Abstract:From a systems-theoretical perspective, community music can be conceived of as a self-referential communication system with the capacity for self-observation and self-description. How do these self-descriptions relate to the economic and social-political agendas of recent decades? This paper argues that community music tends to adapt itself to neoliberal and advanced-liberal agendas by integrating their key semantics into its own self-description. Although this could be seen as a merely strategic necessity, it can be shown that the incorporated semantics not only modify (...) the way community music sees itself, but also “subjectivate” the people community music addresses. The apparent overcoming of neoliberal “individuality” by the advanced-liberal notion of “community” can be shown to be especially dangerous in this regard. (shrink)

Abstract:What forms of practices can we observe in music education settings? Is it always music just because there are instruments in the room and some sounds are produced or because we can identify some pieces of a musical work now and then? Or is it because the children are engaged in self-determined activities? Or does the verbalization of behavior in musical terms prove this to be musical practice? This and other thoughts that guided the initial interpretations in a teaching research (...) project based on video materials have shown to be fallacies during deeper analyses. Since the indicators that this paper argues to be fallacies seem to be quite common–some in participatory observation of music practice (reflective practice of music educators) and others in theoretical and research work on music education–the identification and reflection of these fallacies could be of general value for music education discourse and practice. Various examples demonstrate how undifferentiated or even fallacious interpretations of practices in music education settings can undermine possibilities for aesthetic experience and musical practice. The paper argues that the necessary differentiation in observation depends on a reconsideration of philosophical questions and concepts from the past. (shrink)

The paper argues that a prevalent conception of power in the educational sciences is detrimental to pedagogy both as a field of practice and as a discipline and inept as a scientific concept from an epistemological standpoint. The designation of this power concept as ‘aethereal’ can provide the education theoretical discourses with a means to analyze and criticize positions and arguments that have undermined the autonomy of education since the establishment of Foucauldian thinking in the educational sciences. First, this article (...) argues that the pedagogical notion of the educable child depends on the concepts of individuality, plasticity, and autonomy within the framework of a negative ontology. Second, it problematizes the effects of the substitution of these concepts in the postmodern power-critical educational sciences for pedagogy in general and the child as its key concept in particular. The politicized child is conceived of as subjugated, passive, vulnerable, and what is crucial: as a thing-like, i.e. pedagogically ineducable but only powerfully moldable identity. Third, it analyses the philosophical basis of this shift towards the politicization of the child by introducing the concept of ‘aethereal power’. The article concludes with a sociological reflection on the societal dimension of this fundamental transformation of education and hints at the emerging post-critical pedagogy as a possible remedy. (shrink)