Tyler Bickford
I am an ethnomusicologist at Columbia University, where my dissertation research examines the media ecology of K–8 schoolchildren at a small, rural, public school in New England.
Some of my writing and a CV can be found here. I post new writing and upcoming talks here. Most recently I have a piece about sharing earbuds that I’d love feedback on (below). contact: tb2139 [at] columbia [dot] edu
Earbuds Are Good for Sharing (preprint)
Tyler Bickford Columbia University tb2139@columbia.edu 1 Earbuds Are Good for Sharing: Children’s Sociable Uses of Headphones at a Vermont Primary School. Forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, edited by Jason Stanyek and Sumanth Gopinath. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tyler Bickford, Columbia University tb2139@columbia.edu Abstract Working from ethnographic research with K–8 schoolchildren at a small public school in Vermont, this chapter examines one of the central practices of music listening of contemporary U.S. children: splitting the cheap earbuds that lately accessorize many consumer devices in order to share them and listen jointly with friends. At Heartsboro Central School, students used their portable music players to move through space, tuck into clothes, and link friends from ear to ear. MP3 players bundled with headphone cables circulated among lockers, desks, pockets, and backpacks. Wires threaded under clothing and tangled across crowded lunchroom tables. Hanging from a shoulder or shirt collar, maxed-out earbuds strained to liven up group spaces with portable, lo-fi background music. In class, students listened surreptitiously to earbuds concealed in sleeves and under the hoods of sweatshirts. Most often two friends would share a pair of earbuds—one for me, one for you—listening together with one ear as they participated in the dense overlap of talk, touch, and gesture that characterized their unmonitored peer interactions. By sharing earbuds kids activated and delineated relationships, and they solidified certain types of social bonds. With the same actions they enforced and regulated status hierarchies, excluding certain children from listening even while expanding access for others who might be limited by parental resources or restrictions. While a complex logic of genre, celebrity, and consumerism informed HCS children’s musical tastes and habits, most prominent was the intimate embedding of earbuds as social anchors among the complex networks and hierarchies of these elementary- and middle-school children. This chapter argues that through their listening practices children’s upset the rationalizing logics of privatization and isolation that accrue to headphones and portable music, as they creatively reimagined their music devices to fit within the persistent and densely sociable cultures of childhood, as tangible technologies for interaction and intimacy that traced out bonds and tethered friends together in joint activity. Introduction Over the last generation changes in the social structure of the family and children’s command of an increasing share of family spending have led marketers to cultivate children as an important consumer demographic (Schor 2004). Music marketed to children—led by the Disney juggernaut, which promotes superstar acts such as the Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus across television, radio, film, DVDs and CDs, and branded toys, clothing,
Tyler Bickford Columbia University tb2139@columbia.edu 1 Earbuds Are Good for Sharing: Children’s Sociable Uses of Headphones at a Vermont Primary School. Forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, edited by Jason Stanyek and Sumanth Gopinath. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tyler Bickford, Columbia University tb2139@columbia.edu Abstract Working from ethnographic research with K–8 schoolchildren at a small public school in Vermont, this chapter examines one of the central practices of music listening of contemporary U.S. children: splitting the cheap earbuds that lately accessorize many consumer devices in order to share them and listen jointly with friends. At Heartsboro Central School, students used their portable music players to move through space, tuck into clothes, and link friends from ear to ear. MP3 players bundled with headphone cables circulated among lockers, desks, pockets, and backpacks. Wires threaded under clothing and tangled across crowded lunchroom tables. Hanging from a shoulder or shirt collar, maxed-out earbuds strained to liven up group spaces with portable, lo-fi background music. In class, students listened surreptitiously to earbuds concealed in sleeves and under the hoods of sweatshirts. Most often two friends would share a pair of earbuds—one for me, one for you—listening together with one ear as they participated in the dense overlap of talk, touch, and gesture that characterized their unmonitored peer interactions. By sharing earbuds kids activated and delineated relationships, and they solidified certain types of social bonds. With the same actions they enforced and regulated status hierarchies, excluding certain children from listening even while expanding access for others who might be limited by parental resources or restrictions. While a complex logic of genre, celebrity, and consumerism informed HCS children’s musical tastes and habits, most prominent was the intimate embedding of earbuds as social anchors among the complex networks and hierarchies of these elementary- and middle-school children. This chapter argues that through their listening practices children’s upset the rationalizing logics of privatization and isolation that accrue to headphones and portable music, as they creatively reimagined their music devices to fit within the persistent and densely sociable cultures of childhood, as tangible technologies for interaction and intimacy that traced out bonds and tethered friends together in joint activity. Introduction Over the last generation changes in the social structure of the family and children’s command of an increasing share of family spending have led marketers to cultivate children as an important consumer demographic (Schor 2004). Music marketed to children—led by the Disney juggernaut, which promotes superstar acts such as the Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus across television, radio, film, DVDs and CDs, and branded toys, clothing,