—-1 —0 —+1 An Ethnomusicologist in the Science-Music Borderlands How should we conceptualize the perceived border between the science of music (in psychology, biology, neuroscience, and so on) and music’s place in the humanities and social sciences (ethnomusicology, musicology, music theory)? Is it a sharp divid- ing line between distinct cultures or modes of inquiry? Based on the evidence in this volume, I think the answer is no. But if we speak of Science-Music Borderlandia not as a sharp partition but as a region that encompasses the science-humanities border, what kind of place is it? It will be useful to consider Alex Chavez’s point that “although the scholarly field of border studies and the metaphorical use of the borderlands are often conflated, they are distinct” (2017, p. 11). Border studies tend to explore the material conditions of physical spaces, while the use of borderlands as a metaphor typically “speak[s] of a liminal state of in-betweenness in work in the humanities, largely cul- tural studies” (ibid.). In this volume, liminality bespeaks “the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” or borderland between the music-sciences and music-humanities (Anzaldúa, quoted in ibid.). 1 With this in mind, let us say that Science-Music Borderlandia (SMB) contains “dis- tricts” (subfields) that straddle the oft-politicized music-science and music-humanities borders. To those who immigrate to SMB, its outsider status lends it the romance of the underdog. There is also a culture of access in SMB that allows its residents to travel fairly easily across its own internal science-humanities border. But those who spend a long time in SMB feel the frustrations of a rural province neglected by the metropoles— with a concomitant lack of funding. SMB’s underdog status, however, looks radically different as one moves farther away from it. The boundary between SMB and several regions of the music-humanities remains heavily policed: SMBers are usually happy to let outsiders in, but many in the music-humanities metropoles don’t want SMBers 9 The Science of Music Is about Relations Jim Sykes 581-106089_ch01_1aP.indd 203 24/06/22 11:30 AM