Simon Barber
Biographic Data
| ID | 4239319 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Simon Barber |
| GIVEN NAMES | Simon |
| FAMILY NAME | Barber |
| SIGNATURE | BARBER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Birmingham City University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2844-360X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Book Forum: Catherine Comyn, The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa (2022)
Catherine Comyn’s The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa (2022) examines the centrality of finance in the colonisation of Aotearoa, from the sale of Māori lands and the first colonial emigration scheme to the founding of settler nationhood and the enforcement of colonial grievances. Moving from the formation of the New Zealand Company in the 1830s to the Hokianga Dog Tax Uprising at the close of the nineteenth century, this book reveals the inext…
‘The song factories have closed!’: Songwriting camps as spaces of collaborative creativity in the post-industrial age
This article explores ‘songwriting camps’, a contemporary form of collaborative music creation initiated primarily by record labels and music publishers but also by producers and enthusiasts. In such camps, musicians produce songs for various purposes, from commercial exploitation to self-actualization. This research explores the origins of industrialized songwriting, collaborative songwriting practices, and current thinking on creativity and cop…
China's rise and the United States’ response: Implications for the global order and New Zealand/Aotearoa. Part I: Using uneven and combined development theory to explain China's rise
Part One of this article provides a novel condensed Marxist account of China's rapid economic growth which underpins its rising geopolitical and military power. In the vast literature on China's rise, pro‐market reforms and/or state policy‐making and interventionism are emphasised as causes, depending on whether a neoliberal or neomercantilist perspective is adopted. Although these accounts contain important elements of truth, Marxist economic th…
China's rise and the United States’ response: Implications for the global order and New Zealand/Aotearoa. Part II: The US response, emergence of a multi‐polar order, and New Zealand/Aotearoa foreign p…
China's rise is reconfiguring the global order as it develops into the world's second most powerful nation‐state and becomes an increasingly serious threat to US global hegemony. In Part Two of this article, the US response to China's rising economic, geopolitical, and military power is analysed with a focus on Obama's ‘pivot towards Asia’, Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods, and Biden's comprehensive strategy to ‘out‐compete’ China. These developm…
The Benefits of Collaborative Popular Music Songwriting: A Spectrum of Artist-Songwriter Involvement
This article explores the often overlooked role of professional songwriters in popular music, who occupy the spectrum between craftspeople and artists. Drawing on seventeen episodes of the Sodajerker podcast featuring songwriters who write for and with popular artists, we outline the role of professional songwriters in the popular music industry and how collaboration between songwriters and artists shapes and refines songs. On this basis, we prop…
Māori Sovereignty or Death
In her 1984 book ‘Māori Sovereignty’, Donna Awatere sustains a blistering polemic on ‘white culture’ that still retains its rhetorical force 40 years later. Her construction of a sharply delineated binary between a monolithic notion of ‘white culture’ as against ‘taha Māori’ can come at the cost of simplification. But this is not at all to say that Awatere is wrong when she says it is ‘Māori Sovereignty or death’. In this paper, we extend Awatere…
Rate and review: Exploring listener motivations for engagement with music podcasts
Podcasts have become an important part of music reception practices, providing new ways of engaging with reviews and recommendations, artist interviews and popular music histories. This article presents a replicable working methodology that can be applied to study the data associated with podcasts of any genre. In our analysis, we explore approximately 16,000 listener reviews of the Top 50 podcasts in the Apple (UK) music chart in order to discov…
Imagining Beyond Decolonisation
Review of Bianca Elkington et al, Imagining Decolonisation. An ‘ethic of restoration’ as a third way between Fanonian rupture and the exclusionary performativity of Pākehā overtures to decolonisation
Māori Mārx: Some Provisional Materials
This article gathers together some provisional materials for the construction of a Māori Mārx. I begin by following Marx’s thought as he continually complexifies his understanding of the determinants of history in his search for the proper starting place for a materialist dialectics. I leave historical Marx at the close of his life, occupied with the passionate study of Indigenous modes of life. Returning his gaze, I read Marx from an Indigenous …
Sociology in a crisis: Covid-19 and the colonial politics of knowledge production in Aotearoa New Zealand
Rather than being exceptional for Māori and Pacific Peoples, Covid-19 is the latest iteration of virulent disease that arrived with European colonisation. The various pandemics are connected; they exacerbate and intensify existing conditions of colonial inequality and injustice. The political and economic marginalisation of Māori and Pasifika within Aotearoa New Zealand ensures that Covid-19 will have disproportionate impacts upon them. Covid-19'…
In Wakefield's laboratory: Tangata Whenua into property/labour in Te Waipounamu
This article follows the alchemical political economy of Edward Gibbon Wakefield for whom Kāi Tahu whenua served as a laboratory. Wakefield's clever formula for the transubstantiation of an incendiary social situation in Britain into new terrain for capital was designed to secure the transplantation of English economic and social relations to the colonies to ensure the persistence of a landless class compelled to sell their labour for wages. Inge…
Conceptualizing Creativity and Strategy in the Work of Professional Songwriters
Drawing upon interviews conducted as part of the Sodajerker on Songwriting podcast this paper explores professional songwriting as musical labor. It explores how songwriters conceptualize creativity and what strategies they employ for the delivery of original songs. It argues that individuals evince a faith in their own autonomy in the face of the demands of form and industry, expressing intuitive concepts of inspiration and practical insights in…
Voicing passion: The emotional economy of songwriting
This article examines articulations of the role of passion in accounts of the life and work of the songwriter. It draws upon a range of interviews with successful artists captured in the Sodajerker On Songwriting podcast. It is suggested that these interviews capture the ‘voicing’ of the conventions of creativity in popular music, exploring a context in which passionate motivation, expression and understanding of the (potentially) affective respo…
Smooth jazz: A case study in the relationships between commercial radio formats, audience research and music production
This article examines the relationships between three areas of activity within the music and media industries: the construction of music formats for commercial radio programming, audience research and music production. With specific reference to two companies located in the United States, this research explores some of the ways in which these practices impact upon one another and help to develop the organization of music genres into discrete, str…
Sociology in a crisis: Covid-19 and the colonial politics of knowledge production in Aotearoa New Zealand
Rather than being exceptional for Māori and Pacific Peoples, Covid-19 is the latest iteration of virulent disease that arrived with European colonisation. The various pandemics are connected; they exacerbate and intensify existing conditions of colonial inequality and injustice. The political and economic marginalisation of Māori and Pasifika within Aotearoa New Zealand ensures that Covid-19 will have disproportionate impacts upon them. Covid-19'…
Conceptualizing Creativity and Strategy in the Work of Professional Songwriters
Drawing upon interviews conducted as part of the Sodajerker on Songwriting podcast this paper explores professional songwriting as musical labor. It explores how songwriters conceptualize creativity and what strategies they employ for the delivery of original songs. It argues that individuals evince a faith in their own autonomy in the face of the demands of form and industry, expressing intuitive concepts of inspiration and practical insights in…
Māori Sovereignty or Death
In her 1984 book ‘Māori Sovereignty’, Donna Awatere sustains a blistering polemic on ‘white culture’ that still retains its rhetorical force 40 years later. Her construction of a sharply delineated binary between a monolithic notion of ‘white culture’ as against ‘taha Māori’ can come at the cost of simplification. But this is not at all to say that Awatere is wrong when she says it is ‘Māori Sovereignty or death’. In this paper, we extend Awatere…
Rate and review: Exploring listener motivations for engagement with music podcasts
Podcasts have become an important part of music reception practices, providing new ways of engaging with reviews and recommendations, artist interviews and popular music histories. This article presents a replicable working methodology that can be applied to study the data associated with podcasts of any genre. In our analysis, we explore approximately 16,000 listener reviews of the Top 50 podcasts in the Apple (UK) music chart in order to discov…
In Wakefield's laboratory: Tangata Whenua into property/labour in Te Waipounamu
This article follows the alchemical political economy of Edward Gibbon Wakefield for whom Kāi Tahu whenua served as a laboratory. Wakefield's clever formula for the transubstantiation of an incendiary social situation in Britain into new terrain for capital was designed to secure the transplantation of English economic and social relations to the colonies to ensure the persistence of a landless class compelled to sell their labour for wages. Inge…
China's rise and the United States’ response: Implications for the global order and New Zealand/Aotearoa. Part II: The US response, emergence of a multi‐polar order, and New Zealand/Aotearoa foreign p…
China's rise is reconfiguring the global order as it develops into the world's second most powerful nation‐state and becomes an increasingly serious threat to US global hegemony. In Part Two of this article, the US response to China's rising economic, geopolitical, and military power is analysed with a focus on Obama's ‘pivot towards Asia’, Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods, and Biden's comprehensive strategy to ‘out‐compete’ China. These developm…
Smooth jazz: A case study in the relationships between commercial radio formats, audience research and music production
This article examines the relationships between three areas of activity within the music and media industries: the construction of music formats for commercial radio programming, audience research and music production. With specific reference to two companies located in the United States, this research explores some of the ways in which these practices impact upon one another and help to develop the organization of music genres into discrete, str…
Voicing passion: The emotional economy of songwriting
This article examines articulations of the role of passion in accounts of the life and work of the songwriter. It draws upon a range of interviews with successful artists captured in the Sodajerker On Songwriting podcast. It is suggested that these interviews capture the ‘voicing’ of the conventions of creativity in popular music, exploring a context in which passionate motivation, expression and understanding of the (potentially) affective respo…
Conceptualizing Creativity and Strategy in the Work of Professional Songwriters
Drawing upon interviews conducted as part of the Sodajerker on Songwriting podcast this paper explores professional songwriting as musical labor. It explores how songwriters conceptualize creativity and what strategies they employ for the delivery of original songs. It argues that individuals evince a faith in their own autonomy in the face of the demands of form and industry, expressing intuitive concepts of inspiration and practical insights in…
Māori Mārx: Some Provisional Materials
This article gathers together some provisional materials for the construction of a Māori Mārx. I begin by following Marx’s thought as he continually complexifies his understanding of the determinants of history in his search for the proper starting place for a materialist dialectics. I leave historical Marx at the close of his life, occupied with the passionate study of Indigenous modes of life. Returning his gaze, I read Marx from an Indigenous …
Sociology in a crisis: Covid-19 and the colonial politics of knowledge production in Aotearoa New Zealand
Rather than being exceptional for Māori and Pacific Peoples, Covid-19 is the latest iteration of virulent disease that arrived with European colonisation. The various pandemics are connected; they exacerbate and intensify existing conditions of colonial inequality and injustice. The political and economic marginalisation of Māori and Pasifika within Aotearoa New Zealand ensures that Covid-19 will have disproportionate impacts upon them. Covid-19'…
In Wakefield's laboratory: Tangata Whenua into property/labour in Te Waipounamu
This article follows the alchemical political economy of Edward Gibbon Wakefield for whom Kāi Tahu whenua served as a laboratory. Wakefield's clever formula for the transubstantiation of an incendiary social situation in Britain into new terrain for capital was designed to secure the transplantation of English economic and social relations to the colonies to ensure the persistence of a landless class compelled to sell their labour for wages. Inge…
Imagining Beyond Decolonisation
Review of Bianca Elkington et al, Imagining Decolonisation. An ‘ethic of restoration’ as a third way between Fanonian rupture and the exclusionary performativity of Pākehā overtures to decolonisation
Rate and review: Exploring listener motivations for engagement with music podcasts
Podcasts have become an important part of music reception practices, providing new ways of engaging with reviews and recommendations, artist interviews and popular music histories. This article presents a replicable working methodology that can be applied to study the data associated with podcasts of any genre. In our analysis, we explore approximately 16,000 listener reviews of the Top 50 podcasts in the Apple (UK) music chart in order to discov…
Māori Sovereignty or Death
In her 1984 book ‘Māori Sovereignty’, Donna Awatere sustains a blistering polemic on ‘white culture’ that still retains its rhetorical force 40 years later. Her construction of a sharply delineated binary between a monolithic notion of ‘white culture’ as against ‘taha Māori’ can come at the cost of simplification. But this is not at all to say that Awatere is wrong when she says it is ‘Māori Sovereignty or death’. In this paper, we extend Awatere…
Book Forum: Catherine Comyn, The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa (2022)
Catherine Comyn’s The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa (2022) examines the centrality of finance in the colonisation of Aotearoa, from the sale of Māori lands and the first colonial emigration scheme to the founding of settler nationhood and the enforcement of colonial grievances. Moving from the formation of the New Zealand Company in the 1830s to the Hokianga Dog Tax Uprising at the close of the nineteenth century, this book reveals the inext…
‘The song factories have closed!’: Songwriting camps as spaces of collaborative creativity in the post-industrial age
This article explores ‘songwriting camps’, a contemporary form of collaborative music creation initiated primarily by record labels and music publishers but also by producers and enthusiasts. In such camps, musicians produce songs for various purposes, from commercial exploitation to self-actualization. This research explores the origins of industrialized songwriting, collaborative songwriting practices, and current thinking on creativity and cop…
China's rise and the United States’ response: Implications for the global order and New Zealand/Aotearoa. Part I: Using uneven and combined development theory to explain China's rise
Part One of this article provides a novel condensed Marxist account of China's rapid economic growth which underpins its rising geopolitical and military power. In the vast literature on China's rise, pro‐market reforms and/or state policy‐making and interventionism are emphasised as causes, depending on whether a neoliberal or neomercantilist perspective is adopted. Although these accounts contain important elements of truth, Marxist economic th…
China's rise and the United States’ response: Implications for the global order and New Zealand/Aotearoa. Part II: The US response, emergence of a multi‐polar order, and New Zealand/Aotearoa foreign p…
China's rise is reconfiguring the global order as it develops into the world's second most powerful nation‐state and becomes an increasingly serious threat to US global hegemony. In Part Two of this article, the US response to China's rising economic, geopolitical, and military power is analysed with a focus on Obama's ‘pivot towards Asia’, Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods, and Biden's comprehensive strategy to ‘out‐compete’ China. These developm…
The Benefits of Collaborative Popular Music Songwriting: A Spectrum of Artist-Songwriter Involvement
This article explores the often overlooked role of professional songwriters in popular music, who occupy the spectrum between craftspeople and artists. Drawing on seventeen episodes of the Sodajerker podcast featuring songwriters who write for and with popular artists, we outline the role of professional songwriters in the popular music industry and how collaboration between songwriters and artists shapes and refines songs. On this basis, we prop…
Political science (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Art (7 works) · Law (7 works) · History (6 works) · Visual arts (6 works) · Music History and Culture (5 works) · Aotearoa (4 works) · Creativity (4 works) · Gender Studies (4 works)