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Brynjulf Stige, The Practice Turn in Music Therapy Theory, Music Therapy Perspectives, Volume 33, Issue 1, 2015, Pages 3–11, https://doi.org/10.1093/mtp/miu050
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Abstract
In this article, I argue that there has been a practice turn in music therapy theory, and I explicate how this turn might indicate a way forward in future developments of the discipline and profession. Informed by “praxeology” (philosophy of action) and “practice theory” (a specific theory tradition in the social sciences), I depict practices as social and situated activities, bundled “in the middle” between social structures at the macro level and individual agency at the micro level. I explore examples of the practice turn in music therapy theory, and specify constitutive, relational, contextual, temporal, and corporeal features of music therapy as health musicking. After exploring one practical example, I reflect on implications for research and theory development in music therapy. I argue that the emerging family of “practice turn theories” can be appropriated flexibly to provide relevant conceptual tools when “zooming in” and “zooming out” on the micro and macro dimensions of practice, and when trailing connections. The assumption that human agency and subjectivity emerges from social practice informs the argument.