Everlasting love: The sustainability of top-down vs bottom-up approaches to music and conflict tran

Following the 2007 ESA Arts conference on sustainability a book was published with a number of articles around the theme of arts and sustainability. I contributed a chapter based on my fieldwork in Norway and Sudan. Full abstract below.

Abstract

Sustainability: A new frontier for the arts and cultures

In recent years there has been an increase in the use of music as a tool for conflict transformation in conflict-ridden societies such as Sri Lanka or Sudan. And in multi-cultural societies in Europe music is often seen as a bridge builder between different ethnic groups. Two ideas that underpin such projects is that a) exposure to music from the “other” side in a conflict can break down group prejudices and b) the aesthetic experiences from music are capable of reaching people on a level that verbal discourse(s) can't. In either case music is seen as an agent for social change in people's everyday lives, rather than simply a cultural reflection of existing societies.
Many such initiatives take a top-down approach where (international) organisations use music as a part of the general psycho-social (re)building of social ties after the violent part of a conflict is over. Internal evaluations of such projects have made various claims with regards to their results, however little or no research has been done to see if any changes are sustainable beyond the duration of the actual project. At other times music is used spontaneously, naturally taking a bottom-up approach, to form new, joint, in-groups, as reported by Reyes from Sudanese refugees in Uganda. Here the problem is that such events are simply not reported on. Again, a key question is whether any positive affect can be carried through over a longer period of time.
In this paper I attempt to discern if the participants have added to, or amended, their toolbox of practices, as discussed by Swidler, as a result of these musical interventions. Furthermore, as music is such a temporal cultural material, are these changes sustainable in everyday life? And what are the differences between top down and bottom up approaches in terms of participants' willingness to incorporate any informal learning that has taken place as a result of music use? In particular, how important is the distance (in terms of class, ethnicity, age, religion) between the initiators and the participants when it comes to the incorporation of new practices? And are there other ways that these musical interventions have caused changes to relationships?
To avoid being trapped in culture-specific assumptions I am using empirical data from two very different locations where music has been used in different ways for resolving or preventing conflict. In Norway the object of study is a school based project took place in the early 1990s with the aim of reducing tensions between Norwegian and immigrant children through music performances. In Sudan I look at the regular cross-cultural use of music in refugee camps around Khartoum. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with former pupils in Norway and inhabitants of refugee camps in Sudan. The focus was on the narratives of the participants, rather than the musicians or organisers.

Bibliography info
Bergh, A. (2008). Everlasting love: The sustainability of top-down vs bottom-up approaches to music and conflict transformation. In S. Kagan & V. Kirchberg's (Eds.), Sustainability: A new frontier for the arts and cultures, pp. 351-382. (Germany): VAS-Verlag.

Further info
http://www.vasverlag.de/product_info.php?info=p332_Sustainability--a-new-frontier-for-the-arts-and-cultures.html