Friday 18 August 2017

The Relationship Between Wellbeing and Peacebuilding: A Musical Perspective

The UK Research landscape has in recent times become more and more focused on 'wellbeing.' This is not purely altruistic, it is, as most things, primarily economic. Despite social researchers attempts at challenging the dominant public discourse that wellbeing of the public was a leftwing or even communist agenda, it has been shown that a lack of social wellbeing directly correlates with an economic strain on the national health service. Early interventions to increase wellbeing are not medical in nature, because medical issues have not yet manifested theselves. These interventions need to be social and possibly artistic in nature. For the first time, the public discourse about the value of the arts is being taken seriously by policy makers and economists. But how does this increased focus on the arts and wellbeing relate, if at all, to peacebuilding?
Within Peacebuilding, there have been many discussions about the connections with wellbeing, although the debates tend to be between psychological or sociological approaches, or top-down versus bottom-up approaches. There has not been much in the way of discussing wellbeing as a peacebuilding process; they are both on a continuum of violence reduction and improving human fulfillment. Music has been considered within peacebuilding as an add-on to highlight issues and/or raise funds for campaigns. My own research and others suggest that music can play a much larger role, given its ability to affect identity, memory, belief and emotions, and therefore, behaviour. this new focus on wellbeing shows how the personal can connect to the social as well.
In other words, music and peacebuilding research needs to connect to music and wellbeing research in a more direct way. I am currently developing a network of music and wellbeing as well as a network of music and peacebuilding (through the Min-On Music Research Institute). I will post progress on these networks as they progress.