Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music

Since the beginning of human civilization, music has been used as a device to control social behavior, where it has operated as much to promote solidarity within groups as hostility between competing groups. Music is an emotive manipulator that influences attitude, motivation and behavior at many levels and in many contexts. This volume is the first to address the social ramifications of music’s behaviorally manipulative effects, its morally questionable uses and control mechanisms, and its economic and artistic regulation through commercialization, thus highlighting not only music’s diverse uses at the social level but also the ever-fragile relationship between aesthetics and morality.

Steven Brown is a researcher in cognitive neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He received his doctorate at Columbia University in New York, and has done research at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. His research deals with the neural basis of human communication, including the arts.

Ulrik Volgsten is a research fellow in the Department of Culture, Aesthetics and Media at Göteborg University in Sweden. He received his doctorate in the Department of Musicology at Stockholm University, and has published papers on both musical and philosophical topics. Volgsten's multidisciplinary research mainly focuses on human communication in different media.