When singing strengthens the capacity to aspire: girls’ reflexivity in rural Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

In the present paper, we explore the impact of singing for girls in rural Bangladesh. Previous findings in this field-based interview study (with 18 girls) have demonstrated that singing can act as a driving force in young girls’ psychological individuation processes, implying increased agency and autonomy. A critical question, however, is to what extent the village girls will manage to maintain a feeling of agency as they pass through puberty. How do they navigate between their own wish to continue singing and pressure from cultural norms (such as getting married)? Using Margareth Archer’s morphogenetic approach and Arjun Appadurai’s approach to culture as a capacity as analytical tools, we connect different modes of reflexivity to the girls’ capacity to aspire. We discuss specific mechanisms that emerge as relevant for the girls/young women as they navigate their way through the Bengali rural society.

KEYWORDS:

• Girls’ voices
• reflexivity
• morphogenetic approach
• capacity to aspire
• Baul songs
• Bangladesh

Acknowledgements

A special thank you to Wera Sæther for organizing the field work and for spending many hours interpretating and translating. Thanks to Mrinal Kumar Das for assisting with linguistic and cultural competence. Thanks also to anonymous reviewers for constructive comments. A final thanks to all the participants for their courage and generosity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In 2022, there are ten of these song schools, with more than four hundred children and young ones taking part in weekly teaching (on afternoons/Saturdays). The activity has been reduced during the Covid-19 pandemic, though not fully stopped, and they are now resuming activity.

2 On this point, her model differs from Bhaskar’s Transformational Model of Social Activity. Bhaskar argues for a duality and a form of ‘inner action’ (rather than a dualism and a ‘between’), as explained by Price at the conference of the International Association of Critical Realism (2021) and in Bhaskar (2016).

3 Fakir refers to an ascetic (Islamic term) with connotation to renunciation (Openshaw 2017)

4 Translated by Sæther 2022. For a collection of published Lalan songs in English, see Salomon (2017).

5 Before the pandemic, almost 80% of all Bangladeshi girls were married by the age of 18, the median age being 15 (Alston et al. 2014), and almost half of Bangladeshi women gave birth by 18 years of age (Blum et al. 2019).

6 Bhaskar writes that ‘critical realism aspires to clear the ground a little, removing, in the first place, the philosophical rubbish that lies in the way of scientific knowledge’ (2016, 2).

7 As a literary translator, WS also assisted in finding relevant sources for the Bengali song poetry.

8 Singing boys and song teachers have also been interviewed. This paper concentrate on the girls’ accounts.

9 Five of the original (18) participants were not interviewed at that time: Two girls were denied participation by the family or family in-law, one had a sick child and two girls were not able to travel to the song school on the day of the interview.

10 Two of the girls’ affiliated song schools had been closed, one girl suffered from a health condition making it difficult to sing.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Jordet

Maria Jordet is Ph.D. candidate at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences in the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies. She graduated as a clinical psychologist at the University of Oslo in 2018 and is working as a therapist in addition to research. She wrote her master thesis on the human voice. She is also a Research Fellow in the Economy of Francesco Academy.

Siri Erika Gullestad

Dr. Philos. Siri Erika Gullestad is a professor of clinical psychology, University of Oslo, and psychoanalyst. She is the former Dean of Department of Psychology and former president of Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society. Gullestad has practiced as a therapist for 40 years. She is the author of numerous articles and books within the psychoanalytic field, including The theory and practice of psychoanalytic therapy. Listening for the subtext. Routledge, 2020 (co-authored with Bjørn Killingmo).

Hanne Haavind

Hanne Haavind is a professor in developmental psychology at the University of Oslo. Her research deals with processes of personal change and development for children and young people, and for clients in psychotherapy. She teaches qualitative analysis of ongoing social interaction in relationships between parents and children and between intimate partners. In her work, she brings to attention the implicit negotiations about possible meanings attached to gender.