"A fascinating thesis and a timely synthesis.... Becker urges the reader to view certain arcane cultural rituals as being in the mainstream of spiritual development and argues that the resulting trance-like states may relate to the basic fabric of emotions and consciousness, which are our ancestral, animalian heritage. This is both a risky and courageous undertaking that challenges both cultural and neuroscientific studies." ―Jaak Panksepp, author of Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions
In Deep Listeners, Judith Becker brings together scientific and cultural approaches to the study of music and emotion, and music and trancing. Becker claims that persons who experience deep emotions when listening to music are akin to those who trance within the context of religious rituals. Using new discoveries in the fields of neuroscience and biology, Deep Listeners outlines an emotion-based theory of trance using examples from Southeast Asian and American musics. A companion CD includes excerpts from several of the musical genres under discussion, and a 16-page color insert presents vivid documentation of the global experience of "deep listening."

Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing

Arts & Photography

Becker, Judith

Music

Indiana University Press

English summary: In the first half of the nineteenth century, Basel missionaries travelled to India with strong religious convictions and values, which were shaped by the European Awakening. Yet, the encounter with Indians changed them: by modifying their beliefs and values and by adapting Indian concepts, they developed a contact religiosity. Judith Becker focuses on the 'Christian values' of conversion and sanctification and demonstrates how these concepts changed in the encounter. She relies on approaches developed in sociological and psychological studies on conversion. Using postcolonial concepts, Becker asks how people and religion in India were represented by the missionaries. The mission reports oscillate between exoticisation and an emphasis on equality and unity of mankind. There are, however, clear differences between the narratives written by people in Europe or in India. Those missionaries who lived in India for decades only seldom used exoticisation and adapted some Indian concepts. Their contact religiosity demonstrates the meaning of intercultural entanglements to the Europeans. German description: In der ersten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts reisten Basler Missionare mit starken, durch die Erweckungsbewegung gepragten, religiosen Uberzeugungen und Werthaltungen nach Indien. Die Begegnung mit Inderinnen und Indern veranderte sie: Sie entwickelten eine Kontaktreligiositat, indem sie ihre Uberzeugungen und Werthaltungen modifizierten und indische Einflusse adaptierten. Judith Becker legt den Fokus auf die Frage nach conversio, Bekehrung und Konversion, und sanctificatio, den daraus folgenden Werthaltungen, denn Bekehrung und 'christliches Leben' sahen die Missionare als Zentrum ihrer Arbeit. Dabei zeichnet Becker nach, wie sich diese Auffassungen veranderten. Sie nutzt die in der neueren Konversionsforschung entwickelten Ansatze und Methoden. Zugleich verwendet sie postkoloniale Ansatze und fragt nach der Reprasentation von Menschen und Religionen in Indien. In den Missionsberichten findet sich sowohl eine Exotisierung Indiens als auch die Betonung der Gleichheit aller Menschen und aller Christen. Dabei treten deutliche Unterschiede zwischen in Europa und in Indien verfassten Erzahlungen zutage. Solche Missionare, die mehrere Jahrzehnte in Indien lebten, exotisierten nur selten; sie ubernahmen manche indische Vorstellung. Die Kontaktreligiositat demonstriert die Bedeutung der interkulturellen Verflechtung fur die Europaer.

Conversio im Wandel: Basler Missionare zwischen Europa und S|dindien und die Ausbildung einer Kontaktreligiosität, 1834-1860 (Veroffentlichungen Des ... Fur Europaische Geschichte) (German Edition)

History

World

V&R Academic

What happens when people of different cultural, religious, political and social backgrounds live in close contact with each other? This volume focuses on the encounter between European missionaries and indigenous people and aims to illuminate how life in a contact zone changed concepts, attitudes and practices. It collects examples from nearly all world regions from early modern times to the middle of the twentieth century. The contributions discuss the concept of 'contact zones', defining them both as spaces where people of different backgrounds actually met and as 'imagined contact zones' between European Christians and those living abroad who insisted on forming one community and thus exchanged ideas, and as 'personalised contact zones' in individuals who transcended boundaries and integrated different backgrounds and attitudes. In each case people, concepts and attitudes changed in the encounter. Practices were modified and new practices emerged. Values and conceptions were transformed. When individuals embodied the contact, however, they often were expelled from the contact zone, especially when they were not recognised as 'European'. The volume thus also sheds light on the limits of the contact. By focusing on the results of the intercultural encounter, however, it mainly demonstrates the impact of life in a contact zone on those involved.

European Missions in Contact Zones: Transformation through Interaction in a (Post-)Colonial World (Veroffentlichungen Des Instituts Fur Europaische Geschichte Mainz, 107)

Historical Study & Educational Resources

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