectivity. Bourdieu fails ‘to take his own greatest insight seriously’ (2000: 431)

19. The affective in aesthetic experience • Attention to the affective dimensions of aesthetic experience may well benefit from a deeper engagement with interpersonal ties and interactions • Crossley (1996): emotions of affect belong to the world of intersubjective relations – emotions constitute a ‘way of relating’ (p.46) • Relatedly, on musical aesthetics, Frith (1996) notes role of ‘communal values’ ‘musical appreciation is, by its very nature, a process of musical identification, and the aesthetic response is, implicitly, an ethical agreement’ (p.114) ‘Whether we’re talking about Finnish dance halls in Sweden…or Indian film music in Trinidad, we’re dealing…not just with a commitment to ‘different’ songs, but also with an experience of alternative modes of social interaction’ (p.124) • Sayer (2005) extends habitus to include ethical dispositions which ‘concern what is of value, how to live, what is worth striving for and what is not’ (p.6) • Affective  interpersonal ties (and their norms)  ethics  communality?

20. Possible objections • My findings concern children – dependents – so especially likely to invoke parents & family. Isn’t this a weakness? • Firstly, operations of habitus suggest ongoing significance of early/primary socialisation for people’s cultural taste profiles • So seems worth attending closely to this life phase and the relationships to culture developed then • Second, although degrees of investment in familial bonds may wax and wane over time, no reason to think that significance of relational ties and their dynamics do not pertain in adulthood

21. ‘The relational’ in cultural taste & practice • Silva & Le Roux (2011) on cultural capital and tastes of couples • ‘the most marked differences between women and men regarding cultural tastes and participation is related to the lifecourse and their predominant engagements in the system of relations…within households and families’ (p.557) • Kalmijnand Bernasco (2001) on influence of presence (or not) of children on degree to which partners share lifestyles • Silverstone (1992) on significance of ‘household culture’ for media preferences and practices • Vettehenet al., (2012) on influence of partnerships/coupling for tastes and practices (e.g., TV genre choices) • “theoretical models of intergenerational transfer of tastes and interests may be improved if these models include household culture as a mediating variable” (p578)

22. ‘The relational’ in broader decision making • Smart (2011) on decision making and family relationships • People’s decisions (about wills, moving house, caring) are undertaken in relation to others and not simply in terms of their own separate needs and desires • Zelizer (2012) on household resources and ‘Relational Earmarking’ • People incorporate concerns about personal relationships as well as meaningful factors derived from the past and attributed to the future (morality and cultural meanings) in their financial decision-making

23. Closing thoughts… • Considerations of aesthetic experience tend to focus on relationship between individuals and cultural goods. Broadly, two types of theory: • Internalist: typically appeal to phenomenological features of experience • Externalist: attend to features of the object experienced • But findings presented here suggest importance, of interpersonal factors • Children’s interpretive frames populated by meanings/values sustained by and in interpersonal ties • More broadly, the question of how peopleoccupying particular social positions are active in their own classification, might benefit from more attention to relations • Where Bourdieu prioritises originary experiences and relative closure of dispositions in habitus, more attention to the relational might help explain how and why people modify/reconstruct dispositions throughout their lives