Rethinking Social Action through Music

Rethinking Social Action through Music

Author: Geoffrey Baker

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2021-04-12

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 180064129X

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How can we better understand the past, present and future of Social Action through Music (SATM)? This ground-breaking book examines the development of the Red de Escuelas de Música de Medellín (the Network of Music Schools of Medellín), a network of 27 schools founded in Colombia’s second city in 1996 as a response to its reputation as the most dangerous city on Earth. Inspired by El Sistema, the foundational Venezuelan music education program, the Red is nonetheless markedly different: its history is one of multiple reinventions and a continual search to improve its educational offering and better realise its social goals. Its internal reflections and attempts at transformation shed valuable light on the past, present, and future of SATM. Based on a year of intensive fieldwork in Colombia and written by Geoffrey Baker, the author of El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth (2014), this important volume offers fresh insights on SATM and its evolution both in scholarship and in practice. It will be of interest to a very varied readership: employees and leaders of SATM programs; music educators; funders and policy-makers; and students and scholars of SATM, music education, ethnomusicology, and other related fields.


A Theory of Social Action

A Theory of Social Action

Author: R. Tuomela

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 1984-09-30

Total Pages: 554

ISBN-13: 9789027717030

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It is somewhat surprising to find out how little serious theorizing there is in philosophy (and in social psychology as well as sociology) on the nature of social actions or joint act. hons in the sense of actions performed together by several agents. Actions performed by single agents have been extensively discussed both in philosophy and in psycho~ogy. There is, ac cordingly, a booming field called action theory in philosophy but it has so far strongly concentrated on actions performed by single agents only. We of course should not forget game theory, a discipline that systematically studies the strategic interac tion between several rational agents. Yet this important theory, besides being restricted to strongly rational acting, fails to study properly several central problems related to the concep tual nature of social action. Thus, it does not adequately clarify and classify the various types of joint action (except perhaps from the point of view of the agents' utilities). This book presents a systematic theory of social action. Because of its reliance on so-called purposive causation and generation it is called the purposive-causal theory. This work also discusses several problems related to the topic of social action, for instance that of how to create from this perspective the most central concepts needed by social psychology and soci ology. While quite a lot of ground is covered in the book, many important questions have been left unanswered and many others unasked as well.


The Explanation of Social Action

The Explanation of Social Action

Author: John Levi Martin

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-06-01

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 0199773440

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The Explanation of Social Action is a sustained critique of the conventional understanding of what it means to "explain" something in the social sciences. It makes the strong argument that the traditional understanding involves asking questions that have no clear foundation and provoke an unnecessary tension between lay and expert vocabularies. Drawing on the history and philosophy of the social sciences, John Levi Martin exposes the root of the problem as an attempt to counterpose two radically different types of answers to the question of why someone did a certain thing: first person and third person responses. The tendency is epitomized by attempts to explain human action in "causal" terms. This "causality" has little to do with reality and instead involves the creation and validation of abstract statements that almost no social scientist would defend literally. This substitution of analysts' imaginations over actors' realities results from an intellectual history wherein social scientists began to distrust the self-understanding of actors in favor of fundamentally anti-democratic epistemologies. These were rooted most defensibly in a general understanding of an epistemic hiatus in social knowledge and least defensibly in the importation of practices of truth production from the hierarchical setting of institutions for the insane. Martin, instead of assuming that there is something fundamentally arbitrary about the cognitive schemes of actors, focuses on the nature of judgment. This implies the need for a social aesthetics, an understanding of the process whereby actors intuit intersubjectively valid qualities of complex social objects. In this thought-provoking and ambitious book, John Levi Martin argues that the most promising way forward to such a science of social aesthetics will involve a rigorous field theory.


The Myth of Social Action

The Myth of Social Action

Author: Colin Campbell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1998-07-09

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780521646369

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The Myth of Social Action, first published in 1996, is a powerful critique of the sociology of the time and a call to reject the prevailing orthodoxy. Arguing that sociological theory had lost its way, Colin Campbell mounts a case for a new 'dynamic interpretivism' a perspective on human conduct which is more inkeeping with the spirit of traditional Weberian action theory. Discussing and dismissing one by one the main arguments of those who reject individualistic action theory, he demonstrates that this has been wrongly rejected in favour of the interactional, social situationalist approach now dominating sociological thought.


Social Action

Social Action

Author: Seumas Miller

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-11-26

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780521788861

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Social action is central to social thought. This centrality reflects the overwhelming causal significance of action for social life, the centrality of action to any account of social phenomena, and the fact that conventions and normativity are features of human activity. This book provides philosophical analyses of fundamental categories of human social action, including cooperative action, conventional action, social norm governed action, and the actions of the occupants of organizational roles. A distinctive feature of the book is that it applies these theories of social action categories to some important moral issues that arise in social contexts such as the collective responsibility for environmental pollution, humanitarian intervention, and dealing with the rights of minority groups. Avoiding both the excessively atomistic individualism of rational choice theorists and implausible collectivist assumptions, this important book will be widely read by philosophers of the social sciences, political scientists and sociologists.


Liberalism and Social Action

Liberalism and Social Action

Author: John Dewey

Publisher: Great Books in Philosophy

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13:

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In this, one of Dewey's most accessible works, he surveys the history of liberal thought from John Locke to John Stuart Mill, in his search to find the core of liberalism for today's world. While liberals of all stripes have held to some very basic values-liberty, individuality, and the critical use of intelligence-earlier forms of liberalism restricted the state function to protecting its citizens while allowing free reign to socioeconomic forces. But, as society matures, so must liberalism as it reaches out to redefine itself in a world where government must play a role in creating an environment in which citizens can achieve their potential. Dewey's advocacy of a positive role for government-a new liberalism-nevertheless finds him rejecting radical Marxists and fascists who would use violence and revolution rather than democratic methods to aid the citizenry.


From Thought to Action

From Thought to Action

Author: Amy Aldridge Sanford

Publisher:

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9781516578160

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From Thought to Action: Developing a Social Justice Orientation empowers readers to successfully navigate their individual social justice journeys and channel their increased consciousness into activism. The book provides robust historic, cultural, and social context for social justice work, assists readers in managing the discomfort that often accompanies raised consciousness, and offers step-by-step instructions for initiating social justice campaigns and projects. The


Fire and Ink

Fire and Ink

Author: Frances Payne Adler

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9780816527939

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Fire and Ink is a powerful and impassioned anthology of stories, poems, interviews, and essays that confront some of the most pressing social issues of our day. Designed to inspire and inform, this collection embodies the concepts of Òbreaking silence,Ó Òbearing witness,Ó resistance, and resilience. Beyond students and teachers, the book will appeal to all readers with a commitment to social justice. Fire and Ink brings together, for the first time in one volume, politically engaged writing by poets, fiction writers, and essayists. Including many of our finest writersÑMart’n Espada, Adrienne Rich, June Jordan, Patricia Smith, Gloria Anzaldœa, Sharon Olds, Arundhati Roy, Sonia Sanchez, Carolyn Forche, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Alice Walker, Linda Hogan, Gary Soto, Kim Blaeser, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Li-Young Lee, and Jimmy Santiago Baca, among othersÑthis is an indispensable collection. This groundbreaking anthology marks the emergence of social action writing as a distinct field within creative writing and literature. Featuring never-before-published pieces, as well as reprinted material, Fire and Ink is divided into ten sections focused on significant social issues, including identity, sexuality and gender, the environment, social justice, work, war, and peace. The pieces can often be gripping, such as ÒFrame,Ó in which Adrienne Rich confronts government and police brutality, or Chris AbaniÕs ÒOde to Joy,Ó which documents great courage in the face of mortal danger. Fire and Ink serves as a wonderful reader for a wide range of courses, from composition and rhetoric classes to courses in ethnic studies, gender studies, American studies, and even political science, by facing a past that was often accompanied by injustice and suffering. But beyond that, this collection teaches us that we all have the power to create a more equitable and just future. Ê


Community Gardening as Social Action

Community Gardening as Social Action

Author: Claire Nettle

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-23

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1317163419

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There has been a resurgence of community gardening over the past decade with a wide range of actors seeking to get involved, from health agencies aiming to increase fruit and vegetable consumption to radical social movements searching for symbols of non-capitalist ways of relating and occupying space. Community gardens have become a focal point for local activism in which people are working to contribute to food security, question the erosion of public space, conserve and improve urban environments, develop technologies of sustainable food production, foster community engagement and create neighbourhood solidarity. Drawing on in-depth case studies and social movement theory, Claire Nettle provides a new empirical and theoretical understanding of community gardening as a site of collective social action. This provides not only a more nuanced and complete understanding of community gardening, but also highlights its potential challenges to notions of activism, community, democracy and culture.