Anti-Colonial Strategies in Cross-cultural Music Science Research

Abstract

This paper presents a critical analysis of ethical and methodological issues within cross-cultural music science research, including issues around community based research, participation, and data sovereignty. Although such issues have long been discussed in social science fields including anthropology and ethnomusicology, psychology and music cognition are only beginning to take them into serious consideration. This paper aims to fill that gap in the literature, and draw attention to the necessity of critically considering how implicit cultural biases and pure positivist approaches can mar scientific investigations of music, especially in a cross-cultural context. We focus initially on two previous papers (Jacoby et al., 2020; Savage et al., 2021) before broadening our discussion to critique and provide alternatives to scientific approaches that support assimilation, extractvism, and universalism. We then discuss methodological considerations around cross-cultural research ethics, data ownership, and open science and reproducibility. Throughout our critique, we offer many personal recommendations to cross-cultural music researchers, and suggest a few larger systemic changes.

Participant and Musical Diversity in Music Psychology Research

“…This was most prominent in studies of WEIRD participants, and thus may partially reflect the desire to utilise musical stimuli of cultural relevance to one's research participants. But most studies within non-WEIRD countries also tended to employ at least some Western music, suggesting there is still a strong tendency to use Western music as a baseline comparator from which cultural differences are sought, which propagates potentially problematic contrasts between "the West and the rest" (Hall, 2018;Sauvé et al, 2023). Results from Figure 2 also indicate that this trend is not decreasing over time.…”

“…One positive point to note is that we have evidenced a gradual decrease over time in the number of studies conducted in WEIRD countries and the number of WEIRD first authors, although in both cases non-WEIRD groups are still consistently in the minority (see Figure 2). Although various recent calls have been made to increase the diversity of collaborators and participants in music psychology research (Baker et al, 2020;Jacoby et al, 2020;Sauvé et al, 2023) there is still much work to be done in practice, while the prevalence of first authors from WEIRD countries raises questions about the inherent power dynamics within research collaborations and the privileged position of native English speakers in academic publishing practices (Amano et al, 2023).…”

“…Similarly, theories about how music is perceived or responded to that are developed solely in relation to Western (art) music may not be applicable to groups of people whose music is organised in a different way (for example, in terms of its harmonic structure; Athanasopoulos et al, 2021;Lahdelma & Eerola, 2023). Indeed, multiple recent position papers in our field have called for the inclusion of a greater diversity of musics, cultures, and collaborators in our research (Baker et al, 2020;Jacoby et al, 2020;Sauvé et al, 2023).…”

It’s time to open your ears to world music: Commentary on Quan et al. (2022)

“…It seems that the premises of the experiment were built upon an assumption that European and North American music were not ethnic and worldly enough. The recommendations for cross-cultural music studies advise against such divisions between Europeans and non-Europeans (Western and non-Western) and instead, encourage diversity and inclusivity to mitigate any possible underlying presuppositions (Jacoby et al, 2020;Sauvé et al, 2023;Savage et al, 2023;Thompson et al, 2019). The exclusion of Western musical sample might be reasonable in some other circumstances where Western music has been often studied, yet in this research by Quan et al (2022), it might be the case that these sojourners are not as familiar with European and North American music as anticipated and the exposure to these musical traditions could provide us with more insight into their musical preferences and the correlation to their psychological and sociocultural adaptation.…”