Auswahl der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zum Thema „Tomte (Musical group)“

Né des ateliers de design musical offerts à l’Université McGill par Mario Bertoncini, Sonde s’impose rapidement au Canada et à l’étranger. Partant de jeux exploratoires et d’improvisations méditatives, le groupe utilise des techniques électroacoustiques afin d’explorer les potentialités acoustiques de matériaux divers. Il arrive parfois que ces musiciens s’arrêtent sur une source sonore dont les qualités musicales dépassent toute attente. C’est le cas du sahabi, instrument constitué d’un cadre de métal au travers duquel sont tendues des dizaines de cordes métalliques. Deux exemplaires de cette source sonore existent et les membres du groupe les utilisent fréquemment depuis 1976. Pour ces raisons, le sahabi mérite le statut d’instrument de musique. Mais quels sont les enjeux qui accompagnent ce glissement sémantique ? Le présent article répond à cette question en s’appuyant sur un entretien réalisé par l’auteur avec Charles de Mestral, créateur du sahabi et figure importante de la nouvelle musique au Québec.

RésumésLe « chef-dictateur », dont Toscanini demeure le représentant par excellence, n’est que le cas limite d’une série de métaphores politiques qui ont accompagné toute l’histoire moderne de la direction d’orchestre. Cette pratique invitait déjà, par définition, àréfléchir àl’autorité d’un individu sur un groupe, àl’efficacité et àla légitimité de ses décisions; l’attribution d’une valeur morale aux interprétations esthétiquement convaincantes des œuvres du répertoire acheva par la suite de donner àla figure du chef un statut symbolique. Soit une surenchère dans le domaine des représentations, qui toutefois ne correspond pas nécessairement àune accumulation des pouvoirs réels du chef au sein des institutions musicales, la tendance historique dans ce domaine allant plutôt vers une réglementation accrue de ses compétences. Ce parcours historique de la direction d’orchestre en tant que forme de commandement se déploie du début du XIXe siècle, moment où la baguette s’impose comme outil et emblème du chef, jusqu’aux suites de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, où la mise en cause de l’autoritarisme conduit àune critique du modèle traditionnel.

This article begins with the notion that a text can create and influence a “public,” that is, a group of individuals with common values and aspirations. Richard Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594–1662) is the focus here; specifically, this article shows how book 7, which defends the prelacy, stitches together civil and ecclesiastical governors throughout the commonwealth in order to persuade this public not to embrace a Presbyterian ecclesiology and rid England of its bishops. Accordingly, Hooker’s text, composed with this public in mind, links together the nature and role of the civil and ecclesiastical by arguing that both are “of God,” by giving his public the intellectual skills to understand his defense of bishops, and by concentrating on public authority, public wisdom, and the public good which the magistrates must protect. Hooker’s goal is to encourage various estates to understand the threat to their power by the Presbyterian call for change. The hope is that the magisterial community, which runs the country and includes bishops, will consider the whole of the commonwealth and the value of the status quo before joining with the Presbyterians for change. Cet article se penche sur l’idée qu’un texte peut créer et influencer un « public », c’est-àdire, un groupe d’individus ayant en commun des valeurs et des aspirations. On explore cette hypothèse plus particulièrement à travers l’oeuvre de Richard Hooker intitulée Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594–1662), et plus spécifiquement, en montrant comment le livre 7, qui défend la prélature, rassemble dirigeants civils et ecclésiastiques de la communauté afin de les dissuader d’adopter l’ecclésiologie presbytérienne ou de débarrasser l’Angleterre de ses évêques. Pour ce faire, le texte de Hooker, écrit avec ce public en tête, rapproche par la nature et par leur rôle le civil et l’ecclésiastique en avançant que les deux relèvent de Dieu, en fournissant à son public les connaissances intellectuelles nécessaires à la compréhension de sa défense des évêques, et en se concentrant sur l’autorité, la sagesse, et le bien commun publics que les magistrats doivent protéger. Le but visé par Hooker est d’encourager les diverses instances à comprendre la menace que constitue pour leur pouvoir l’appel presbytérien au changement. Il espère ainsi que toute la magistrature, qui dirige le pays et inclut les évêques, prendra en considération l’ensemble de la communauté et les mérites du statu quo avant de rejoindre les Presbytériens dans le mouvement pour le changement.

Music plays an important role in the construction of identity in adolescence. However, few studies have explored the relationship between the formation of group identities in adolescence and musical creation as an experiential group activity in secondary school. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to shed light on the formation of group identities in the classroom and determine the factors involved in this process. An educational project focusing on participatory musical creation was carried out in three Spanish secondary schools, involving 267 students. Data were collected by means of participant and non-participant observation, a classroom diary, a questionnaire and video recordings, analysed within the framework of activity theory. The results revealed the influence of a number of interconnected determinants on the formation of group identity in the classroom: (1) student involvement in all stages of the project; (2) the construction of meaningful musical experiences through the students’ role as musicians; (3) the classroom climate; (4) the emergence of positive emotions; (5) high motivation to learn; and (6) student identification with their own music. These results indicate the useful role of music creation in the formation of group identity. Keywords: activity theory; creative learning; music; participation; secondary education---Glazba ima važnu ulogu u izgradnji identiteta tijekom adolescencije. Unatoč tome, malo je studija istraživalo odnos između oblikovanja grupnih identiteta u adolescenciji i glazbenoga stvaranja kao iskustvene grupne aktivnosti u srednjoj školi. Stoga je cilj ovoga istraživanja bio osvijetliti oblikovanje grupnih identiteta u razredu i utvrditi čimbenike uključene u taj proces. Proveden je obrazovni projekt s fokusom na participacijsko glazbeno stvaranje u tri srednje škole u Španjolskoj. U projektu je sudjelovalo 267 učenika. Podatci su sakupljeni metodama sudioničkoga promatranja, promatranja bez sudjelovanja, razrednoga dnevnika, upitnika i videozapisa, a analizirani su unutar okvira teorije aktivnosti. Rezultati pokazuju utjecaj određenoga broja međusobno povezanih faktora na oblikovanje grupnoga identiteta u učionici: (1) učenički angažman u svim stadijima projekt, (2) stvaranje značajnih glazbenih iskustava kroz učeničke uloge glazbenika, (3) razredno ozračje, (4) javljanje pozitivnih emocija, (5) visoka motivacija za učenje i (6) poistovjećivanje učenika s vlastitom glazbom. Navedeni rezultati otkrivaju pozitivno djelovanje glazbenoga stvaralaštva na oblikovanje grupnoga identiteta. Ključne riječi: glazba; kreativno učenje; sudjelovanje; srednjoškolsko obrazovanje; teorija aktivnosti.

Introduction Music scholarship across genres is often concerned with music's metaphysical and ephemeral effects on individuals, communities, and society. These scholarly framings constitute a concept that we refer to here as “the magic of music”. Using this framing, this article addresses the ways that the magic is undermined by a range of worldly, non-magical realities, using the case study of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and their devastating effects on the previously thriving live music industry in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. The magic of music includes such aspects as the intangible sounds of music, the mysterious practice of creative music-making, and the transformative effects on audiences and others who participate in music culture. We begin with a broad discussion of the sonic properties of music as a form of magic—a common rhetoric that has been used across the world regardless of genre or cultural origin. Next, we turn to the social contexts surrounding music, such as live music settings. De Jong and Lebrun argue that “the power of music” can create “moments of rare, intense and direct interactions between individuals” that are often described as magical, and that “magic is, in this sense, understood as a perfectly natural and plausible, and not supernatural, experience, even if its intensity and rarity in one's life makes it extra-ordinary” (4). We use this framing of “music as magic” in our consideration of the specific context of Australia’s music industry from 2020 to the present. We posit that the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside government-sanctioned lockdowns, cultural shifts such as an increased focus on poor working conditions and risk in music work, and detrimental arts funding policies worked together to effectively break the spell of “music as magic” for industry and patrons. Finally, we draw on key examples from popular music studies, industry reports and new government policies, to call attention to recent proposals to rehabilitate the magic through a re-enchantment of music and the music industry. Feels like Magic: The Social Context of Music Music is a form of organised sound and silence that people across cultures, history, and places, have articulated as possessing magical properties (Nettl). Music is not only sound waves but also a social category, thus the notion of magic extends beyond sound into everyday discourse in the social realm of music, which will be the focus of this article. Audiences/listeners may describe their own response to music as a magical feeling, stemming from the performer’s ability to convey emotion and provide a performance that “mirrors the performer’s [own] deep connection to the music” (Loeffler 19). Such ‘magical moments’ of deep connection among audience members and between audiences and performers may be elicited in various ways. Examples include the sense of emotional self-recognition found via personal lyrics, resonance with unique vocal timbres, or the shared sense of belonging that develops with fellow audience members, including strangers, during musical events (Anderson). For the latter, the magic (or “magick”, a spelling associated with stagecraft) of ritualised music performance is a common element of Paganism in music performance, with some popular music artists implicitly “appropriat[ing] the Pagan subculture's symbols for artistic inspiration and commercial gain”, presenting themselves as contemporary conduits that reconnect audiences to old magics (Sweeney Smith 91; see also Weston). When it comes to these sorts of ideas about magic and music, performers and audiences routinely make claims about magical musical powers such as “talent”, an idea deployed to describe the skills and charisma of certain musicians, and “creativity”, a “magic ingredient” (see McRobbie) that people who write or produce music are supposed to possess in order to perform their craft (Gadir 61–4; Gross and Musgrave 10, 22; see also Nairn). Music of all forms can provide profound affective experiences, regardless of how it is made and who plays it. There is also a magical discourse present in popular music that has reached millions of people in a globalised musical world dominated by recordings. For as long as music has had a mass market, its magic properties (as articulated in multiple ways across history) have been a selling point for musicians, records, and concerts. The recorded music industry’s very selection process is rooted in the idea that “creativity is based on ‘little bits of magic’ and that success is down to luck and timing” (Gross and Musgrave 140). Music writing (scholarly, criticism, journalism) tends to focus on these magical properties: from the sublime nature of a musical work and its form to the phenomenology of sound and affective experience of music, and even the inexplicable, elusive ‘talent’ of particular musicians. Jimi Hendrix labelled his music work “completely, utterly a magic science” (Clarke 195), while Joni Mitchell “consistently referred to Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, and Jaco Pastorius as ‘magicians’ and ‘shamans,’ thereby conferring a susceptibility to the miraculous upon the musicians she most respected” (Lloyd 124). As we show below, this conflation of magical and religious concepts is evident elsewhere in discourse on the intangibility of musical talent. Some genres of music have emphasised the idea of music as magic more than others. For example, scholarship on electronic dance music (EDM) has embraced the concept of “DJ as shaman” (Brewster and Broughton 19; Luckman 133; Rietveld “Introduction” 1; Rietveld This Is Our House) and the nightclub as a “pseudo-religious pilgrimage site” (Becker and Woebs 59), extending Benjamin’s argument for art’s origins in service of ritual (24). Miller has further alluded to a mystical DJ craft, both as a performer quoted in music media (Gallagher) and in his own academic writing: “gimme two records and I’ll make you a universe” (DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid 127; Miller 497). Shamanism is also explored in rock music discourse (see Kennedy 81–90). Notions of musical magic extend beyond performances and personalities into the recording studio. Music mastering is commonly labelled a “dark art” (Hepworth-Sawyer and Golding 241; Hinksman 13; Nardi 211), and the music studio as a site where magic is made (Anthony 43, 194). Rolling Stone magazine has even deployed a recurrent editorial phrase—“the magic that can set you free”—to distinguish the authenticity of rock from pop music (Frith 164–5). We argue that two key ruptures of the last few years—namely, widespread lockdown policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, and emerging discussions on poor working conditions and harms in the music industries—have had the effect of breaking the magic spell of music. There has been a groundswell of musicians, commentators, and scholars pausing to query (and in some cases overturn entirely) some of the illusions that the music industry constructs around musicians. We use the city of Naarm/Melbourne in Australia to draw out some of these trends. When the Magic Dies: Breaking the Spell of the Music Industry The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in lengthy lockdowns in the city of Naarm/Melbourne. In total, over a two-year period, the city spent 262 days in home confinement under strict orders from the government, with limited travel and no access to the usual amenities of the city, including all public in-person entertainment (Jose). This had a profound effect on the state’s musicians and the music industries that service them. It completely closed the city’s music venues for an extended period, driving musicians into alternative, virtual modes of performance (Vincent) and driving other music workers into non-music-related employment. For a city often touted as “the live music capital of Australia” (see Homan et al.), the lockdowns effectively broke the spell of music as a key employer and as a driver of arts practice and social experience in Melbourne. Quite suddenly, the lockdown periods revealed the precarious lives of musicians away from the stage. Once stripped of the “magical” quality of live performance, musicians’ work and practice appeared both more complex and more routine. The COVID-19 pandemic broke the spell of music that takes place in social settings. At the start of 2020, live music was one of the first activities to be banned. Live music relies on people being near one another, often in enclosed spaces. It often involves people on stage and in the crowd singing, an activity identified early in the pandemic as an effective method of spreading the virus. These attributes, together with its status as “entertainment” rather than as an essential activity, meant that live music gatherings became entirely illegal (Strong and Cannizzo). Even as lockdowns were lifted, live music was one of the last activities to be reinstated, albeit with access restricted in various ways. People continued to engage with music via other means, for example, through virtual live-streamed performances and platform-based audio streaming. Globally, there was an increase in people listening to older, nostalgic music (Yeung)—an indicator that music was still being used for its magical self-soothing capacities, alleviating the worst pandemic anxieties. However, the closure of the Victorian live music sector drew attention to the material conditions of music making in new ways (“Losses Continue”). Many musicians and music workers could not take advantage of government schemes to support workers who had lost their income during the pandemic (Triscari). This highlighted what was already known to music industry workers: that their work was insecure. It also revealed the contradictions within government music policies: on the one hand, music’s utility for city branding, on the other, little regard for what support and resources are required for it to take place. As more and more musicians used the pandemic to draw attention to their already existing labour conditions, the precarious and mundane aspects of music-making became foregrounded in broader discussions (see Strong and Cannizzo). These included the overall degree to which musicians are exploited (see Nairn), whether musicians can earn a living wage, pay their rent, or receive other workplace benefits including safe working environments. These problems exist in stark contrast to the historically mythologised portrayals of musicians as concerned about their art and Dionysian social experience above all else, regardless of their physical or material conditions. In reality, live music work has always included mundane activities and routine labour. The historical mythology of the “star”, regardless of genre, tends to depict the lives of performers as exotic and removed from everyday life. In this sense, performers are perceived as magical as much as the music they make. The everyday world, within this mythology, is something akin to “a fearful, life-threatening condition that could ensnare you in its grasp … as relentless routine and the marker of social distinction” (Highmore 16). Audiences tend to view musicians as committed to alternative ways of being, and music performance as an escape from the everyday, wherein work becomes interchangeable with leisure and touring provides a nomadic lifestyle. However, in recent years, popular music studies research, together with musicians, fans, and media, have called these ideas into question. A career in live music performance appears to offer no escape from responsibility—something at the heart of fearful representations of everyday life. Inside of a music practice, new responsibilities emerge. Leisure becomes labour with all its attendance downsides. Close-knit familial-style relationships are formed, often based on financial and creative partnerships, including the risk of gender-based abuse that exists within such relationships (Fileborn et al.). The nomadic life of a performer involves its own cramped and confining aspects (a life of group transit and service entrances). This combines with an already in-progress push towards making the vicissitudes of this work more visible—afforded by social media, cultural formations such as #MeToo, and a significant upswing in research showing the harms of music work (Gross and Musgrave; Strong and Cannizzo)—to significantly undermine the myth of live music’s magical properties. In Naarm/Melbourne, prior to the pandemic, this myth was brittle. After years of lockdown, it arguably shattered. The emotional devastation wrought by an abrupt and almost complete cessation of live music activities also had flow-on effects on recorded music. For example, it prevented activities such as tours that support album releases, recording sessions, or rehearsing new musical material. Already existing mental health issues in the music industry were highlighted and amplified by these circumstances (Brunt and Nelligan). Together with the aforementioned financial disadvantage experienced by musicians, research had already shown for years before the pandemic that mental health was poor in this sector (Gross and Musgrave). Such mental health issues are due in part to the relationship between music work and conceptions of self and identity, where success or failure are felt as intensely personal (a by-product of the idea that music possesses magical qualities). Mental health problems are also associated with exclusion, bullying and harassment, which are not only widespread but have been normalised and even celebrated for decades. Pre-existing pressures such as these were exacerbated dramatically by the pandemic lockdowns, which spurred on further discussions about them (Strong and Cannizzo). During the pandemic, the magic of music had been disrupted in several ways: the ability of music to connect people to one another in live settings had been curtailed or removed, and the narratives of the creation of music being magical had been replaced with a vision of mundanity, hardship, and underappreciation. If the magic did not set musicians or music workers free, why should they return to long working hours for little pay in an industry that was frequently unsafe and that left them feeling bad—especially when they discovered that when the chips were down, they would be left out of the support offered to others? Re-Enchanting Music: Conjuring a Different Kind of Magic Weber used the term “enchantment” as a means of explaining the magic within worldly (empirical) phenomena. By contrast, he argued that disenchantment was the removal of magical experience from the real world and that this was the result of replacing the “supernatural” exclusively with rationality and calculation (Koshul 9). The easing of lockdown conditions heralded what we call here the “re-enchantment” of the music industry. An industry that is re-enchanted refers to a world which is “susceptible again to redemption” and is “reimbued not only with mystery and wonder but also with order [and] purpose” (Landy and Slalor 2). During the early post-lockdown period, the aim of government, patrons, and the entertainment industry was to rekindle the pre-COVID levels of audience engagement with live music. Audiences themselves were eager to return to live music and were prepared to spend money on concert tickets and music festivals, according to findings from the Australia Council’s Audience Outlook Monitor (Patternmakers). However, this report also showed that restrictions, fears of further outbreaks, and lockdowns were still looming in the minds of audiences and event organisers. This was compounded by a lack of investment in the creative industries broadly by the Australian Federal government during lockdowns and a staggered reopening, particularly in the state of Victoria, where lockdowns continued well into 2021. The road back to ‘normality’ would require putting audiences, industry, and, indeed, the government, back under the spell of music. Reaffirming the idea that music has a fundamental value in society and culture was the first step. The election of a federal Labor government in 2022 started this process, after a decade of conservative Liberal leadership that had actively worked to devalue and defund the arts. The new government quickly launched a consultation process around the arts in Australia, and launched the resulting policy, titled Revive: Australia's Cultural Policy for the Next Five Years, in mid-2023. This policy not only reaffirmed the central place of the arts, including music, in Australia's social life, but went further than any previous government in acknowledging some of the disenchantment in the industry. They committed to establishing Music Australia (Creative Australia) as a body dedicated to ensuring the prominence of music in arts activities, and the Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces, a body that would, among other things, deal with complaints around workplace misconduct of various types. This later body was created partly in response to the Raising Their Voices report documenting widespread bullying and sexual harassment in music spaces. In addition to this, Australian state governments implemented various measures to encourage the re-normalisation of concert attendance. For example, the Victorian State Government’s Always Live funded programme was launched with a regional, one-off gig by the Foo Fighters. Initiatives such as these on the state and federal level served to bolster the struggling industry. An initially slow return to live shows, followed by a spate of visually spectacular, large-scale, sold-out shows by Harry Styles and Taylor Swift, indicate a return to a form of ‘business as usual’ for top-tier international touring artists. Although top-down policy can send a message that music work is valued, much of the ‘magic’ of music is created by communities and within grassroots spaces. In Naarm/Melbourne, the announcement that the iconic live music venue the Tote Hotel was being put up for sale has provided a flashpoint moment. The venue’s current owners have become emblematic of the problems in the industry, reportedly failing to provide proper benefits to their staff over a long period (Marozzi). The owners of the Last Chance Rock and Roll Bar have since announced a fundraiser for three million dollars to buy the Tote, which they have framed in terms of protecting the value of music to the Naarm/Melbourne community. The owners promised to not only protect music-making on the site but also to “leave the Tote to the bands and future generations for the rest of time” by “putting the building into a trust that will legally protect the Tote from being anything other than a Live Music Venue” (“Last Chance to Save the Tote”). References to the (dark) magic of this situation is visible in the designs for the t-shirts given out for contributors to the funding campaign: two zombies crawling from the grave of the Tote, beers in hand, ready to keep on rockin’. The zombies are indicative of a venue risen from the dead through the Naarm/Melbourne music community’s magical effort. The response of the public and commentators that have followed the achievement of this fundraising goal is akin to the wonderment of an audience seeing a magician perform an impressive trick. Notably, the community-led and community-focussed approach of the Tote draws on the magic of connection built around music scenes, not only corporate interests. This includes exploring how venues can be owned by the communities that use them (Wray), schemes that provide artists with a universal basic income (Caust), and “safer spaces” strategies that work to increase the accessibility of music for everyone (Hill et al.). Conclusion In this article, we have outlined the ways that Naarm/Melbourne, which has been celebrated as one of the world’s best live music cities, temporarily lost the magical allure of its musical life in the eyes of many, and subsequently started to regain it through a fragile process of rejuvenation. Traces of ideas about live music’s ineffable magic can clearly be found in recovery stories that now circulate. Moreover, such stories are articulated against a backdrop of new mythologies forming around the city’s music branding and practice. The especially long pandemic lockdown period in Naarm/Melbourne has brought into sharper focus the hard realities of music-making and performance—as labour, local culture, and policy. The post-COVID city is now tasked with selectively rebuilding itself as a music city, unifying the magical potency of the old with a more clear-eyed, unromantic analysis of the present. References Anderson, Benedict. 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Deux faits signent la nature profonde de l’être humain : (i) un cerveau d’une grande plasticité et (ii) la puissance impérieuse de la culture qui se manifeste non seulement par la diversité et l’intensité de son expression, mais aussi par la forte influence qu’elle exerce rétroactivement sur le développement de notre architecture cérébrale – qui l’a rendue possible. Cette plasticité développementale, résumée dans l’idée que « nous héritons notre cerveau ; nous acquérons notre esprit » (we inherit our brains ; we acquire our minds)(Goldschmidt 2000), relève d’un processus plus général appelé « altricialité » par les éthologues. Le terme est dérivé de l’anglais altricial, mot qui vient lui-même du latin altrix : « celle qui nourrit », « nourrice » (Gaffiot 1934). Dans son acception première, l’altricialité signifie qu’une espèce n’est pas immédiatement compétente à la naissance, contrairement aux espèces dites précoces. C’est le cas, par exemple, de la plupart des passereaux qui naissent les yeux fermés et dont la survie dépend entièrement de l’aide apportée par leur entourage. Il en va de même pour notre espèce. Dans le cas des nouveau-nés humains, toutefois, s’ajoute à l’altricialité primaire une altricialité secondaire. On désigne ainsi le fait que notre cerveau n’est pleinement compétent (sur les plans cognitif, émotionnel, sensoriel et moteur) que tardivement. La force et la durée de la croissance cérébrale post-natale caractérisent cette altricialité secondaire. Du point de vue de la force, le chimpanzé Pan troglodytes, espèce animale qui nous est phylogénétiquement la plus proche, a un coefficient de croissance cérébrale de 2,5 entre la naissance et l’âge adulte, contre 3,3 chez les humains (DeSilva et Lesnik 2008). Du point de vue de la durée, on a longtemps cru que la maturité du cerveau humain coïncidait avec la puberté, mais on sait aujourd’hui que la période de surproduction et d’élimination des épines dendritiques sur les neurones pyramidaux du cortex préfrontal court jusqu’à la trentaine (Petanjeket al. 2011). Outre des contraintes obstétriques, cette maturation prolongée est probablement due aux coûts métaboliques élevés du développement cérébral (Goyal et al. 2014), un processus de co-évolution ayant favorisé l’étalement dans le temps de la dépense énergétique (Kuzawa et al. 2014). Cette forte altricialité cérébrale est propre aux êtres humains, le contrôle génétique qui s’exerce sur l’organisation somatopique de notre cortex, sur la connectique cérébrale et sur les aires d’association étant plus faible que chez le chimpanzé commun. Par exemple, deux frères chimpanzés auront des sillons cérébraux davantage similaires que deux frères humains, parce que le cerveau des premiers est moins réceptif aux influences environnementales que celui des membres de notre espèce (Gómez-Robles et al. 2015). Cette spécificité du cerveau humain est tout aussi importante que son quotient d’encéphalisation (6,9 fois plus élevé que celui d’un autre mammifère du même poids, et 2,6 fois supérieur à celui d’un chimpanzé), le nombre élevé de ses neurones (86 milliards contre 28 milliards chez le chimpanzé), la complexité de sa connectique (environ 1014 synapses), les changements néoténiques lors de l’expression des gènes (Somel et al. 2009) et son architecture complexe. Chez le nouveau-né humain, la neurogenèse est achevée, excepté dans la zone sous-ventriculaire – connectée aux bulbes olfactifs – et la zone sous-granulaire, qui part du gyrus denté de l’hippocampe (Eriksson et al. 1998). Toutefois, si tous les neurones sont déjà présents, le cerveau néonatal représente moins de 30% de sa taille adulte. Immédiatement après la naissance, sa croissance se poursuit au même taux qu’au stade fœtal pour atteindre 50% de la taille adulte vers 1 an et 95% vers 10 ans. Cette croissance concerne essentiellement les connexions des neurones entre eux (synaptogenèse, mais aussi élagage de cette interconnectivité ou synaptose) et la myélinisation néocorticale. À chaque minute de la vie du bébé, rappelle Jean-Pierre Changeux (2002), « plus de deux millions de synapses se mettent en place ! » Au total, 50% de ces connexions se font après la naissance (Changeux 2003). Cette spécificité d’Homo sapiens a une portée anthropologique capitale. Elle expose si fortement les êtres humains aux influences de leur environnement qu’ils deviennent naturellement des êtres hyper-sociaux et hyper-culturels, ce qu’avait pressenti Malinowski (1922 : 79-80) quand il soutenait que nos « états mentaux sont façonnés d’une certaine manière » par les « institutions au sein desquelles ils se développent ». Le développement du cerveau dans la longue durée permet une « imprégnation » progressive du tissu cérébral par l’environnement physique et social (Changeux 1983), en particulier lors des phases de socialisation primaire et secondaire. L’être humain a ainsi des «dispositions épigénétiques à l’empreinte culturelle » (Changeux 2002). Les effets sociaux et les incidences évolutionnaires (Kuzawa et Bragg 2012) d’une telle aptitude sont immenses. L’entourage doit non seulement aider les nouveau-nés, mais aussi accompagner les enfants jusqu’à leur développement complet, l’immaturité du cerveau des adolescents étant à l’origine de leur caractère souvent impulsif. Cet accompagnement de l’enfant se traduit par des changements dans la structure sociale, au sein de la famille et de la société tout entière, notamment sous la forme d’institutions d’apprentissage social et culturel. Les êtres humains sont ainsi contraints de coopérer, d’abord à l’intérieur de leur groupe familial et d’appartenance, puis sous des formes plus ouvertes (voir Coopération). Née de processus évolutifs anciens d’au moins 200 000 ans (Neubaueret al. 2018), l’altricialité secondaire nous donne un avantage adaptatif : contrairement à d’autres espèces, nos comportements ne sont pas « mis sur des rails » à la naissance, ce qui les rend flexibles face à des environnements changeants, favorisant ainsi la diversité phénotypique et culturelle. Cette plasticité cérébrale peut produire le meilleur. Par exemple, 15 mois seulement d’éducation musicale avant l’âge de 7 ans peuvent renforcer les connexions entre les deux hémisphères cérébraux (Schlaug et al. 1995) et induire d’autres changements structuraux dans les régions assurant des fonctions motrices, auditives et visuo-spatiales (Hyde et al. 2009). Une formation musicale précoce prévient aussi la perte d’audition (White-Schwoch et al. 2013) et améliore la perception de la parole (Du et Zatorre 2017). Cependant, comme cela est souvent le cas en évolution, il y a un prix à payer pour cet avantage considérable qu’est l’altricialité secondaire. Il a pour contrepartie un appétit vorace en énergie de notre cerveau (Pontzer et al. 2016). Il nous rend plus vulnérables, non seulement jusqu’à l’adolescence mais tout au long de la vie où, suppose-t-on, des anomalies des reconfigurations neuronales contribuent au développement de certaines pathologies neurologiques (Greenhill et al. 2015). Enfin, un risque associé au « recyclage culturel des cartes corticales » (Dehaene et Cohen 2007) est rarement noté : si ce recyclage peut produire le meilleur, il peut aussi produire le pire, selon la nature de la matrice culturelle dans laquelle les individus sont pris (Candau 2017). Par exemple, le choix social et culturel consistant à développer des industries polluantes peut provoquer des maladies neurodégénératives et divers désordres mentaux (Underwood 2017), notamment chez les enfants (Bennett et al. 2016), phénomène qui est accentué quand il est associé à l’adversité sociale précoce (Stein et al. 2016). Toujours dans le registre économique, la mise en œuvre de politiques qui appauvrissent des populations peut affecter le développement intellectuel des enfants (Luby et al. 2013), un message clé du World Development Report 2015 étant que la pauvreté est une « taxe cognitive ». Un dernier exemple : Voigtländer et Voth (2015) ont montré que les Allemands nés dans les années 1920 et 1930 manifestent un degré d’antisémitisme deux à trois fois plus élevé que leurs compatriotes nés avant ou après cette période. Bien plus souvent que d’autres Allemands, ils se représentent les Juifs comme « une population qui a trop d’influence dans le monde » ou « qui est responsable de sa propre persécution ». Ceci est la conséquence de l’endoctrinement nazi qu’ils ont subi durant toute leur enfance, notamment à l’école, en pleine période d’altricialité secondaire. En résumé, l’altricialité secondaire est au fondement (i) de l’aptitude naturelle de notre cerveau à devenir une représentation du monde et (ii) d’une focalisation culturelle de cette représentation, sous l’influence de la diversité des matrices culturelles, cela pour le meilleur comme pour le pire. Cette hyperplasticité du cerveau pendant la période altricielle laisse la place à une plasticité plus modérée à l’âge adulte puis décroît à l’approche du grand âge, mais elle ne disparaît jamais complètement. Par conséquent, loin de voir dans les données neurobiologiques des contraintes qui auraient pour seule caractéristique de déterminer les limites de la variabilité culturelle – limitation qui est incontestable – il faut les considérer également comme la possibilité de cette variabilité.