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Rethinking the Large Ensemble Paradigm: Moving Toward Epistemic Justice

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Abstract

In this paper, I center the epistemic dimensions of musics and musicking to consider the ways in which the band/orchestra/choir paradigm of music education prevalent in the U.S. and Canada may be implicated in epistemic injustice. Drawing in particular on the work of Fricker (Epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing, Oxford University Press, New York, 2007), Dotson (Hypatia 26(2):236–257, 2011), and The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice (Kidd et al., The Routledge handbook of epistemic injustice, Routledge, New York, 2017), I explore facets of epistemic injustice and apply these ideas to music education school contexts in Canada and the U.S. I further explore aspects of school music that may amount to “testimonial smothering” (Dotson 2011) and “cognitive imperialism” (Battiste in Can J Native Educ 22:16–27, 1998). Ultimately, building on existing literature on epistemic justice (Kidd et al. 2017; Fricker 2007), I theorize an epistemically just music education for school music in alignment with culturally responsive, anti-racist, and anti-colonial teaching.

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Notes

  1. Pohlhaus cites David Owen here: (Owen 2003).

  2. See http://www.ug.edu.gh/music/courses.

  3. See Chapter 5 in particular.

  4. Lind and McKoy (2016) use Gay’s (2010) edition in their work. This edition includes the first six dimensions listed here. Their subsequent edition (McKoy and Lind 2023) also elaborates only the first six dimensions.

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  1. College of Music, Michigan State University, Music Practice Building, 345 W. Circle Drive, Room 214, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Juliet Hess

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Hess, J. Rethinking the Large Ensemble Paradigm: Moving Toward Epistemic Justice. Stud Philos Educ 42, 411–429 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-023-09882-8

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