The norient journal is part of the norient network and website. At the same time, it works as an independent section with its own editors and (mostly) different authors.
The norient journal offers cross-cultural (case) studies of the diversity of aesthetical approaches in our increasingly transnational and digitalised world. It analyzes contemporary musical aesthetics and observes how musicians interact and situate themselves musically in local, regional, global, and transnational contexts. norient works with a broad definition of music that includes phenomena like soundscapes, the sonic, noise, and sound.
The name norient implies that this network (and the journal) reaches beyond orientalist ideas and essentialist views of the world and the world of music. norient looks at musicians as individual human beings first. They are interacting with local and global social to political realities, but they are not “determined” by their culture of origin, if at all one such culture of origin can be determined for a musician. We care for music, not categories.
The norient journal favours () cross-cultural approaches and collaborative and transdisciplinary work. In this way, the norient journal hopes to put forward far-ranging theses without ignoring the complexity, ‘messiness’ (cf. Taruksin) and the process-oriented nature of human (and artists’) behaviour and strategies. Its aim is to put forward detailed analysis of music, musicians and musical communities and to reflect on the ruptures and flows of the 21st Century on various levels.
Annually the norient journal plans to put out a call for papers that focus on one topic cross-culturally: the discrepancies between the urban and the rural, the construction of place, taste networks, new musical aesthetics.
Currently norient is putting together a editorial team. So far these scholars plan to work with us:
David-Emil Wickstroem
Post-Soviet sphere (mainly Russia, Ukraine), Germany, Norway, Transcultural flows, Migrant communities, Identity
Shin Hyunjoon
south korea, rock music, experimental music
Jesse Wheeler
brazil, punk
Birgit Abels
pacific islands, southeast asia, identity, transcultural flows, spatiality
Violetta Mayer
chile, resistance music
Jeroen de Kloet
china, popular music
