Transforming Through the Arts

2021 ◽  
pp. 83-98
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Function ◽  
The Arts

The work of scholars and practitioners working in the field of peacebuilding and social transformation is equally art and craft. The arts have a social function that goes beyond its aesthetic nature as they have historically served as powerful tools for social transformation. These are acts of creation that are the results of rigor and intention. This chapter offers a discussion on how communities in Medellin have used the arts as tools for creating moments of creativity that have led to social transformation. To make sense of this, the authors use Lederach's suggestion to center simplicity when thinking about peacebuilding initiatives, as well as his use of Haiku as an analogy to how we, as scholars and practitioners of peacebuilding and social transformation, should approach our work.

Rethinking Music Education and Social Change

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Kertz-Welzel
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The Arts ◽  
New Vision ◽  
Education And Social Change ◽  
Socially Responsive ◽  
Utopian Theory

The arts and particularly music are well-known agents for social change. They can empower, transform, or question. They can be a mirror of society’s current state and a means of transformation. They are often the last refuge when all attempts at social change have failed. But are the arts able to live up to these expectations? Can music education cause social change? This book offers timely answers to these questions. It presents an imaginative, yet critical approach. It is optimistic and realistic. It rethinks music education’s relation to social change and offers a new vision in terms of music education as utopian theory and practice. This allows one to unearth the utopian energy of the music education profession and to openly imagine how the world could be otherwise—while at the same time critically scrutinizing respective conceptions. Utopia, being an important topic in sociology and political science, offers a new tradition of thinking and a scholarly foundation for music education’s relation to social change. However, music education is not only a means for social transformation. It also has artistic and aesthetic dimensions. Thus, connecting music education with utopia leads to two approaches in terms of politically or socially responsive music education and “esthetic” music education. Rethinking music education and social change within the framework of utopia offers much-needed opportunities for reconceptualizing music education in the 2020s.

Tristan the Artist in Gottfried's Poem

PMLA ◽  
1962 ◽  
Vol 77 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 364-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. T. H. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Function ◽  
Gottfried Von Strassburg ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Arthurian Romance ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Grand Design ◽  
Christian Men ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Middle Ages

Although the thinkers of the Middle Ages il did not develop any theories about the function of the artist which can be compared with those of Plato or the Romantics, they had definite views on art and its relation to society. Art in its broadest sense had for them an ethical and social function which inevitably became part of the grand design of the universe. None of the great writers of romance is without consciousness of this function. In the creation of the Arthurian romance in particular they were fully aware of their responsibilities, but they interpreted them in differing ways. It seems to me that Gottfried von Strassburg realizes most fully the intellectual aspects of his responsibility and takes most note of the esthetic theories which justified the arts, and in particular music, as beneficial for Christian men and women and as leading towards that harmony of the spirit with the eternal which was regarded as the highest good.

scholarly journals Channelling discomfort through the arts: A Covid-19 case study through an intercultural telecollaboration project

2021 ◽  
pp. 136216882110582
Author(s):  
Melina Porto ◽  
Irina Golubeva ◽  
Michael Byram
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Affective Responses ◽  
Communication Education ◽  
Online Surveys ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Project Data ◽  
A Site

In this article we argue, in the context of the current dominance of the performative and instrumental drives characterizing the accountable university, that language and intercultural communication education in universities should also be humanistic, addressing ‘discomforting themes’ to sensitize students to issues of human suffering and engage them in constructive and creative responses to that suffering. We suggest that arts-based methods can be used and illustrate this with an intercultural telecollaboration project created in response to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. In this way language and intercultural communication education can become a site of personal and social transformation albeit modest and piecemeal as part of a longer process. Through arts-based methodologies and pedagogies of discomfort, Argentinian and US undergraduates explored how the theme of the Covid-19 crisis has been expressed artistically in their countries, and then communicated online, using English as their lingua franca, to design in mixed international groups artistic multimodal creations collaboratively to channel their suffering and trauma associated with the pandemic. This article analyses and evaluates the project. Data comprise the students’ artistic multimodal creations, their written statements describing their creations, and pre and post online surveys. Our findings indicate that students began a process of transformation of disturbing affective responses by creating artwork and engaging in therapeutic social and civic participation transnationally, sharing their artistic creations using social media. We highlight the powerful humanistic role of education involving artistic expression, movement, performativity, and community engagement in order to channel discomforting feelings productively at personal and social levels.

scholarly journals L.S. Vygotsky’s Critique: Between Aesthetics, Publitsistika and Psychology

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 25-34
Author(s):  
P.N. Marques
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Educational Engagement ◽  
Critical Activity ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Formal School ◽  
Extensive List ◽  
Early Activity

This paper discusses L.S. Vygotsky’s early activity as a critic through an analysis of texts in which the author himself reflects on the task of the critic. Fragments from the essay on Hamlet, Psychology of art and theatrical reviews of the Gomel period (1922—23) are analyzed to provide an overview of how his understanding of the role of the critic has evolved and changed in time. By moving from the reader’s critique to the objective analytic method, Vygotsky has placed the critic in a position of social and educational engagement, a public figure committed to raise the level of the arts and the audience’s capacity optimize the aesthetic experience. His stance to the critical work is also analyzed within the context of Russian critical traditions, particularly some ideas of Boris Eikhenbaum and the Formal School of literary studies. Finally, the critical activity is seen alongside an extensive list of attributes that has been linked to Vygotsky (scientist, methodologist, philosopher etc.) as an equally important and complementary facet of a person fully committed to social transformation.

scholarly journals Re-instating the Amateur: Holding Space for the Core Purpose of Art in the Classroom

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Armos
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Educational Goals ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Art Educator ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Art Classroom

The methods and objectives for art education in public and post-secondary schools are often aimed towards the development of a professional fine arts or academic career. However, reflecting on the reasons humans originally turned to the arts can have profound effects on how we frame the role of the artist, art educator, student, and classroom. This paper traces perspectives on the core purpose of art from fields ranging from biology and anthropology to education and literary theory, noting how they converge on notions of art as an evolutionary form of social bonding, and open-ended life inquiry for personal and social transformation. Drawing from these theories, it discusses how these transactional perspectives on art reinforce the value of exposing students to both creative and interpretative forms of aesthetic inquiry. Further it proposes that the figure of the amateur artist—as opposed to that of the professional artist or renowned academic—can serve as an embodiment of the core purpose of art and our educational goals in the art classroom, encouraging students from diverse career paths to actively seek out meaningful and transformative art-making and appreciating experiences.

Arts and Peacebuilding

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Hunter ◽  
Cynthia E. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Peace Education ◽  
Peace Studies ◽  
Professional Networks ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Intercultural Collaboration ◽  
The Arts ◽  
New Directions ◽  
International Projects

The arts have long been associated with social transformation and peacebuilding. In conflict-affected settings, the arts can serve to raise awareness of the impacts of violence, enable distinctive expressions of culture, offer opportunities for intercultural collaboration, and embody affective and aesthetic means of engaging with trauma and healing. Conversely, the arts also have the potential to harm, when they are used in the name of propaganda, for example, or result in re-traumatizing victims of conflict in an aestheticization of experience. An emerging interdisciplinary field of arts and peacebuilding is researching the arts’ potential to restore capacities that might have been eclipsed by violence and long-standing oppression—that is, arts practice at the nexus of reconciliation, community development, and social justice. As the field grows, scholarship in peace studies, applied arts, conflict resolution, and peace education is contributing to a productive troubling of definitions of peace and is drawing attention to the role of affect, cultural diversity, and coloniality in such work. Future scholarship in which the arts are conceptualized beyond the instrumental benefits to their multiple legitimate purposes as a “way of knowing” will more appropriately capture the complexities, uncertainties, and paradoxes of imagining and building peace through the arts in diverse contexts. Key international projects continue to decolonize universalizing definitions and practices of the arts by documenting and investigating a range of aesthetic practices in peacebuilding. This work is being generated and disseminated broadly across disciplinary scholarly communities, government and nongovernment agencies, and professional networks of educators and artists. The nexus of arts and peacebuilding theory has much to offer the mobilization of new directions in peacebuilding practice and an integration of arts-based peace education.

Can Art Embody Truth? Ethics, Aesthetics and Gandhi

Social Change ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004908572199685
Author(s):  
John Clammer
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
World View ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
The Status ◽  
Classical Indian Philosophy ◽  
Formed Part

The philosophical question of whether moral standards apply in art and the practical one of whether the arts can be vehicles of positive social transformation run through a great deal of social theory. In this article, these issues are discussed through an examination of Mahatma Gandhi’s approach to art and in particular his views on music and visual arts as they formed part of his personal world view and his socio-political programme. The article contextualises this in relation to Gandhi’s over-arching concern with the pursuit of truth and its theistic basis, his relationship to certain aspects of classical Indian philosophy and in particular the status of rasa among the four traditional purusharthas, and his relationship with Rabindranath Tagore and the artists at Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan, in particular Nandalal Bose. The article suggests that Gandhi was far from uninterested in aesthetic matters, but that the key to his thought lies in his holistic approach to both philosophy and lifestyle where the arts play an important role when integrated with ethical and religious demands.

scholarly journals Practices of Remembrance: The Experiences of Artists and Curators in the Centenary Commemoration of World War I

Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Katherine Isobel Baxter
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Creative Arts ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Affective Experiences ◽  
The Uk ◽  
National Investment

The centenary of World War One was marked in the UK by an unprecedented national investment in the creative arts as a vehicle for remembrance. This scale of funding for commemorative arts, not least under a government whose mantra had been economic “austerity”, demonstrates the importance that the nation-state placed on remembrance and on engaging the public in acts of memory through the arts. In the aftermath of the centenary, funding bodies have commissioned evaluations of this programming. These evaluations have focused on audiences reached, organisations benefitted, and social transformation. What remain occluded by the reports are the experiences of the artists themselves and the curators with whom they worked. In this article I explore the personal and affective experiences of several artists and curators whose work contributed to this national programme of remembrance. I ask: to what extent did artists and curators consciously engage with prior artistic responses to World War One? How did the context of collective commemoration and memory-making inform their practice and the works produced? What did their involvement in this programme of national remembrance make them feel? What were the narratives of the war they wanted to tell? To begin to answer these questions, I draw on a series of one-to-one interviews conducted with a number of artists and curators who were involved in commemorative projects in the UK and overseas.

scholarly journals Between Tradition and Modernity: Modern Confucianism as a Form of East Asian Social Knowledge

Asian Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana S. ROŠKER
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Social Function ◽  
Protestant Ethic ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Modern China ◽  
And Function ◽  
Role And Function

In the last decades of the 20th century, the revival of traditional Confucianism assumed increasing importance and relevance. The revitalization of its complex philosophical heritage thus became part of the most important theoretical currents in contemporary East Asian societies. Due to its potentially stabilizing social function and compatibility with capitalism, Confucianism is often seen as the Asian equivalent of Max Weber’s “protestant ethic”. In modern sinology, this view is known as the “post-Confucian hypothesis”. The appearance of the “vacuum of values” in modern China and its problematization and connection to the transformation of the structure, role, and function of social knowledge provide a good example of the consequences of explosive social transformation. This also raises the question of whether the Confucian modernization model is indeed capable of generating a non-individualistic version of modernity. Proceeding from this hypothesis, the present paper aims to show that the purported relation between modernity and individualism, which international modernization theories have always viewed as “inevitable” or “intrinsic”, is, in fact, little more than an outcome of Western historical paradigms.

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