Songs of Citizenship: Music, Refugees, and Humanitarian Politics in East Africa
Author(s):
Oliver Y. Shao
Publication Year:
2019
Type:
thesis
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Abstract:
Music in “refugee camps” is commonly understood as ancillary to the more pressing issues of food, shelter, and healthcare. With a different ear, one can hear how songs and dances provide people with important ways of thinking, communicating, and feeling in places rife with precarity and inequality. In this dissertation, I examine the ways music, dance, and ritual intersect with subject formation and humanitarian politics through critical analysis informed by the histories and social life of the Kakuma Refugee Camp in East Africa. My analysis stems from eleven months of politically engaged ethnomusicological research conducted over two visits between 2013 and 2015. Guided in part by logics and sentiments of care, the United Nations refugee agency and their contracted agencies supported cultural engagements through funding and organizing public festivals and local music projects. More than just a site of altruism, however, Kakuma’s inhabitants enacted their social practices within a context of extreme social control beset with nightly curfews, cultural bans, and restrictions on movement and employment. Through delving into the musical experiences of hip hop artists, Dinka pastoralists, and religious congregations, my findings demonstrate the various ways Kakuma’s social actors used creative expressions to make claims to citizenship rights and related practices in a place where state and humanitarian forces impinged upon basic civil liberties. Some may view refugees and asylum seekers as individuals stripped of all political rights once they enter a “refugee camp.” Contrastingly, this study demonstrates that Kakuma’s inhabitants drew on a far-ranging array of cultural expressions to legitimize their needs and demands for citizenly rights and recognition amidst their subjection to wider disciplinary social forces. Through examining a range of sonic practices, this dissertation challenges and reimagines reductive and dichotomous distinctions between refugees and citizens.
Citation (Chicago Author-Date):
Shao, Oliver Y. 2019. “Songs of Citizenship: Music, Refugees, and Humanitarian Politics in East Africa.” PhD, Bloomington: Indiana University. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2226599157.