Musik som livsstil och vetenskap : Studerandes möte med universitetsämnet musikvetenskap

Sammanfattning: The aim of the present study is to elucidate young people's encounter with a subject within the field of art, music and drama - here musicology. Central issues touch upon recruitment, study motives, the students' conception of the subject, education, and a retrospective view on how the knowledge is evaluated and used. Data has been collected in five part-studies throughout 3.5 years (not longitudinal) using 338 questionnaires and 21 interviews with active and ex-active students of the Musicology Department at Uppsala University. The students' perspective has been established as the sole point of vantage and the research process adheres to inductive logic.The picture of the results as a whole is analysed in three thematic sections: the interplay of internal and external conditions, i.e. the contrast between, on the one hand, the external conditions obtaining to music in youth cultures of the surrounding society, and, on the other hand, the limited, exclusive and scientific representation within the university. The second theme captures the dualism between the artistic/practical direction of studies and the theoretical/scientific direction that is illustrated in the results in various ways. The key-words characterising the third thematic section are: learning, education and public interest.The study generates knowledge relevant at departmental/subject level as well as at a general university college level: with regard to, inter alia, the planning and composition of courses, the department's communication with the surrounding society, the perceived identity of the discipline, issues relating to small and large educational units respectively and the importance of environmental factors to different categories of students. Further, the study has emphasised the importance of the students' perspective and the combination of different research strategies, and the so-called third assignment of the university college, and the public interest of studies in the field of arts and humanities.