Rethinking Milton Singer’s semiotic anthropology: A reconnaissance

The article discusses the possibility of using the cognitive tools of semiotics (theory of signs) for theoretical considerations of social structures from the anthropological perspective. In the literature on the subject, this approach is defined as semiotic anthropology, a term coined by Milton Singer. The article emphasizes the possibilities, untapped within Singer’s work, of further epistemological research within the scope of the “cultural theory of signs” and reduction of the paradigms of research on culture from philosophical and philological as well as anthropological and ethnographic paradigms to a semiotic paradigm, enabling the analysis of meanings of cultural messages (as broadly understood), from architecture and painting and even eating habits (e.g., cooking) to systems of values and literature. In this sense, semiotic anthropology represents the position of “mild holism” and becomes a tool supporting the exploration of culture.

To become one with the instrument: The unfolding of a musical topography

The present article advances the notion of musical topography to describe the engagement between a practitioner and the musical instrument, emphasizing its developmental character. From the point of view of semiotic anthropology, it is suggested that the development of such a practical engagement is guided by expressivity, and that the instrument appears not only as an extension of the body, but participates in the generation of a unitary field, where bodily motion, the instrument and the tonal space are intertwined. The development of lived musical practice draws its force from a situated tradition that consists of normative, structural and stylistic elements, and of a constellation of genres and values shaped and reshaped by generations of practitioners. Finally, it is emphasized that the notion of musical topography brings back to musical praxis its long neglected imaginative dimension.