Music Asylums

By Tia DeNora,

Book cover of Music Asylums: Wellbeing Through Music in Everyday Life

Book description

Taking a cue from Erving Goffman's classic work, Asylums, Tia DeNora develops a novel interdisciplinary framework for music, health and wellbeing. Considering health and illness both in medical contexts and in the often-overlooked realm of everyday life, DeNora argues that these identities are by no means mutually exclusive. Moreover, she…


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Why read it?

1 author picked Music Asylums as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Tia DeNora is a brilliant sociologist who writes a lot about music, and this book makes a great argument for music as a resource, or what she calls a ‘technology of self’.

We use music to shape our identity, and drawing on Erving Goffman’s ideas about ‘asylums’, she suggests that music is one such space we create in our lives where we can find ourselves again. Being musical becomes an integral part of being human.

Music has always been somewhere I’ve found solace and freedom, and I know that it’s the same for lots of the people I work with,…

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