The Sabar Ways of Knowing Through the Arts

We engage with the significance of aesthetic experience as it is created and conferred in the everyday lives of everyday peoples, in this case, the indigenous Sabar tribes of Jharkhand, India. Through several months of fieldwork, we found that arts and aesthetic practices are integral to Sabar “ways of knowing, being, and doing.” We examine definitions and identify limitations before introducing the social actors of the study. We illustrate how the arts empower “voice” by enabling multimodal expressions and access to data that other methods may not elicit. This paper offers discussions on how aesthetic experiences and activities are essential means of being; furthermore, it highlights the relevance of everyday aesthetics for the development of sustainable educational systems and future citizenship.