Linked Arms and Lingering Songs: An Analysis of Sound, Belonging and Governance in Student Sittnings

Sammanfattning

This thesis aim is to highlight the ability and power that sound has to act as a social driver, generating movement, coordinating bodies and allowing for the conceptualization of sound as a soft mechanism of governance. Using a theoretical framework built on the works of Michel Foucault (1977, 2007) and Pierre Bourdieu (1977), as well as previous studies concerned with sound and its social and cultural significance, I argue that sound is able to guide bodies and their behaviours in accordance to its expectations by relying on ritual repetition and a felt sense of belonging and appartenance to a community, creating attuned bodies that possess the embodied knowledge which allows them to react to the guidance of the sound. The context in which this phenomenon is approached is represented by student sittnings organized by Kalmar Nation, one of the student organizations in the city of Lund, Sweden. The findings demonstrate that sound does have the ability to move and coordinate bodies, generating synchronization and shared patterns of behaviour that, over time, contribute to a sense of belonging and emergence of self-regulation without the use of coercion or authority. This research contributes both in a theoretical sense, as it tackles sound as a force that is able to affect human bodies in a secular, non-mystical setting, as well as from a practical perspective, providing insights regarding how sound works in spaces that benefit from or require collective, synchronized participation.