Weekly Task:
- Investigate and reflect on the story from The Music Works using the link on Moodle
- Focus on the four key areas of social bonding.
The Music Works:
The Music Works is a small, Gloucester based company that works with young people building self confidence, motivation, and empowerment through using music. The company looks to improve someones chances in life after experiencing some kind of anti-social behaviour like committing crimes for example. They aim to improve peoples attitudes towards learning and build confidence to create more chances for them in the education system and then leading to employment through music. They also train musicians, teach youth workers, staff and young leaders to create a higher standard of teaching and create a larger amount of job roles in the music industry, giving people more opportunities to succeed.
Music is known to have great health benefits like reducing depression and anxiety, boosting your immune system and improving your mental state. Music is becoming more and more popular in programs to help people. The Music Works offer music lessons which include learning about music technology and working in bands. They also offer after school clubs on developing musical skills, working in studios producing and recording music and holiday activities and courses. These activities work to enhance a persons mental health and wellbeing while improving someones musical skills.
Social Bonding Theory:
The social bonding theory was created by Travis Hirschi in 1969. It is how to explain and approach social problems for individuals. Social Bonding Theory looks at peoples criminal activities to analyse their mindset to find out to why they would engage in crime. This theory suggests that this behaviour is linked to having weak social bonds and each element looks at promoting law-abiding behaviour.
The four elements of social bonding are attachment, commitment, involvement and belief:
Attachment – This explores how a person holds values and the way someone acts in normal society. Social Bonding Theory suggests that a persons relationship with parents and school experience is said to have a strong role within how someone engages in general society.
Commitment – Commitment focuses on how a person engages to learning right or wrong and how someone acts and abides by the law. For example, the relationship between the mother and father and child and parents growing up could effect someones commitment to staying within legal behaviour.
Involvement – This is looking into a persons personal criminal activities and the persons choice to involve themselves in illegal behaviour. Hirschi’s theory suggests that if a child hasn’t been taught right from wrong at an early age, when faced in certain situations, they may choose the option that makes the most sense to them, which might not always be the right decision.
Belief – Belief is how a person follows the values the law. This looks at how a person acts within society in terms of how much they keep within the law in daily life and their individual group. It analyses how much a person cares to stick within the law and how high on their priorities it is to them.
Reflection
Both pieces of writing describes two different approaches to analysing someones anti-social behaviour to help them become a better version of themselves. The Music Works takes young people, where a lot the people there struggle with abiding by the law or being a conforming member of society and encourages music as a form of therapy to enhance them to be more motivated and want to succeed in life. The Social Bonding Theory looks into a persons past a lot of the time to find un-solved problems and traumas that could’ve created a mindset or perspective that leaded a person to commit a crime. Hirschi’s theory was that a lot of someones way of acting within society could be related to past traumas or stresses to do with family or something that impacted someones mind-set at some point within childhood or growing up.
I feel that music is a great way to heal someone. Music strengthens relationships and brings people together. Foe example, strangers will come together for events like festivals and gigs to experience music as a community and connect with each other. Types of music therapy like the things they achieve and promote at The Music Works are becoming more and more popular as ways to help people. Making music and dancing to music is a world-wide human expression across all cultures and listening to music is proven to give you a healthier brain, heart, blood pressure and reduced depression and anxiety. Therapists are now using music as a more popular way helping people through their problems and stresses because of all of the benefits that music has towards the human mind and body.
References:
http://criminology.wikia.com/wiki/Social_Bond_Theory
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4179700/
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/03/13/seven-reasons-why-music-benefits-your-health/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118517383.wbeccj518/abstract
Jazzy Heath UOG 