Making music in divided cities: Transforming the ethnoscape
Author(s):
Gillian Howell
Lesley Pruitt
Laura Hassler
Publication Year:
2019
Type:
journal article
Journal/Book Title
International Journal of Community Music
Publisher
Editor(s):
Pages:
331-348
Volume:
12
Issue:
3
Abstract:
In the phenomenon of the divided city – urban environments partitioned along ethno-religious lines as a result of war or conflict – projects seeking to bring segregated people together through community music activities face many operational and psychological obstacles. Divided cities are politically sustained, institutionally consolidated, and relentlessly territorialized by competing ethno-nationalist actors. They are highly resistant to peacebuilding efforts at the state level. This article uses an urban peacebuilding lens (peacebuilding reconceptualized at the urban scale that encompasses the spatial and social dimensions of ethno-nationalist division) to examine the work of community music projects in three divided cities. Through the examples of the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, BosniaHerzegovina, the Mitrovica Rock School in Mitrovica, Kosovo, and Breaking Barriers (a pseudonym) in Belfast, Northern Ireland, we consider the contextspecific practices and discourses that are deployed to navigate the local constraints on inter-communal cooperation, but that also contribute to the broader goal of building peace. We find that music-making is a promising strategy of peacebuilding at the urban scale, with both functional and symbolic contributions to make to the task of transforming an ethnoscape into a peacescape.
Citation (Chicago Author-Date):
Howell, Gillian, Lesley Pruitt, and Laura Hassler. 2019. “Making Music in Divided Cities: Transforming the Ethnoscape.” International Journal of Community Music 12 (3): 331–48. https://doi.org/10.1386/ijcm_00004_1.