ABSTRACT
This book is intended to deal with issues of sociology as they apply to the field of music education. It is not intended, nor could such a volume ever manage, to be comprehensive in its coverage of sociological theories, movements and topics; the field is simply too broad. What I and the other authors who have contributed to this text have tried to do, however, is to present some relevant sociological ideas as they relate interestingly to matters of music education. You may ask: why do we need such a book? I would argue that the answer is because, as Bauman says above, once we begin thinking sociologically we find that we have a new lens to bring to bear upon some of the issues that have vexed music educators persistently since the field was first given a name. Questions as to whether and which music should be included as a compulsory element of school curricula and, if so, in what form originated with some of the first considerations of how we should formally educate human young (see Plato, 2008) and some of these may even have been implicit in our earlier ventures into education (see Mithen, 2005, The Singing Neanderthals). More recent questions concerning the ownership of music in education, the amount of control pupils should have over their experiences in music classrooms and the extent to which various groups and individual learners are relatively advantaged or disadvantaged by and in music education are also of the greatest interest. Not only does sociological thinking present us with a new lens or set of lenses through which to examine such issues but it may also help us to begin to see our way towards answers to questions, answers which have proved particularly elusive in the past. Sociological theory is good to think with, it gives us a framework around which to order our investigations and analytical tools with which to dissect what we find. Perhaps most importantly it makes the familiar strange, so that we have the opportunity to see it as if for the first
time. One could argue that this is something that much music education research has tended to lack in the past.
