To be published as volume no. 4 in the IIAS book series, University of Amsterdam Press. Estimated publication: summer 2009. Editor: Birgit Abels, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, Netherlands. Series editors: Max Sparreboom & Paul van der Velde.

Austronesia (the area where Austronesian languages are spoken) stretches over a large and mainly oceanic area: from Madagascar in the west, to Easter Island in the east. Customarily, Austronesia is roughly divided into Formosa/Taiwan, the Malay Archipelago, and the Pacific islands of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. The music of some Austronesian areas has yet to be described and analyzed in publication. This is particularly lamentable given the value (beyond musicological contribution) a study of local and regional music, grounded in cultural theory, could have. Some parts of the region have aptly been described as “laboratories of social and cultural change,” and music plays a decisive role in both the expression and construction of identities, i.e., with regard to key factors driving social and cultural transitions.
“Austronesian Soundscapes. Performing Arts in Oceania and Southeast Asia” seeks to combine analyses of Austronesian music in a single, edited volume. To that end, the editor is calling for papers focusing on specific areas of Austronesia, describing and explaining performing arts in their cultural context(s) and transcending disciplinary frontiers within the humanities and social sciences. The articles should present studies of individual cultures through the “lens” that music offers.
The volume will collate the material and will draw together contemporary cultural studies and musical analyses. “Austronesian Soundscapes. Performing Arts in Oceania and Southeast Asia” aims to fill an important research gap, and to demonstrate, at a methodological level, how these two disciplines, cultural studies and music studies, can strengthen, complement and enrich each other; how a cultural study of music (rather than an “ethnomusicology” or a “comparative musicology”) such as this, can create new vistas for understanding the challenges faced by Austronesian cultures in a globalized world.

The editor encourages contributions which devote rigorous analytical attention to traditional musical styles, and also to emergent popular music and styles. Music is fundamental to the organization of society, and vice versa. It is central to the generation of meaning; yet at the same time, sound already carries meaning. Because of this subtle and complex relationship, the musical analyses should be deployed to leverage a deeper understanding of the cultural contexts that bring the music about. How do the culture carriers themselves conceptualize the meaning that is expressed and renewed through their music-making? The articles should not ask Gayatri Spivak’s groundbreaking question of the late 1980s - Can the subaltern speak? They should ask instead, how it speaks through music?

Please submit your abstract (300–400 words) and a short bio electronically as a Word file e-mail attachment by August 15, 2008, to Birgit Abels, International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), at austronesiansoundscapes*@*gmail.com (please remove the asterisks before and after the “@”). You are invited to consult with Birgit before developing your research article, and early notification of interest would be greatly appreciated. Final submissions should be 5,000–8,000 words in length and are due by January 31, 2009.