This is my first visit here. I see there are also ten topics with unread posts that are waiting for me. I also have to figure out all the mysterious new buttons here.
And I will have to figure out where this train of thought is going.
Welcome to the T:AP Academic Council! One of our challenges will be to find academics who are as dedicated to T:AP as the three of us, so this online group can grow. In the meantime, let us start our discussions in earnest.
What are some of the research questions that should drive our search?
Over the last 11 years, George mentioned repeatedly his interest for a study of "the systematic use of the arts for peacebuilding." In a recent conversation, Itir and I agreed that whereas contacts and exchanges between artists, academics and activists are wonderful, the question is: does it work?
I believe this is one of the questions that will help us focus and generate interesting research:
How do we evaluate the impact of musical and artistic projects on social change an peacebuilding? Surveys, interviews, ethnographies and stats are being collected all over the world, but how do we have access to them?
If we find out that music and the arts work very well as additions to already existing schemes for social change and peacebuilding, does that count?
Ok, your turn. Please help me formulate some of the crucial questions that will make our research compelling, productive, meaningful and useful ; )
“How do we evaluate the impact of musical and artistic projects on social change an peacebuilding? Surveys, interviews, ethnographies and stats are being collected all over the world, but how do we have access to them?”
In my view, it would not make much sense to respond to the first question by pursuing the ideas in the second question. New research is undertaken all the time partly because the data that are already available cannot be used to answer some questions in an effective way.
This is particularly true when one wants to know whether certain specified actions have particular specified effects; cause and effect relationships. Hard science centers on the idea of randomized controlled trials, RCTs. You take action A in one set of conditions, and action B in a similar set of conditions, and measure and compare the outcomes of interest.
When RCTs cannot be used, one can work with existing data. One can use epidemiological methods of the type used by health researchers. For example, since it would be unethical to conduct research that is likely to induce cancer in humans, researchers gather existing data of various types to try to determine what are the main causes of various cancers. However, the tools of epidemiology are rather weak, when compared with the tools of RCTs.
Good research generally begins with the preparation of well-formed hypotheses of interest to the researcher. The work could begin with brainstorming over a proposition such as, “artistic projects contribute to peacebuilding.” If we thought that this was a very robust proposition, in the sense that all sorts of artistic projects contribute strongly to all sorts of peacebuilding under all sorts of conditions, we could specify some rules for identifying these things, and use epidemiological methods.
However, I assume none of us thinks the relationship is extremely robust. We think that maybe some types of artistic projects contribute at least to some degree to some types of peacebuilding under some types of conditions. Okay. Now we have to start specifying the types.
If we specify the types we can begin to do some serious research. Let’s go for the easier ones first, the relationships that are most likely to be strong. Perhaps the next step in this discussion would be to get some ideas on when artistic projects are highly likely to contribute to peacebuilding. What types of artistic projects are highly likely to prove effective in what types of peacebuilding, under what conditions?
Once we get to some well-formed hypothesis, and agreements on what would be good indicators for the variables of interest, we could try epidemiological methods. But I think the best way to proceed would be to design and carry out RCTs on the hypotheses that interest us.
George suggests that we need well-formed hypotheses and that we should test those hypotheses with randomized controlled trials (RCT). I'm sorry, but I think this line of thought takes us in very unhelpful directions. I do not think there is any possibility of using RCT to investigate useful questions within the general area of the impact of music on peacebuilding. Further, I think it is unhelpful to try to be overly concerned about stating hypotheses.
At this point IMO we should be trying to formulate useful questions. For instance (NOTE: these questions are merely intended to be illustrative)
1) Communal singing was very important within the US civil rights movement. It kept up morale, strengthened the bonds among the workers, gave us courage, and motivated us. Therefore, a key question might be:
What is the role of group singing in people's movements? In nonviolent campaigns?
2) Can music change attitudes within the general populace to be more supportive of a progressive movement? If so, how does this work?
Once we have some useful questions that we feel need to be explored, then we can worry about specific research methods.
NOTE on research methods:
Given that we necessarily are studying real life field situations that we have no control over, the appropriate methods will be ethnographic, epidemiological, survey, etc. There will be little to no opportunity to do randomized control treatment studies. Further, I would argue that the attempt to do RCT studies will invariably change what we are trying to study so that even if we could manage such a study, it would not be useful.
I think that it's a brilliant idea to make a list of intriguing questions. We have two so far, let's try to get ten quickly! Who's next?
1) Communal singing was very important within the US civil rights movement. It kept up morale, strengthened the bonds among the workers, gave us courage, and motivated us. Therefore, a key question might be: What is the role of group singing in people's movements? In nonviolent campaigns?
2) Can music change attitudes within the general populace to be more supportive of a progressive movement? If so, how does this work?
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