RT Article
T1 Musical life stories: coherence through musicking in the prison setting
JF Crime, media, culture
VO 19
IS 1
SP 74
OP 94
A1 Hjørnevik, Kjetil
A2 Waage, Leif
A2 Hansen, Anita Lill
LA English
YR 2023
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1835746721
AB Despite the strong relationships evidenced between music and identity little research exists into the significance of music in prisoners? shifting sense of identity. This article explores musicking as part of the ongoing identity work of prisoners in light of theory on musical performance, narrative and desistance and discusses implications for penal practice and research. Through the presentation of an ethnographic study of music therapy in a low security Norwegian prison we show how participation in music activities afforded congruence between the past, the present and the projected future for participants by way of their unfolding musical life stories. Complementing existing conceptualisations of music as an agent for change, our study suggests that musicking afforded the maintenance of a coherent sense of self for participating prison inmates, whilst offering opportunities for noncoercive personal development. We argue that research into musicking in prison offers fruitful ways of tracing how the complexities inherent in processes of change are enacted in everyday prison life, and that it can advance our knowledge of relationships between culture, penal practice and desistance.
K1 Cultural Criminology
K1 Desistance
K1 music and identity
K1 Music therapy
K1 musical life stories
K1 prison ethnography
DO 10.1177/17416590211059135