Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Figures -- Preface and acknowledgements -- 1 Formulating questions - the 'music and society' nexus -- Music and society - the 'grand' tradition -- Music and society - the 'little' tradition -- Getting into the music -- The 'art' of feeling secure - aesthetics of risk assessment -- Music 'in flight' -- Music as a medium of social relation -- Conceptualizing music as a force -- Relations of music production, distribution and use -- 2 Musical affect in practice -- The interactionist critique of semiotics - overview -- Mapping gender on to music and music on to gender - the case of Carmen -- How is music's social power generated? The sources of semiotic power -- Artefacts and users -- Verbal meaning in naturally occurring speech situations -- From inscription to affordance: the dual nature of semiotic materials -- Music is not a 'stimulus': semiotic force does not reside within its forms alone -- 3 Music as a technology of self -- Knowing what you need - self-programming and musical material -- Aesthetic reflexivity -- Musically reconfiguring agency - self-regulation, self- modulation -- Getting into focus - music and mental concentration -- Relevant units of affect -- Music and self-identity -- 'The song is you' - identity and relation through music -- Musical memories and the choreography of feeling -- Finding 'the me in music' - musically composed identities -- 4 Music and the body -- The sociology of the body -- Getting into the rhythm of life -- Musical entrainment -- Paradox of cure in the neonatal unit - the body's sonic resources -- How does music work? Key questions -- Embodied awareness and embodied security -- Music and bodily security -- More questions -- A naturally occurring experiment -- Composing (for) the users - commercial musical profiles of music use.

'Let the music move you up and down' - the warm-up -- Packaging and repackaging music -- packaging and repackaging bodies -- Gearing up and staying up - musical devices -- Cooling off and shifting down - from 'body' to 'heart' to the 'calculus' of the crunch -- Music as a prosthetic technology of the body -- Music prosthetic technology and daily life -- 5 Music as a device of social ordering -- Musical prescription? Music and intimate culture -- Music and collective occasions -- Music as a touchstone of social relations -- Music for strangers -- Music in public places - the case of the retail sector -- The sound of consumption -- Case study: music on an English high street -- How and where are store music policies made? -- Creating scene, creating agency - music as ambience -- Music is a flexible but powerful interpretative resource -- What does music do within organizational settings? -- The sounds of silence -- 6 Music's social powers -- 'Sleepers awake' - music as a resource for human being -- Non-rational orderings -- Reprise - what does music do? -- Musical power and its mechanisms -- Politics of music in the public space -- Bibliography -- Index.