Interculturality, postethnicity and the Aboriginal Australian policy future

Abstract

Though now under some challenge, the policy orthodoxy in Australian Aboriginal affairs since the 1970s has been progressive in its social justice orientation, postcolonial in its amelioration of the colonial legacy, and culturalist in its privileging of ethnicity. In this paper I argue that its attempt to recover the past in the face of increasing postethnicity is becoming counter-productive, by stultifying cultural adaptation and compromising individuals' capacity to engage with modernity. The notions of interculturality and postethnicity point to coexisting ancestral cultures, an imagined, symbolic national Aboriginality, and deep intersection with settler-Australia and the world, and so cultural 'changing-sameness' and simultaneous 'bothness'. The paper argues that a dialectic of public policy and Aboriginal identity politics resists this lived reality, with negative effects. It proposes that a way forward is to engage more fully with the lived reality.

Mapping the cultural elements that support and inhibit music teachers’ sociomusical identities in Chile

“…First, participants in the Central Zone advocate for music education based on individualism (Angel-Alvarado et al, 2021), while participants in the other zones base their teaching on models oriented toward active participation, socialization, and interculturality (Angel-Alvarado, 2020; Moore, 2016; Rojas, 2021). In the Central Zone, the use of smartphones and laptops is encouraged during music lessons.…”

“…According to Harnish (2005) and Skinner (2015), sociomusical identities are apparent when traditional music is preserved, adapted, and renewed using contemporary elements. In other words, sociomusical identities involve a syncretism based on postethnicity because local traditions and foreign cultural elements are reciprocally intertwined (Casas-Mas, 2018;Moore, 2016;Van Klyton, 2014), producing new types of transcultural identity (Steingress, 2004). For example, new cultural movements have emerged in local communities from the mixing of Altiplano rhythms with electric sounds, and Insular music with digital sounds.…”

“…Sociomusical identities should be seen as transcultural processes of “preservation, adaptation and innovation” (Harnish, 2005, p. 265) because local and foreign communities exchange cultural elements reciprocally within social groups (Hao et al, 2016; Rojas, 2021), producing a new kind of identity based on syncretism and interculturality (Casas-Mas, 2018; Längler et al, 2020; Moore, 2016; Steingress, 2004). Such social practices can be observed, for instance, in the Aymara youth from Chile who recreated the cumbia using digital and electronic instrumentation (Guerrero, 2007).…”

Educating critically about language and intercultural communication: What and who is at stake?

“…Throughout the course, both Indigenous-Australian and Anglo-Australian are used as the two main sets of cultures of reference from which other cultural systems are explored from a critical intercultural perspective. One week is dedicated to Indigenous and Anglo-Australian communicative styles, largely based on research conducted in this area in legal contexts (Eades, 2004(Eades, , 2008Bowen, 2019;Gibbons, 2003), and another week to aspects of Indigenous-Australian cultural systems as relevant to intercultural communication more broadly in Australia (Alia, 2014;Hattersley, 2014;Heiss, 2018;Moore, 2016). 2 The first author does not claim to be an expert in all areas that are touched on in the course, but her educational vision for it encompasses them all.…”

Patterns of variation in sociomusical identity of school-goers in a condition of social vulnerability and musical gaps in their education

“…In other words, sociomusical identity can be understood from a cross-hybridization process because it "interprets cultural contacts as the source of a syncretism that is established in a third space and creates a new kind of identity and otherness" (Steingress 2004a, 187). Hence, the cross-hybridization process explains fusion music from a perspective based on interculturality and post-ethnicity (Casas-Mas 2018; Van Klyton 2014) because ancestral legacies and symbolic aboriginal representations are intertwined with contemporary heritage and the world (Moore 2016). Therefore, the cross-hybridization process is understood as culture mixing because there is a reciprocal interchange of elements between colonized and colonizer communities (i.e., Waterman 1993).…”