ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes the role music education has played in the colonial project, and explores how, as an oppositional framework, anti-colonialism could help music educators to resist colonialism operating within and through the field. It explores ‘an intervention into ongoing coloniality through engaging a theoretical framework of anti-colonialism’. The book describes sociological theories of coloniality, establishing relationships between the conceptual and its material manifestations; impacting social spaces from schooling, to prisons and policing, to cultural materials, to governmental policy. It focuses on the sociological relations within complex and diverse environments such as Hong Kong. The book argues that uncertain and even paradoxical social relations ‘inevitably have direct and indirect impact on local music educators’ pedagogical philosophy and behaviours, as well as decision making in relation to curriculum design and teaching materials’.
