Cultural Competence or the Mapping of Racialized Space: Cartographies of Music Education

Abstract Cultural competence has received great attention in the education literature. In music education, cultural competence typically manifests as the practice of including multiple musics in the classroom and engaging in culturally responsive teaching. I argue that conceptually, these practices are cartographic. Including multiple musics and engaging in culturally responsive teaching involve mapping racialized space. This article first examines how cultural competence has been taken up in different fields in ways that are cartographic. I subsequently explore literature predominantly from the field of geography on cartography in order to consider how practices of cultural competence can be cartographic. I then return to music education to explore how culturally responsive music educators may engage in cartographic practices, as well as account for the ways that such cartographic practices have been resisted by scholars challenging the concept of cultural competence. Ultimately, I consider ways that music educators may resist cartography in their efforts to be culturally responsive, drawing on literature predominantly outside of music education to imagine possibilities.