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Legacy: participatory music practices with elderly people as a resource for the well-being of healthcare professionals

‘Legacy: Participatory Music Practices with Elderly People as a Resource for the Well-being of Healthcare Professionals’ was a qualitative research project into the learning and well-being of hospital nurses and nursing home caregivers working with vulnerable elderly people and participating in live music practices Meaningful Music in Healthcare (MiMiC) and Music and Dementia in the Netherlands.The data collection (2016-2019) employed an ethnographic approach and data triangulation of participant observation, episodic interviews and group discussions. The constructivist grounded theory approach to data analysis proceeded from sensitising concepts to initial and focused coding, ultimately reconstructed into a thick description merging empirical data, theory and the researcher’s interpretations. The emerging core categories, Participation, Experience and Learning Benefits, were conceptualised within an epistemological framework of philosophical pragmatism.The findings suggest that, through an emerging community of practice, healthcare professionals could collaborate with musicians to connect with patients or residents. The collaboration enabled the use of shared musical experiences as a resource for compassionate care. Still, allowing oneself to participate musically and showing emotional vulnerability were challenging. The accumulation of ‘experiencing’ and collegial encouragement supported healthcare professionals’ participation beyond their professional performance.Person-centred music-making resonated with the values of person-centred care. It enabled healthcare professionals to take time and become engaged with patients or residents in musical situations. Healthcare professionals described gaining new understandings of the patients or residents and each other, which could be seen promoting a cultural shift from task-centredness towards relationship-focused person-centred care.Musicians’ communication provided new professional insights into teamwork. Also, observing patients and residents’ responses to the music evoked sympathetic joy in healthcare professionals. Looking through the eyes of ‘the other’ was central for nurses and caregivers’ meaning-making of the value of music-making and awareness of its impact on patients, residents and themselves. The perceived benefits of the music practices for healthcare professionals’ job resources and satisfaction seemed connected to changes in care relationships, work atmosphere, sense of mindfulness and recognition.The conclusions of the research suggest that participatory music practices might be considered as supportive of delivering person-centred care. The findings could be applied in training programmes and professional development of musicians, nurses and caregivers.

Listening into others

The essays collected here are based on two decades of engagement with the residents of the slums of Govindpuri in India’s capital, Delhi. The book presents stories of many kinds, from speculative treatises, via the recollection of a thousand everyday conversations, to an account of the making of a radio documentary.Zig-zagging through the lanes of Govindpuri, Listening into Others explores the vibrant sounds emanating from slum culture. Redefining ethnography as listening in passing, Chandola excels at narrating the stories of the everyday. The ubiquity of smartphones, sonic selfies, wailing, the ethics of wearing jeans, the crossroad rituals of elections, the political agency of slum-dwellers, the war of the sexes through bodily gestures, and conflicts over ownership of both property and sound generated in the slums — these are among the many encounters Chandola opens up to the reader.Slums are anxious spaces in the materiality, experience, and imagination of a city. They are the by-products of the violent and exploitative mechanisms of urbanization. What becomes of the slum-dwellers, who universally, across centuries, cities and continents, befall similar fates of being discriminated, reckoned to be the scum of the earth, and a burden on society? By listening to identified others and amplifying their voices in their own vocabularies and grammar, Tripta Chandola’s praxis creates a methodological, political, and poetic rupture. Slums, she finds, are not anathema to the city’s past, present, or future. They are an integral component of urbanization and a foundational part of the city.With Listening into Others, Tripta Chandola poses the question: ‘Who owns the slum, and who determines which voices are heard? From where you are, listen with me.’

Online Courtship

About this publication: Computer mediated interpersonal interactions are defining our daily lives as we know it. Studying this phenomenon with various methodologies, across different cultures and traditions is a crucial component in understanding social ties. This book brings together articles that approach online dating from a range of cultural and critical perspectives.The research decodes the level of engagement and manner of approaching online dating in various countries such as France, India, China, Turkey, Cuba, USA and Portugal. Mapping the history of dating and courtship shows the evolution of these practices even before the introduction of the online medium and traces parallels and differences between old and new traditions.

Hidden Crises and Communication: An Interactional Analysis of Hidden Crises

In this paper I describe the ways in which the communication discipline can make a hidden crisis transparent. For this purpose I examine the concept of crisis entrepreneurship from a communication point of view. Using discourse analysis, I analyse the discursive practices of crisis entrepreneurs in the domain of education in the Netherlands. This paper is part of my Ph.D. project in which I examine the dilemmas encountered by crisis entrepreneurs and the interactional solutions they choose in addressing a crisis. In my Ph.D. project I have analysed how crisis entrepreneurs use discursive practices: (1) to show the factuality of the problem. For example, the way the problem is presented is too theoretical and is not a problem in reality; (2) to present the credibility of the messenger as an authentic, legitimate spokesman. Crisis entrepreneurs may be accused of wanting to attract attention to their own cause; (3) to create the accountability for the problem and the solution. For example, crisis entrepreneurs can be accused of nursing personal grievances or of drawing attention to the issue without actively attempting to solve it. The conclusion is that a communication professional is able to recognize a problem raised by crisis entrepreneurs. Knowledge of interactional dilemmas helps communication professionals understand the potential of crisis entrepreneurs. A communication professional can therefore contribute to the recognition of crises by acknowledging that a crisis entrepreneur is someone who can have a strong hand in the public agenda, i.e., public affairs that are important to the authorities.

Hidden Crises and Communication

In this paper I describe the ways in which the communication discipline can make a hidden crisis transparent. For this purpose I examine the concept of crisis entrepreneurship from a communication point of view. Using discourse analysis, I analyse the discursive practices of crisis entrepreneurs in the domain of education in the Netherlands. This paper is part of my Ph.D. project in which I examine the dilemmas encountered by crisis entrepreneurs and the interactional solutions they choose in addressing a crisis. In my Ph.D. project I have analysed how crisis entrepreneurs use discursive practices: (1) to show the factuality of the problem. For example, the way the problem is presented is too theoretical and is not a problem in reality; (2) to present the credibility of the messenger as an authentic, legitimate spokesman. Crisis entrepreneurs may be accused of wanting to attract attention to their own cause; (3) to create the accountability for the problem and the solution. For example, crisis entrepreneurs can be accused of nursing personal grievances or of drawing attention to the issue without actively attempting to solve it. The conclusion is that a communication professional is able to recognize a problem raised by crisis entrepreneurs. Knowledge of interactional dilemmas helps communication professionals understand the potential of crisis entrepreneurs.

Book review – Feminisms in Leisure Studies. Advancing a Fourth Wave