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Feeling the Crux of Justice

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Justice and mobility are intertwined elements of our civilization and affect all of us significantly. Through two blog posts, Bachelor’s students of Erasmus University Rotterdam Kaitlan Adams, Cassandra Kamberi and Yannis Diakantonis discuss affective justice and mobility, drawing on their individual experiences and perceptions. This post reflects on their diverse understandings of what justice is and, most importantly, how it feels like.

Image by Steve Johnson/Pexels

Justice is not really about holy scriptures, legal artifacts, or the dialogues of a “Suits” episode. As Kamari Maxine Clarke points out in her concept of ‘affective justice’, developed in her 2019 book Affective Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Pan-Africanist Pushback, it is “affective” and hugely influenced by our emotions. Exactly because justice is so inextricably linked to personal emotions, it automatically becomes subjective and, hence, potentially divergent between individuals. That is why a universal definition of justice is hard to come by, despite the proliferation of “best” strategies to achieve it. The feeling of justice is very difficult to delineate; it feels like anger, it feels like control, it feels like a type of equity. All at the same time.

‘We perceive justice to be correlated with what we feel is right.’ In a general sense, we define justice as the fair and impartial treatment of others. On an emotional level, justice feels like a mixture of empathy and anger. On one hand, having empathy for both those who have been wronged and those inflicting injustice is what is needed to achieve equitable outcomes. Empathy means understanding and sharing the feelings of others. On the other hand, anger is also connected to justice because where empathy is lacking, we feel anger. We felt anger and a lack of justice when one of us experienced sexual harassment. We felt a lack of empathy from the people who did this. We felt anger at societal expectations that have normalized these behaviours. Understanding justice in its affective dimension highlights that justice could be achieved; if women’s feelings were actualized and if the emotional root cause of toxic masculine behaviours was acknowledged. For justice to be achieved, practices that cater to emotional causes and consequences must be mobilized.

‘For us, justice goes hand in hand with a feeling of control.’ Namely, control over the most fundamental aspects of our lives, as well as control over the process of restoring the system of values and laws we have all collectively agreed upon. In other words, justice feels like confidence that one’s basic rights and dignity will be respected (Cremer & Bos, 2007). Upon coming to the Netherlands for his studies, Yannis wanted to join the football club of our university. The problem? All the other players and coaches were a group of Dutch friends who had known each other for years. Nevertheless, they immediately tried to break down any linguistic or national barriers that might have existed between them. Hence, Yannis felt that justice was being done to his body, his ambitions, and his social interactions while playing the sport that he had loved ever since he was a little child.

‘After quite some thought, we realized that our sense of justice is based on a feeling of life-value equity.’ We believe there are some “fundamental” truths that when violated, lead to injustice. The biggest fundamental truth for us is that all life is equal in value. For example, it feels utterly unjust that some people in the world live in wealth and luxury, while at the same time, others live in poverty and suffering. The fact that our contemporary economies and systems of production perpetuate this situation (making this gap even bigger whilst exploiting people), makes a statement about how and whose lives we value most. Such an unjust way of doing things feels disturbing, leading us to the conclusion that we must dedicate our lives toward somehow lessening this inequitable way of life. Otherwise, we would once again be part of a huge injustice without truly contesting it.

‘Reflecting on how to restore justice,’ we  recognize that its various perceptions, as well as the numerous inherent differences between individuals, can present a challenge when trying to create a universally applicable definition. This tension is equally tangible in the extensive Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on justice (Miller, 2021). Since justice is so important, yet feels so different to each of us, perhaps the first important action we can take is to understand each other. Talking with our neighbours about what injustice feels to them could be a small first step. Perhaps the feeling of control can be obtained through dialogue and expression; anger about injustice can be resolved when it is no longer suppressed; equity in the value of life could be achieved through radical reforms of our socioeconomic systems. Through building communities that thrive on mutual understanding and creating institutions that reflect the diversity of emotional responses to justice, we could develop a more inclusive and holistic reality of a just world—one that reflects a multitude of lenses.

Bibliography

Clarke, K. M. (2019). “Affective Justice: The Racialized Imaginaries of International Justice.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 244–267, https://doi.org/10.1111/plar.12307.

De Cremer, D. and K. van den Bos (2007). “Justice and Feelings: Toward a New Era in Justice Research.” Social Justice Research, vol. 20, no. 1, Mar. 2007, pp. 1–9, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-007-0031-2.

Johnson. http://www.pexels.com/photo/blue-yellow-and-orange-canvas-painting-2362791/.

Miller, D. (2017). “Justice.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 26 June 2017, plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/.

Read their first article on Justice and Mobility.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Kaitlan Adams is a third year Bachelor’s student in Erasmus University College. Majoring in Political Science and International Relations, with a double-minor in International Human Rights Law, as well as Arts, Culture, and Society, Kaitlan has interests in working with NGOs that fight for human-rights and has a background in teaching English to underprivileged Youth.

Cassandra Kamberi is a third year bachelor student majoring in Psychology and Philosophy at EUR. She is a board member of Positive Impact Society Erasmus (PISE), aiming to help students identify how they can have the most positive impact they can with their career and resources. Some of her projects include running a committee alongside other students for Improving Institutional Decision Making,  and writing her philosophy thesis on the mental health crisis. Perhaps her biggest interest lies in understanding what drives suffering in human beings even when all their basic needs are met, and how we can potentially alleviate this suffering through both cultural reform and individual practices.

Yannis Diakantonis is a third year Bachelor’s student and Research Assistant in Erasmus University Rotterdam. Some of his current research projects relate to candidate selection and electoral systems in the context of developing countries. He has worked in several NGOs which, among others, promote Climate Neutrality, Green Finance and Sustainable Digitalization.

 

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Creative Development | Moving national narratives: artistic expressions of flight, refuge and belonging by Roy Huijsmans

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National historiography often takes the form of a single story propagated by those in power, thereby muting alternative experiences of ordinary citizens of these celebrated events. In Laos, the country’s National Day coincided with an international dance festival, showing different ways of recounting histories. In this blogpost Roy Huijsmans suggests that in the creative realm and performing arts we may find articulations of the subjugated narratives of the collective memory of the nation.

When visiting the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) late November 2019 for the Fang Maekhong International Dance Festival I found myself also witnessing the preparations for the celebration of the 44th Lao National Day. Government buildings were being adorned with freshly purchased national flags, always flanked by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party flag in bright red and sporting the familiar hammer and sickle in yellow. There were the inevitable banners, too, carrying slogans celebrating the nation and the progress made under the leadership of the communist Lao People’s Revolutionary Party.

In Lao historiography, the establishment of the Lao PDR is presented as the logical endpoint of a long struggle by the Lao peoples against imperial forces – first French colonial rule, then Lao Royalist Governments backed by the United States of America as part of its broader stakes in the Second Indochinese War. Around each national day (2 December), the various Lao newspapers and television stations contribute their bit to the reproduction of the national narrative, with specials about revolutionary heroes, heroic battles, and by detailing the development progress made under revolutionary rule. The same narrative is presented in school text books, musea, and in public speeches by officials.

All this is not particular to the Lao PDR. National historiography often takes the form of a single story told from the vantage point of the victors. Thereby it silences the many different experiences that were generated by these very same historical events (Evans 1998). For example, the narrative of a united revolutionary struggle against foreign powers and influence hides the many internal conflicts and civil war that were also part of the making of the Lao PDR.

A key element missing from the Lao narrative is the fate of the about 10 per cent of the then population that left the country throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. They left because they found themselves on the wrong side of history or simply escaped the impoverishment and repressive political climate characterising the infant years of the Lao PDR.

Virtually everyone in the today’s Lao PDR knows someone who has fled the country. Stories of flight, refuge, and increasingly also about return are told, yet often in private. These are the stories of uncles and aunts now living in France, the USA, or Australia. These stories have found no place in school textbooks or in any of the official commemorations around the Lao national day. Yet these stories matter because these, too, are a part of the collective memory of the nation.

The arts: subtle propositions going beyond the national narrative

Artistic initiatives are turning the tide to make the voices of migrants and refugees heard, however. Parallel to the preparations for the Lao National Day celebration, Vientiane also witnessed the 10th edition of the Fang Mae Khong International Dance Festival. The French-Lao dancer Thô Anothaï was part of the impressive line-up comprising Lao national and international dancers. In his contemporary dance titled Mekong, Thô enacted his personal experience of fleeing Laos at a young age. Through his dance, by means of movements rooted in hip-hop and contemporary dance, he represented memories of his flight, such as a boats man paddling him across the Mekong River in the deep of the night.

As Thô took the stage, the first lines of a Lao traditional song were played. Soon the music gave way to soundbites of women’s voices in French, Lao, and the Vietnamese language that graphically described moments in the experience of flight and refuge. The song accentuated Thô’s personal account as a Lao story; the women’s voices referenced the broader context of the aftermath of the Second Indochinese War in which we must understand Thô’s experience. Through his performance Thô invited the audience to accompany him in his journey across the Mekong River, recalling his childhood experience of flight expressed through the serene and stunning beauty of his dance.

The themes of flight, refuge and identity are also central to Nith Lacroix’s 2007 documentary film titled Pierre & Pierrot. The film focuses on twin brothers of a French father and a Lao mother who were separated at a young age in their flight across the Mekong River into Thailand.

Thô Anothaï and Nith Lacroix’s artistic work are first and foremost works of art. Yet, by staging their work for audiences in the Lao PDR, the art may become more than just that. For more inclusive celebrations of national events, it is important to recognise the suffering and pain that is also part of the collective memory of the nation.

References
Evans, G. (1998). The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books.

This article is part of a series on Creative Development. Read more articles of this series here.

Color 2 Roy Huijsmans

About the author:

Roy Huijsmans is a teacher/researcher at the ISS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creative Development | “Do I exist”? Miktivism for Land Rights and Identity in Ethiopia by Tatek Abebe

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Miktivism—the use of music for the purposes of activism and social change—has become a popular strategy of resistance among Ethiopian youth. I use the term miktivism to refer to the practice of employing music to advance causes of social justice by youth who do not claim to be activists, at least not openly. This blog explores an example of miktivism: young musicians deploying what they regard as their talents and resource—music and microphone—to highlight questions of land and identity in the Oromia region, Ethiopia.

Land grabbing in the Oromia region  

The Oromia region is the largest of Ethiopia’s nine federal regions. Its inhabitants, the ethnic Oromo people, account for about 35% of the country’s population. Oromo people inhabit lands surrounding Addis Ababa and also in west, central, and south Ethiopia. Due to its proximity to Addis Ababa, the Oromia region has been subjected to continuous encroachment by industrial and real estate developments driven by Ethiopian and international investors and suffered from land grabbing driven by foreign agri-investments (e.g. Lavers 2012).

Maalan Jira? / Do I exist?

The struggle to retain agricultural land has been at the core of widespread youth protests in the Oromo region during the period 2015-2018. Music plays a key role in these protests and the song Maalan Jira by Oromo artist Hacaaluu Hundeessaa serves as a prime example.

Maalan Jira is a social-political song disguised by love lyrics in Affan Oromo language. The song was released in 2015, at the beginning phase of the youth protests and has had close to 6 million views on the YouTube.

Land grab as an existential threat

Maalan jiraa, maalan, jiraa, maalan jiraa, Yaa Gaa-laa-nee…
Maalan jiraa maalan, caccabsee na nyaatee jiraa
Ani hin jiruu… Ani hin jiruu, Ani hin jiruu… Yaa Ga-laa-ne, Ani hin jiruu Kukkutee na nyaate xurri

Do I exist Galaane? No Galaane I do not exist; they chopped and ate my liver [vital organs].
What is left of me Galaane? They broke up my bones and ate them.

Koo Galaanee tiyyaa, Sululta loon hin tiksuu darabaatti galchiisa, 

My dear Galaane, Sululta cannot let the cattle to graze freely; they have to fence them.

 The lyrics present contemporary land grabs as an existential threat. This is done by drawing an analogy between the human body/anatomy and land as a vital means of existence for the rural population. Hacaalu Hundessa repeatedly expresses that his ‘bones are broken up’, bit by bit, in order to exemplify how agricultural land is slowly becoming a scarce resource for farmers. Phrases like ‘vital organs chopped away’ and ‘eaten up’ represent first of all the grabbing and selling of rural land to investors. These existential metaphors also resonate with one of the most popular chants during the protests: ‘lafti keenya lafee keenya’ (‘our land is our bone’). Secondly, the music video and the lyrics refer to the need to fence cattle because of declining open pastures. Oromo people have a long tradition of letting their cattle unfettered in the field. Cattle is brought home only when they are to be milked or slaughtered. This is just one example of illustrating intensified land grab in the name of development, experienced by local population not as a mere change in livelihoods, but as a compromise to what it means to be Oromo.

Historical repetition of grabbing of Oromo lands

Laal Galoo-too, Gullalleen kan Tufaa, gaara Abbichuu turii, Galaan Finfinnee..see.
Laal Galoo-too, Silaa akka jaalalaa Laal Galoo-too, wal irraa hin fagaannuu Laal Galoo-too, Jarraa nu fageessee.

Look my Galoo, Gullallee belonged to Tufaa, Abbichuu was on the hills, Galaan farmed Finfinnee.
We, the lovers, should have never been separated, but those people separated us.

The main protagonist in the song is a woman named Gelaanee, who is affectionately referred to as ‘Galoo’. Gelaanee also refers to a queen of one of the Oromo clans which was conquered by Emperor Menellik II during his expansion in the 20th century. Following this conquest and resembling contemporary developments, queen Gelaanee’s land became incorporated into Ethiopia’s capital.

Malaan Jira recounts the violent expansion of Finfinnee into Addis Ababa through the gradual pushing away of indigenous Oromo clans. The song laments how—through land grabs—people are losing not just their land but also their rural mode of life. It refers to localities like Gullelle, Abbichuu, Galaan and, Sululta etc; places where Oromo clans lived for generations. These areas are now either part of Addis Ababa or suggested for incorporation into Addis Ababa’s Integrated Development Plan. This development plan, locally known as the master killer plan, is the main trigger for the ‘Ethiopian Spring’.

‘Separation of lovers’

Diiganii gaara sanaa, Gaara diigamuu hin-mallee,
Nu baasaan addaan baanee, nuu addaan bahuu hin-mallee. 
Seeqanii sesseeqanii, kan gar gar nu baasan jaraa—yii
 
They dug that hill, a hill that should never have been dug/destroyed.
They separated us, the people who should never have been separated.
Little by little, they cut us apart [alienated us].

Maalan Jira effectively mobilizes a number of metaphors to express social critique in a guarded manner. For example, the phrase ‘Separation of lovers’ refers to the growing rift between Oromia region and Finfinnee brought about by the allocation of its land for the development of Addis Ababa. The metaphor also stands for the ethnic-based federalism pursued by the Ethiopian government, amplifying differences rather than shared interests. Both the song and music video tell stories of several generations of farmers who went on to cultivate vast areas of land, yet the present generation does not even have a ‘ground to sleep on.’ The music video alludes to systemic dispossession, i.e. the process of political economy altering the material grounds of life as well as the ways in which people struggle for control of social reproduction.

Maalan Jira is a prime example of the miktivism embraced by Oromo youth. It shows how youth mobilize historical references and powerful metaphors, describing the loss of identity, way of life, livelihoods and lands of Oromo people. Yet, by using ‘Galoo’ they can just claim it is an innocent love song. This strategy enables youth to elude the risks engendered by voicing political issues openly.

Reference
Lavers, T. (2012). ‘Land grab’ as development strategy? The political economy of agricultural investment in Ethiopia. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 39 (1), 105-132.

This article is part of a series on Creative Development.

About the author:

Tatek AbebeTatek Abebe is a professor at the Norwegian University of Sciences and Technology (NTNU) where he convenes the MPhil in childhood studies. His current research focuses on generational implications of development/poverty with an emphasis on young people’s lives and transitions into adulthood. He conducts ethnographic and participatory fieldwork in diverse African contexts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creative Development | Art and Knowledge Production: Sense, The Senses and the Struggle for Control by Aoileann Ní Mhurchú and Cathy Wilcock

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What is the relationship between art and knowledge production? Does art only contribute to the aesthetics or does it have any role to play in production and even in control of knowledge? This article explores these questions through an example of ‘immigration’. It is a version of the presentation given by Aoileann Ní Mhurchú at the recent ISS workshop ‘Moving Methods’, funded jointly by the CI and D&I groups.   

Across the social sciences, the study of ‘art’ is being understood broadly as the study of ‘creative endeavour’ (Danchev and Lisle 2009: 776).  Here, art is understood not only as finished products such as paintings or novels, but as ‘activities that produce aesthetic responses, critiques and affirmations’ Rosario-Ramos et al (2017: 221). This moves our focus beyond ‘high art’ and towards a variety of cultural processes such as graffiti, rap music, cartoons, and film.  Furthermore, it moves us beyond the intentions of the artist as the source of meaning, and it opens up the idea that art’s relationship to knowledge production is rooted in its activation of responses, critiques and affirmations.

Much work has already shown how popular culture can provide frames of reference about cultures and people which influence how they are ‘known’. For example, by orientalizing the colonized as victims, exotic and/or to be feared (Semmerling 2006).

In relation to the topic of immigration, there has been rich discussion around representations of the ‘good verses the bad immigrant’. In the dystopian video game ‘Papers Please’, the player is asked to assess the claims of immigrants as ‘dubious or genuine’ based on their collection of paperwork. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QP5X6fcukM&frags=pl%2Cwn An archetypal ‘immigrant’ identity has been shaped by such artistic products, which are themselves emergent responses to the same cultural milieu to which they contribute.

What has also been explored is how popular culture can challenge dominant ways of knowing the world (Magallanes-Blanco 2015). For example, on immigration, art works such as the murals along the USA-Mexico border by Mexican artist Lalo Cota have been praised for directly challenging the harmful dominant narrative of the ‘good/bad migrant dichotomy’. In a darkly humorous tone, his surrealist and satirical works play with the notion of ‘illegal alien’ by depicting sombreros in the shape of UFOs.

Pic 1

Image by Lynn Trimble

Therefore, art is about power relations: it raises questions about dominance and resistance and, is linked to struggles over control of knowledge between the margins and the centres.

Linking art to struggles over knowledge is a useful but broad endeavor. Ranciére helps narrow this down by theorizing this struggle by way of the senses. Ranciére associates art with a process of struggle over knowledge through ‘determin[ing] the relationship between seeing, hearing, doing, making and thinking’ (Ranciére 2013). Ranciére points to the role of art in engaging the senses to invoke visibility, audibility, saying ability, thinkability, do-ability of certain ideas/possibilities over and in contrast to others. The result is that art is posited as political, rather than something which can merely comment on politics.

To explain: the political nature of, for example, F.Lotus – Ai Weiwei’s installation of 1,005 life jackets floating in the pond of the Belevedere museum in Vienna – can be understood not only for its commentary on the migration crisis, but for the ideas and identities that are made visible and audible when they act on the senses of the audience.

Pic 2.jpg

As such, we need to situate such arguments within post and de/colonial literature. This has a long history of exploring how knowledge ‘has been grounded in the suppression of sensing and the body’ (Mignolo 2011b: 275; hooks 1989). In doing so, it allows us to think about the active suppression of ways of being linked to the senses under modernity (which is seen as the other side of coloniality rather than its opposite).

To go back to our example of ‘Papers Please’, a post/decolonial angle propels us to delve deeper and to ask how and in whose interests was the knowledge of the ‘good/bad immigrant’ produced in the first place?

Such literature helps us to look beyond art as a struggle over senses which can merely ‘add to’ our existing knowledge of social sciences. Instead, it draws attention to harder epistemological questions about the nature of the ‘academy’ and ‘reality’ itself. For example, it points to how a focus on the senses (re)shapes what is known as ‘creativity’ by linking this to vulnerability and the margins (Ní Mhurchú, 2016).  Additionally, it forces us to (re)evaluate as a colonial move (Mignolo 2003) the separating out of art as interpretive knowledge (grounded necessarily in the humanities) from questions about practical societal knowledge (grounded necessarily in the social sciences).

The ideas sketched here gesture towards a conceptual framework to approach the analysis of art for knowledge-production in the social sciences. Situating Ranciere’s sensory approach within the post/decoloniality literature, allows us to recognize art as a struggle for control over knowledge through the senses. While doing so, we are urged to recognize that knowledge-producing institutions are part of, and not above or outside of, those struggles.

On 22 May 2019, ISS Associate Professor of Childhood & Youth Studies Roy Huijsmans along side Assistant Professor Katarzyna Grabska and Academic Researcher Cathy Wilcock will hold a seminar regarding their joint research on ‘Migration and Musical Mobilities’. Find more information here. 

This article is part of a series on Creative Development.

About the authors:

Aioleann Ni MuruchuAoileann Ní Mhurchú is a lecturer in International Politics at the University of Manchester. Her research interests lie in the areas of critical citizenship studies, international migration, sovereignty and subjectivity, and theories of time and space. She recognises the limits of existing frameworks for understanding experiences of political resistance and participation from positions of marginality or ambiguity. And therefore engages with aesthetic forms of meaning and representation in literature and vernacular music and language.

CW bw

Cathy Wilcock is a postdoctoral researcher at the ISS, with a background in critical development studies. In her role at ISS, she is continuing her work on political belonging in the context of forced migration. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creative Development | Rap Against Dictatorship: Thai lessons in history, politics, and belonging by Roy Huijsmans

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On December 30th, 2018, when the end-of-year music charts were nearing their annual climax, music history was made in Thailand: the music video of Thai collective Rap Against Dictatorship called Prathet Ku Mi ([What] My Country’s Got) reached 50 million views on YouTube. This blog post explains that appreciating rap as social critique requires going beyond lyrics to contextualise its multiple and at times subtle messages and references.

Thailand has a long history of military coups.[1] The most recent one took place on May 22nd, 2014. Since then, Thailand has been ruled by the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), formed by the military. Various observers have expressed concern about the human rights situation in Thailand under the NCPO. In 2018, Freedom House cautioned that the government ‘has exercised unchecked powers granted by the constitution to impose extensive restrictions on civil and political rights, and to suppress dissent’.[2] Next to rewriting the constitution, the NCPO has used various legal instruments to supress critical voices, including a new Computer Crime Act and restrictions on political gatherings.[3]

Within this context, academic conferences are monitored, too. Recently, charges were pressed against Thai academics who protested this at the 2017 International Conference on Thai Studies (Chiang Mai) by holding up handwritten Thai language signs declaring that ‘an academic forum is not a military camp’. This peaceful protest was deemed violating Order No.3/2015 that forbids political gatherings of five people or more.[4]

Rap as critique

The country free of corruption which doesn’t even investigate on it,
The country whose prime minister’s watch is made of corpses
The country whose parliament is the playground of its soldiers,
The country in which a constitution is written so that its army’s paws can trample all over it,
…

This is my country, this is my country.[5]

Holding up some handwritten signs at an academic conference seems gentle protest compared to the language used in Prathet Ku Mi. It thus came as no surprise that within days of its YouTube release (October 22nd, 2018), the Thai newspaper The Nation reported that ‘police had already been ordered to identify the rappers and explore the option of pressing charges’.[6] The day after, The Nation continued reporting on the song, stating that it ‘went to the top of Thailand’s iTunes download list’ and had already attracted millions of viewers.[7] Possibly because it went viral, to date no actual charges have been pressed against the rappers.

The lyrics are only a small part of what makes Prathet Ku Mi such a remarkable song. James Mitchell explains on New Mandala that the real power of the song perhaps lies in the moving images of the music video.[8]

From lyrics to visuals

The music video restages an iconic image of what is known as the Thammasat massacre or the 6 October event. At 3:20 minutes into the clip a guitar solo sets in. The camera zooms in on an electric guitar in the colours of the Thai flag – the only colour scene in the music video. The next scene makes clear what the audience in the background has been cheering to: a hanging, and a young man beating the hanged body with a chair.

On 6 October 1976 Thai state and paramilitary forces violently ended a student protest at Thammasat University in Bangkok. Students protested the (invited) return to Thailand of the former military dictator Thanom Kittikachorn. Suchada Chakpisuth, a then first year student at Thammasat, recalled that the violence was triggered by a mock-hanging students staged to demand justice following an actual hanging of students by state forces. Unfortunately or deliberately, the Thai radio reported it as ‘a play lynching the Crown prince’ by communist students unleashing disproportionate countermeasures.[9]

To date, no one has ever been charged for the violence and many questions have remained unanswered. The music video returns to this moment in Thai history in a musical genre that appeals to the young. As James Mitchell argues, the music video thereby ‘accomplished what the Thai education system cannot’ because school books do not discuss this moment in Thai history in much detail.[10]

Prathet Ku Mi: a statement of belonging

With the long-delayed elections in sight (March 24th, 2019), Rap Against Dictatorship has released a timely and youthful lesson in political consciousness and citizenship. Their message is one of critique, but a deeply engaged one. This is realised by juxtaposing the listing of criticism with the phrase prathet ku mi (ประเทศกูมี).

Coupling the Thai term prathet (ประเทศ) for country with the first person pronoun ku (กู), the English translation as ‘my country’ does not do justice to the intricate meanings conveyed through this phrase. First, connecting the collective notion of prathet to the personal deviates from common expressions used by politicians such as prathet Thai (ประเทศไทย; Thailand) or prathet rao (ประเทศกเรา; our country). Next to this individual claim on a collective concept, ku is not a neutral personal pronoun. Ku is what is used informally among friends as a means to bond but also to convey anger. This intricate use of language not only fits the style of the rap genre – it also conveys a very firm sense of belonging. It is a personal statement, yet reclaiming the collective. It is informal, yet referring to the formal construct of country. It is full of anger, yet it is all but disengaging. After all these rappers suggest learning from the troubled history of ‘my country’.

Hyperlink to Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZvzvLiGUtw
[1] https://www.newmandala.org/counting-thailands-coups/
[2] https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/thailand
[3] https://asiancorrespondent.com/2016/12/understanding-thailands-revised-computer-crimes-act/
[4] https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1314859/charges-against-academics-harm-nation
[5] https://lyricstranslate.com/en/%E0%B8%9B%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B0%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%A8%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B9%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%B5-prathet-ku-mi-my-country.html
[6] http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/breakingnews/30357295
[7] http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/breakingnews/30357314
[8] https://www.newmandala.org/thailands-rap-against-dictatorship/
[9] https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/unforgettable-unrememberable-the-thammasat-massacre-in-thailand/#!
[10] https://www.newmandala.org/thailands-rap-against-dictatorship/

This article is part of a series on Creative Development. See the first article of this series here.

Image Credit: Pauliepg. The picture has been cropped.

Color 2 Roy Huijsmans

About the author:

Roy Huijsmans is a teacher/researcher at the ISS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creative Development | Migration and musical mobilities in Sudan and Laos by Roy Huijsmans, Katarzyna Grabska and Cathy Wilcock

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How are belonging, citizenship, and rights contested through creative practices such as music and dance? What role do the creative industry, international cultural institutions, and the mobilities of performing artists play in this? And what is the significance of all this for rethinking development in post-conflict settings such as Sudan and Laos? This article briefly reflects on these questions that are driving a new ISS-funded research project.

Researching development through creative practice

A new research project led by ISS researchers Katarzyna Grabska, Roy Huijsmans, and Cathy Wilcock called Creative Development: Migration and musical mobilities in Sudan and Laos seeks to investigate the intersection of migration and creative practice. The project commences in 2019 and involves qualitative, arts-based and ethnographic field research in France, Laos, Sudan, and the UK. This research will contribute to an emerging body of work studying the relations between arts, popular culture, migration, and development.

In development studies, there is some recognition of the role of popular culture in development practice, perhaps most noticeable in research on the phenomenon of ‘celebrities’ as goodwill ambassadors (e.g. David Beckham, Shakira, Angelina Jolie). In migration and refugee studies, the engagement with the arts has been more profound and has gone beyond a focus on the rich and famous, also breaking with a western-centric view of development.

A good example is the collaborative project led by Dave Lumenta at Universitas Indonesia. The project is entitled ‘Performing out of Limbo’. It is a musical/research collaboration between Oromo refugee youth from Ethiopia and musicians, students and academics from Indonesia (see a short YouTube clip here, and a write up here).

Music and dance as acts of citizenship

The project’s conceptualisation of citizenship and belonging draws on the work of Engin Isin. In the social sciences, citizenship is mostly treated as a ‘status’. In their 2008, book ‘Acts of Citizenship, Isin and Neilsen depart from such a view and approach citizenship as an act. Such a conceptualisation of citizenship enables us to rethink ‘who’ can be a citizen based on ‘collective and individual deeds that rupture socio-historical patterns’ (p13).

This approach enables viewing music and dance performances as acts of citizenship, as explored by Aoileann Ní Mhurchú in her article ‘Unfamiliar Acts of Citizenship’. Here she engages with the experiences of young migrants in Ireland and their engagement with hip hop and vernacular languages. Their practices do not fit into conventional categories of belonging based on language use, ethnicity, or nationality, and are better described as processes facilitating ‘creative hybrid refashioning of self’ (p163) through which political identities and relations of belonging are renegotiated. Although these songs, like much hip hop, come with a message, the focus on processes and effects lead us to go beyond a discursive analysis of the lyrics to ask what senses of belonging those involved in these musical practices realised through them.

Creative development and contested acts of national belonging in Laos and Sudan

This research project will build on the work of Ní Mhurchú and others through examining music and dance as acts of citizenship in post-conflict settings. With recent histories of violent internal conflict, followed by regime change Laos and Sudan offer fertile terrain for studying acts of citizenship in and through (re)emerging creative practices.

In both Laos and Sudan, questions of national belonging are delicate matters. Expressions of citizenship are not only regulated through legal practices, but also actively promoted through national education curricula and state-censored media. This indicates that citizenship in these contexts is much more than a matter of status, but also a matter of conduct, and one that comes with a strong national(ist) morality. From such a perspective, it is not difficult to see why a music video by the popular Thai national country singer Lumyai shot in the Lao tourist site of Vang Vieng stirred debate in Laos. Although the lyrics hardly refer to national belonging, other elements of the clip do. The music video is shot in a famous rural Lao location, and in her dance moves Lumyai weaves together elements from the traditional Lam Fong dance with sexually provocative moves. As such, Lumyai transgressed norms about proper (gendered) conduct on Lao soil.

Emplacement and movement in creative development

Due to recent histories of violent conflict, there are significant Lao and Sudanese diaspora, and the diaspora play an active role in the creative scene. Migration, like popular culture, is a transnational phenomenon. Moreover, culture is also transnationalised through international cultural institutions. This is evident from the work of the Institut Français in Laos and in Sudan and the Goethe Institute in Sudan. Culture has always flown, but this is particularly true in the present-day social media landscape. In addition, diaspora networks and international cultural institutions also facilitate the movement of artists and creative development. At the same time, dance and citizenship become acts of citizenship when they are emplaced—that is, when these creative expressions become meaningful in relation to more territorialised relations of belonging. Hence, the research project will pay close attention to the dynamics of mobilities and placemaking in the manifestations of creative development under study. Stay tuned!

On 5 February 2019, the ISS will host a workshop on ‘Moving methods: creative approaches to experiences of displacement, migration, social justice and belonging’.

Color 2 Roy HuijsmansRoy Huijsmans is a teacher/researcher at the ISS.

 

 

 

 

 

Kasia Grabska_

Katarzyna (Kasia) Grabska is a lecturer/researcher at the ISS and a filmmaker.’

 

 

 

CW bw

 

Cathy Wilcock is a postdoctoral researcher at the ISS, with a background in critical development studies. In her role at ISS, she is continuing her work on political belonging in the context of forced migration.