Epistemic communities: Extending the social justice outcomes of community music for asylum seekers and refugees in Australia

Abstract

This article reflects on the many diverse professionals who often come together around complex community music programmes to exercise and voice their own values and commitment to social justice and to work together to make a change more broadly in society. Drawing on a qualitative case study of an Australian refugee and asylum-seeker music programme, we argue that such diverse and values oriented music facilitation teams and their surrounding networks can be productively conceptualized, developed and evaluated as ‘epistemic communities’. Epistemic communities consist of diverse professional and academic agents who share common values and beliefs about a social problem. They also share beliefs about things that they can do to effect change. In this case study, the common concern was social justice for refugees and asylum seekers. The common method for promoting change was music creation, participation and dissemination. We argue that the epistemic communities conceptual framework provides one way of conceptualizing the ‘ripple’ effects of complex community music programmes and the ways that music and other professionals and self-advocates (e.g. music programme participants) act as broader agents of social justice and social change.