Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the recent emergence of funk da milícia to argue that music styles that have already been marked as popular forms to express and enforce (informal) sovereignty, can subsequently be used by others groups and organizations to oppose and contest such sovereignty.

Paper long abstract:

The sound of the popular music known as funk proibidão is closely connected to gang rule in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro (Sneed 2007). Whereas drug factions still reign in numerous favelas, in the last decade off-duty policemen, firemen and other state agents have begun to form paramilitary groups to take over the favelas from the heavily armed traficantes. While many milícias have banned baile funk parties because of its close association with the drug factions, a musical genre known as funk da milícia has begun to emerge. Funk da milícia praises the informal sovereignty of the milícias. For instance, the funk song 'O Batman voltou' (Batman has returned), praises the infamous Liga da Justiça paramilitary group, which uses the symbol of Batman as its marker. This paper analyzes the recent emergence of funk da milícia to argue that certain artistic genres/music styles that have already been marked as popular forms to express and enforce (informal) sovereignty, can subsequently be used by others groups and organizations to oppose and contest such sovereignty and possibly replace it by another. Aesthetic enforcement of sovereignty by means of funk is not confined to the drug gangs or milícias. Funk music is also increasingly used a means to legitimize state violence in favelas. The infamous special operation battalion of the military police (BOPE), which became the symbol of the state 'war' against drug-gangs, is openly cherished in particular funk songs (Rocha et al. 2009).

Paper short abstract:

This article discusses the ways in which popular culture reflects and reinforces criminal governance structures in Kingston, Jamaica, where so-called “dons” are central to extra-state forms of political order.

Paper long abstract:

This article discusses the ways in which popular culture reflects and reinforces criminal governance structures in Kingston, Jamaica, where so-called "dons" are central to extra-state forms of political order. The continued existence of criminal governance structures - like other forms of political order - relies both on the authority and legitimacy of individual leaders and on the institutionalization of the collective (such as the gang or cartel). I argue that the continuation of Jamaica's donmanship relies on the iconization of individuals - an aesthetic fashioning of an elevated social status that combines religious, political and celebrity culture elements - and on the naturalization of the power structure surrounding these individuals. This consolidation of power is achieved not only through material incentives, but also through symbolic and discursive practices. The legitimacy of Jamaican dons at the neighborhood level is explained in part by their informal provision of material services that the Jamaican state is not perceived as providing: welfare, employment, security and justice. I argue that to appreciate the ways in which donmanship has developed as an enduring form of political order, attention must also be paid to the imaginative, aesthetic underpinnings of criminal authority. In this paper I draw on ethnographic research and cultural analysis to discuss how various popular culture expressions - dancehall music, dance events and urban murals - feature in legitimizing donmanship.

Paper short abstract:

This paper describes and analyzes how Falun Gong - both illegal anti-China 'evil cult' and Chinese cultivation practice of physical/ethical refinement and redemption - is transnationally mediated, embodied and reconciled through what I refer to as the 'aesthetics of conviction.'

Paper long abstract:

Since the Chinese government's campaign of persecution, de-legitimization and iconoclasm against Falun Gong, the movement has established an informal 'Middle Kingdom' in New York - the global city from where various transnational practices and media seeking to contest, persuade and 'save' Chinese people and the world have been authorized by Falun Gong's guru, Master Li. Using theories of religion, media and body, I draw upon my ethnographic PhD research in New York and Hong Kong concerning contestations over mediating Falun Gong and how people are being incorporated. This paper contextualizes and analyzes both Chinese state and Master Li's mediations of Falun Gong and (particularly) how they are reconciled through practices/forms of cultivation: what I refer to here as an 'aesthetics of conviction'. While 'aesthetics' is approached as authorized conglomerates of space, media (broadly defined) and practices which compete for bodies and loyalties, 'conviction' is approached simultaneously as the everyday embodied processes through which people are convicted as criminals/persecuted, cultivate certainty and convictions, and seek to convince others. The paper emphasizes the necessity of analyzing the transnational, contested and experiential dimension of the aesthetics of illegality/criminality so as to grasp how authority is contested and established but also how people subject to and reconcile competing forms of aesthetics as part of accessing new life-worlds of imagination, ethics and belonging.

Paper short abstract:

This paper try to expose the relationship between the ideology of the Basque National Movement and the Basque Radical Rock performed during the years after the dictator Franco’s dead.

Paper long abstract:

This paper try to expose the main features of the movement that emerged in the mid-80's in the Basque Country (Spain) and its importance in the social and political changes to our times.

This urban culture was born of bands of different musical styles like punk, urban rock, ska and reggae, but with a very special influence of punk.

This evolved into an economic crisis with high levels of unemployment, marginalization mainly in suburban industrial zones, drug use and especially the political transition following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in Spain

Most of the lyrics are marked by ideology "anti-official system." With a critique of the state, the police, the monarchy, the church, the army ... The Basque Radical Rock music was an expression of a philosophy "anti" (system, police, nuclear, repression, military) characterized by their refusal to accept an imposed system of things.

Moreover the Basque National Liberation Movement, represented since 1978 by the political coalition "Herri Batasuna" welcomed the Basque Radical Rock to the groups more akin to their positions. They organized a lot of festivals as a form of relationship with the no Basque youth with no future. Although not all bands agreed that "sponsorship", openly rebelling and some of them continued their particular ideology "anti-system" and "stateless" rejecting the basque nationalist ideology.

Finally I would like to introduce some of the most importance features of this underground music culture like clothing style, magazines, festivals that we can recognized even today in the Basque community.

Paper short abstract:

Kurdish music production was legally and normatively restricted in Turkey throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s. However, home-recorded or illegally smuggled Kurdish music cassettes provided a soundtrack for daily life, and helped embody identity and resistance throughout this period.

Paper long abstract:

Until 1991, the production, distribution and broadcasting of Kurdish music were illegal within the borders of the Republic of Turkey. However, a vibrant cassette culture in the 1970s and 1980s formed the backbone of an under-the-table music market. This paper looks into how cassettes were important tools for resistance, communication, and identity politics for an ethnic community mostly living in poverty - and whose rights for cultural expression have been heavily restricted by regulatory, normative, and cultural measures. Cassette-tapes recorded in makeshift studios, home sessions, or wedding celebrations were reproduced by hand and distributed among social circles. More professional productions were imported from countries populated by Kurdish diaspora, or neighboring countries with indigenous Kurdish communities. Along with tea and tobacco, music tapes were heavily circulated in the black market in Southeastern provinces, with products arriving from bordering countries such as Iraq and Syria. Moreover, letters and songs were recorded onto tapes and sent to loved ones living in other cities or countries. Cassettes were usually played in homes, behind closed doors, and were often buried underground in backyards, but at times played loudly in the face of military enforcement officials. I argue that cassettes were actively used as a means to promote and protect ethnic identity by those who were socially, legally, and economically oppressed, as well as to maintain personal, musical relationships with loved ones. I argue also that this cassette culture formed a material basis for a legally recognized Kurdish music market in Turkey after 1991.

Paper short abstract:

A relative freedom with respect to the building process, urban deregulation, coupled with scarce resources, create a more unique, democratic and sustainable aesthetic in the sovereign informal city.

Paper long abstract:

When discussing the contemporary city and its visually-driven society, the importance and role of aesthetics is often disregarded.

Over time, security and urbanist agendas have organized the city, resulting in progressive standardization of the urban fabric and its spaces.This standardization has allowed various improvements including in mobility, safety, and reduced manufacturing time and cost. However, it has had a great impact in terms of social control by shaping individual and collective relationships and perceptions. Every urban element has become engaged to an aim-given aesthetic which informs its content and purpose. Through stereotyped aesthetic principles one can depict spatially-located social groups, understand the public/private status of spaces, and draw borders between the formal and informal city. Urban policies and laws,alongside extreme design, have withdrawn individual expression and appropriation by limiting the range of aesthetic, let alone physical, possibilities.

If this is true regarding the formal city, deregulation, fortuitousness and scarce resources, compose an entirely different context within the informal realm. In fact unofficial sovereignty allows local (popular) culture to emerge. This is shown by the broad architectural and material solutions found throughout these frugal cities, where aesthetics meets function.

I will argue that through new aesthetic conceptions and liberties, some already present in the informal city, we can re-interrogate our habitat -the city.Acknowledging scarce planetary resources and huge (urban) population growth and inequalities, aesthetics are an interesting gateway to rethink relationships with space and "place",with politics and policies,with the human and natural environment, and with society as whole.