This volume on arts-based research explores the transformative power of arts for qualitative inquiry and beyond. The chapters address multiple approaches from within arts-based research and suggest that art can be mobilized to reorient the political, especially when we find the political aim straying from its proper target of truth and justice. Artistic representation is never an end in itself, for the goal is to change the way we think about people and their lives. Arts-based research makes the world visible in new and different ways, in ways ordinary scholarly writing does not allow. The Arts develops a utopian idea of belonging, illustrating how moments of history, biography, culture, politics and lived experience come together in the aesthetic. Ultimately, the content of the book examines how artistic insights resonate in arts-based research, something that not only gives us criteria for assessing the quality of ethical engagement in arts-based research practice, but also provides a conceptual framework for living more just lives through art.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Arts-Based Research for Troubled Times
James Salvo
Chapter One
Small Acts of Activism: Singing Utopia
Anne Harris
Chapter Two
Still Hanging/On: “Strange Fruit” and “Glory”: Songs of/as/in Protest
Bryant Keith Alexander
Chapter Three
Suburban Black Suburban Blue
David Carless
Chapter Four
Singing in Troubled Times
Kitrina Douglas
Chapter Five
Tightrope Walking: Songs for Healing
Marcelo Diversi
Chapter Six
Our Ethical Responsibility to Refine ABR Definitions
Dafna Moriya
Chapter Seven
Disinterestedness as a Post-Pragmatic Criterion for the Ethical Practice of ABR
Richard Siegesmund
Chapter Eight
Relational Whirlpools
Joseph D. Sweet, Emppu Nurminen, & Mirka Koro-Ljungberg
About the Authors
Index
