British Forum for Ethnomusicology One-Day Conference

3rd November 2018 - Keele University, Staffordshire

Call For Papers

Beyond Memory and Reconciliation:
Music, Conflict and Social Manipulation in Post-Conflict Contexts

Where words fail and the state does not help, music can play many roles,
including in acknowledging trauma, promoting understanding of the roots of
conflict, negotiating social guilt, facilitating public debate,
contributing to reconciliation, expressing a collective sense of cultural
survival, and preserving social memory (Fast and Pegley 2012; O’Connell and
Castelo-Branco 2010, Ritter and Daughtry 2007; Urbain 2008). It can also be
a painful reminder of a violent past, and thus a site of tension between
the competing desires to remember and to forget. How, when, and why do
these roles develop? How has music been used to understand, remember and
transform social conflict?

In ethnomusicology and related disciplines, scholars have tended to focus
on processes of memory and reconciliation and the role that music serves to
process recent conflict. However, less attention has been paid to
post-conflict mechanisms of remembrance, nostalgia, and cultural survival
in post-memory/reconciliation contexts. In some cases governments, NGOs and
popular culture have joined forces to create spaces to discuss the
aftermath of social conflict, but what happens when complacency sets in?
How are cultures revived and drawn together (or apart)? How is guilt
negotiated? Music can be a powerful tool in the negotiation of difference
and the discussion of the roots of conflicts (Gilroy 2005, Brinner 2009,
Abbi-Ezzi 2008, Montero-Diaz 2016). It can also be used to manipulate
individuals into taking sides in a conflict; believing the conflict is
resolved; enhancing nationalist behaviour, or even triggering more conflict
(Johnson and Cloonan 2009).

This one-day conference seeks to bring together voices from various
theoretical, ethnographic, historical, and geographical perspectives to
understand how music is bound up with reassertions of the national and
social in post-conflict contexts.

The programme committee welcomes submissions from any discipline that
address the following or related areas:

   -

   The use of music by governments and institutions to promote
   memory/reconciliation, to enhance national self-esteem, to steer public
   discourse towards optimistic post-conflict ideals or to exacerbate
   conflict.
   -

   The links between music and politics when addressing memory and
   reconciliation after a conflict.
   -

   The relationship between music, conflict and social manipulation.
   -

   The role of music in the (re)negotiation of guilt, social role, class,
   and race in post-conflict contexts.
   -

   Music and the reformulation of nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and nation
   building and branding post-conflict.

We invite proposals for individual papers (20 minutes + 10 minutes
questions) and for panels of three related papers (90 minutes in total
including questions).

We are delighted to announce our keynote panel with Prof. Rachel Beckles-
Willson, Prof. John O’Connell and Dr. Felicity Laurence.

They will each give a keynote presentation, and as a panel engage in
dialogue with participants on the conference themes.

Abstracts for individual papers should be no more than 300 words. For
panels, send three abstracts of no more than 300 words each, as well as a
panel description of no more than 100 words.
Abstracts should be sent to [log in to unmask] by 5pm on Monday 25th
June. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out in July.

More information: https://bfeoneday2018.wordpress.com/

-- 
Dr Morgan Davies

BFE Administrator

Email: [log in to unmask]
Website: www.bfe.org.uk