Forging Transnational Actor Networks through Participatory Action Research: Responsibility to Protect via Musical Rehumanisation in Post-War Liberia

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2018

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journal article

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The World of Music

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This article outlines a reconfiguration of the “network” trope as a means of conducting reflexive, applied research on society, technology, and music, towards positive social transformation, with application in post-war Liberia. In the social sciences, the mathematical concept of graph or network has provided a powerful paradigm both for scientific explanation and humanistic understanding, through social network analysis. Its application in the present article transcends these applications through a shift in emphasis, from explanation and understanding to social transformations, induced by forging new transnational networks out of the collaborative, iterative cycles of participatory action research (PAR) centered on music, digital musical production, and sociomusical relationships. These networks are designed to address what the UN has identified as the “responsibility to protect” (R2P), as a means of mitigating that dehumanisation underlying all human rights abuses. Beyond explanation or understanding, I emphasise PAR networks as tools and instances of social transformation, not only as means, but as ends in themselves, holding that the right sort of transnational social network—a harmoniously interacting global community—is precisely what is sought. Further, whereas the network actor is typically either human (in social network analysis) or non-human (in much network science), I combine the two in applied research, building on Latour’s “Actor Network Theory” (ANT) in two respects. First, beyond joining the human and nonhuman I consider also their double intersection: the expressive arts (including music) as the human nonhuman; and dehumanisation as the nonhuman human. Second, I extend such constructivism to transformative participatory action research. The chapter charts the iterative formation of a transnational PAR actor-network, including Liberian refugee musicians, academics, students, and producers, constituting both method and objective for applied ethnomusicology. I identify the digital song (manifesting in multiple remixes) as flexible mediator, its potential remixes enhancing connectivity, forging harmoniously interacting transna tional actor-networks via people, technology, and music. Such networks not only facilitate a better world, they embody it.

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