Editorial

Abstract

Editorial Estelle R. Jorgensen This issue marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the Philosophy of Music Education Review—a journal that has appeared in an unbroken chain since its inception in 1, no. 1 (Spring, 1993). The journal is indexed in major philosophical, musical, educational, and library indices, is available online and in libraries around the world, and has a distinguished international Editorial Board consisting of professional philosophers, aestheticians, and philosophers of arts education and music education. It continues to be an important scholarly voice of members of the International Society for the Philosophy of Music Education and remains the only refereed international journal devoted exclusively to the philosophy of music education. Looking back over the past five volumes (volumes 20 to 24), our contributors were working in at least twelve countries representing in order of the number of contributions: USA (twenty-six), Canada (ten), the United Kingdom (six), Finland (four), Germany (four), Norway (four), Denmark (three), Greece (three), Singapore (three), the Netherlands (one), New Zealand (one), and Sweden (one). The present issue features European writers whose symposium began life as a panel presentation at the Ninth International Symposium on the Philosophy of Music Education held at Columbia University, New York, in June 2013. The issues with which this conversation deals seem especially timely and worth exploring more fully. Its premise, as Øivind Varkøy puts it, is that "proclaimed pluralism, diversity, and heterogeneity" are in tension with "expressions and experiences of uniformity, sameness, and homogeneity." I invited the panelists to expand their position papers into full-blown articles in order to tease out philosophical questions that I saw as important for readers of the Philosophy of Music Education Review. [End Page 1] At that time, today's full-blown nativist, nationalist, and populist sentiments were less obvious in Western politics. Still, looking back over the past few years, their roots are evident in the cultural and political upheavals in the Middle East and the massive population migrations to the United Kingdom and on the European continent. In North America, growing white restiveness over the increasing populations of color and the impact of cultural policies that recognized the multiplicities and pluralities of Western culture took their toll particularly on male self-identity. There was a rising tide of economic discontent by workers left behind by the tumultuous technological changes that displaced them from the factories in which they had previously worked for a living wage. If they were unable to retrain for new positions, they were unemployed, underemployed, or forced to cobble together minimal wage jobs that left them in poverty. Global capital movements exacerbated these demographic and cultural shifts as manufacturing moved to low-wage environments. And there was a growing alienation from professed governmental commitments to cultural multiplicity and pluralism on the one hand and growing expectations of rationality and uniformity on the other. It is not surprising that these complex and intertwined demographic, economic, and technological movements prompted a rising tide of political resentment against the political and economic elites in the West. The establishment was held responsible for the clashes between the public's desire for a sense of belonging, cultural and national cohesiveness, economic wellbeing, and sense of identity and the forces of multiculturalism, globalism, and economic rationalism. Economic laissez-faire proved disastrous for many people who were excluded from prosperity and alienated from their own culture. These geographic and cultural shifts resulted in political upheavals in the United States and European countries where establishment politicians were repudiated and the world political order began to fray. Upheaval was also evident in the ideologies manifest in Western education. Postmodern writers sought to upend notions of unity, stability, and order that had characterized modernism. In emphasizing matters of difference, deconstruction, and disorder and unmasking what they saw as untenable modernist assumptions, postmodernists fostered notions of pluralism, multiculturalism, and globalism. Other ideologies such as neoliberalism also arose in response to the perceived flaws of modernity. American pragmatism (embraced by North American and European writers alike) turned out to be unduly optimistic in failing to sufficiently grasp the dark side of capitalistic democracies. In the United States, for example, increasing efforts to rationalize and standardize education...