The ambiguity of "Community" and the Chilean Cueca

Abstract

We have tended to rely on cultural relativism in its most simplistic form, and in a way that is heavily reliant on liberal humanism. That is, we tend to resort to fairly basic relativist arguments about equal worth, when the strongest arguments focus on the political economies of uneven access to resources and the intervention of education (and performance) into those economies. At this level, we have fallen far behind; discussions around issues of canon formation and control have gone on in English departments for twenty years, often at a level of critical sophistication that music departments only gesture towards (Wong, 2006, p. 263).