Social justice in music education: the problematic of democracy

Abstract

While social justice concerns of feminist research in music education have been mostly ignored or rejected by the profession, democracy based on paternalist Enlightenment concepts of humanism and liberalism is generally understood and accepted with little or no consideration of its social and economic implications. More nuanced accounts refer to John Dewey's notions of democracy as a way of life, community, or democracy as an ideal, but assumptions underpinning these notions such as community and consensus as unproblematic virtues in addition to considerations of democracy's limitations typically go unexamined, notwithstanding caveats of its failures particularly in terms of women and so-called ‘minorities.’ Focusing on specifically liberal forms of democracy and democratic practices in music education—particularly as they are constructed as models for presumably equitable and just classroom interaction and curricular content—I use feminist, postmodern epistemological and ontological perspectives to problematize assumptions, ideals and processes on which liberal democracy is based and look beyond and beneath the dualisms and representations on which it depends. My argument that unexamined traditional liberal practices and discourses inevitably serve to re-inscribe colonial narratives of salvation is deployed to open spaces for thinking democracy's potential in music education discourses and practices.

Notes

1. For a comprehensive account of voting and majority rule, see Lani Guinier (1994).

2. Philosopher Gilles Deleuze would agree on the final count, calling this ‘the error of humanism, the error of believing that the proper perspective for understanding the world is centered on the viewpoint of the human subject’ (May, 2005, p. 24).

3. See Iris Marion Young (1990) for a comprehensive explication and critique of liberal pluralism.

4. For a comprehensive discussion of this, see Gould (in press).

5. Similarly, Jakobsen (1998) declares that ‘oppositions [dualisms] invoke a complex field of interrelated differentiations—the gender opposition male-female also invokes a moral field of good and evil—and, yet, such oppositions [dualisms] also condense the complexity of these interrelations such that male and female appears to be identical to good and evil’ (p. 8).

6. Centralizing power with teachers may be described as a ‘poor’ solution, because in the context of democratic ideals it is recast as a ‘problem’.

7. Nomads move along paths that are more accurately characterized as trajectories outlined by points. Arriving at each point only to leave again, nomads are distributed in open space through relays of these points. Rather than physically moving in space, however, nomads occupy it; which is to say they move through without moving on (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).

8. hooks (1994) goes on to assert, ‘A progressive revolutionary feminist movement must welcome and create a context for constructive conflict, confrontation, and dissent. Through that dialectical exchange of ideas, thoughts, and visions, we affirm the transformative power of feminist politics’ (p. 108).