Protest music: using music to challenge (environmental) hegemony

Kemi Fuentes-George

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PROJECT SUMMARY

This chapter outlines a research project for students to engage seriously with the idea that music forms a legitimate basis of knowledge production. As described below, the frames (or metaphors, symbolic representations, and cognitive cues used to understand an issue) embedded in music and other cultural products reflect different normative ways of understanding real-world processes. Because norms affect the social weight and significance given to real-world phenomena, culture can shape action in environmental governance, as in other issue areas (Haas, 1992; Litfin, 1994; Fuentes-George, 2016, 2017, 2019; Smith, 2004; Solnit, 2019). At the end of the project, students should understand the ways in which subaltern groups can produce knowledge about the world through music; how this knowledge challenges hegemonic conceptions about the natural environment; and how this affects policy engagement, advocacy, and mobilization.

The project should consist of a student presentation of a song/songs or other cultural product (e.g., a poem, graffiti, artwork) produced by a subaltern population that is connected to an identifiable environmental issue. This might seem challenging, but it is important to realize that subaltern groups have used music and art as tools to communicate political information about a variety of environmental crises globally, including: water access in the Palestinian Territories, oil extraction in the Tar Sands, climate change and carbon credit markets, and oil pollution in the Niger Delta (for more on using art in teaching see Adsit-Morris, this volume). Depending on the size of the class, the presentations could be either done as group projects over the course of the semester, or as five to seven-minute-long videos emailed to the professor for wider distribution to the class as a whole, in any other format that works best. The crucial task is that the student(s) presenting the material describe the song/ cultural artifact, explain its political context, and discuss how it connects to a relevant environmental movement.

Because the idea that music and culture matter for policy is not widespread in political science (Bleiker, 2001; Dunn, 2008; Smith, 2004), I recommend that in carrying out this project, the instructor spend at least one day exploring the recommended readings that focus on the ways in which music functions as counterhegemonic knowledge production. The readings also provide some useful case studies of subaltern communities challenging dominant narratives of natural resource management through music and cultural framing. These readings will clarify that narratives and symbolic representations matter to people. It is also important to recognize that these protest movements are not always successful. The readings discuss the protest movement by the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta against oil extraction, which was spearheaded by the poet Ken Saro-Wiwa in the 1990s. As we saw with the execution of Saro-Wiwa, states are fully capable of using violence to repress counterhegemonic movements, which, despite their cultural import, still have to contend with the political landscape (Harvan, 2001; Nnamdi et al., 2013; Vila, 2014).

The readings listed below differ in some very important ways, including the extent to which environmental injustice is central to the core of the reading. However, together, they form a basis to understand why and how protest music, and other cultural products, matter to environmental movements. As indicated in the headings, they fit into three categories. The first, “Music and Culture as (Environmental) Knowledge,” illustrates some of the ways in which music and culture are used, particularly by subaltern communities, as legitimate bases of knowledge. Central to this section is the argument that music is not “merely” an aesthetic product, but also constitutes a framework through which different groups create their understanding of the political world.

The second, “Discourse, Power, and the Environment,” illustrates some of the ways in which differently constructed narratives about the environment (What is it? How do we understand its value? Whose voices matter? Can we own it?) affect power and policy around natural resource management. As the readings discuss, the ability to determine, among other things, whether a forest is sacred and intrinsically valuable, or whether it is a commodity, to be managed as a carbon sink under the carbon credit market, can have tremendous implications for the power and autonomy of Indigenous people. By understanding how and why culturally bound discourses shape understanding, students should get a better sense of why culture matters.

The third section, “Music in Social Movements and Protest,” does not directly address environmental management (although Indigenous rights do appear in this section as well). However, it explores in more detail the role that protest music plays and has played in providing cohesion to social movements. Finally, the section titled “Additional Readings: Songs, Stories, Narratives, and Their Effect on Our World” provides general background readings on the role of norms, including the use of music as a basis of knowledge and norm sharing, in international/global studies. Notably, not all of these readings could be assigned to students, particularly in an undergraduate class. Neither is this an exhaustive list. However, these readings should provide enough of a basis to begin conducting independent research on this topic, and instructors should feel free to select whichever of these readings or excerpts work well for the learning goals.

I have used this project in all my courses on protest music and social movements. Those courses have tended to consist of around 24 students, but I have adapted it to work for smaller classes of 15 students, and once used it as an assignment in a large course (80 students). It has worked effectively as a way to promote more engagement with material, and complements standard academic assignments (research papers, responses, quizzes, etc.). This approach can be used in courses on environmental justice (from a comparative, international/global, or domestic lens), international environmental politics, or comparative environmental politics. Any environmental issue that has public mobilization efforts around it (of which there are many) is likely to have or have had musical or other cultural performance elements as part of the social mobilization.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

  • Understand the way in which discourses and discursive practices (norms, metaphors, frames) shape approaches to environmental governance.
  • Understand how different bodies of knowledge are produced in and for different populations.
  • Illustrate how and when knowledge is produced and disseminated among people in formats that differ from what is commonly understood as “academic” (e.g., music, art, poetry).
  • Describe how different value systems embedded in different kinds of knowledge (“nature as commodity” versus “nature as sacred”; “whales as industrial product” versus “whales as anthropomorphic and intrinsically valuable species”) imply different policy positions (for more on embedded value systems and assumptions see both Moreno-Cruz and Kolden, this volume).
  • Understand how power shapes which body of knowledge is considered legitimate in an environmental issue-area.

SUGGESTED BACKGROUND READINGS

Music and Culture as (Environmental) Knowledge

  • Berkes, F. (2009). Evolution of co-management: role of knowledge generation, bridging organizations and social learning. Journal of Environmental Management, 90(5), 1692–1702.
  • Berkes, F. (2017). Sacred Ecology. Routledge.
  • Cabral, A. (1974). National liberation and culture. Transition, 45, 12–17.
  • Carruthers, D. V. (2001). The politics and ecology of Indigenous folk art inMexico. Human Organization, 60(4), 356–366.
  • Fuentes-George, K., & Juarez-Serna, I. (forthcoming). Observers orparticipants? Post-colonial barriers between international environmental institutions and Indigenous participation. Environmental Politics (manuscript under review).
  • Garcia, J., & Shirley, V. (2012). Performing decolonization: lessons learned from Indigenous youth, teachers and leaders’ engagement with critical Indigenous pedagogy. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 28(2) .
  • Harvan, M. (2001). “The Gods of the Delta”: religion in the literature of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni movement. In Jamie S. Scott & Paul Simpson-Housley (eds.), Mapping the Sacred (pp. 241–263). Brill.
  • Kafumbe, D. (2018). Tuning the Kingdom: Kawuugulu Musical Performance, Politics, and Storytelling in Buganda. Boydell & Brewer.
  • Kritkausky, R. (2020). Without Reservation: Awakening to Native American Spirituality and the Ways of Our Ancestors. Simon and Schuster.
  • Monani, S., & Adamson, J. (2017). Dancing at the end of the world: the poetics of the body in Indigenous protest. In Salma Monani & Joni Adamson (eds.), Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies (pp.119–136).Routledge.
  • Mushengyezi, A. (2003). Rethinking Indigenous media: rituals, “talking”drums and orality as forms of public communication in Uganda. Journal ofAfrican Cultural Studies, 16 (1), 107–117.
  • Nnamdi, B. S., Gomba, O., & Ugiomoh, F. (2013). Environmental challenges and eco-aesthetics in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. Third Text, 27(1), 65–75.
  • Ntiamoa-Baidu, Y. (2008). Indigenous beliefs and biodiversity conservation: the effectiveness of sacred groves, taboos and totems in Ghana for habitat and species conservation. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture, 2(3) .
  • Paterson, M., & Stripple, J. (2016). Singing climate change into existence: on the territorialization of climate policymaking. In Mary E. Pettenger (ed.), The Social Construction of Climate Change (pp. 173–196). Routledge.
  • Sheridan, M. J. (2009). The environmental and social history of African sacred groves: a Tanzanian case study. African Studies Review, 52(1), 73–98.
  • Thomas-Müller, C. (2021). Life in the City of Dirty Water: A Memoir of Healing. Allen Lane.
  • Watt-Cloutier, S. (2018). The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Fight to Protect the Arctic and Save the Planet from Climate Change. University of Minnesota Press.

Discourse, Power, and the Environment

  • Anshelm, J., & Hansson, A. (2014). Battling Promethean dreams and Trojan horses: Revealing the critical discourses of geoengineering. Energy Research & Social Science, 2, 135–144.
  • Carey, M., Jackson, M., Antonello, A., & Rushing, J. (2016). Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research. Progress in Human Geography, 40(6), 770–793.
  • Curley, A. (2019). “Our winters’ rights”: Challenging colonial water laws. Global Environmental Politics, 19(3), 57–76.
  • Fuentes-George, K. (2016). Between preservation and exploitation: Transnational advocacy networks and conservation in developing countries. MIT Press.
  • Fuentes-George, K. (2017). Consensus, certainty, and catastrophe: discourse, governance, and ocean iron fertilization. Global Environmental Politics, 17(2), 125–143.
  • Fuentes-George, K. (2023). The comparative politics of environmental justice. In Jeannie Sowers, Stacy D. VanDeveer, and Erika Weinthal (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics (Chapter 23). Oxford University Press.
  • Kalland, A. (1993). Management by totemization: whale symbolism and the anti-whaling campaign. Arctic, 124–133.
  • Kalland, A. (2009). Unveiling the Whale: Discourses on Whales and Whaling. Berghahn Books.
  • Khagram, S. (2004). Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power. Cornell University Press.
  • Peterson, M. J. (ed.). (2019). Contesting Global Environmental Knowledge, Norms, and Governance. Routledge.
  • Raymond, H. (2007). The ecologically noble savage debate. Annual Review of Anthropology, 36, 177–190.
  • Schlosberg, D., & Carruthers, D. (2010). Indigenous struggles, environmental justice, and community capabilities. Global Environmental Politics, 10(4), 12–35.
  • Vermeylen, S., & Walker, G. (2011). Environmental justice, values and biological diversity: the San and the Hoodia benefit sharing agreement. In J. Carmin & J. Agyeman (eds.), Environmental Inequalities Beyond Borders: Local Perspectives on Global Injustices (pp. 105–128). MIT Press.
  • Zeitoun, M. (2008). Power and Water in the Middle East. IB Tauris & Co Ltd.

Music in Social Movements and Protest

  • Egya, S. E. (2012). Historicity, power, dissidence: the third-generation poetry and military oppression in Nigeria. African Affairs, 111(444), 424–441.
  • LeVine, M. (2015). When art is the weapon: culture and resistance confronting violence in the post-uprisings Arab world. Religions, 6(4), 1277–1313.
  • Mahon, M. (2014). Music, power, and practice. Ethnomusicology, 58(2), 327–333.
  • Neustadt, R. (2004). Music as memory and torture: sounds of repression and protest in Chile and Argentina. Chasqui, 33(1), 128–137.
  • Olaniyan, T. (2001). The cosmopolitan nativist: Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and the antinomies of postcolonial modernity. Research in African Literatures, 32(2), 76–89.
  • Olukotun, A. (2002). Traditional protest media and anti-military struggle in Nigeria 1988–1999. African Affairs, 101(403), 193–211.
  • Olwage, G. (2008). Apartheid’s musical signs. In Grant Olwage (ed.), Composing Apartheid: Music for and against Apartheid (pp. 35–54). Wits University Press.
  • Tibbs, D. F. (2012). From Black power to hip hop: discussing race, policing, and the fourth amendment through the war on paradigm. Journal of Gender Race & Justice, 15, 47.
  • Vershbow, M. (2010). The sounds of resistance: the role of music in South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement. Inquiries Journal, 2(06). Accessed July 27, 2021 at: http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/265/the-sounds-of -resistance-the-role-of-music-in-south-africas-anti-apartheid-movement.
  • Vila, P. (2014). New Song in Chile. In Pablo Vila (ed.), The Militant Song Movement in Latin America: Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina (Chapter 1). Lexington Books.

Additional Readings: Songs, Stories, Narratives, and Their Effect on Our World

  • Bernstein, S. (2001). The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism. Columbia University Press.
  • Bleiker, R. (2001). The aesthetic turn in international political theory. Millennium, 30(3), 509–533.
  • Dunn, K. C. (2008). Never mind the bollocks: the punk rock politics of global communication. Review of International Studies, 34(S1), 193–210.
  • Haas, P. M. (1992). Introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination. International Organization, 46(1), 1–35.
  • Litfin, K. (1994). Ozone Discourses: Science and Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation. Columbia University Press.
  • Smith, S. (2004). Singing our world into existence: international relations theory and September 11. International Studies Quarterly, 48(3), 499–515.
  • Solnit, R. (2019). Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters.Granta Books.
  • Wendt, A. (1992). Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics. International Organization, 46(2), 391–425.

ONLINE MULTIMEDIA BACKGROUND MATERIALS

  • Thomas-Müller, C. (2015). CBC Anishinaabe Water Walkers. SoundCloud. Accessed August 2, 2022 at: https://soundcloud.com/claytonthomasmuller/ cbc-anishinaabe-water-walkers.
    • Interview with Clayton Thomas-Müller of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation on the Anishinaabe Water Walk against Transcanada in 2015.
  • Grist (2021). What’s behind this Colombian band’s latest dance beat? The sounds of nature. https://grist.org/justice/whats-behind-this-colombian-bands-latest-dance-beat-the-sounds-of-nature/.
    • Background and interview with Simón Mejía, Colombian musician and environmental activist. Contains song recommendations.
  • Distraction from Climate Action: Article 6 False Solutions (VIDEO) | Indigenous Environmental Network (2021, August 24). Indigenous Environmental Network. https://www.ienearth.org/distraction-from-climate-action-article-6-false-solutions-video/.
    • Collection of interviews with Indigenous activists and allies discussing the competing narratives of the natural environment present at COP-25 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
  • Indigenous Native American Perspectives (2021). Ecologia. http://www.ecologia.org/news/index.html.
    • Collection of podcasts, transcripts, and storytelling resources on Indigenous participation in environmental governance.
  • Jamila Jones oral history interview conducted by Joseph Mosnier in Atlanta, Georgia, 2011 April 27. [Video]. The Library of Congress. https:// www.loc.gov/item/2015669108/.
    • Interview with one of the Black Civil Rights activists who participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, in which she describes her part in the decades-long evolution of the Black Civil Rights song, “We Shall Overcome.”
  • Hughes, A. (2022). Book of the Month: “Life in the City of Dirty Water” by Clayton Thomas-Müller. Native America Calling. https://www.nativeamer icacalling.com/wednesday-june-30–2020-book-of-the-month-life-in-the -city-of-dirty-water-by-clayton-thomas-muller/.
    • Interview with, and music, Clayton Thomas-Müller, First Nations environmental activist from the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation.
  • PBS (2020). “Robert Bullard: How Environmental Racism Shapes the US.” Accessed January 24, 2022 at: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/ amanpour-and-company/video/robert-bullard-how-environmental -racism-shapes-the-us/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAubmPBhCyARIsAJWNpi N30rKevwiP-FGHwSQTUYuyXp0inpLHwKpVFAyY3AqNrDn7o _9fIAoaApKDEALw_wcB.
  • Peaceful Uprising (2021). “Music.” Accessed July 28, 2021 at: https:// music.peacefuluprising.org/.
    • Collection of musical resources and songs by environmental justice group, Peaceful Uprising.
  • The Grio (2021). “Black Ecology: 10 Songs that Address the Environment.” Accessed January 24, 2022 at: https://thegrio.com/2021/04/29/10-songs -that-address-the-environment/.
    • Collection of musical resources and songs by African American musicians on the environmental crisis.

ISSUE BACKGROUND: MUSIC, CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSES

Storytelling matters. As Rebecca Solnit (2019) has shown, telling a story about a particular event involves several choices that have significant implications. Whose interests are centered? What framework is used to evaluate the normative “goodness” or “badness” of actions? These are some of the questions that affect how characters and their actions in a story are perceived. Importantly, different narrative choices made at different times, or with different emphases, can reframe action that seems “good” in one framework as action that is considered “bad” in another.

Storytelling is also central to politics, including (but not only) in the environment. The literature on environmental governance in areas like ozone management, whaling, geoengineering, and conservation provides several examples of ways in which discursive shifts around an environmental problem affected the policies deemed appropriate, and the eventual responses considered for that problem (Haas, 1992; Litfin, 1994, Kalland, 1993, 2009; Anshelm & Hansson, 2014; Fuentes-George, 2016, 2017). To be clear, the argument that stories matter and should be taken seriously is not an argument that facts are irrelevant. Nor do scholars of the role that culture plays in politics make this point. As Solnit (2019) points out, although competing narratives can tell different stories about a given set of facts by centering different voices and perspectives, it is crucial to nevertheless ground explanations about the world in verifiable facts. Similarly, as Wendt argues (1992), there is a material world that exists independent of our preferences. However, the significance of material reality is shaped by the structure of norms – the stories – that we use to describe that reality.

The important corollary to this is that, to return to Solnit, the choice of which story gets told is a political and powerful one. Policymaking is as much a discursive competition as it is a material one. Stakeholders in an environmental issue often engage in arguments over how to frame and understand a crisis, even when they agree on what a core set of underlying facts is (Kalland 1993, 2009; Fuentes-George 2016, 2019). To be clear, it is not always possible to generate shared agreement between different populations on what the proper discursive framing of a problem is.

However, when this happens, competing discourses still matter, because culturally resonant frames can mobilize support and action among a population and its potential allies to oppose or support a dominant frame. This means that the choice of frames is shaped by strategic decisions about which arguments are likely to be more convincing to target audiences, as well as appeals to authenticity and cultural relevance. Indeed, the story of social mobilization and protest is as much one of getting “your own people” on your side as it is of convincing potential opponents to see things your way. In those spaces of mass mobilization, tools like music and other cultural products play a key role in sharing discursive ideas about how to understand an emerging issue area (LeVine, 2015; Olaniyan, 2001; Vershbow, 2010).

The effect of framing and discourses on governance is evident in the way that different groups debate the meaning of nature. After global protests in the 1980s against deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon exposed the extent to which the World Bank was financing projects that expropriated land from Indigenous people, the international society committed to creating mechanisms for greater participation. For example, the World Bank adopted the Indigenous People’s Policy, which required new World Bank projects to be developed only after borrowers consulted with Indigenous people. After the Rio Conference of 1992, subsequent international institutions in climate, biodiversity, and persistent organic pollutants, among others, have created various mechanisms in the three decades since to increase participation from Indigenous, First Nations, and other non-state groups.

However, although the mechanisms for access to international governance have proliferated, meaningful participation still falls short, because the dominant discourse around environmentalism is one that effectively precludes arguments advanced by Indigenous and First Nations. As Bernstein noted (2001), mainstream approaches to environmental governance, especially in the international and global arena, have been dominated by a discourse that treats the environment as a commodifiable good, which fits within a neoliberal approach to governance (see also: Fuentes-George, 2016; Khagram, 2004; Moreno-Cruz, this volume; Schlosberg & Carruthers, 2010; Vermeylen & Walker, 2011). In response, Indigenous and First Nations people have characterized several governance responses under the liberal paradigm as offering up nothing more than “false solutions,” entirely rejecting measures like carbon trading as fundamentally inequitable (Fuentes-George and Juarez-Serna, forthcoming). Perhaps ironically, this has meant that in certain arenas, Indigenous people were at the forefront of opposing mechanisms that dominant society understood as “environmentally friendly.”

Consider too, campaigns against REDD+ by Indigenous people in the Americas. As described in Chapter 5 of Between Preservation and Exploitation (Fuentes-George, 2016), in 2010, the government of California entered into an agreement with the government of Chiapas (as well as the government of Acre in Brazil) to implement a REDD+ program to offset California’s carbon emissions by promoting “the restoration and reforestation of degraded lands and forests, and through improved forest management practices.” As a jurisdictional program, Chiapas would generate carbon credits through statewide efforts, including changes in land use policies and financial incentives to save forests that could then be sold to California. The state government of Chiapas then included the REDD+ efforts in its 2013–2018 developmental plan for the state, pledging to adjust its legal land management framework in order to address climate change, economic growth, and the quality of life in marginalized (largely Indigenous) communities.

However, despite the hopeful statements from the Chiapaneco government and the state of California, communities within Chiapas, who were otherwise in favor of land conservation, treated the proposed REDD+ program with skepticism, if not outright hostility. Local communities argued that the pro- posed REDD+ projects would replace traditional agricultural practices with tree husbandry practices designed by outsiders, for the benefit of outsiders. Further, Indigenous activists and community-based organizations (among them Zapatistas and Friends of the Earth–Mexico) stated in a 2013 letter to California Governor Brown, that managing the forests as tradable carbon sinks erased Indigenous land use traditions in a program designed to alleviate California’s responsibility to curb its own emissions.

As another example, in Arizona in 2002, the city of Flagstaff contracted with Arizona Snowbowl to use recycled wastewater on the San Francisco Peaks to create artificial snow. The Hopi nation attempted to block the project, arguing that the use of recycled wastewater (including water that came from mortuaries) would, among other things, contaminate the sacred nature of the Peaks, by bringing the water of death to a sacred place of life. Between 2010 and 2018, the Hopi First Nation and allies conducted protests against AZ Snowbowl, holding drumming circles (some of which were attacked by opponents to First Nations rights) to argue that the Peaks should be managed as sacred sites, rather than commodifiable property. Although the Court of Appeals initially sided with the Hopi, the State Supreme Court of Arizona reversed the decision in 2018, arguing that public land belonged to the sovereign government of the United States and not the First Nations, and that to public land of “religious, cultural, or emotional significance … is not special injury.” As Schlosberg and Carruthers (2010) observed, the argument that First Nations can participate in a governance system that does not recognize their worldview does not hold. In other words, even if Indigenous people are present during the decision-making process over natural resources, for nations like the Hopi, the idea of reducing nature to an economic commodity is not one that can allow for full Indigenous participation, as it fundamentally erases their understanding of what nature is (Fuentes-George and Juarez-Serna, forthcoming).

However, Indigenous, First Nations, and other groups have clearly not abandoned activism. More importantly, Indigenous and First Nations groups have continued to challenge the dominant frameworks of understanding nature that shape international environmental governance. The difference between the hegemonic neoliberal approach to environmental management and the one advanced by Indigenous and First Nations groups critical of this hegemony is visible in cultural depictions of nature. These can be found in songs and musical performances; but critically, also in poetry, graffiti, and dance.

In making this argument, there are some crucial observations to keep in mind. First, the argument that Indigenous and First Nations have an understanding of the environment that is culturally grounded should not be taken as a statement that the hegemonic, neoliberal approach to environmental management is culturally unbound. In the same way that Indigenous understandings of the environment are shaped by culturally derived norms, frames, and metaphors, so too are hegemonic approaches. The only difference is that, by definition, cultural hegemony is normalized in such a way that the frames, biases, and metaphors that undergird it have been normalized and interpreted as the default. For example, studies of climate governance, among other things, have shown that factors that shape governance, including the calculation of risk and the assessment of value, are affected by cultural and social norms particular to Western liberalism (Anshelm & Hansson, 2014; Bernstein, 2001; Fuentes-George, 2017; see also Chapter 6 by Jinnah and Moreno-Cruz in this volume). As indicated above, when different narratives around an issue emerge, different policies can become more normatively appropriate, and thus more likely to be adopted by stakeholders. This is important to underline, as the idea that “culture shapes knowledge” is culturally derived is used to dismiss the knowledge base of the subaltern, particularly as the hegemony remains unaware of the effect of its culture on its knowledge base (Solnit, 2019).

Second, music and other cultural products matter not just because they can illustrate the norms and narratives underlining a particular understanding of the natural world. There is a reason that music has been a central part of protest movements and in struggles over environmental justice, civil rights, anti-Apartheid movements, and democracy in places like Chile, Canada, South Africa, Jamaica, Nigeria, and the United States. Music moves people. The public performance of song, when done in unison within a crowd, can function in a powerful way to create a shared identity and common purpose. Further, when the sonic elements of music are accompanied by dance or graffiti, music can be used to claim physical space for the subaltern, even if only temporarily (LeVine, 2015; Mahon, 2014). As Clayton Thomas-Müller, environmental activist from the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, stated: “the drums are always there” (Fuentes-George, unpublished interview).

This is not to say that all kinds of narrative shifts are necessarily consonant with environmental justice. One of the most widely studied cases of narrative shift involving music and the environment was the “Save the Whales” campaign of the 1970s and 1980s. There, activists – primarily from Western environmental nongovernmental organizations like Greenpeace – drove a global campaign to ban the hunting of whales by arguing that whales were an intrinsically valuable species, and not commercial products for use in large-scale industry. As part of the campaign, activists recorded whale sounds, and compiled them into albums of “whale song,” to underline the idea that, by virtue of producing music, whales were intelligent, cultured, and artistic in ways similar to humans.

In many ways the campaign was a success. The moratorium was adopted. On the other hand, moral opposition to whaling among primarily white, middle- and upper-income environmentalists has led to decades of restrictions on Indigenous populations, some of whom (like the Makah Nation in Washington state) have been unable to engage in culturally significant whaling practices due to state enforcement of this narrative shift. Nevertheless, the shift in the public’s perception of whales from a commodifiable industrial resource to an intrinsically valuable, intelligent, and human-like species was made possible by the deployment and cultural acceptance of particular norms (Kalland, 1993, 2009). Music, like any other part of culture that affects perception, matters.

PROJECT INSTRUCTIONS

Depending on the size of the class, presentations could be done as individual projects, or as group projects of two or more students. In order to avoid free-riding or problems of coordination, it is not recommended that groups be larger than four, but that is at the discretion of the professor.

Identify the Cultural Product to Investigate

For the first step, the student(s) should find a cultural product – music, graffiti, dance, or other – that is produced to respond to an environmental issue-area. This can be done through various online searches. For example, a YouTube search conducted in July 2021 with the terms “First Nations drumming tar sands” led to a video filmed by Paula Kirman and Radical Citizen Media of a 2008 drumming circle near Fort Chipewyan in Alberta, Canada (YouTube, 2008). In the video, members of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations community are holding a rally to protest the expansion of the tar sands. Without giving too much away, students are encouraged to consider not just music or cultural artifacts produced by First Nations in the Americas, but also music, art, and other cultural products from other countries, and produced by other peoples. These could include, for example, the Black Civil Rights movement, which also has produced environmentally relevant music. Also, these do not need to be contemporary songs/movements. The struggle among different populations over environmental management, natural resources, and environmental justice is very old, and can be traced at least back to the spread of settler-colonialism, and the formation of the nation-state.

In order to help students in their search, the instructor may set guidelines around the research topic. For example, the material could be organized such that one group of respective student(s) may be required to investigate movements and culture around deforestation and land rights in the Amazon, another to investigate oil pipeline protests in Indigenous territory in the Americas, another to investigate anti-whaling movements, and so on.

Describe its relevance to environmental management and environmental justice movements
Second, the student(s) will need to analyze the song/performance/cultural product and explain how it engages with environmentalism. What are the metaphors/images used by the artist/performer during the performance/protest/march? How does the piece talk about the relationship between people and the land? How does it engage with political power and control over natural resources? Is/was it being used in a march, or campaign?

Explain the sociopolitical power structure that gives the song and movement context
Third, the student(s) will need to place the song/performance/art in its political context. What is the relationship between sociopolitical power, policy, and the environmental rights of the subaltern population from which the music is drawn? What are the specific policies/practices in place with which the song/ cultural product engages? What are the specific critiques raised by the music/ other cultural product about dominant approaches to managing the natural environment? What are the changes desired by the associated social movement or group? How does the narrative of nature and the environment differ from dominant discourses?

Collate information in a clear presentation

The student(s) should clearly communicate not just the meaning of the song, but also specifically the way in which it engages with power, using the guiding questions from the steps listed above.

Depending on the size of the class, and the amount of time allotted to each section, this may vary. In my experience, when done as a comparative politics course, what has worked has been to divide the presentations up according to theme and give the presenting student(s) 10–15 minutes in class to present their material. However, this has worked well for classes of longer durations, which in my experience would be one hour 15 minutes to two hours. For larger classes, or classes with shorter durations, I have either blocked off a week specifically for presentations, or asked students/student groups to record their presentations on video/podcast and make them available to me electronically. This is flexible, and should be dictated by the logistics of the course.

In order to respect the fact that these cultural products are created for an audience, the presentation should include a snippet of the actual product. This could include an excerpt of the song or performance (no more than two minutes) or a recitation of the poem, or other kind of performance when possible.

ADDRESSING COMMON CHALLENGES

There are a variety of challenges likely to emerge in these projects. It is not always easy to find the meaning behind a song or performance. First, song lyrics may be drawn from a cultural context or written in a language not familiar to the student; a challenge that is likely to be exacerbated by the fact that students are encouraged to seek out protest movements in other countries. For example, I have had students unfamiliar with hip hop who have completely misunderstood the ways in which artists like Yasiin Bey or stic.man use metaphor, sarcasm, and Afro-American cultural signifiers to communicate. Cultural barriers can become even more difficult when students are trying to communicate meanings across different languages – particularly, but not exclusively, translations of Indigenous languages.

Second, the meaning of any song is often fluid. For example, in First Nations protests against the Tar Sands in Canada, some of the songs chanted in the drum circles predate the machinery of Tar Sands extraction, and some performances do not have lyrics at all. In some cases, as occurred with the nueva canción movement in Chile, a song can become a protest song because the choice of instrumentation is understood as critiquing hegemonic power. Consequently, to understand the way in which a piece of music or performance engages with an emerging political crisis often requires looking beyond what is discernible through a textual analysis of the lyrics. Students will need to do a little research into the performers/musicians or other people within the community to understand how the song is understood as part of a protest movement. These could include finding interviews with the performers, or additional ethnographic scholarship on the musical form in question.

At the same time, it is important that students also reflect on the way they hear and understand protest art. It is not clear that the meaning of a song is entirely determined by the intentions of the writer/performer. Bruce Springsteen famously wrote “Born in the USA” as a protest against jingoistic nationalism and military adventurism. However, between 1984 and 2020, several US presidential candidates used his song in their campaigns, despite having platforms that were fundamentally opposed to the message of the song as conveyed in the lyrics. Interestingly, in videos of these rallies, the supporters of the presidential candidates can be heard singing along with the chorus, initially intended to be sardonic, but in the context of the performance serving to mobilize and amplify the antithesis of the initial intent. It is therefore important to highlight to students that their subjective response to the songs of choice, and their initial reaction, can and perhaps should be a part of the analysis as well. Audience interpretation matters in how a song is understood, and students should not feel paralyzed by the need to find a singular “true” meaning behind a piece of protest art.

REFLECTIONS ON EQUITY IN THE CLASSROOM

Several equity issues can arise in this project. Although colleges and universities are no longer segregated by race and class in the way that they historically have been, they still overrepresent upper-income and white populations.

Conversely, this project engages with the voices of marginalized people as they protest systems of injustice. Due to the function of sociopolitical power, these will tend to be people in Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, and of comparatively lower income than the typical college/university student. This is particularly apparent when studying First Nations’ environmental justice protest movements. Consequently, there will likely be a disjuncture between the lived experience of much of the classroom, and the experience of the people whose movements are being discussed within it. This will understandably vary across classroom and institution.

With this in mind, it is important to be aware of the possibility of reductive explanations about the people involved in protest movements. This can be illustrated by the continued appearance of the “noble savage” myth in discussions of Indigenous engagement with environmental protest. As indicated throughout, protest movements use culturally relevant frames to makes sense of emerging political crises. These frames (and their attendant metaphors, symbols, and rationales for action) can be seen in the cultural products that are used in generating mobilization around these crises. However, while mobilizational frames are culturally relevant, they (1) are chosen strategically; (2) balance between appeals to in-group supporters and out-group audiences; and (3) are therefore not fully representative of the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural diversity of the groups from which they are drawn.

Problematically, there is a tendency among environmentalists to portray Indigenous people and indigeneity as a monolithic and romantic, pre-modern identity that exists in harmony with the natural environment (Hames, 2007). In a normative sense, this erases important distinctions between different Indigenous groups in different political contexts, as well as making invisible the life experience of Indigenous people who do not inhabit the mythic, pre-modern lifestyle. In a practical sense, conservationist organizations that do not understand their diversity and agency have often clashed with Indigenous people, when Indigenous people have advocated for environmental management protocols or outcomes that differ from the imagined preferences of the romanticized “noble savage” (Thomas-Müller, 2021). In all cases, students and the professor should be careful to avoid taking any statement from Indigenous, Black, or other people of color as “the” perspective of the community, instead of “a” perspective drawn from the community. This need is particularly heightened if and when BIPOC students are in the class, as they often feel social pressure to “speak for” the community to which they are identified (correctly or not) as belonging.

Second, this chapter presents music and cultural narrative as a form of producing and communicating sociopolitical knowledge within a community. As mentioned above, it is important to recognize that culture shapes knowledge production not only for marginalized communities, but also for the dominant society. The fact that marginalized communities use alternate forms of knowledge production, such as songs and graffiti, that are consciously informed by cultural narratives does not mean that hegemonic knowledge production exists free of value judgment or cultural influence. Without acknowledging the ways in which hegemonic cultural beliefs shape the production of mainstream environmental science (Carey et al., 2016), there is a risk that students might come away from this project thinking that marginalized people only sing about the environment, while others do the real work. This, of course, is not the case.

While these challenges may be unavoidable, one way in which students and professors may avoid some of the pitfalls of studying movements of marginalized people from the perspectives of academic institutions is by recognizing their own positionality. Students and the professor are encouraged to reflect on how their identity and background shape their response to the song/graffiti/ cultural product and acknowledge that in some way during the project. How do you think your background and identity affect your encounter with this music/culture? Do you think you are the primary audience? Were the cultural elements in the song/narrative (including styles of instrumentation and language) chosen to comfort, alienate, antagonize, or rally people of a similar background to you? By bringing this to the foreground, it should be clear that the researcher/student is not simply describing politics and mobilization from the mythical agenda-free perspective of the neutral observer, but also inhabiting a space as both subject and agent of politics.

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