Art, Health and Well-Being
This chapter consists of two parts, by different authors, each invited to contribute independently to a chapter on ‘Art, Health and Well-Being’. David Haley in Part 1 argues that an expanded dynamic notion of art could provide the creative dialogue needed to value disparate readings of well-being. Peter Senior in Part 2 summarizes the important part played to date by the arts for health in the UK and elsewhere.
Ancient Ways in Current Days: Ethno-Cultural Arts and Acculturation
This research investigates the benefits of traditional/ethnic arts participation on well-being for immigrant and ethnic minority groups. While arts programs are increasingly seen as beneficial, little empirical evidence exists to support this belief, especially regarding ethnic groups in cross-cultural transition and multicultural environments. Three phases of research were undertaken, the first being qualitative, followed by two quantitative studies. Study 1 was a qualitative research into feelings of migrant and minority artists about how their arts practices affected their lives and acculturation processes. Practitioners from a number of ethno-cultural groups of both traditional and contemporary/Western arts were included to determine whether there were differences in effects of practices between those categories. Several broad themes emerged specific to the traditional/ethnic arts category, providing strong evidence for distinction between ethnic and contemporary/Western arts in effect for ethnic peoples: Cultural knowledge, the learning of cultural history, behaviours, and mores, Connectedness, the feeling of connection to family, peers, and community, as well as to other ethnic communities, Ethnic identity development, the sense of belongingness and meaning arising from ethno-cultural group membership. Study 2 examined data from longitudinal study of New Zealand youth (Youth Connectedness Project), specifically addressing differences based on arts participation for Maori and Pasifika (Polynesian) youth. Results demonstrated that youth who participated in any arts reported greater connectedness and well-being over those who participated in no arts, and that youth who participated in traditional Polynesian cultural arts had the highest ethnic identity scores. The processes involved were modelled and tested with path modelling. Study 3 was designed to investigate components of ethnic arts practices to understand why and how the improvements in ethnic identity, connectedness, and well-being observed in the previous studies come about. Participants were recruited internationally, from a wide range of ethnicities and arts practices. The outcomes of this study include construction of cross-cultural measure of traditional arts participation factors and a structural equation which models the process by which Well-Being is enhanced. Factors arising in exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the scale were centrality, pride, belongingness, and cultural knowledge. In the process model tested, level of traditional/ethnic arts participation positively influenced levels of Connectedness and Ethnic Identity, which both served as mediators between level of traditional arts participation and increased Well-Being outcomes. In summary, these studies demonstrate that there are specific individual and group level benefits from participation in traditional arts for members of ethnic cultures and their communities. These benefits operate through enhancement of ethnic identity and connectedness, which in turn positively influence well-being outcomes. The results suggest that public support of such arts and programs which include such arts would lead to better adaptation outcomes for immigrant and ethnic minority groups.
The Cosmopolitan Imagination: The Renewal of Critical Social Theory
Gerard Delanty provides a comprehensive assessment of the idea of cosmopolitanism in social and political thought which links cosmopolitan theory with critical social theory. He argues that cosmopolitanism has a critical dimension which offers a solution to one of the weaknesses in the critical theory tradition: failure to respond to the challenges of globalization and intercultural communication. Critical cosmopolitanism, he proposes, is an approach that is not only relevant to social scientific analysis but also normatively grounded in a critical attitude. Delanty's argument for a critical, sociologically oriented cosmopolitanism aims to avoid, on the one hand, purely normative conceptions of cosmopolitanism and, on the other, approaches that reduce cosmopolitanism to the empirical expression of diversity. He attempts to take cosmopolitan theory beyond the largely Western context with which it has generally been associated, claiming that cosmopolitan analysis must now take into account non-Western expressions of cosmopolitanism.