![]() ![]() In doing so, this paper involves itself in a series of dynamics that prove a clean and simple understanding of music impossible- representations and culture inhabit a space that is complicated by debates regarding the dialectics of subjectivity as well as our understanding of how information spreads through society. This methodology will be mobilised here in the case of hip hop, tracing the genre’s emergence and spread across the globe to provide a functional model of the role of music in IR. In the cases of the Brazilian bossa nova and Fela Kuti’s innovation in Afrobeat, Inayatullah traces the movements of musical motifs and artists’ careers in their international context to glean insights into how music embroils itself in and relates to wider power structures. This study follows the qualitative biographical approach utilised in Frederic Ramel and Cecil Prevost-Thomas’ collection of articles ‘International Relations, Music and Diplomacy’which perceives an “acoustic turn in IR”, as well as in Naeem Inayatullah’s “Gigging on the World Stage: Bossa Nova & Afrobeat After De-Reification’. ![]() In particular, Jessica Gienow-Hecht’s chapter ‘Nation Branding’ talks of the “power in being respected and listened to”. Inadvertently, the case of hip hop has a great deal of symbolic relevance to Selbin & Nayak’s call to recognise other modes of information in IR in order to alleviate its centring on Europe and the West, not only utilising oral methods of sharing knowledge but directly evolving out of these African historical traditions. Following these warnings, this research paper positions itself alongside aesthetic approaches to IR in order to highlight the value and causal importance of lived international reality beneath the dominant and well-recognised flows of power. For instance, Selbin & Nayak describe how the African oral historical tradition has been neglected in studies of IR in favour of traditionally European modes of information and, as such, Bleiker advises that we “forget IR theory” altogether in order to “escape the vicious circle by which these social practices serve to legitimise and objectivise the very discourses that have given rise to them”. Īt a broader level, these approaches suggest that dominant studies of IR, such as realism’s emphasis on power dynamics and international structure in explaining international reality, miss something fundamental in the lived reality for groups around the globe. ![]() For Selbin & Nayak, decentring IR is not simply about “inserting case studies from around the world” and an aesthetic approach can be seen to be particularly useful here, mobilising alternative modes of study that allow us to confront “the way we talk about, share and experience these narratives”. This approach aligns itself with what Eric Selbin & Meghana Nayak describe as the ‘centring’ of IR on voices from the global north/west, “ certain political projects” and “completely multiple ways of understanding and living in the world”. Instead, aesthetic studies of IR recognise the inevitable distance between the represented and their representation and thus take representations themselves as a fundamental unit of analysis, generating a “more diverse but also more direct encounter with the political”. “Representation is always an act of power” according to Robert Bleiker’s ‘The Aesthetic Turn in International Political Theory’, describing a shift away from mimetic approaches to the discipline which seek to “represent politics as realistically and authentically as possible”. Thus, hip hop is positioned as possible study material in IR to explore the role of lived experience and individual agency beneath the visible flows of power that are already so well recognised in the discipline- in effect, this discussion balances the importance of ‘keeping it real’ against ‘keeping it realist’ in studies of IR. As such, a qualitative study of hip hop’s emergence and spread around the globe, tracing particular musical motifs and artists’ careers is advanced to assess to what extent the genre serves to challenge these existing understandings in IR. At a wider level, studies of IR tend to neglect the role of individual agency in favour of explanations resting on global power relations and structural forces. This, in addition to its spectacular spread globally and malleability in being able to take on localised meanings and sounds, makes it difficult to square with existing understandings of music in IR which conceptualise the role of sound in terms of top-down forces and domination by institutional, national and commercial interests. Hip hop places a particular emphasis on marginalised groups and ‘keeping it real’- a popular phrase in the hip hop community reflecting the importance of behaving and sharing messages consistent with ones’ personal experience. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |