Introduction: The Politics of Diversity in Music Education

Alexis Anja Kallio,Kathryn Marsh,Eva Sæther,Heidi Westerlund,Sidsel Karlsen

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-65617-1_1

Abstract

The Politics of Diversity in Music Education attends to the political structures and processes that frame and produce understandings of diversity in and through music education. Recent surges in nationalist, fundamentalist, protectionist, and separatist tendencies highlight the imperative for music education to extend beyond nominal policy agendas to critically consider the ways in which understandings about society are upheld or unsettled and the ways in which knowledge about diversity is produced. This chapter provides an overview of the scholarly foundations that this book builds upon before introducing the four sections of the book and contributing chapters. The first section of the book focuses on the politics of inquiry in music education research. The second section attends to the paradoxes and challenges that arise as music teachers negotiate cultural identity and tradition within the political frames and ideals of the nation state. The third section considers diversities that are often overlooked or silenced, and the final section turns to matters of leadership in higher music education as an inherently political and ethical undertaking. Together, chapters work towards a more critical, complex, and nuanced understanding of the ways in which the politics of diversity shape our ideals of what music education is, and what it is for.

Highlights

The Politics of Diversity in Music EducationAlexis Anja Kallio, Kathryn Marsh, Heidi Westerlund, Sidsel Karlsen, and Eva Sæther
Teachers were directed to approach music as a universal phenomenon that in itself holds the potential to exist distinct from sociocultural context or social ties and rise above the power relations relating to the politics of diversity that arise in any given education context
The Politics of Diversity in Music Education working at the intersection of music education and ethnomusicology challenged this understanding, as Anthony Palmer (1992) argued, “artistic expression weakens when it becomes generalized

Summary

Introduction

The Politics of Diversity in Music Education working at the intersection of music education and ethnomusicology challenged this understanding, as Anthony Palmer (1992) argued, “artistic expression weakens when it becomes generalized. A reflexive and critical reading of these chapters and the book as a whole raises important questions that continue to trouble and inspire us, with regard to the Eurocentricity of knowledge production, the political economy of the publishing industry, and the processes by which some of us are able to claim universality and others are relegated to the margins of particularity This remains as an ongoing practical, theoretical, methodological, ethical and moral task for each of us, and our field more broadly: how can we engage ethically with the politics of diversity when we ourselves are complicit in existing inequities and injustices? This remains as an ongoing practical, theoretical, methodological, ethical and moral task for each of us, and our field more broadly: how can we engage ethically with the politics of diversity when we ourselves are complicit in existing inequities and injustices? Answering and acting upon this question is a shared responsibility for all music education scholars and practitioners, and we hope that the critical discussions, new perspectives, reconsiderations, and redirections offered within these pages contribute towards this learning and change

Introduction of Chapters