Insider or outsider? Exploring some digital challenges in ethnomusicology

Abstract

This paper considers debates that have taken place in ethnomusicology as a result of engagement with the classification of data. Landmark projects over the past century introduced various classification systems and initiated important debates within the field. From the author's perspective, classification of data is understood as a necessary precursor to computation in these projects. Classificatory thinking is used here as a theme to explore debates that have arisen when abstractions of musical practice have been suggested for use with ethnomusicology. The paper proposes that a recent approach to research practice for embedding computation adds to ongoing interdisciplinary work, demonstrating novel ways of contextualizing archival materials with ethnography alongside computation. The approach attempted to strike a balance for engaging large amounts of data in ethnomusicology. The paper argues that some resulting tensions arising from classification lead to insights, which cannot be drawn by ethnomusicological methods alone.

Intercultural Music Engagement over Electronic Bridges: Online Ethnography and Actions Research during COVID-19 Lockdown

“…The meeting of our respective disciplinary backgrounds requires that we navigate deductive versus inductive approaches and weigh the value of outsider versus insider perspectives. This tension has been explored within ethnomusicology regarding the use of computational and data visualization approaches to large data sets of archival recordings, and the place of comparative, classificatory thinking in the field (Egan 2021). O'Reilly, writing about the ethnographic method, subscribes to holism, drawing from the work of Anthony Giddens which underscores the interdependence of social structures and individual agency, arguing that "ethnography that pays attention to wider structures and to the thoughts and feelings of agents, within the context of daily life and individual action, is an ideal approach to research the practice of social life " (2012:20).…”