Theory introduction

Introduction: Learning and Teaching Social Theory

Edited by

Jon Cope, Joyce Canaan and Dave Harris

Published 2006 © Sociology, Anthropology, Politics (C-SAP), The Higher Education Academy Network University of Birmingham Birmingham, B15 2TT E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk © 2006 selection and editorial matter, the Higher Education Academy; individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, taping or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publishers. ISBN 1 902191 34 X

C-SAP Monographs Monograph No. 1: Benchmarking and Quality Management: The debate in UK Higher Education. Edited by David Jary Monograph No. 2: Teaching Rites and Wrongs: Universities and the Making of Anthropologists. Edited by David Mills and Mark Harris Monograph No. 3: Perspectives and Practice in Widening Participation in the Social Sciences. Edited by David Jary and Rob Jones Monograph No. 4: Engagements with Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Edited by Denise Carter and Michaela Lord Monograph No. 5: Teaching Race in the Social Sciences. Edited by Malcolm Todd and Max Farrar Monograph No. 6: Reflections on Practice: Teaching ‗Race‘ & Ethnicity in Further and Higher Education. Edited by Malcolm Todd and Steve Spencer Monograph No. 7: Pedagogies of Teaching ‗Race‘ and Ethnicity in Higher Education British and European Experiences. Edited by Susie Jacobs Monograph No. 8: Learning and Teaching Social Theory. Edited by Jon Cope, Joyce Canaan and Dave Harris

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Contents Introduction: Learning and Teaching Social Theory Jon Cope, Joyce Canaan and Dave Harris

p.9

1. Social Theory and Strategic Communication David Harris

p16

2. Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations Jon Cope

p36

3. Learning About Learning in a New University Patrick Ainley

p67

4. Teaching Social Theory: Reflections from a Teaching Diary Joyce Canaan

p84

5. Commodification verses Civic Engagement: Service Learning in the Sociology Curriculum Wesley Shumar

p106

6. In Search of the Generative Question: A Hermeneutic Approach to Pedagogy Johaan Graaf

p128

7. Marketing a Monster? Teaching Social Theory in the Globalised Market of New Zealand Higher Education Ruth McManus

p146

8. Ritzer‟s „McDonaldization of Society‟ Thesis as a Vehicle for Teaching Weber and General Social Theory David Jary

p171

9. Extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers? A Pedagogic Strategy for Engaging students in Social Theory Paul Sutton

p195

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CONTRIBUTOR’S BIOGRAPHY: Patrick Ainley is Professor of Training and Education at the University of Greenwich School of Education and Training. Books include: ‗Learning Policy, Towards the Certified Society‘, Macmillan 1999; ‗Apprenticeship: Towards a New Paradigm of Learning‘, (edited with Helen Rainbird) Kogan Page 1999; ‗The Business of Learning, Staff and Student Experiences of Further Education in the 1990s‘ (with Bill Bailey), Cassell 1997; ‗Degrees of Difference, Higher Education in the 1990s‘, Lawrence and Wishart 1994; ‗Class and Skill, Changing Divisions of Knowledge and Labour‘, Cassell 1993; ‗Training for the Future, The rise and fall of the Manpower Services Commission‘ (with Mark Corney), Cassell 1990; ‗From School to YTS‘, Open University Press 1988. He is currently writing a book with Martin Allen titled Education Make You Fick, Innit? What has gone wrong in England‘s schools, colleges and universities and how to begin to put it right to be published by Tufnell Press in the New Year 2007. [email protected] Joyce Canaan has predominantly researched in the area of education and most recently has focused on Higher Education. Her publications to date include:: Canaan and Montgomery (eds) 2004 Locating Higher Education in the Webs of Globalization (special issue of Qualitative Studies in Education); Canaan and Epstein (eds) 1997 A Question of Discipline: Pedagogy and Power in the Teaching of Cultural Studies, Willis, Jones, Canaan and Hurd 1990 Common Culture as well as articles in books and journals. [email protected]. Jon Cope is a Politics Researcher for the Higher Education Academy Subject Network for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics. He is a parttime Ph.D. candidate in the School of Politics, International Relations and the Environment at the University of Keele where his research interests focus upon changing concepts of citizenship and contending discourses of

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory globalisation and resistance. He has taught modules on Global Political Economy and Global Environmental Politics. [email protected] Johann Graaff teaches in the Sociology Department at the University of Cape Town. He has published in the areas of Development Studies, Higher Education and Social Theory. His recent books include: Coetzee, Graaff et al. (eds)(2001) Development: Theory, Policy and Practice. OUP; Graaff (2001) What is Sociology? OUP. Cape Town. David Harris is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the College of St Mark and St John. His publications include Teaching Yourself Social Theory and Key Concepts in Leisure Studies. He is also the joint editor of a website of social theory resources to be found at: http://www.arasite.org/ [email protected] David Jary is Visiting Research Professor at the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI) at the Open University and an Associate Director of the ESRC TLRP project: ‗What Students Learn‘. He is also Emeritus Professor at Staffordshire University. Until 2004 he was a Senior Coordinator at C-SAP. His numerous writings on social theory include The Contemporary Giddens – Social Theory in a Modern Age (with Chris Bryant). He also edited two previous C-SAP monographs. [email protected] Ruth McManus is a Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Her current teaching/research interests are sociology of death, dying and bereavement; social theory; globalisation and social policy. [email protected] Wesley Shumar is a cultural anthropologist at Drexel University whose research focuses on higher education, virtual community, ethnographic evaluation in education, the semiotics of mass culture, and the self in relation to contemporary personal and political issues of identity and

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globalization. He has worked as an ethnographer at the Math Forum, a virtual math education community and resource center, for the last five years. Currently he is the co-pi for the Virtual Math Teams (VMT) project, an NSF funded project. The project studies small group collaborative learning and has been developing an online chat environment where students of math can discuss and work on math together. Dr. Shumar is author of College for Sale: A Critique of the Commodification of Higher Education, Falmer Press, 1997 and co-editor of Building Virtual Communities: Learning and Change in Cyberspace, published by Cambridge University Press. [email protected] Paul Sutton is Program Leader for Sociology at the College of St Mark and St John and was a ‗non-standard‘ entrant to the higher education system. He teaches across a broad range of undergraduate sociology modules with research interests in social theory and the sociology of health and illness. He also has a burgeoning interest in the scholarship of learning and teaching. [email protected]

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory

8

Introduction

Learning and Teaching Social Theory Jon Cope, Joyce Canaan and Dave Harris This volume of essays came about as an attempted response to the following questions: How do we learn and teach social and political theory in the contemporary university?

What relationship, if any, is there between

disciplinary theoretical canons and students‘ political attitudes and practices? Should the learning and teaching of theory have an aim of teaching students to think critically—a Sociology benchmark—and if so, should it

develop students‘ awareness that the theories available are

inevitably political and using them to understand and critique the world is therefore a political act? If such a stance is taken—and, interestingly for us, such a stance was taken by virtually all contributors—what are the implications of these questions for academic and student ‗activism‘, especially in the neo-liberal marketised university as it is presently configured? Among the themes which the editors suggested as useful routes through which to address these questions were: the tensions of teaching social and political theory in the context of the globalising and marketising of higher education (eg. McManus, ch.7); the role of theory within disciplinary canons; rationales for including (and excluding) particular theorists and theories in one‘s teaching; pedagogic strategies for engaging students in social and political theory (eg. Jary, ch.8); the impact of the post-colonial, feminist and postmodern turn on learning/teaching theory and how and where learning social and political theory might happen outside the university. The perceived need for such a discussion at this time, for which this volume might claim to be an initial step, stems significantly from the profound changes sweeping higher education, both in the UK and across the world.

These changes in the organization and management of

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory universities reflect broader tectonic shifts in the socio-cultural and politico-economic fields in which processes of education and forms of knowledge emerge and develop. The role of theory in abstracting and attempting to frame, describe and explain these changes has led to some interesting controversies where the very purpose of theory has been thrown into question. At the same time, historical shifts in the sociocultural and political-economic realms continuously change the very subject material to which students of theory must relate their ideas, altering the more immediate contexts in which learning and teaching are assumed to take place and, indeed, the various ways that learning and teaching occur. The development of these forms of managerialism is usually understood by placing it in a broader context of political, economic and social change affecting Britain and other societies. The precise emphasis to be given to political, as opposed to economic or cultural, imperatives might be the subject of some debate, of course. The specific dominance of managerialism in higher education is usually justified in terms of 'a vocational turn' to meet the needs of a new 'knowledge economy', for example, but it is quite possible to see it also as a result of strong political or cultural initiatives to move towards a 'mass' higher education system (in several senses), and to take on sources of resistance and claims of autonomy that stand in the way. There are still more general models of modernity that might help social theorists in particular to locate and understand the complexities of social change in the very organizations in which they work, and this produces both prospects and problems for teaching social theory, as we shall see in this volume. A second reason for addressing the learning and teaching of theory in higher education social science at this juncture has been the lack of attention given to this specific task by theorists themselves. Considering the inherent challenges of learning and teaching social and political theory and the numerous controversies which inevitably surround such an endeavor, texts that have explored this feature of social science in its own right are rather rare, with the notable exceptions of Nelson (1983) and

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Introduction especially Harris (2002). Indeed, while many of the most widely known recent social theorists and political philosophers have commented extensively upon broad issues of education in society (Russell, Mannheim, Dewey, Gramsci, Derrida, Foucault, etc.) it is perhaps surprising that relatively little explicit attention has been paid to the pedagogic processes involved in learning and teaching theoretical concepts in the social sciences and the academy more generally. Given the prevailing conditions for social and political theory in universities in England and elsewhere, the contributions to this volume offer a refreshing optimism in the face of such adversity. This is not an optimism that is ignorant of the constraints now facing higher education, but one that matches its recognition of the constraints with a striking creativity and innovation and a commitment to a critical/theoretical grounding for the learning and teaching of social science subjects more generally.

This commitment expresses itself through a range of

observations and possibilities which highlight spaces for maneuver and opportunities to underpin our teaching practice with a reflective and theory-based approach (eg. Ainley, ch.3). The contributions represent an international range of scholars teaching in diverse types of university but all dealing in various ways with the changes mentioned above. Some authors reflect usefully on their long experience of teaching social theory while others, more recent to the task, show themselves equally unafraid to challenge some of the established orthodox approaches to learning and teaching theory in the social sciences. Working within a prevailing educational discourse that works to construct students as instrumentally oriented, contributors to this volume consider the reasons for this orientation and attempt a closer empathy with the changing learning experience to which students are expected to adhere (Harris, ch.1, Canaan, ch.4 and Sutton, ch.9). Such changes in the ways students are expected to learn are closely linked to the changing institutional contexts including declining public educational resources and increasing managerial demands.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory However, we find it interesting that the government‘s introduction of Learning and Teaching Subject Centres, which in some ways have sought to direct learning and teaching in higher education in ways that fit with a neo-liberal marketised government agenda, has enabled the emergence of C-SAP (one of those centres), which hosted the seminar that provided the basis for the conference at which these papers were first presented and which funded the three editors of this volume in different ways.

This suggests to us that it is still possible to develop the

government‘s agenda and use it to create alternative ways of thinking and acting with social and political theory and with Sociology and Political Science more generally. We have been pleased to find that Political Science and Sociology academics in different parts of the world, subject to similar government initiatives to those introduced in England, have been using their teaching to question and critique rather than support the current order. If, as educators, we have a responsibility to engender notions of social justice and citizenship in the next generation of workers, leaders, managers, teachers, parents etc. then a grasp of the theoretical concepts underlying notions of the just society and the democratic polis is fundamental. These concerns come to the fore albeit in increasingly complex ways and in an era characterized by unprecedented processes of socio-economic, cultural and political change widely identified, both in celebration and denigration, under the catch-all term ‗globalisation‘. It might even be said that in this context, theory has begun to lose some of its political edge over recent decades and social science teaching and research should attempt to reestablish its normative function. After all, it is very tempting to link some of the decisions and assumptions of some higher education policymakers and practitioners to a limited theoretical sophistication among elites who have been educated in an era where theoretical innovation and application has shifted from the social and political sciences to the literary and cultural fields now largely dominated by postmodernism. The explanations that develop form such a turn tend to be looking at the operations of language rather than also considering the material constraints and possibilities of the current era.

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Introduction This has largely resulted in a declining tendency for theorists to bring their particular kinds of intellectual knowledge to bear upon the many pressing social and political crises of our time. We think the contributors to this volume would all agree that the very processes which are altering the context of demand a renewed commitment to thinking through the role and purpose of theory in the social sciences.

The following papers

demonstrate some of the outcomes of this reflection and more importantly demand further exploration of the ways in which it might be possible for students not only to learn but also use the theoretical insights of the social sciences to think critically about and, where possible, to engage critically with the world. Some of the contributions (eg. Cope, ch.2 and Shumar, ch.5) stress the importance of linking theory to practice and developing ‗active‘ strategies for enabling students to regard theory and critical analysis as relevant to their lifeworlds, allowing them to trace the continuities, connections and tensions between apparently dissonant processes and events. Others maintain that important combination of theory, practice and material analysis through the careful choice of strategies and theorists they employ to communicate these ideas in the classroom (eg. Graaf, ch.6). All of the papers demonstrate a strong commitment to theory, not only as a central aspect of social science, but as a vital source of critical reflection upon the kinds of societies that we and our students will create and inhabit. This volume then is by no means simply a ‗how to‘ manual, although the reader will hopefully find many innovative ideas and approaches which might be of help to them in maintaining and developing these vital but demanding elements of social science. Instead, it offers those learning and teaching social and political theory a discussion of ideas about how students theorise, the changing conditions under which they theorise and how lecturers can more effectively support such theorising within those conditions. The volume draws upon the theoretical knowledge of scholars teaching and researching in the field in order to deploy that knowledge of

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory the social and the political so as to challenge students and colleagues‘ complacency and possible confusion about the world at present.

The

papers map out further possibilities for effectively engaging students with theory, encouraging them to regard themselves as theorists. The difficulty of such a task is underlined by the recognition that the theoretical traditions of the social sciences have long been considered some of the most challenging in terms of learning and teaching. Theory, after all, is usually deemed the most prestigious subject in many disciplines (Guillaumin, 1995).

Notes 1 The necessity of combining theory and analysis is recognized in the subject benchmark statements for Politics and International Relations which states: 3.1(2)(b) […] the curriculum should similarly expose them [students] to elements of normative

and/or

positive

analysis/political science.

political

theory

and

elements

of

political

3.1(2)(c) The distinction between political theory

(normative and positive) and political analysis/political science, maintained above for reasons of clarity, may well not be so maintained in teaching where, for example, theoretical considerations might appropriately be raised in courses dealing with essentially empirical material or, conversely, empirical cases might be raised in essentially theoretical courses.

References Ainley, P. and Canaan, J. E. (2005), ‗Critical Hope in English Higher Education Today, Constraints and Possibilities in Two New Universities‘, special issue of Teaching in Higher Education on "Transformative Purposes, values and identities for higher education", 10(4). Guillaumin, C. (1995), Racism, Sexism, Power and Ideology. London: Routledge.

Harris, D. (2002) Teaching Yourself Social Theory. London: Sage Publications. 14

Introduction

Nelson, C. 1983) Theory in the Classroom. Urbana: University of Illinois Press Quality Assurance Agency (2000) Subject Benchmark Statements. Available

at:

http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/honou rs/default.asp

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Chapter 1 Social Theory and Strategic Communication A paper delivered at the C-SAP Conference 1820 March 2005

David Harris Introduction Social theory has a critical potential described in Habermasian terms as offering a way to dissolve ‗blocks‘ affecting critical thinking about self and others, or offering the systematic pursuit of inquiry free from distorted or strategic interests in a later version. This critical function need not be confined to politically radical approaches, but they often make excellent case-studies to see what happens to this function in practice. To the extent that social theorists think at all about the social conditions in which such inquiry can take place, the university seems to offer an obvious home, especially in countries like the UK without a strong radical political party. In universities, participants can engage in a Habermasian ‗ideal speech situation‘, pursuing inquiry unconstrained by anything except argument, raising and defending validity claims as they see fit. A university seminar offers this opportunity to participants universally, pursuing truth rather than exercising power. This harmonious state is hopelessly idealist(ic), of course. Universities have probably never approached this state even in their heyday, and the modern university is far more concerned to respond to political and commercial constraints rather than trying to dissolve them by argument. Universal opportunity to participate has become transformed into policies of mass entry by consumers not participants. Social theory has not escaped incorporation, and its old critical radical role is exercised, if at all, only on the less well-policed margins of the system, and by ‗eccentrics‘ (Cohen 2004).

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Social Theory and Strategic Communication The strategic environment in which social theory has to operate in the modern academy is most visible in the form of practical constraints confronting the academic theorist. One set of constraints turns on the difficulties of constructing modules or courses in an environment increasingly dominated by managerialism. The other set of constraints arises immediately as soon as one encounters students who are increasingly 'instrumental' in their stance towards their courses. Social theory courses often look 'difficult', 'abstract' or risky in various other senses, and are likely to be approached with caution rather than with a desire to question validity claims. Managerialism The effects of the domination of university life by managerialism have been much discussed (see Canaan (2002), Cohen (2004), Deem (2003), Ozga and Deem (2000) for recent interventions). Academics are increasingly required to submit to the demands of 'rational curriculum planning', requiring course outlines to be specified in agreed formats, including learning outcomes, types of assessment and how they are connected to learning outcomes, agreed types of booklists, even the tight specification of the kind of verbs to be used in describing the syllabus. There are various processes of rational audit, internal validation, and periodic external scrutiny by various bodies responsible for 'quality'. Managerial evaluation, usually installed at a superior institutional level, concerns itself with cost effectiveness, viability, and location in various kinds of strategic planning and marketing. This is not a criticism of our colleagues who are managers as such, of course, but of managerialism as an approach claiming universal applicability. The personal effects, obstacles, frustrations and stresses that result for the academic are described clearly in Canaan‘s teaching diary (see her contribution to this volume). The development of these forms of managerialism is usually understood by placing it in a broader context of political, economic and social change affecting Britain and other societies. The precise emphasis to

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory be given to political, as opposed to economic or cultural, imperatives might be the subject of some debate, of course. The specific dominance of managerialism in higher education is usually justified in terms of 'a vocational turn' to meet the needs of a new 'knowledge economy', for example, but it is quite possible to see it also as a result of strong political or cultural initiatives to move towards a 'mass' higher education system (in several senses), and to take on sources of resistance and claims of autonomy that stand in the way. There are still more general models of modernity which might help social theorists in particular to locate and understand the complexities of social change in the very organizations in which they work, and this produces both prospects and problems for teaching social theory, as we shall see below. Student Instrumentalism These developments have also been the subject of much research, from the classic studies (Becker et al. 1995) through to more recent work by Norton et al. (2001). The effects will be immediately familiar to most social theory teachers, however. If the social theory course or module is optional, recruitment will fall away and may disappear altogether as students choose what seem to be 'easier' options. Those who remain, or who are compelled to attend, will pursue 'selective neglect', in the terms of Becker et al., focusing on material which will be assessed and simply ignoring the rest, choosing assignments which appear to be 'easier', and avoiding intellectual challenge in seminars. As Norton et al. (2001) discovered seeing higher education as a 'game', with unofficial rules that have to be learned, is very widespread among the current UK student body. Studies like this attempt to understand this behavior, in contrast to the usual official heavy-handedness which is the managerial response. The fear and loathing of plagiarism has taken on the dimensions of a classic moral panic (Levin 2004), with the offence being defined more and more broadly and technically (with students required to master a long list of arcane referencing conventions), and treated more and more as a serious crime that requires exemplary punishment. As Becker et al (1995) point

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Social Theory and Strategic Communication out,

however,

student

instrumentalism

appears

to

be

a

quite

understandable phenomenon, arising from the well-known social processes whereby groups develop collective, and often deviant, solutions to the problems that they encounter: Norton et al. (2001) also argue that plagiarism is likely to be the result of unanticipated pressure and poorlycalculated risk rather than arising from some deep-seated challenge to authority, which is what is often feared. These studies, together with many others, suggest that instrumentalism is best understood as an unintended consequence of pervasive and onerous assessment systems, rather than as a moral flaw in modern youth. In trying to explain the moral panic that seems to be underway, it is possible to suggest that the official indignation and rage directed towards the student plagiarist, despite the similarities with managerialism, expresses the way in which any unregulated behaviour seems to threaten the identity and the ideology of the manager (see Adorno et al. 1983). The reaction to plagiarism (and debt or even poor attendance) clearly reveals the authoritarian nature of the academy, just in case anyone was in doubt. The academy readily turns to blustering dogmatism and force instead of calm reason, and, in the rush to punish; understanding is simply ruled out of order as inappropriate. It could be said that students 'playing the game' is the same kind of response as the ritualism of academics described above, and sometimes the same kind of response as ‗having a laff‘ in Willis‘s (1977) classic account of schooling. As with Willis‘s ‗lads‘, student responses reveal both ‗limitations‘ and ‗penetrations‘ in their understandings. Some episodes can reveal the partial acquiescence and semi-deviant collective responses, drawing upon 'popular cultural capital', which form a well-known coping strategy of the relatively powerless (de Certeau 1984). There are some cases too that seem to reveal the right blend of instructive absurdity to approach a more penetrating détournement (see Plant 1992) – an institution charged a student with plagiarism only to find its own regulations on plagiarism were themselves plagiarized (Levin 2004 gives several examples indicating that this may be a common practice); a student was charged with inadequate

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory referencing of sources in an essay on the ‗death of the author‘; a student ‗innocently‘ asked how one should cite the Bible in Harvard style, and meet the requirement for an author and initial. General approaches This work hints at the possibility that far more general cultural and social changes lie behind the emergence of these specific forms of managerialism and instrumentalism. There would be no shortage of theoretical frameworks to develop this possibility. For example, Ozga and Deem (2000: 141), offer an account involving the ‗usual suspects: post modernity, post-Fordism, globalization and restructuring‘, Canaan (2002) speaks of ‗marketisation‘, while Delanty (2003: 71) suggests a role for ‗postmodernity, neo-liberalism and third wayism‘. Weberian approaches Despite the alternative approaches discussed elsewhere in this volume, an obvious suggestion is that the specific forms are best understood as examples of 'rationalization'. Both managerialism and student instrumentalism alike display the characteristic dominance of 'zweckrationalitat', as a calculative relationship between means and ends displaces the (value-) rational pursuit of inquiry. Value-rationality does not entirely disappear, of course, but it remains as a private concern, no longer at the centre of social life. Allied concepts such as secularisation, or 'disenchantment' might help to illuminate some classic unintended consequences of trying to theorise in the rational university. The familiar mechanisms of secularisation can be used to explain how the rational administration of a teaching system tends to figure higher and higher on the agenda of the working academic, until it saturates working life. Some parallels can be found in sociological analyses of religious sects. As sects grow in popularity and size, more and more time has to be devoted to the management of finance, resources, memberships and the like, and, the passions that had originally driven the sect become

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Social Theory and Strategic Communication diluted. In a similar way, academics are so busy complying with the needs of supplying suitable materials for a mass teaching system that they can lose sight of the original purpose of the exercise. The exhaustion and weariness of many colleagues, and the disillusionment they report, might be cited as evidence here. As we shall see, social theory itself can also be implicated in a general process of 'disenchantment', which eventually turns back and consumes itself. The usual account describes the ironic fate of Protestant theology which spawned a rational work ethic specifically, and an intellectual heritage devoted to rational-scientific inquiry more generally. Social theory has also contributed to a radical skepticism, especially in its various 'post' formulations. Thus Beck (in Journal of Consumer Culture 2001) describes 'postmodernism' as validating precisely that 'enforced individualism' which is characteristic in 'second modernity': it criticizes everything but offers no positive way forward, leaving the individual to cope with real life using their own resources. The case of ‗postmodernism‘ is interesting because it is one of the few issues which have become popular outside of the academy. There it finds a social base in the class closure strategies of the new petit bourgeoisie, according to Bourdieu (1984), who locate themselves against classes both above and below by deploying a restless and relativist social critique. A more general connection may also be found with the widespread cynicism of popular culture, or the weary suspicions of public opinion weakened by spirals of strategic communication, as contending parties try to interpret their failings as the result of ‗spin‘ by rival parties, only to have this interpretation also rendered as ‗spin‘ (Eco 1987). It is not surprising to find that the meta-narratives faced with most skepticism by a cynical public probably include those spun by the modern university. Shumar‘s chapter in this volume suggests that growing withdrawal from participation in higher education may be one result, as students particularly doubt the supposed benefits in terms of access to worthwhile jobs.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Weberian approaches are usually criticized in their turn for monocausality and pessimism, and it is true that the complexities of actual practices can be lost in any ‗lazy theorising‘ that simply finds rationalization everywhere. These objections are aired specifically and recently, in the debates about the Weberian notion of McDonaldization in Ritzer's work (see Prichard 1997,or Hayes and Wynyard 2002, for example). This is the subject of wider discussion in Jary‘s chapter in this volume, and so can be left undeveloped here, but it is worth noting the ambiguity of the findings relating to complexity as evidence against the rationalization thesis.

The phenomenon of ‗bilingualism, speaking

managerialism and also embracing more traditional academic or subject/discipline values‘ (Deem 2003: 255), for example, seems to be celebrated, but whether it is an adequate source of resistance to managerialism is much more in doubt. As Deem herself notes, those ‗traditional values‘ can also help managers do ‗soft management‘ of the ‗human relations‘ variety. Merton on ‘social strain’ We might deploy some classic analyses of organizational strain to pursue this further, and try to see what happens to resistance over time. ‗Ritualism‘ (in Merton‘s sense) is a possible response to strain, for example. Given structured conflict over ideologies, as in the modern university (Delanty 2003), one way to solve the dilemma is to maintain major allegiance to one option, and conform to the other by just ‗going through the motions‘. This can be compared to the view that managerialism must fully colonise and eventually replace other discourses. Of course, in ‗soft management‘, it would be the traditional academic and subject-specific values that are treated ritualistically as a phase in colonization. Ritualism could also operate in the other direction too, however. Ritualist management would be a social pathology that does as much economic damage as criminalized forms of deviancy (as Merton argued), and it would be worth investigating. Certainly there are common

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Social Theory and Strategic Communication complaints about the irrelevance of modern management to academic life, its tendency to create a ‗paper world‘ in some dimension parallel to the real one of academic practice, as committees meet to consider papers generated by other committees while actual teaching and learning goes on much as before. The cost-effectiveness of management is certainly worth investigating, especially if a substantial portion of it does turn out to be ritualistic: some case-studies would be useful here. Data on the costs of new management systems in the sector as a whole are elusive but the sums are probably substantial. Systematic investigations of this kind could also help develop an imminent critique, which avoids the obvious counterclaim of vested interest in nostalgic defences of ‗traditional‘ academic practices. Is abstracted rational management really ‗fit for purpose‘ when applied to academic activity? If not, the view that university management simply expresses some universal, functional or inevitable trend towards rationalization or marketisation would need to be qualified. One alternative possibility would be to see the growth of ‗New Public Management‘ as an arena for academic micropolitics, as other innovations have been. Who better than social theorists to consider these possibilities in the public interest? Marxist approaches – incorporation There are some excellent analyses of how liberal political institutions have become quietly subverted by strategic interests. The apparent freedom and autonomy represented by elections, consumer choice, or the impartiality of the press have been understood as easily incorporated, as not capable of opposing the wider hegemony that drives forward advanced monopoly capitalism. It becomes important to consider whether universities are exempt. There are several examples which illustrate the inability of even critical thought to grasp the effect of these real forces. In what is perhaps the classic example, Hegel‘s accommodation with the Prussian State is seen as the result of an uncritical (almost naively functionalist) grasp of actual

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory politics which led to a premature identification with apparently adequate philosophical concepts – the actual Prussian State, with all its social and historical contradictions, became too easily connected in thought with the idealized State of Hegelian thought (see Colletti 1975).There is also the notorious case of Heidegger‘s accommodation with Nazism. According to Marcuse‘s (1972) critique, Heidegger left an unfortunate space for fascist fuhrerprinzip as a ‗practical‘ solution to existential dilemmas, rather as Puritanism left its adherents with nowhere to turn for practical guidance except the adoption of a capitalist work ethic. It would be possible to add the fascinating example of the Derridavian Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political established in France, which tried to confine its activities to discussing what ‗the political‘ was rather than engaging in political activity as such. This boundary proved impossible to maintain, however. As Fraser puts it, political activity was only deferred in favour of 'a retreat into philosophy' (Fraser 1989: 82). This philosophical turn was reflected in the actual debates, which featured ever more levels of analysis, never considering difference as sometimes best expressed in a 'good old fashioned political fight' (82). Where the Centre did close with actual politics, in the occasional discussion of totalitarianism or democracy, for example, debate slid away from rigorous analysis into more mundane kinds of commonsense discussion, gestures towards the empirical level after all, and even (heavily ‗constructed‘) political exhortation. No attempt was made to link with any actual political movements or concrete political discussions involving Marxism or feminism, nor to explore any of the sociological work on politics. ‗Politics‘ seemed to be a matter of opting for a particular abstract political position ‗decisionistically‘. As a final irony, the founders were unable to resist direct political attack, in the form of a forceful take-over bid for the Centre itself, from neo-conservatives. Radical, critical, autonomous academics, developing the most advanced forms of critical social theory, seem to have been easily outmanoeuvred and incorporated by the rational teaching systems which they encounter. My own account (Harris 1992), suggests that the academic

24

Social Theory and Strategic Communication micropolitics initially essential for the survival of British Cultural Studies had the familiar and ironic consequence of leaving the approach vulnerable to the conventions of the academy. The 'theoretical mapping' designed to develop an adequate Marxism proved itself to be extremely useful for a systematic pedagogy of ‗balanced argument‘, and also facilitated the transition into a conventional academic research programme. In particular, the conditions in a marginalized and semi-independently funded postgraduate Centre in Birmingham, or the illuminating encounters of the earlier generation with self-educated proletarians in Workers‘ Education Association (WEA) classes, proved to be misleading models for pedagogy at the highly rationalized UK Open University (UKOU) to which the leading exponents moved in the early 1980s. Specifically, the work of Hall et al. (1978) on the media, shows how the professional ethics of journalists, which include the need to be 'autonomous', or 'balanced', can be nested nicely inside a more general ideological and cultural drift towards 'authoritarian populism'. The same authors have been silent, however, on their own struggles inside the UKOU, which employs mass media techniques to teach. Their canonical Cultural Studies course (known by its UKOU code U203) could be seen as equally conveniently located within a much more authoritarian teaching system. As one indication of the consequences, Miller (1994) has accessed some of the student feedback on U203, gathered at the UKOU itself, and reports that ‗as soon as the course began…students started registering their surprise and dismay at its content and approach‘ (427) Miller correctly attributes these findings to the ‗network of relations [which] constrained and controlled the kind of exchanges …[developed]…between the course designers of U203 and their students‘(426), and highlights the patronizing didactic stance that the course team seems to have maintained instead of analyzing these constraints. The stance led to the ‗ready resistance students were bound to produce in response‘ (427). The fragmented nature of the assessment scheme, completely unanalyzed by the course team and taken as a simple ‗given‘, also led to students merely ‗reiterating the information proffered in each [section]‘ (429). The course team could

25

Learning and Teaching Social Theory respond only with a number of ‗contradictory orders‘ to the students. (430). Student evaluation of this kind, at the UKOU and elsewhere, is shallow and positivist and cannot be accepted uncritically. It is not equipped to measure long-term or indirect effects, which may have been substantial despite initial hostility and instrumentalism. OU course materials are permanently available once printed, unlike the ephemeral records of face-to-face teaching, and there is nothing to stop a student rereading the arguments long after being liberated from the constraints of the teaching system. U203 also probably had a radicalising effect on other academics at least, if not on OU students directly. However, Cohen (2004) outlines a final ironic outcome as Cultural Studies spread to the whole university system – the radical academic politics embraced in the initial phase appeared as generational revolt, which served only to undermine the old traditional and ‗elitist‘ academic subjects and pedagogies. Unable to provide a suitable alternative practice itself, Cultural Studies, once stripped of its inconvenient radical elements, merely cleared the terrain for the new managerialism to inherit. A similar point is made about the effects of the anti-elitist stance of the ‗new pedagogy‘ for higher education (Hayes in Hayes and Wynyard 2002). Townshend (2004) has also pointed to similar consequences for the 'hegemonic project' of Laclau and Mouffe. In these cases, we seem to have examples of the secularisation or incorporation processes outlined above, where managing the demands of the academic institution in which one works renders the actual material involved as harmless: critical courses are reduced to the familiar academic commodities and are offered alongside the most ideologically suspect alternatives. Indeed, they may help to ‗decorate‘ and validate the whole enterprise. The deep indifference to content of the rationalized university is misrecognised as ‗academic freedom‘, and critical goals are displaced so they become private matters, as irrelevant to the workings of the system as use value.

26

Social Theory and Strategic Communication Scholasticism Social theory may have its own peculiar dynamic here, already hinted at in the discussion on postmodernism. It tends to develop towards scholasticism, an increasing concern with social theory itself, its history, scholarly coherence and development. The trend has been noticed by commentators from Gellner to Bourdieu, and both imply vested interests are at stake (although this needs to be thought out, as below). For Gellner, theory typically begins with 'preoccupation with objective issues... its centre of gravity... still lies outside the universities'. When it gets professionalized, more formal themes emerge at the expense of 'mere "content"'. Such theory can still be critical, undermining orthodoxies. The final stage requires a rejection of this whole tradition, in the name of an accommodation with the 'reality of the objective world' (Gellner 1968: 291). This accords nicely with 'what the more comfortable Dons had always been inclined to believe... that the world was much as it seemed to them' (Gellner 1968: 291). Bourdieu (2000:25) points out that: ‗…. academic aristocratism draws [a line] between the thinker and the ―common man‖…This aristocratism owes its success to the fact that it offers to the inhabitants of scholastic universes a perfect ―theodicy of their privilege‖, an absolute justification of that form of forgetting of history, the forgetting of the

social

conditions of possibility of scholastic reason…‘

I do not think this critique can be seen simply as a ‗vulgar Marxist ‗one, despite Bourdieu‘s rhetorical use of the term in another piece on the false autonomy of (Kantian) categories (Bourdieu 1984), because it is not just immediate class interests that produce this ‗forgetting‘. It is also more than a lack of critical adequacy. Idealism is over determined by the need to enter the academic profession and embrace a suitable occupational ideology or ‗typically professorial aesthetic‘ (Bourdieu 1986: 493). The modern university manages by reducing culture to texts and isolated or modularised ‗topics‘, which are then niche marketed and take

27

Learning and Teaching Social Theory the form of the ‗bricolage degree‘ (Cohen 2004). Even academic research takes forms like those sponsored by the notorious Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) , producing what Cohen (2004: 21) calls ‗ ―para-citology‖ – the authorisation of one‘s own texts by constant referential and often deferential citation of others‘, reducing academic life to a ‗bizarre mixture of monologic pedagogy and compulsive intertextuality‘. Cohen (2004) argues that post-structuralist critique of Marxism and postmodernism weakened the last hope that Cultural Studies had of retaining a link with material politics, despite an attempt to cling to Gramsci and Raymond Williams. However, scholastic Marxism had already sowed the seeds somewhat before. We can turn again to Hall et al. (1978) for an example. The specific issue addressed concerns the creation of a moral panic around 'mugging', and develops from an earlier political intervention on behalf of some black youths demonized and punitively sentenced in Birmingham. However, there is considerable theoretical digression and discussion in the book as well, which would almost certainly be excessive if the project was trying simply to calm down a moral panic and mobilize support for the victims. It seems more promising to read these digressions and discussions as arguments in pursuit of a more scholastic agenda, a settling of accounts with Althusser and with Althusserian criticisms of 'radical criminology'. This agenda seems at least equally important for the authors. Radical social theory as an academic project seems unable to resist being treated as simply another form of idealist philosophy, wanting to be judged by the same rules as any other academic subject. Scholasticism is not the result of a political faint-heartedness, nor just an indication of waning energy, in my view, but is an effect instead of the slow and insidious pressures of responding to the institutional demands and agendas of the academy. In the modern university, another group makes the important decisions about how to teach and assess: theorists are not allowed to be legislators, which leaves only endless interpretation.

28

Social Theory and Strategic Communication

Discussion It seems clear from the above that even the most radical and critical material and theoretical apparatuses can be defused, incorporated and defeated by unreflected social relations found in universities. The social relations between academics and managers and between academics and their students cannot be seen as providing some neutral or taken-forgranted context for teaching (nor can the relations between writers and commercial publishers, for that matter). These social relations must themselves be thought out and analysed in a reflexive application of social theory to its own conditions of production and dissemination. Perhaps this might start by grasping social theory as a ‗scholarly field‘ in Bourdieu‘s terms or a discourse in Foucault‘s – as connected to determining moments of material practice and the deployment of power, rather than just as a sequence of ideas, ‗perspectives‘ or ‗paradigms‘ pursued by a mythical organic community of scholars. The same caution suggests no easy answer to pedagogy. There are strong arguments, e.g. in Giroux, that conventional pedagogy needs to be replaced by ‗radical‘ forms, involving an expanded commitment to public critique (see Kellner 2001). Many other chapters in this collection offer a range of alternative pedagogies which run against the grain of rationalized teaching and are designed to fit local circumstances. However it would be risky to reduce these approaches to mere techniques, stripped of radical intentions. General ‗progressive‘ techniques can still be recuperated by rational organizations and involve covert agenda-setting in practice. The well-known ‗stage-management of discovery‘ is one example. Abstracted progressivism still risks the usual alternatives of either a thinly-disguised ‗soft management‘ didacticism or insufficient challenge to ideology. Gramsci himself warned of the latter consequence, according to Entwhistle (1979): Italian fascism supported a conservative progressivism in State education which celebrated uncritically a kind of ‗common-sense‘ or ‗folk‘ knowledge. By contrast, Gramsci seems to have believed in conventional education in the classical curriculum,

29

Learning and Teaching Social Theory hoping thereby that ‗organic intellectuals‘ would be able to take on bourgeois ideologues on their own ground. This too runs risks, as above: it is a very difficult task to use conventional pedagogy for radical ends, as the examples above indicate. The pedagogic point about the ‗organic intellectual‘ is that continuing contact with the organized working class would prevent incorporation and idealism. This suggests that radical education is not just a matter of the design of academic courses or pedagogies, which is difficult enough, but turns on experience outside the academy as well. Of course, all depends on what this experience might be, and idealized abstraction must be avoided here too. Recent studies of UK students entering the academy through access courses -- see Archer et al. (2001), or Reay (2002) -- seem to stress the perfectly understandable apologetic, insecure and highly vulnerable nature of contemporary working class culture, and those applicants see themselves as ‗paying back‘ through working in conventional semiprofessions (teaching or social work) rather than in political leadership. Further, to repeat a point made earlier, long-term and indirect effects are unpredictable for any chosen pedagogy. Finally, there may be more radical options: social theorists may have to distance themselves from the modern university much more. Cohen (2004) argues that universities are no longer suitable places to conduct critical investigations, and may indeed be positively harmful. His solution is to attempt new links with local communities to bring the university back under control, and he cites some examples from Denmark and Holland. Currently, these seem highly limited and idealistic for the UK context, but Cohen‘s more general point is to question whether the notion of an academy should be uncritically connected in thought to the much more contradictory administrative unit embodied in an actual university. If universities are no longer obviously compatible with social theorizing, social theorists may have to come to see themselves as having split loyalties, in a way long familiar to workers in a ‗semi-profession‘. Lecturers are both autonomous thinkers and employees and it might be necessary to separate those two roles, instead of pursuing some ideal

30

Social Theory and Strategic Communication wholeness, rendering unto Caesar, resisting where we can, and keeping separate the free discussion of social theory for the margins (or as a ‗parallel career‘ – see below). The techniques of rational working, project and time management often urged on us could well be used to win space for ourselves, instead of making us more efficient workers for the organization. Some sort of resistance to the notion of ‗professional‘, openended commitment might offer a limited defence against increasing work intensification. It might even be possible to see some potential in student instrumentalism for a new kind of teaching strategy. One approach, developed in my online tutorial (Harris 2005) and in local ‗study skills‘ material, assumes students will want to plagiarize my material, and offers initial advice about how to conceal plagiarism effectively. Followed assiduously, the resulting extraction of underlying principles, and attempts to work them into personal understandings, actually looks rather like the much-admired ‗deep approach‘: if all goes well, students will be led unwittingly into a genuine academic encounter. This is a risky strategy of course, and students might just use the tutorial to develop more sophisticated kinds of plagiarism as they intended. Another well-known risk is of a more general kind: the tutorial is a form of strategic thinking in itself, which seems to confirm the Weberian insight that rational strategy can only be opposed by another rational strategy and thus no-one can escape from strategic thinking in order to develop more sincere or openended kinds of communication. All pedagogy seems to involve the difficult (maybe ultimately impossible) use of a teaching strategy to challenge strategic thinking and it is always a problem to know when to opt for sincerity. The final possibility turns on the much-discussed potential of webbased teaching as a substitute ‗public sphere‘ (see Perzynski 2005 for an essay and a subsequent online discussion). The potential lies in the relatively unconstrained nature of electronic communication and the huge amount of suitable theoretical material already available on the Web. At the moment, given the low cost of establishing a web presence, there is an

31

Learning and Teaching Social Theory option of pursuing an online parallel career as a social theorist, especially if one‘s institution cannot offer a home for arguments one wishes to pursue. It is possible to offer material and discuss it electronically without the distortions introduced by having to assess people, provide assessable material in a bureaucratic form, follow the conventional subject divisions of academic labour, or reproduce the conventional social relations between writers, readers and publishers. Browsers can pursue their own interests unconstrained by syllabi, the requirements of physical access or timetable. Of course, substantial constraints remain, including the obvious ones of language and resources, and some universities (!) are struggling to redomesticate the technology and close off the more expansive options. References Adorno, T., Aron, B., Hertz-Levinson, M., Morrow, W. (1983), The Authoritarian Personality (Studies in Prejudice), New York: W. Norton and Co. Ltd. Archer,

L.,

Pratt,

constructions

S., of

Phillips,

D.

(2001),

masculinity

and

‗Working-class negotiations

of

men's (non)

participation in higher education‘, Gender and Education, vol. 13, no. 4, 431-49. Becker, H., Geer, B. and Hughes, E. (1995) [1968], Making the Grade: the academic side of college life, with a new introduction by Howard S. Becker, London: Transaction Publishers. Bourdieu, P. (1984), Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. R. Nice, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Bourdieu, P. (2000), Pascalian Meditations, Cambridge: Polity Press. Canaan, J. (2002), ‗Teaching Social Theory in Troubled Times‘, in Sociological Research Online, vol. 6, no. 4 Cohen P. (2004), ‗A Place to Think? Some Reflections on the Idea of the University in the Age of the ―Knowledge Economy‖‘, in New Formations, vol. 53, no. 12: 12—27. Colletti, L., (1975), ‗Introduction‘, in New Left Review (eds.) Marx: Early Writings, London: Penguin Books.

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Social Theory and Strategic Communication De Certeau, M. (1984), The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press. Deem, R. (2003), ‗Gender, Organizational Cultures and the Practices of Manager-Academics in UK Universities‘, in Gender, Work and Organization, vol. 10, no.2: 239—59. Delanty, G. (2003), ‗Ideologies of the Knowledge Society and the Cultural Contradictions of Higher Education‘, in Policy Futures in Education, vol. 1, no.1: 71—81. Eco, U. (1987), Travels in Hyperreality, London: Picador. Entwhistle, H. (1979), Antonio Gramsci: Conservative Schooling for Revolutionary Politics, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. Fraser, N. (1989), Unruly Practices:

power discourse and gender in

contemporary social theory, Cambridge: Polity Press. Gellner E. (1968), Words and Things, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd. Hall, S. Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J., and Roberts, B. (1978), Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order, London: Macmillan. Harris, D. (1992), From Class Struggle to the Politics of Pleasure: the effects of gramscianism on cultural studies, London: Routledge. Harris (2005) ‗Dave Harris (and Colleagues): essays, papers and courses‘ [online] www.arasite.org/ Hayes D and Wynyard R (eds) (2002), The McDonaldization of Higher Education, Westport, Conn: Begin and Garvey. Journal of Consumer Culture (2001), ‗Interview with Ulrich Beck‘, Journal of Consumer Culture, vol. 1, no. 2: 261-77. Kellner, D. (2001), ‗Critical Pedagogy, Cultural Studies and Radical democracy at the Turn of the Millennium: Reflections on the Work of Henry Giroux‘, in Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies, vol. 1, no.2:220—39. Levin, P. (2004), ‗Beat the Witch-hunt! Peter Levin‘s Guide to Avoiding and Rebutting Accusations of Plagiarism, for Conscientious Students‘, [online] http://www.study-skills.net/plagiarism.pdf

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Marcuse, H (1972), Negations, Harmondsworth: Penguin University Books. Miller, R. (1994), ‗―A Moment of Profound Danger‖: British Cultural Studies Away From the Centre‘, in Cultural Studies, vol. 8, no. 3: 417—37. Norton, L., Tilley, A., Newstead, S. and Franklyn-Stoakes, A. (2001), ‗The pressures of assessment in undergraduate courses and their effect on student behaviours‘, in Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 26, no. 3: 269-84. Ozga, J, and Deem, R. (2000), ‗Carrying the Burden of Transformation: the experiences of women managers in UK further and higher education‘, in Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, vol. 21, no. 2: 141—55. Perzynski, A. (2005), Untitled [online] http://socwww.cwru.edu/~atp5/habermas.html Plant, S. (1992), The Most Radical Gesture: the Situationist International in a postmodern age, London: Routledge. Prichard, C. (1997), ‗How managed is the McUniversity‘, in Organisation Studies, vol. 26, no. 2: 287—316. Reay, D. (2002), ‗Class, authenticity and the transition to higher education for mature students‘, in The Sociological Review, 398-418. Townshend, J. (2004),‗Laclau and Mouffe‘s Hegemonic Project: The Story So Far‘, in Political Studies, vol. 52: 269—88. Willis, P. (1977), Learning to Labour How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs, Farnborough: Saxon House.

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Social Theory and Strategic Communication

35

Chapter 2 Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations Jon Cope

All social life is essentially practical.

All mysteries which lead

theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice. […] The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. (Marx [1845]1977:157-8) This paper examines the contemporary context of teaching theory in UK higher education (HE) and suggests that critical approaches to social and political theory are threatened at a number of levels. The paper will outline some opportunities for maintaining theory at the centre of the social sciences and some possibilities for challenging the processes that might undermine its future. I suggest that the concept of ‗citizenship skills‘ currently in vogue provides some avenues by which theory might be more closely related to political practicalities, both inside and outside the university—locally and globally. The last part of the paper reflects upon some of my own limited excursions in this direction and includes a few short extracts from interviews with some involved to indicating how their own

reflections

on

a

brief

political

engagement

affected

their

understanding and use of theory. The paper has two related aims. First, to identify ways that theory can be communicated in a manner that encourages students to reflect and relate their theoretical knowledge to their own lives. It seems appropriate to think critically and creatively for this task in a context where students are increasingly constructed and encouraged to construct themselves as consumers desiring ‗useful‘ knowledge that might enhance their economic

36

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations security in an uncertain employment market (see Naidoo and Jamieson 2005). A second aim is to suggest how this critical thinking might be further pursued as part of an active and reflective engagement with the structures and processes of neo-liberal globalisation that work to construct students in such a way. I suggest one possibility here is by learning and teaching social and political theory through concepts of critical citizenship and providing opportunities for exploring its important practical and praxiological1 aspects. Such a strategy openly engages with and contests Charles Clarke‘s claim that ‗universities exist to enable the British economy and society to deal with the rapid processes of global change.‘ (Vasagar, J. and Smithers, R. 2003). Instead, I suggest that, at least for some social and political theorists, the task might be rather to subject such processes of change to critical scrutiny, to assess the power relations at work and to suggest ‗alternative globalizations‘ more geared towards peace and social justice. Such aims may seem idealistic and contentious, but if knowledge (perhaps especially theoretical knowledge) is indeed linked to power in ways suggested by Foucault (1981: 92-102), then universities, as ‗factories of knowledge‘, are likely to be crucial to the future of the democratic project and the maintenance of an actively and politically engaged civil society.1 Higher Education Policy and ‘Academic Capitalism’1 Current changes in HE policy, geared toward ‗competitiveness‘ in a global knowledge economy, have widespread consequences for learning and teaching in universities (Wright, 2004). Widening participation (WP) (or ‗massification‘) in HE and the concomitant introduction of student fees must be understood in the context of this more general process of privatizing and marketising HE. Similarly, this context shapes curriculum agendas such as employability, citizenship and sustainable development: [T]he massification of higher education was intimately bound up with the postwar trajectory of political capitalism, and its repercussions have continued to transform the moral economy of

37

Learning and Teaching Social Theory identity, citizenship, and work both within and outside of the educational "dream factory." (Stevenson, 1999:311) In this historical context then, WP and tuition fees may help shift student focus in a more vocational direction, adopting a narrower instrumental approach to learning (already familiar to many from the English national curriculum).

Perhaps most significantly though, discourses of

employability and enterprise have begun to dominate much of the debate around learning and teaching in HE. In addition, the push toward ‗third stream‘ funding from the private sector (see HEFCE 2003) means that neo-liberal discourses can be channeled directly into the student learning experience. These discourses are key to understanding to the impact of neo-liberal policy-making on pedagogical priorities and opportunities in HE (Davies and Peterson, 2005). As I will suggest below however, noncommercial opportunities remain within some third stream funding and new HE policy agendas. These alternative spaces must be developed and expanded for theory to remain at the core of the social sciences. Increasingly then, corporations exert pressure upon governments and universities to produce ‗skilled‘ workers and their influence is keenly felt through powerful discourses of employability and enterprise. Such pressures are not new but appear to be gaining ground as the dominant paradigm of neo-liberalism becomes more deeply entrenched in HE (Henkel, 2004). They are supported, and to some extent driven, by global institutions (e.g. IMF, WTO and World Bank etc. See Rikowski, 2001: 2329) that are dominated by ruling elites in developed states (e.g. EU, OECD, Trilateral Commission, World Economic Forum, Bilderberg etc.) and disseminating the same neo-liberal ideology (Wright, 2004).

As Ryan

(1982: 45-58) argues, corporations and investors place huge value in the institutions of education and recognise all too well the role they play in constructing and maintaining the required conventional wisdom. To help understand why HE, and in particular the teaching of social theory therein, is important to neo-liberal globalisation, the concept of hegemony as developed by Antonio Gramsci is useful. Shared cultural

38

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations understandings (Gramsci‘s ‗common sense‘) are heavily shaped by the knowledge outputs of universities and these institutions have historically underpinned the hegemony of a particular social group or ‗class‘ (Delanty, 2001. Also on Gramsci and hegemony, see Ransome, 1992).

Such

‗knowledge outputs‘ are now not just commercial and industrial applications of academic research but also the production of a knowledge workforce for a global information economy. While a satisfactory discussion of Gramsci‘s concept of hegemony lies beyond the scope of this paper (see Gramsci, 1971; Entwistle, 1979; Allman, 1988), his work has been influential in relation to the role of cultural, and especially educational, institutions in creating, maintaining and contesting a hegemonic ‗historic bloc‘.

Gramsci stressed the

importance of culture, knowledge and ideas for the success of any political project and extended Lenin‘s negative use of the term hegemony to show how a ruling class is able to maintain power through the construction and manipulation of ‗common sense‘. Gramsci extended the concept to give greater priority to ‗superstructural‘ elements such as cultural knowledge in turning a new world-view, such as neo-liberalism, into reality and thus creating a new historic bloc. Yet, despite this Marxist heritage, it is the New Right which appears, perhaps unwittingly, to have drawn most benefit from Gramsci‘s theory of hegemony. This political movement recognised the role of education and knowledge production for the task of dismantling the Keynesian welfare-based state and full employment model of national and international political economy, in favor of a neo-liberal global market society. Since World War Two, a strand of conservatism which later evolved into the New Right has funded scholarship, set up research centres, endowed university chairs, paid for numerous conferences, seminars

and

periodicals

and

supported

any

development

and

dissemination of ideas beneficial to corporate capital and financial markets. Conservative foundations and think tanks such as The American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation were founded with the huge fortunes amassed in the post-war United States. According to Susan

39

Learning and Teaching Social Theory George (2004:192), ‗In the past 20 years ultra-conservative US foundations have spent a billion dollars to these ends‘ (the development and dissemination of neo-liberal ideology). Their efforts have culminated in such confident declarations as ‗the end of history‘ (Fukuyama, 1992) and ‗there is no alternative‘ (TINA1).

In the core economies of the global

system, democracy and citizenship have been forged into a liberalcapitalist

and

consumerist

form,

restricted

to

parliamentary

representational systems where business interests freely influence domestic and international policy. It is important to remember then, that universities and academics are not merely the passive recipients of globalisation and neo-liberal ideology; they were and remain at the very epicenter of this emergent hegemony. As a result of this widely contested project (and while still relatively free, at least when compared to primary and secondary education in the UK), universities and those learning and researching within them appear considerably less political and radical than in the recent past.1 This malaise is by no means restricted to students but reflects a widespread disaffection with politics and representative democracy indicated by declining turnouts at elections and general cynicism toward politicians and the political system (Ashley, 2002).

Students, their emerging political

identities and their approaches to learning, are significantly shaped by this system of HE and the wider structures which influence their habitus. Among the complex and powerful interlocking webs of work, family, friends and the mass media, the student experience can easily assume a rather tokenistic and consumerist character.

The radical potential for

social theory to analyse and expose these processes for students and the wider world makes it a potentially ‗dangerous‘ educational element. Theory, Citizenship and Education It is within the context outlined above, and the more general one of the failure of the social democratic left to maintain the momentum built up through the 60‘s and early 70‘s, that theory in the social sciences appears

40

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations to have lost some of its political direction and transformative potential. As Eagleton (2003:30) notes: The emancipation which failed in the streets and factories could be acted out instead in erotic intensities of the floating signifier. Discourse and desire came to stand in for the Godard and Guevara which had failed. At the same time, some of the new ideas were the first straws in the wind of post-political pessimism which was about to blow through the West. While cultural and postmodern theory is sometimes defined by its radical edge, it is not always so radical in a direct political sense and is often deeply suspicious of any emancipatory programs or theories of progress (Foucault, 1977, Lyotard, 1984 and Peters 2001). Admittedly, significant exceptions to this have been some forms of feminist and postcolonial theory for example, Said (1995) and Mohanty (2003). However, this sharp turn away from enlightenment ‗optimism‘ has some important implications for theory and how it is taught.

It is more difficult to

demonstrate for students the usefulness and purposes of theory if it appears merely to be a process of navel-gazing reflection, more for its own sake than any progressive social or political goal. In fact, the emergence of social theory, as distinct from philosophy more generally, corresponds historically with the development of modern democratic politics as central to the enlightenment project of human emancipation (Heilbron, 1995). It is worth noting also though, that the much older traditions of western philosophy emerged somewhat coterminously with notions of citizenship, the community and concepts of the ideal polis (Heater, 1990). Derek Heater has suggested that there exists an inherent link between theory/philosophy, citizenship/democracy and learning/teaching that goes back as far as the very origins of our modern political assumptions, ancient Greece. Heater (1990: 2) asserts that it was the Greeks who first ‗combined the essential facility for abstract thought [theory] with the conviction that participation in public life [citizenship]

41

Learning and Teaching Social Theory was crucial to the full and proper development of the human personality [education].‘1 Democracy requires not only participation from its citizens, but a constant reflection on the assumptions and conditions of society in order that alternative social and political frameworks might be identified and considered.

The effective learning and teaching of theoretical

approaches to the human condition, wherever it might take place, is fundamental to this democratic project. I do not want to spend time discussing theories of citizenship and democracy in detail here

(for this see Delanty, 2000; Held, 1995;

Linklater, 1998 and Heater, 1990) but to back up my assertion that citizenship requires a theoretical grasp of the political, some explanation and justification is required. Citizenship can be rather crudely defined as a set of interconnected rights and responsibilities due both to and from some established political community which require action on the part of the citizen for their societal fulfillment. However, decisions about the kind of rights and duties to be owed must draw on assumptions about politics that can only be argued effectively with recourse to theory (e.g. theories of the state etc.). Citizenship is a necessarily general term referring to abstract concepts as much as situated practices; its concepts need to be generalisable and therefore theoretical in nature. In respect to critical theories, and the praxis of critical citizenship, the link with a radical democratic project becomes central.

The purpose here is to enable

students to use theory to expose and critique the democratic deficits within existing institutions of governance and to demonstrate how they contribute to suffering and injustice. Embedded within this conceptualisation of a theoretically informed, active and critical citizenship is Aristotle‘s notion of phronesis. The concept is described by Aristotle in the Nichomachean Ethics and was considered to be ‗not only the necessary basis for social and political inquiry but the most important of the intellectual virtues‘ (Flyvbjerg, 2001:5). It refers to knowledge that is ‗reasoned, and capable of action with regard to things that are good or bad for man [sic].‘ (1140a 241140b12).

Developing Aristotle‘s original distinction of this type of

42

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations knowledge, Flyvbjerg suggests that ‗Phronesis concerns values and goes beyond

analytical,

scientific

knowledge

(episteme)

and

technical

knowledge or know how (techne) and it involves judgments and decisions made in the manner of a virtuoso social actor.‘ (2002: 358).

Further

building on the work of others such as Bernstein (1989), Gadamer (1993: 20-22 and esp.322) and Foucault (1984)1, Flyvbjerg develops the concept of phronesis to incorporate considerations of power into the process of identifying and addressing social and political problems. Critical citizenship can, in this (phronetic) sense, and particularly in the dire context of the current global (dis)order, be consciously part of a counterhegemonic project. This is undoubtedly a more controversial claim and deserves some further discussion. For the time being at least, what we do in the classroom is still somewhat within our control and this gives us the opportunity to develop styles of learning and teaching that encourage students to regard Politics and political theory as oriented towards political practice. We can allow students to see the discipline of Politics as being about doing politics, as something more than simply doing Political Science by orienting our pedagogies toward just and sustainable futures. Indeed, social sciences provide the fundamental theoretical tools to endorse and enhance the emancipatory potential of education. As Hannah Arendt articulates the formidable challenge: Education is the point at which we decide whether we love this world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin that, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable. And education too is where we decide where we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and lead them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands the chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world. (1968:196)

43

Learning and Teaching Social Theory Writing in 1968, it is understandable why Arendt addressed the subject of education and social change together. In sharp contrast with today, the student movement stood at the vanguard of political dissent and agitation. In our current context of emerging grassroots struggles against poverty, war, imperialism and the myriad injustices which characterize the contemporary systemic (dis)order,1 one is led to wonder what role today for the founts of knowledge, learning, debate and new ideas in engaging with these struggles. We may be led to assume that universities and state education in its totality have already been co-opted into preserving the status quo or even drawn into the hegemonic project of neo-liberalism and late capitalism. Indeed, Lyotard (1984) links the dissolution of the institutional and cognitive structures he associates with modernity with the demise of the university as a possible source of emancipatory knowledge. Suggesting that the university was now too much implicated in the control of society by the state, Lyotard in fact welcomed the possibility of its eventual demise (Delanty 2001: 134-135). It is reasonable to suggest however, that he would expect theory and philosophy to continue, even thrive, elsewhere. These trends of commodification and vocationalism present a number of possibilities. Firstly, that we explicitly link processes and struggles outside the university to pressures inside the university and use our intellectual resources as theorists to stimulate creative resistance and dissent in our learning and teaching of theory as well as in our research. Secondly, that new spaces of social and political learning emerging outside the university are embraced and expanded. Thirdly, that we use those connections (between learning and doing politics in society and teaching Politics in the University) to help students regard theory as directed and purposeful. This is not a process of indoctrination or brainwashing; political consciousness (or ‗conscientization‘) must emerge from students‘ personal experiences of a need for change. As Friere puts it: The starting point for organizing the program content of education or political action must be the present, existential, concrete

44

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations situation, reflecting the aspirations of the people. Utilizing certain basic contradictions, we must pose this existential, concrete, present situation to the people as a problem which challenges them and requires a response—not just at the intellectual level, but at the level of action…It is not our role to speak to people about our own view of the world, nor to attempt to impose that view on them, but rather to dialogue with people about their view and ours. We must realize that their view of the world, manifested variously in their action, reflects their situation in the world. (1972: 85) If such an approach becomes impossible (as seems increasingly likely in the current climate) we might assume that part of such a process of deradicalisation would involve the forced decline of social and political theory in social science programs. Therefore it may be worthwhile speculating about other spaces and means for learning and disseminating theory. This is related to concerns over the decline of the public intellectual raised by scholars such as Fuller (2005), Jacoby (1997) and Said who describes intellectuals as those whose ―place it is to publicly raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma…to be someone who cannot be co-opted by governments and corporations (1994: 32).

Academics,

largely due to the managerialism and auditing processes they work within and around (research ratings according to citations made etc.) are increasingly constrained in their outputs and this renders knowledge in the social sciences increasingly insular and pointless. With the growing separation of teaching and research, teaching increasingly becomes the only public outlet researchers really have. (Delanty, 2001:110) As already mentioned,

in

such

a

context

the

work

of

the

progressive

intellectual/educator may become increasingly located outside the University. If so, what alternative spaces and channels exist for theorists to communicate their ideas? How can these be used to contribute to the learning and teaching of theory? Most notably perhaps, the internet offers opportunities to discuss and disseminate theoretical knowledge in a number of ways. Aside from

45

Learning and Teaching Social Theory academic resources such as e-journals, online ‗zines and activist websites dedicated to social and political discussion often contain good material from distinguished theorists and intellectuals. These are sometimes useful to compliment classroom activities by demonstrating how theory has a life and political application outside the university but also as a place where students can discuss political ideas less formally. These sites and forums also point to the extent to which discussion and development of radical social and political ideas is moving beyond (or perhaps being squeezed from) the university. Many academics use the opportunities provided by new communication media to discuss theoretical questions, and sometimes with their own students. Indeed, this anonymised setting is often more conducive to free and open dialogue than the sometimes constrained context of the classroom, an informal space where the constraints of summative assessment give way to more formative feedback and discussion. Given this propensity for scholars and theorists of society and politics to communicate their ideas widely, now increasingly via new media, it is perhaps not surprising that some academics are involved in the alter1-globalist and justice movements. Social scientists and theorists are particularly active in the organisation of and participation within the proliferating Social Forums and other spaces of progressive education and resistance. As a result, the level of debate at these meetings is often theoretical but is equally concerned with intelligibility and praxis. In these contexts theory is not just for other academics, it contains an explicit normative element and a direct political purpose. A good example of this is the Radical Theory Forum at the 2004 London European Social Forum organized by Bice Maigishcura and Jeremy Gilbert.

This forum (and

others like it) sought to draw the intellectual resources of academic social and political theorists into the Global Justice Movement and develop links between education and activism.1 The movement and its antecedents are well aware of the primacy of education in effecting change as they have seen the neo-liberal right operating successfully in this way.

However,

these connections allow a reciprocal educational process whereby such

46

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations widespread sites of political contestation offer opportunities for students to recognize the rhetorical role of theory when related to practice. As outlined below, the strategies I briefly discuss for engaging students with theory require a practical political element in order for them to underpin aspects of active citizenship. For this they also need to be related to political issues relevant to students‘ lives and experiences and the understandings they already have of the world. So, which theorists might underpin this kind of praxis-based and relational approach to learning and teaching theory? Although it is perhaps a little bold for a white, junior, male academic to suggest that we pay a little less attention to white European males that have been so central to the Western theoretical canon, I may suggest a few useful additions. While these are no doubt included in many courses on theory, I mention them because they often appear as secondary to the likes of Hobbes, Locke, Marx and Kant. While these are indispensable for a full grounding in social or political theory, they might be complimented by other thinkers more relevant to practical and emancipatory politics in the 21st century. Among such thinkers we might include Franz Fanon, Antonio Gramsci, Mahatma Gandhi, Gertrude Stein, Patricia Hill Collins, Amilcar Cabral. These thinkers directly relate their theoretical approaches to their own political identity and agency. Reading and engaging with them can help students to see the possibilities for grounding theory in political practice and to recognize its emancipatory potential and role within a radical democratic project and to develop the concept of active citizenship. Reflections and Opportunities The last part of this paper discusses some possible strategies and reflections upon my own brief experiences in the area of teaching theory through concepts of citizenship. While I have suggested that learning theory need not be restricted to classroom and class time (assuming sufficient time and resources are forthcoming), I want to suggest also that citizenship provides a concept that ticks the boxes of various government and management agendas for HE, but also provides the conceptual space

47

Learning and Teaching Social Theory for radical pedagogies and critical citizenship as part of a counter hegemonic project for alternative globalizations.

Indeed, Alan O‘Shea

makes this very point from a cultural studies perspective, identifying ‗some compatibility between acquiring high level skills in the social sciences, […] acquiring skills for both employability in the culture and knowledge industries and for ‗critical citizenship‘ (2005: 100). Despite this supposed compatibility, it would appear nevertheless, that the task of teaching directed toward progressive, alternative futures is not an easy one in the current era. Proponents of critical pedagogies must look for opportunities in the form of spaces and resources (time and money) to develop the kinds of learning which facilitate conscientization. This might involve a little semantic maneuvering and radical interpretation of emerging HE agendas but there appear to be all too few alternative routes for those educators who wish to contribute to the development of participatory democracy and a critically aware society. Every opportunity and possibility, no matter how small, must therefore be grasped in order to meet this challenge. What possibilities exist then for those involved in the learning and teaching of social and political theory? What strategies might we employ to respond to the challenges discussed above, both inside the classroom and in society? HEFCE and the DfES are currently driving ‗citizenship‘ and ‗sustainability‘ (often implicitly conflated) as areas that HE should be addressing within the curriculum.

These concepts come with little

definition and substance and unsurprisingly, both have been significantly de-politicised.1 They have been deployed variously as semantic fig leaves for a range of questionable assumptions; citizenship as respect for the liberal democratic state, the rule of law and the most limited forms of political participation and ‗sustainability‘ co-opted as the sustainable economic growth historically underpinning that political project. In this context though, the reputation of citizenship as an ill-defined concept might not be such a terrible thing. While Heater notes that ‗no teacher can properly construct the necessary learning objectives if semantic confusion surrounds the very subject to be studied‘ (1990: vii), I suggest that such

48

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations confusion presents a number of opportunities for maintaining critical theories as core elements of the social science undergraduate curriculum. Social and political theorists in university positions are well placed to clarify a meaningful concept of citizenship and can work to embed this effectively in their curricula. At the very least then, progressive social and political research can contribute to how citizenship agendas are defined for social science and other curricula. A critical theoretical element must be balanced with an active element which opens teaching opportunities in the rich field of experiential learning (see Kolb, 1984 and Boud et al, 1985). Teaching about any conception of citizenship, from any perspective, however watered down and for whatever political purpose, presents certain problems in the contemporary world. Based on a relationship between the individual and the supposed political community, difficulties arise from the changing and contested nature of political community in an increasingly post-national and multicultural context. Citizenship can then be used to explore, from the citizen/student outwards, the theoretical relationships between individual identity, the state and global structures of governance. Firstly, it seems sensible to begin with conceptual languages that are familiar to students already. Citizenship is now taught to most of our students up to the age of 16 and some up to 18.

While the national

curriculum version of citizenship is rather shallow (see Crick, 2000), these students will have some understanding of rights and responsibilities and active participation as basic elements of citizenship. I have found that these understandings can provide openings for engaging students with theoretical approaches to politics and social science more generally. One way in is to demonstrate the limitations of liberal citizenship, with which I have found students are often most familiar, and demonstrate possibilities for deepening this reading by introducing concepts of feminism, postcolonialism and Marxism.

Having been exposed to the UK national

curriculum approach, students may thus tend to define citizenship merely as a set of rights and obligations cast in relation to the exclusive nationstate. Through a course in social or political theory we can show how

49

Learning and Teaching Social Theory different ideological approaches inform and prioritise different discourses of rights and responsibilities. Discussions of which rights students feel might be due to all of humanity cut to the heart of the universal/particular debate and the possibilities for cosmopolitan democracy and citizenship beyond the state.

These debates lie at the very centre of changing

conceptions of citizenship and the territorial, legal and ethical boundaries of political communities. I first came to use the concept of citizenship in an interdisciplinary course on Environmental Management taught across the departments of Economics, Earth Sciences and Politics and International Relations at Keele University. The level one module on which I tutored was entitled ‗Contexts and Debates‘. One of the aims of this particular module was to draw out and examine the political contexts and theoretical debates surrounding environmental issues. As this was my first time as a tutor of first year undergraduates, my challenge became immediately clear at the outset. While stimulated by an excellent lecturer (not me, I should add!) and apparently keen to engage with the issues, few students had any social science background and even fewer had engaged with social or political theory previously. My attempted reassurances that there really were no correct answers and no definite path to ‗the truth‘ left the students confused and unhappy with the prospect of studying this module. Following the first tutorial group, I puzzled over this problem and how I might address it. In the process I stumbled across discussions of citizenship in some of the Environmental Politics literature (Maniates 2002, Dobson 2002) with which I was not especially familiar. It struck me that students might already be conversant with concepts of citizenship and that it might allow a route in to more theoretical approaches and relate these to the overtly social and political dimensions of the environment and ecologism. The students‘ familiarity with notions of citizenship, and a vague assumption that they were themselves, in some sense, citizens helped them realize a capability for abstract thought in relation to their own various and multiple political identities. As such, the overtly political aspects

of

environmental

problems

50

became

more

immediately

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations recognisable as dependent on the theoretical frame through which they are viewed. The approach worked well and initially stimulated discussions around globalisation and the state, corporate social responsibility and global inequality. By the end of the course we had moved on to theoretical issues such as community and the individual, feminism and ecologism, development and post-colonialism. The students were able to demonstrate how their own views on environmental issues could be translated into theoretical terms, generalized and applied, with some modifications, to other related issues and problems. It is this process of developing views into theoretical positions which represents a key outcome for learning theory and to theorise. Reflecting on this ability, students were more able to regard it as ‗useful‘ and a central attribute of critical citizens and a democratic society. Elsewhere in the curriculum Citizenship appears to have a stamp of approval from Government and HEFCE who are currently providing modest resources under the Fund for the Development of Learning and Teaching (FDTL5) projects and ‗Centres of Excellence‘ with active citizenship at their very core. Indeed, this corresponds to the mission outlined in the Dearing report that universities

should

‗interact

creatively

with

local

and

regional

communities‘ in order to apply ‗the knowledge gained from research to addressing practical problems‘ (Dearing, 1997: paras. 1.6-1.8).

Service

learning or ‗scholarship of engagement‘ (see Hall et al 2004 and also Shumar in this volume) introduces voluntary and placement work into the social science curriculum. This provides ample opportunities for relating theory to real issues and problems in the world. Theoretical awareness of the surrounding issues compliments and deepens the learning potential of these activities significantly. Indeed, it is vital for the full potential of service learning in the social sciences to be achieved, requiring students to link the issues around their particular placement to wider regional and global processes and problems. In this sense, a major part of the role of

51

Learning and Teaching Social Theory theory is to provide frameworks for understanding the complex connectivity of social and political problems in the world. Furthermore, it can be demonstrated how such an approach to learning and teaching can enhance student employability without the need for bolt on skills modules which are often viewed with skepticism by staff and students alike. This kind of active and critical citizenship, once we have established that it can equip students with at least some of the ‗soft skills‘ useful for their future lives, provides opportunities to critique and counter the dominant discourse of neo-liberalism and seek more just and sustainable futures. However, the theoretical tools must be complimented with practical social or political engagement and new opportunities are emerging here. There exist a growing number of NGOs, community groups and social movements making connections and working with academics. As I have suggested, such movements are at the fingertips of some academics and organisations such as the Transnational Institute and Public Interest Research Network already provide an intellectual hub around which politically engaged activists can forge links and share resources.

These emerging movements provide new contexts to explore

some of the practical aspects of citizenship education. In return, social and political research undertaken in universities and by students themselves can serve an advocacy role for marginalized and disempowered groups, highlighting their struggles and developing critiques of the structures and institutions which perpetuate their subaltern status. In such a way, the pedagogic goals of explanation and understanding are closely linked to ones of equality and justice. While many of us are quite open and unapologetic about this aspect of our research, the same boldness is rarely seen to have a place in the classroom. Any display of political values here is regarded more as propagandising.

However this seems at odds with an understanding,

increasingly widespread among academics and scholars, that there is no Archimedean point from which to observe or teach objectively. As Susan George suggests:

52

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations Under the guise of ‗objective reality‘ one usually gets the premises and ideological framework of the reigning paradigm, which in our own time is overwhelmingly the neo-liberal worldview. One of the prime responsibilities of critical intellectuals is to make these presuppositions explicit and this ideological framework visible, particularly for their students. They should also have the honesty to make their own views clear. This can normally be done by stating one‘s social goals and one‘s notion of citizenship. (2004: 208) In my experience, the approach advocated by George above is more effective in engaging students with theory than abdicating any personal standpoint in the name of some supposed objectivity. Students seem quite happy to challenge my own assumptions and approaches and have sometimes stimulated me to modify them. This kind of dialogue builds a rapport and can promote a co-learning atmosphere in which students gain confidence to state their opinions. The more complex task for the learning of theory is assisting students to frame and connect these opinions about specific issues such as racism, war, climate change, terrorism, human rights etc. in a more theoretical and rigorous way, encouraging them to analyse, critique and challenge their own assumptions and those of others. Extending and relating this activity into the wider community makes the problems more real and relevant to students.

I am not

necessarily suggesting that a module on social and political theory should also involve a service learning or active citizenship aspect.

However,

where these modules exist elsewhere in the program, and they appear to be increasingly popular especially in Sociology1, then theory based elements of the program could be developed in closer relation to these modules such as linking the learning outcomes, aims and objectives of each to the other. This suggests that government and progressive agendas might both be addressed in similar ways. Governments and employers want graduates to be skilled and flexible operators in a knowledge economy/society. An understanding of elements of social theory, for example socio-economic

53

Learning and Teaching Social Theory change, gender politics and multiculturalism, can underpin practical skills with a reflexivity that allows them to be more flexible in a changing sociocultural and economic context. Meanwhile, a progressive agenda favours an active engagement with social problems in the local and global communities which requires many of the same high level practical skills desired by employers across the public and private sector. Extra-curricular contexts and opportunities My own interest in the potential of active learning through engagement with the practice of politics came partly as a result of less formal and extracurricular encounters with students. I have had some involvement with a group at Keele University, organised and run entirely by undergraduates. The Keele World Today Society (KWTS) has weekly meetings and invites academics and activists to speak and debate with the students on issues and problems identified by them. They also organise trips to various protests and have developed links with other student activist groups such as North Staffordshire Social Forum, People and Planet, Student Action for Refugees and ATTAC. The students themselves have been responsible for the establishment and running of this explicitly political society. Staff involvement is minimal and entails nothing more than encouragement and recognition that it is a valuable educational experience, not just in applying theoretical concepts to real world issues and problems but also in the field of skills development such as organization, communication, campaigning, management, teamwork etc. As with service learning, it is only through the subtle combination of these two different but mutually beneficial kinds of knowledge (theoretical and practical) that citizenship can be fully realised both in its individual and societal sense. The ability to theorise can have little purchase or purpose without social and political goals. Practical skills on their own are of little use without the ability to identify and make moral and ethical judgments about what constitutes the good society and the effective citizen. Part of my involvement with KWTS was to drive them to the European Social Forum in London.1

54

On our long return journey, the

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations discussion in the back of the bus reached a level of theoretical debate that I think most tutors would strive for in their classes. It was certainly beyond anything I have managed to facilitate in a classroom setting. Aside from reinforcing my belief that such gatherings are useful pedagogically, it made me think about some of the ways in which classroom setting and assumptions surrounding them might in fact be a barrier to some kinds of learning.1 The experience made me reflect upon my own teaching and how it might be possible to engage my own students in a similar way. To this end, I subsequently interviewed some of the students to ask how their experience at the forum had affected their understanding of theory and their study of Politics and International Relations. The following extracts are indicative: JC: There was a deeply theoretical discussion on the way back from the Forum, did this theoretical knowledge develop at the forum or were you already aware of these debates? Student 1: I don‘t think I actually learnt any theory there…its just that it‘s all around you so you start using the terms more. I think we just carried on the conversations we had been having over the other days. Student 1: It made me realize that people do actually talk like that… outside university I mean. I got a better idea of how I can talk about politics more generally. JC: Did the less formal atmosphere of the Forum give you more incentive to engage in debate? Student 1: We didn‘t feel so pressured to use the correct language you know… so you‘re less worried about using the right words or dropping the right names and just concentrate on getting your point or question understood… I suppose the language is a bit more emotional than in a lecture…

55

Learning and Teaching Social Theory These comments, (and the tone and enthusiasm which only partly comes through in text form) suggest some surprise at the existence of political debate beyond the classroom and almost relief that their evolving theoretical lenses, developed with time and effort through reading and reflection, could focus on concrete social problems and political goals. The students appeared to welcome an outlet for their thoughts and questions that they felt to be equally valid to the classroom but less judgmental. It may have been this dialogic openness, central to the Social Forum movement that helped to develop the confidence with which the students were able to communicate their thoughts and criticisms of speakers between and after the sessions. When I asked about how the dialogue differed from familiar university lecture situations most replied that there was very little difference. Student 1: I just sort of sat there and listened really… it was like being at a lecture except I didn‘t take notes. I got pretty much what people were saying though and it made me think about the stuff we do in class. This response points to how students sometimes position themselves outside politics as observers and onlookers. Interestingly, this mirrors the supposed objectivity and disinterestedness of much academic practice; politics is something that takes place ‗out there‘ and we observe from ‗in here‘. The Archimedean point mentioned above therefore seems to mitigate against the fusion of social theory and political practice. JC: did you find the workshops with activists more accessible than those with a more academic slant? Student 1: It was pretty difficult to tell the difference sometimes… I mean unless people were actually talking about their own activism in trade unions or the environment and that… it wasn‘t like a one or the other thing…

56

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations JC: Where do you think you got most out of the Forum? Student 2: The best bits were between the main sessions when I spoke to other people in small groups and talking about what we had seen and stuff…It was a surprise to find people so passionate… determined. Again, this suggests that the most valuable learning experience came between the formal sessions where the students were happier to engage in dialogue and to draw upon their theoretical tools. The realization that knowledge can be impassioned rather than merely ‗academic‘ allows students to understand that it is tied to our political identity and can be put to practical use. I asked if she thought she had learned anything from the conversations: Student 2: Oh yeah... it was amazing really… the people I met were really cool… I realized that I knew a lot more than I thought and could argue stuff … especially with the SWP, I was trying to convince them that the environmental crisis would finish capitalism […] not a workers revolution. This was an interesting response to a question about what she had learned; the reply was more about what she was trying to teach others. The student felt empowered by her engagement with activists and her ability to challenge their views. Following on from this I again asked:

JC: So what did you get out of those encounters? Student 2 …confidence I suppose… and motivation… It motivated me to want to learn more and get more involved really… like organizing stuff here at Keele and to get others involved. I think the responses point to a number of brief conclusions. Firstly, that just allowing students to see that there are practical ends, and

57

Learning and Teaching Social Theory social goals to which their theoretical knowledge can be applied, overcomes initial concerns they might have over the ‗relevance‘ or usefulness of theory. Obviously, this can be discussed and explained in the classroom or lecture hall but opportunities to immerse students in the contexts about which we theorise provide other ways to pursue a learning experience less constrained by the often-limiting procedures and rules of a university setting. Particularly interesting was the recognition that the lecture type seminars or ‗workshops‘ at the forum were limited by their similarity to university lectures and some students continued to find this intimidating. This suggests that such an approach to pedagogical communication is perhaps more deeply entrenched in society than just university traditions. Growing staff/student ratios make alternative approaches difficult to conceive within a university setting. However, opportunities for simulated and experiential learning arise within online environments and through imaginative use of the limited physical spaces available.1 An alternative approach then might be to explore additional spaces and fora for learning. This can often be done quite simply and with the students doing much of the work. The Politics department at Keele has organized a series of seminars entitled ‗World Cinema and the Political‘. Organized by staff and some postgraduates; all are invited to suggest films, present them and discuss them afterwards. This is a very simple, enjoyable and I think valuable way to engage students with many kinds of theoretical approaches and one which helps develop critical faculties. The screenings are well attended and undergraduates (especially international students) have introduced and presented a number of films. They get the benefit of an informal seminar type discussion with other students, tutors, lecturers and professors. While there is no formal assessment in these screenings, the feedback students receive in the course of discussions is of a high standard and potentially valuable for their wider studies. Other university bodies could assume greater responsibility to help provide these kinds of informal learning spaces. Students Unions have considerable funds and resources

58

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations in many universities which could be further directed toward educationally relevant activities rather than alcohol-centered entertainment which often excludes many students particularly from overseas backgrounds. Learning support services could recognize the value of a more proactive approach than one which all too often reacts to ‗failing students‘ and in the process creates a negative connotation for itself. Departments and academic staff who are increasingly stretched for time and resources should look to these and other bodies to play a more substantial role in the extracurricular learning experience. Conclusion While contemporary conditions and processes seem to threaten the future of teaching social and political theory in higher education, opportunities exist to reestablish it at the centre of social science. Concepts of critical citizenship and phronesis, linked to radical democratic praxis, offer ways in which theory might be rendered more meaningful and useful for students. They require that we apply the learning and teaching of social theory to real issues and problems that impact upon both students and our own daily working lives and the potential for just and peaceful futures. In addition, and pushed slightly further, they provide possibilities to deflect or reconfigure some of the malign processes and effects associated with marketising HE. Co-opting discourses of ‗vocationalism‘ and ‗enterprise‘ can create spaces and resources for working with communities, social movements, civil society and counter hegemonic groups beyond the university--activism as a vocation and ‗alterpreneurship‘ as forms of critical social enterprise and citizenship. At their best, such forms of learning and teaching can help shift the student as consumer toward the student as critical citizen. At their most limited, such strategies can at least confirm the role of theory and help develop the ability to theorise, however basically, as essential and ‗purposeful‘ in any form of education for citizenship. Reflecting upon my own short experience teaching Politics in a context of encroaching ‗academic capitalism‘ I can say that students generally respond positively

59

Learning and Teaching Social Theory to linking social theory with political practice. Such an approach helps them make more general connections between wider networks of knowledge and action in society. This is perhaps the major potential for the citizenship agenda in HE, for educators to explicitly reject the neoliberal consumer-citizen model in favour of the critical, reflective and potentially radical model essential for a democratic society, a society of ‗citizen-theorists‘ in the old mode of the Gramscian intellectual.

Notes 1 The concept of praxiology is interwoven with various schools of social and political thought over many centuries and while not much discussed in contemporary political theory has important implications for theorizing citizenship and political action. In this essay I use it to refer to an understanding of the strategic as well as the moral relationship between purpose, thought and action. Steiner (1988) distinguishes praxiology as follows:‗(S)cience and praxiology differ as to the content they add to knowledge. Science does not add any axiological content to knowledge as philosophy and praxiology do. Yet the axiological content of praxiology differs from that of philosophy. Praxiology treats of instrumental value, while philosophy treats of intrinsic value. In other words, praxiology treats of effectiveness, while philosophy treats of worthwhileness. To treat of effectiveness is to treat of what means are effective with respect to a given end or ends. Effectiveness, of course, can be established by sensory observation, but worthwhileness cannot.‘ (p. 25) For a further account and brief discussion of praxiological issues in relation to education theory see Theodore Frick‘s Types of Knowledge

of

Education

Created

through

Disciplined

Inquiry:

http://www.indiana.edu/~tedfrick/typesofknowledgesept1.pdf 1 Foucault‘s work is considered by many as antithetical to any kind of political project. His work can be read however as a critique of the institutions rather than the idea of democracy. Much of his work appears to be directed toward a critique of power which is so persuasive that it simply cannot be ignored in any discussion of the democratic project. Bent Flyvberg for instance refers to Foucault as ‗The Nietzchean Democrat‘ (2001). For further discussions see Kelly, M. Critique and Power (1994) which discusses some links and incompatibilities between Marxism and deconstruction.

60

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations 1 The phrase is taken from the title of Slaughter and Leslie‘s (1997) book, which provides a good discussion of the recent changes in higher education and academic work that I can touch on only briefly here. Also see Delanty (2001 esp. ch.8) and Scott (1998). 1 This quote, widely attributed to the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, refers to the supposed victory of capitalism over all other forms of social organisation. The alter-globalist mantra ‗Another World is Possible‘ is sometimes assumed to be a direct response to this claim. 1 In a conversation on this subject with a senior colleague, he relayed an anecdote about Keith Joseph in the House of Commons holding aloft a social science introductory textbook saying that to demonstrate its political bias he had highlighted the Marxist theory sections in red. To the great amusement of his fellow ministers, on opening the book Mr. Joseph revealed that he had in fact highlighted the entire text. While an obvious exaggeration, the point is clear that for good reasons as well as bad, a more cautious attitude now prevails toward theory and in particular grand narratives such as Marxism and Liberalism. The much-discussed ‗end of ideology‘ has had a profound impact on the development of theory in recent years as has elements of postmodernist theory. 1 Held notes however that many of the conceptual and institutional innovations drew heavily upon those of earlier eastern civilisations (1995:6). 1 Flyvbjerg draws here from the text of one of Foucault‘s lectures dated February 15th 1984 which is held in the Foucault Archive, Paris reference C69 (03). 1 These struggles address a variety of disparate and sometimes contradictory goals. There seems to be some consensus however among Marxists, environmentalists, anarchists, trade unionists, indigenous peoples etc. that the common enemy is global capitalism in its neoliberal form. 1 ‗Alter‘ is used instead of anti- to acknowledge the emancipatory possibilities inherent within a global political space. Anti-globalisation is used by critics of the movement to associate it with nationalism, protectionism and thereby portray it as backward and parochial. 1 See the Network of Activist Scholars in Politics and International Relations (NASPIR):

(http://www.naspir.org.uk),

The

Transnational

Institute:

http://www.tni.org and also Radical Theory Forum.

Agenda, titles and abstracts available at:

(http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/wsf/london2004/radical_theory_ forum.htm)

61

Learning and Teaching Social Theory 1 While the White Paper was silent on issues of citizenship and sustainability, The DfES website provides a few clues as to how government conceives of these agendas. For the HEFCE picture of how sustainability might be pursued see: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/HEFCE/2005/05_01/ A look at: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rdreports/2003/rd05_03/ is also an interesting insight into HEFCE‘s understanding of citizenship 1 These kinds of programs are currently being funded in a range of areas across UK higher education. A few examples are the Scholarship of Engagement in Politics project at Warwick University: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/fdtlpolitics/. Volunteering in the sociology and cultural studies curriculum: http://www.csap.bham.ac.uk/resources/project_reports/findings/ShowFinding.asp? id=132 An Anthropology project on Short term overseas volunteering and education: http://www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk/subject_areas/projects/projects.htm?id=91 For a good general overview and list of resources see Student volunteering: its place within the curriculum: http://www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk/resources/project_reports/ShowOverview.asp?id=7 This kind of activity is more developed in the US higher education system. A recent APSA conference on Teaching and Learning produced a range of papers on this topic see: http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/TrackSchedulesTLC2005.pdf 1 Although these were not my students I became involved with them through the various activities of their politics society at Keele. This informal relationship meant that the students felt able to discuss openly their attitudes to learning and teaching in the University, the Forum and its educational potential. 1 For a brief account of some of the difficulties encountered in trying to challenge traditional classroom layout see David Harvie (2004). Aside from being a good general critique of current HE policy, Harvie‘s paper also contains some useful ideas for teaching theory within the constraints of such policy contexts. 1 See Pimental (1999) for a discussion of web based simulations and experiential methods drawing on the work of Kolb (1984). For making the most of lectures and lecture spaces see Bligh (1998) and Harvie (2004).

62

Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations References Allman, P. (1988), "Gramsci, Freire and Illich: Their Contributions to Education for Socialism" in Tom Lovett, (ed) Radical Approaches to Adult Education: A Reader. London: Routledge. Aristotle (1973), Nichomachean Ethics (Translated by J.A.K. Thompson) Harmondsworth: Penguin. Ashley, J. (2002), ‗Party chiefs to tackle cynicism: Labour and Tory chairmen agree pact to battle voter apathy and restore respect for politicians.‘ The Guardian 11th February.

Accessed 20/12/05.

Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,648296,00.html Bernstein, R. (1989), ‗Interpretation and Solidarity‘ an interview by Dunja Melcic‘, Praxis International 9:3 p.201-219. Bligh, D. (1998), What's the Use of Lectures? Exeter: Intellect; (5th ed.). Boud, D. et al (eds.) (1985), Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning. London: Kogan Page. Burke, B. (1999), 'Antonio Gramsci and informal education', the encyclopedia

of

informal

education,

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-gram.htm. Last updated: Cassen, B. (2004), ‗Inventing ATTAC‘ in Muertes, T. (ed.) A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? London:Verso. Crick, B. (2004), Essays on Citizenship. London: Continuum. Dobson, A. (2003), Citizenship and the Environment Oxford: Oxford University Press. Delanty, G. (2001), Challenging Knowledge. Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press. Delanty, G. (2000), Citizenship in a Global Age: Society, Culture, Politics. Buckingham: Open University Press. Entwistle, H. (1979), Antonio Gramsci: Conservative schooling for radical politics. London: Routledge. Flyvbjerg, B. (2001), Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Flyvbjerg, B. (2003), ‗Making Organisation Research Matter‘ In Czarniawska, B. and Sevón, G. eds. The Northern Lights: Organization

Theory

in

Scandinavia.

Stockholm,

Oslo,

Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press, pp. 357-381. Accessed online 13/7/05. Foucault, M (1977), Discipline and Punish. London: Tavistok. Foucault, M. (1981), The History of Sexuality, vol. 1. Harmondsworth, Penguin, Friere, P. (1972), Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. Fukuyama, F. (1992), The End of History and the Last Man. London: Hamish Hamilton. Fuller, S. (2005), The Intellectual London: Icon Books. George, S. (2004), Another World is Possible If… London: Verso. Gramsci, A. (1971), Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Hall, D. Hall, I. Cameron, A. and Green, P. (2004), ‗Student Volunteering and the Active Community: Issues and Opportunities for Teaching and Learning in Sociology.‘ Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences. 1:1 (pp.33-50). Harvie, D. (2004), ‗Commons and Communities in the University: Some Notes and Some Examples‘ in The Commoner. Accessed 12/2/05. Available from: http://www.commoner.org.uk/08harvie.pdf. Heater, D. (1990), Citizenship: The Civic Ideal in World History, Politics and Education. New York: Longman Press. HEFCE (2003), Policy Development Report: Higher Education-Business Interaction Survey 2000-01. Accessed 12/6/06. Available from: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/Pubs/HEFCE/2003/03_11.htm#exec Heilbron, J. (1995), The Rise of Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Henkel, M. (2004), ‗The demise of a dominant culture? Higher education institutions in transition.‘ Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences. 1:1 (pp.21-32).

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Teaching Critical Citizenship for Alternative Globalisations Jacoby, R. (1997), Intellectuals: Inside and Outside the University‘ in Smith, A. and Webster F. (eds.) The Postmodern University: Contested Visions of Higher Education in Society. Buckingham: Open University Press. Kelly,

M.

ed.

(1994),

Critique

and

Power:

Recasting

the

Foucault/Habermas Debate. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Kolb, D. (1984), Experiential Learning. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Linklater, A.

(1998), The Transformation of Political Community.

Cambridge: Polity Press. Lyotard, J.F. (1984), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: Mancheter University Press. Maniates, M. ed. (2002), Encountering Global Environmental Politics: Teaching, Learning, and Empowering Knowledge.

Lanham:

Rowman and Littlefield. Marx, K. (1845), ‗Theses on Feurbach‘ in McLellan, D. (1977) Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mohanty, C. (2003), Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Duke University Press. O‘Shea, A. (2005), ‗Teaching ‗Critical Citizenship‘ in an Age of Hedonistic Vocationalism.‘ Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences 1:2 (pp.95-106) Peters, M. (2001), Poststructuralism, Marxism, and Neoliberalism: between theory and politics. Lanham, MD Rowman & Littlefield. Pimentel J. A. (1999), ‗Design of Net-learning Systems Based on Experiential Learning‘ Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 3:2 (pp.64-90). Ransome, P. (1992), Antonio Gramsci: A New Introduction. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Rikowski, G. (2001), The Battle in Seattle: Its significance for Education. London: Tufnell Press. Said, E. (1995), Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto. Scott, P. ed. (1998), The Globalisation of Higher Education. Buckingham: Open University Press.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Slaughter, S. and Leslie, L. (1997), Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies and the Entrepreneurial University. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Smith, M. K. (1999[2006]), 'Community Participation', the Encyclopedia of Informal

Education,

Accessed

21/5/2006.

Available

at:

www.infed.org/community/b-compar.htm. Smith, M.K. (1994), Local education: Community, Conversation, Praxis. Buckingham: Open University Press. Steiner, E. (1988), Methodology of Theory Building. Sydney, Australia: Educology Research Associates. Stevenson, M.A. (1999) ‗Flexible Education and the Discipline of the Market.‘

International

Journal

of

Qualitative

Studies

in

Education.12:3 (pp.311-323) Vasagar, J. and Smithers, R (2003), ‗Will Charles Clarke have his place in History‘ Guardian, Saturday May 10, 2003. Accessed 9/2/2005. Available

at:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/artsandhumanities/story /0,12241,953165,00.html Weaver, R.M. (1976 [1948]), Ideas Have Consequences Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Wright, S. (2004), ‗Markets, corporations, consumers? New landscapes of higher education.‘ Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences. 1:2 pp.71-93.

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Chapter 3 LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING IN A NEW UNIVERSITY

Patrick Ainley The battle of reason is the struggle to break up the rigidity to which the understanding has reduced everything. Hegel „Logic‟ (32) Introduction This paper reflects on students learning about their own learning following Waugh‘s 2005 account of reflection in Hegel‘s Logic. As Waugh points out, Hegel had been a schoolteacher and remained a practising university teacher.

Logic, originally delivered as a series of lectures,

concerns how the concepts with which people think connect to one another through a process of reflection. This paper suggests the process of reflection described by Hegel points towards the possibility of developing theory from the common experience of students and teachers. However, a brief example of students reflecting on a lecture in a course on educational research shows how far this possibility is from present practice in HE. This distance is accentuated by the differences usually remarked between students and their teachers.

These latter constitute one of the many

paradoxes of HE in the UK today – that, although academic staff are confronted by more students than ever, they know less about students than previously. The growing generation gap between mainly young students is exacerbated as mature entrants to HE are squeezed out by targeting 18-30 year olds. This generation gap is also contributing to an impending crisis that will see the retirement of the cohort of academics who entered HE following the Robbins expansion from the 1960s. This impending crisis of retirement will coincide with marketisation through fee rises in 2006 and after that could see the closure of half England‘s HEIs, according to

67

Learning and Teaching Social Theory Brown‘s 2004 predictions. In relation to gender, 40% of all HE academic staff are female (but only 10% of professors and 27% of Senior-Lecturers and researchers, according to HESA in THES 18/2/05) as compared with 58% of current first-year students. Class (however defined) and ethnicity also continue to be salient differences with non-traditional and minority students as a whole disproportionately represented in new universities. Some suggestions are made in conclusion as to how these barriers might be overcome. First, however, the circumstances in which the author has tried to encourage learning about learning through studying education are briefly outlined, together with some consideration, drawing upon Bourdieu and others, of how typical such encouragement is in higher education today. Studying Education at a new university Education Studies in the School of Education and Training at the University of Greenwich is a BA degree programme that has grown remarkably with a changing student body since its inception in 2000. Initially it recruited mainly mature students (25/ 30+), whose numbers grew rapidly by word of mouth recruitment and most of whom are employed in primary and secondary schools as teachers often with extensive experience and responsibility but who lack a degree qualification. These students included a smaller number of overseas qualified teachers, some asylum seekers and refugees, many with considerable experience but whose qualifications are not recognised in the UK.

The programme

continues to recruit such teachers, some working in schools and some not, who also require a degree for entry to the various forms of post-graduate teacher training eventually entitling them to equitable remuneration. There are in addition a smaller and constant number of younger overseas students. Over the last two years all these students have been joined by other mature students many of whom are not qualified teachers but Learning Support Assistants.

These LSAs also seek a route to degree

qualification to avoid relegation to permanent teaching support status under the government‘s 1998 proposals to remodel the teaching workforce

68

Learning About Learning in a New University and for which a two-year, competence based Foundation ‗degree‘ has been started for delivery in local Further Education (FE) colleges but so far has mainly been taken by small numbers of school administration staff. There are also an increasing proportion of younger, mostly female students on the course, now a majority in the latest (2004-05) first year. They enter mainly through ‗clearing‘ by the university filling places regardless of the qualifications of applicants and seek a route into primary teaching since the degree will not give them a subject specialisation for secondary education unless they take an Education degree combined with another subject. Further change in the rapidly changing student body can be anticipated as fees rise and if the Foundation ‗degree‘ grows as an alternative for LSAs.

The Education Studies degree programme does

however afford opportunities for continuation of a form of polytechnic teaching in the tradition of the institution (the first of the Polytechnics announced in 1965 as a new type of higher education for local, working students). Potentially this degree programme relates theory to practice in the classic manner by building upon students‘ own school experiences, whether as teachers and/or as recent or past students (and there are opportunities for those not working in schools to undertake paid ‗taster courses‘ in primary and secondary teaching, though these are not compulsory). In these senses the programme can be seen to derive from the Open University as well as the polytechnics and in particular to radical approaches within them to relate theory and practice through Independent Study. The most radical of these, in the former School for Independent Study at the neighbouring University of East London, began as a means of qualifying local people to teach in local schools (see Robbins 1988). Also, like subjects such as the anthropology, politics, psychology and sociology of education, the study of education as a field of practice in which knowledge drawn from various disciplines can be applied enjoys the advantage of combining the object of study – education – with reflection upon the process of study. This point is made to the students through lectures and option courses on further, higher and adult/ continuing

69

Learning and Teaching Social Theory education and training as well as on schooling. From the beginning of the course students are encouraged to learn from each other, especially from overseas students whose education may have been very different from that of home students, Combined Studies students and older students. It has to be said though that the part-time nature (requiring attendance one or two days at most) of this ‗full-time‘ course, as well as the disparate living, travel and working (both those employed in schools and those working ‗parttime‘ elsewhere) lives of the students, plus the limited nature of the site facilities, hardly encourage this mutual learning The natural inclination of lecturers on the course is to recreate a classic Education degree highlighting their own academic and research interests in its canonic components of philosophy, psychology, sociology and history of education. They see this degree as a way to sustain their research interests by informing their teaching with them as well as to ‗teach through research‘ as is the current vogue (Jenkins 2004). Core courses therefore introduce students to educational research through case studies and a rehearsal of research methods linked to consideration of various approaches to research, culminating in students‘ own research project in their final year. Having established in outline the local context for this example of students learning about their own learning, the chapter briefly examines the wider context of HE in England before looking at some Education Studies students‘ learning about learning. Widening participation whilst maintaining quality All of the Education Studies students could be defined as ‗widening participation students‘ in that even ten years ago few of them would have been in HE, except perhaps the distance-learning Open University. Whether it is possible to maintain quality whilst widening participation is therefore posed as a practical research question as well as a pedagogic one for teachers on the programme. Its answer of course depends upon the definition of quality but, since formal examinations have been replaced by course work for all courses, space has been opened up for quality to be redefined in investigative projects and other assignments. At the same

70

Learning About Learning in a New University time however, while the presentation of course work eliminates the teaching of exam technique, it still results in students‘ work being marked for qualities of literary presentation (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and academic style

– in the fetish universally made of the Harvard

referencing system, for instance (Ainley and Canaan 2005).

The

justification and hope of such literary demands is that in discursive writing, as Clarke puts it, ‗the real properties of physical text transform the space of possible thoughts‘ (2001: 208) because ‗linguistic representations possess features that may not be found in our internal cognitive representations.. through the various syntactical devices provided by [written] language, relations between pieces of information can be kept straight... That might otherwise become confused‘ (2001: note 11, 224-5). For Pierre Bourdieu and his colleagues at the Centre of European Sociology embarking 40 years ago upon their national study of French students, such formalism was what was learnt in a higher education system that privileged style over substance, form over content and medium over message. As Vincent and Freyssenet explained, ‗For working-class and middle-class students, the issue is how to acquire the spirit and culture peculiar to higher education, the type of education which symbolizes membership of an elite‘.

Therefore, as Bourdieu and Saint Martin

observed of ‗The Users of Lille University Library‘, ‗most students only appear to be working rather than actually getting anything done‘ and what Baudelot called ‗the unreal world of linguistic exchanges demanded by the academic game‘ was most clearly demonstrated through his study of student essays – ‗the irrefutable proof that professorial language is not understood by its audience‘! As for examiners, as Bourdieu et al wrote, ‗while we believe we are assigning marks according to a well-calibrated scale of performance, in practice we are content with dividing candidates into three broad categories of ―brilliant‖, ―mediocre‖ and ―worthless‖‘. This segregation of the ‗men‘ of gold, silver and bronze depends upon ‗the ability to manipulate academic language‘ which comes naturally to those students whose previous education and upbringing has given them the

71

Learning and Teaching Social Theory required ‗cultural capital‘ to convert ‗social heritage into scholastic heritage‘(all refs in Ainley and Broadfoot: 1995, pp. 109-113). In a system that is no longer elite but in which ‗[t]he massive increase in the student population has caused a whole set of transformations both inside and outside the education system‘, including ‗the multiplication of subtly ranked paths through it and skilfully disguised ―dumping grounds‖ which help to blur perception of its hierarchies‘, Bourdieu and Passeron demanded, ‗How can one speak, even by way of a simplification, of a common ―student situation‖.. [when] The differences are too obvious to be called into doubt‘(1979: 12-13). These differences may have existed prior to the polytechnics when, as Tony Crosland said at Lancaster University, there was a binary system with HE technical colleges and FE outside universities. Now, despite the end in 1992 of the former binary divide between polytechnics and universities, ‗diversity‘ (Piatt 2005) is heightened by the growing gap in unit of resource. For example, 17,500 full time equivalent (fte) students at Oxford are funded at £650m. = £33,700 per student per annum as compared with 22,000 ftes at Middlesex University funded at £125m. = £5,680 per student per annum according to Michael Driscoll, VC of Middlesex and Chair of the Coalition of Modern Universities at the annual conference of the CMU 24/1/05 (reported in NATFHE‘s Lecturer February 2005). And even within the same unit of resource, different students may experience the same situation differently (eg. Ashwin 2005). With such disparities between students, Bourdieu and Passeron (1979) suggested: it is to students‘ university activity that people generally look for the basis of the definition that might safeguard the idea that the student situation is a single, unified, or unifying one. However different they may be in other respects, students considered from the point of view of their specific role do indeed share the common feature that they study, that is, that, even in the absence of attendance or exercises, they undergo and experience the subordination of their occupational future to an institution which, by means of the diploma, monopolizes an essential means of social success. But, students may have practices in common without it necessarily

72

Learning About Learning in a New University following that they experience them identically, still less collectively. [This is because]... in a student population we are dealing with the final outcome of a whole set of influences that stem from social origin and have been exerted over a long period.

As this suggests, in this population ‗[e]ducational disadvantage is expressed in the restricted choice of disciplines reasonably available to a given category of students‘(1979: 12-13, ). This disadvantage is certainly apparent to Education Studies students at Greenwich who have gained places through clearing, as well as to the mainly older students who come to the course through various ad hoc arrangements made to credit qualifications at work.

What Bourdieu and Passeron call ‗the

monopolizing of the top establishments by the most privileged students (1979: 7), is already plain to all even before removing the current cap of £3000 per annum on fees to be paid after graduation that were introduced in 2006 (raised from the £1250 up-front annual fee in 2005).

The

anticipated raising of fees beyond this current maximum will render transparent HE‘s connection not only to cultural but to economic capital. Even if the situation and self-perceptions of students in a mass HE system today differ from those in the minority system in France in 1964, the presence of new widened participants in a more diverse HE system pose the same problem of a rational pedagogic response, ‗that is, one based on a sociology of cultural inequalities‘ (1979: 76). This ‗rational pedagogy‘, Bourdieu and Passeron suggested, should ‗in no way be confused with the pedagogies we know at present, which, having only psychological foundations, in fact serve a system which does not and will not recognize social differences‘ (1979: 73).

However, as Robbins (1991) recalls,

Bourdieu later abandoned this attempt at a rational pedagogy because he came to consider it an extra burden upon working-class students who had to make an extra effort that was not imposed on the more culturally privileged. It is certainly an extra burden upon their teachers who can no longer assume student familiarity with academic conventions.

There is

also a balance to be struck between revealing the academic rules of the

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory game to give students meta-awareness of the criteria by which they are ‗marked down‘ in the academy and increasing the student instrumentality that is universally complained about today. Such instrumentality is most evident amongst the younger Education Studies students who, on the one hand are a product of a school system that encourages, as a final year Education Studies project recorded in 2004: [s]tudents to connect their self esteem and what they may achieve in later life exclusively to their exam results. Over assessment in schools has made subject knowledge and understanding a thing of the past as school students are put through a routine year after year, practising what exactly to write and where in preparation for exams.

On the other hand, these standard age, ‗undercooked‘ if not ‗oven ready‘ (as those 18 year-olds with the standard three good A-levels are known in the business) students also feel that they are ‗lucky‘ to have ‗made it‘ as far as they have.

Their attitude to study and occasional

opinions suggest that if they keep their heads down and do the minimum required they should end up with entry to what they anticipate will be secure employment.

Such attitudes do not encourage critical thinking

about their situation. These students are therefore reluctant to engage with any of the statistics of education, for instance, not only because they share a widespread and gendered distaste for mathematics but more fundamentally due to aversion from contextualising the ‗choices‘ they believe they have freely arrived at in the determination of their futures. They counter such assertions and reference to the influence of social factors with the belief ‗We are all individuals‘ and ‗There are always exceptions‘ – excuses for not thinking on a par with the schoolboy‘s ‗Brain hurts, sir‘! There is thus a resistance to thinking about how you ‗Become What You Are‘ (see Wexler 1992)).. This should not be considered a ‗deficit‘ in the students however (Canaan forthcoming). It is logical that students reproduce the logic of their times. In relation to class, for instance, as long ago as 1977 Roberts et

74

Learning About Learning in a New University al pointed to the increasingly late assumption of class identification as young people generally are removed for longer periods from full participation in the labour market.

While Wright‘s 1984 neo-Marxist

notion of some statuses, such as higher education students, having ‗contradictory class locations‘ supposed individuals removed from classbased occupations sharing attributes of the classes above and below them. As a result, most of Lee et al‘s sample of trainees on make-work schemes in Essex at the end of the 1980s, for example, rejected the notion of social class, ‗some flatly refusing to respond because the idea smacked of snobbery, divisiveness and unequal worth‘.

Their most common self-

definition was ‗middle class‘, ‗by which they seemed to mean the bulk of ordinary people who lay between a small and remote upper class and a disreputable but diminishing lower class‘ (1990: 126). Similarly, Ainley and Bailey interviewing FE students in the 1990s found: even the A-level sociology students, despite covering the sociology of education in their syllabus, though they asserted that everyone on whatever course at the College was ‗the same‘, could not explain how it happened that no one in the class actually knew, or was friends with, anyone doing hairdressing at the College, although one conceded, ‗It seems that lots of people who live on the estates in Local Town have gone on to do hairdressing‘ (1997: 79). This is not the place to explore the impact upon individual and class consciousness of the continuing process of class reformation accelerated by the collapse of heavy industry and growth of services since the 1970s (but see Savage 2000 and Roberts 2001). However, the class consciousness of students – or the lack of it (see Ainley 1993) – can be flagged here as an issue of continuing sociological concern, particularly as so many of their teachers, born into a previous social situation, still think in terms of the class relations of yesteryear. Similarly to their teachers, the older Education Studies students, while as motivated as the younger ones to complete the course for

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory vocational reward, are less inclined to profess that all is for the best in the best of all possible self-chosen, meritocratic worlds.

Instead, they see

schooling from a teachers‘ and, in many cases, a parents‘ point of view, as well as from the greater comparative experience they possess of a changing education system. As teachers their class perception is modulated through the defensive notion of professionalism against reduction to wage labour adhered to by the teachers‘ unions and the profession generally, though here again notions of ‗profession‘ are also changing.

More reflective,

experienced and articulate, these older teacher-students tend to agree with George Bernard Shaw‘s estimation that ‗Education is wasted on the young‘. They are a dwindling minority, however. Having described the Education Studies programme in the context of English HE today, a brief example is given of students reflecting on a lecture in a course on educational research. This example is contrasted with the ideal of HE as a privileged site of ‗commun communicative action‘ (Habermas 1985). The ideal of communicative action in HE and its reality The aim of the Education Studies degree programme, as others, was to provide independent communicational space in which generalised concepts could be rationally tested in argument and by experiment. This metaphor of an ideal HE is seen by many academics as providing students with the conceptual tools and mental skills to question received ideas through ‗critical thinking‘ and to test their own hypotheses, ideas and claims to truth against the relevant criteria, whether of scientific experiment, logical proof, scholarly or more directly social research, or technical practice. Students then supposedly graduate to Mastery of their respective subject disciplines or to areas of practice in which they are able to defend in the wider world the conclusions they have arrived at in discussion with fellow students and teachers.

They can therefore

acknowledge the point at which their truth claims no longer depend upon proof but are a statement of faith or an admission of prejudice. Nor can they deny that their thought is in some sense ideological, that it is – as well

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Learning About Learning in a New University as a more of less adequate conception of the reality with which they are dealing – expressive of an interest in or perspective upon that reality. Moreover, that their choice of perspective or means of ordering the information they have acquired, is, as well as an aesthetic, logical or practical choice, also a moral and political judgement that may require further endorsement as well as rational agreement to find a wider acceptance. Such discussion is encouraged by teachers who themselves learn from representing their understandings based upon research in the subject communities to which they belong. Many courses and programmes of study in HE are based upon this implicit model. It is less certain that many students encounter and understand their programmes of study like this! The condensed extract below from a seminar discussion of a lecture on Foucault and education gives a flavour of their conception and presents the germ of an alternative HE. There are five year-two ES students (two 30+ primary LSAs (A & B), one 20+ ‗returning to learning‘ following career change (C) and one (the only male) refugee 40+ (X), plus a younger student – the rest are absent – who says nothing but whose written work shows she is at least passively participating in seminars): A: The way I see it is we can all see things from different points of view. B: You might read something and think it was like this but someone else might read it and think it was from another point of view… but we would have preferred to do it from our own point of view... How does a theory become a theory anyway? C: The reading showed how a subject became a subject with the examples of psychiatry and geography. B: But if we‘re trying to be researchers why do we have to have to look at things through their eyes? C: Because one theory is that you‘re never really going to be objective so it‘s up to you to know a little bit about each one to know what to draw on in different circumstances. The view I‘m taking is more from what I‘ve read than from the lecture so I do see how power/knowledge could be important.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory X: You can be marked down because of many things in your standards in education. B: Like in the new citizenship curriculum. That‘s a form of social control. All agree. C: Foucault would probably throw the whole thing out of the window. That seems rather negative. A: That‘s what I said about theorists! B: But not all theorists are as depressing as this. A: Every one [of the lecturers] has their own person – P likes Durkheim, today Foucault, Q – we‘d have to ask her! And you [PA] you like Marx! PA: But why do you think the lecturer today thought Foucault is important? C: Because…the lecturer as a person has connected with this idea so you could relate that to the same idea again that knowledge that becomes power moulds us. A interrupting: So we can be governed. B: There‘s no way out of it. X: Only through God‘s Grace. B: It‘s a depressing idea. C: It appeals to depressive types of people while Dewey is more optimistic. It depends on your personality.

What is going on here, apart from students as usual trying ‗by indirections to find directions out‘ to divine their lecturer‘s intentions (similarly to the ‗Home Counties University‘ students in Ainley 1994 who judged the relevance of their remarks in philosophy seminars from the frequency of their seminar leader‘s nervous cough)? Or the routine reports that humanities and social science students assess the differing ideological preferences of their teachers in order to tailor their required assignments to them (to the extent that it is part of student folklore that the same essays marked by different lecturers gain different marks, also reported in Ainley 1994)? In this case, C links these preferences to a range of personality types from optimistic Dewey to depressive Foucault. C is also the only student who has done the reading; for the others, finding time to try to understand it was presumably not high enough in their priorities. As C

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Learning About Learning in a New University says, ‗The view I‘m taking is more from what I‘ve read than from the lecture‘. As a result, perhaps she can ‗see how‘ one of the central concepts ‗power/knowledge could be important‘. She also sees a contradiction in the idea ‗that knowledge that becomes power moulds us‘ because the lecturer has also been moulded by the ideas that she ‗connected with‘ following C‘s proto-theory of identification with theorist by personality type of lecturer. C‘s understanding that ‗one theory is that you‘re never really going to be objective so it‘s up to you to know a little bit about each one to know what to draw on in different circumstances‘ is also closest to the ideal of using the various conceptual tools provided by the canon as appropriate above. However, just because the other students have not done the reading does not mean that they have not gained at least an intuitive understanding from the lecture.

They all agree on seeing the new

citizenship curriculum in school, as an example of the imposition of a knowledge regime and therefore also of power. X‘s gnomic utterances, for example, could be regarded as possibly profound if oblique commentaries upon the conversation, especially his last remark that there is no way out of all encompassing ‗power/knowledge‘ save through the Grace of God! A and B also, despite their apparent aversion to theory (‗that‘s what I said about theorists!‘) and a dismissal of it – if with the highly theoretical question ‗How does a theory become a theory anyway?‘, also evidence a tacit comprehension that ‗we can all see things from different points of view‘ and ‗You might read something and think it was like this but someone else might read it and think it was from another point of view.‘ The danger of this negative moment in the dialectic is that all theory is dismissed as ‗depressing‘. But B adds, ‗we would have preferred to do it from our own point of view‘ and asks ‗if we‘re trying to be researchers why do we have to have to look at things through their eyes?‘ She thus points the discussion towards another agenda, one that would generate knowledge ‗from our own point of view‘. B‘s preference for a theory developed from ‗our own point of view‘ runs counter to the liberal education model that sees intellectual

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory development as a cultural artefact produced by great minds (the canon of Dead White Male theorists discussed above). Colin Waugh‘s account of Hegel also seeks ‗a labour theory of cognition to base what we do on our own experience, which shows us that the people who most truly know Further and Higher Education teaching and learning, and hence can change it for the better, are, on the one hand, practising lecturers and, on the other hand, (present and former) students.‘ He finds this ‗independent conception of teaching and learning‘ in Hegel‘s Logic ‗which encapsulated, amongst other things, a model of cognition.‘ This ‗portrays thinking not as a territory to be mapped by an onlooker so much as a system in motion, within which his [sic] own thinking about thinking is a participant.‘ (2005: 21). This participation relates to Paolo Freire‘s more explicitly pedagogical notion of conscientizacao as ‗the deepening of the attitude of awareness characteristic of all emergence‘ (1996: 90) achieved through dialogue. (Compare Bohm 1996: 46: ‗Dialogue is the collective way of opening up judgements and assumptions‘). Dialogue works against what Freire called the ‗banking concept of education‘ in which learners were constituted as ‗receiving, filing and storing the deposits entrusted to them‘ (1996: 53). Similarly to Dewey, political problem solving constituted teachers and students as ‗co-investigators in dialogue‘ (1996: 62).

Starting with

students‘ thoughts and considering them agents capable of expanding their understandings beyond the oppressors‘ common sense (as in Gramsci) students can develop active thought, capable of ‗changing the world‘, not just ‗interpreting it‘. For Waugh, ‗these insights‘ should ‗feed into‘ teachers and students ‗designing our own model of teaching and learning‘ independent of the indirect knowledge of ‗those who currently dominate discourse in the field‘, such as ‗most managers and consultants‘ because ‗only practitioners have the potential to unite theory with practice‘. Conclusion There are practical precedents, not only theoretical ones, for the linkage of ideas with experience to create an independent point of view. In particular, polytechnic education originated in the industrial revolution

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Learning About Learning in a New University and aimed to use work, not in the manner of today‘s vocational education, as a preparation for employment, but as a pedagogical and philosophical principle.

It aspired to derive generalised knowledge from practical

application. It did not confine students to receiving information about specific occupations but, instead, linked practical learning presented as scholarship together with artistic creation and scientific research for a purpose. This purpose was not limited to training in competence for future employment.

The polytechnic ideal of knowledge and skill for a wider

social purpose was embodied in the original socialist ideal of learning for use and in its 1960s social democratic variant of the polytechnics. While the liberal humanism of the traditional universities, pursuing knowledge for its own sake, appeared to contribute only indirectly and, as it were, incidentally to the economy (and to graduate job prospects), polytechnic students aimed to reach the same level of generalised knowledge and higher cognitive skills as traditional university study through direct application to the world of work. Polytechnics therefore answered more directly the question deeply rooted in the consciousness of many students about the purpose of their study than did generalised academic study ‗for its own sake‘ at the universities with which they shared a unitary culture of HE across the then-binary divide. Independent Study (as described by Robbins in 1988) allowed students to define, also in relation to their employment and interests, their own field of study and the means of its assessment. These attempts to create an alternative to academic ‗Official Knowledge‘ in higher education can be compared to previous efforts by teachers in comprehensive secondary schooling to open an academic curriculum to mass access. This paper suggests that the mass of teachers in a mass system of higher education are in the same situation today. References Ainley, P. (2005), For Free Universities, Greenwich University Inaugural Lecture Series. Ainley, P. (2004), Degrees of Difference, Higher Education in the 1990s, London: Lawrence and Wishart.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Ainley, P. (1993), Class and Skill, Changing Divisions of Knowledge and Labour, London: Cassell. Ainley, P. and Bailey, B. (1997), The Business of Learning, Staff and Student Experiences of Further Education in the 1990s, London: Cassell. Ainley, P. and Broadfoot, P. (1995), Review Symposium on ‗Academic Discourse, Linguistic Misunderstanding and Professorial Power‘ by PierreBourdieu, Jean-Claude Passeron and Monique de Saint Martin, with Christian Baudelot and Guy Vincent, trans by Richard Trees, Cambridge: Polity Press 1994 in Assessment in Education, Vol.2, No. 1. Ainley, P and Canaan, J. (2005), Critical Hope in English Higher Education Today, Constraints and Possibilities in Two New Universities, forthcoming in special issue of Teaching in Higher Education. Ashwin, P. (2005), Variation in Students‘ Experiences of the ‗Oxford Tutorial‘, paper given to Society for research into Higher Education Student Experience Network meeting at Sheffield Hallam University, March 10th. Bohm, D. (1996), On Dialogue, London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J-C. (1979), The Inheritors, French Students and their Relation to Culture, trans R.Nice, Chicago: University of Chicago Press first published 1964 as Les Heretiers, Etudiants et Leurs Etudes, Paris: Cahiers du centre de Sociologie Europeene. Brown, R. (2004), ‗The future structure of the sector: what price diversity?‘ Perspectives 8 (4), 93-99. Canaan, J. forthcoming, ‗Developing a Pedagogy of Critical Hope‘ in Learning and Teaching in Social Science. Clarke, A. (2001), Being There, Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Department for Education and Skills (2003), Every Child Matters, London: DfES.

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Learning About Learning in a New University Department for Education and Skills (1998), Teachers: meeting the challenge of change, London: DfES. Freire, P. (1996), Pedagogy of the Oppressed trans. Ramos, M., London: Ramos Press. Habermas, J. (1985), The Theory of Communicative Action Vol.1: Reason and Rationalization of Society trans. McCarthy, T., Boston, Mass: Beacon Press. Hegel, G. (1892), The Logic of Hegel trans Wallace, W., Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Jenkins, A. (2004), A Guide to the Research Evidence on TeachingResearch Relations, York: The Higher Education Academy. Lee, D., Marsden, D., Rickman, P. and Duncombe, J. (1990), Scheming for Youth, A study of YTS in the enterprise culture, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Piatt, W. (2005), Diverse Missions, Achieving Excellence and Diversity in Post-16 Education, London: Institute for Public Policy Research. Roberts, K. (2001), Class in Modern Britain, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Roberts, K., Cook, F. and Semeonoff, E. (1977), The Fragmentary Class Structure, London: Heinemann. Robbins, D. (1991), The Work of Pierre Bourdieu, Recognising Society, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Robbins, D. (1988), The Rise of Independent Study. The Politics and Philosophy of an Educational Innovation, 1970-87, Buckingham: Open University Press. Savage,

M.

(2000),

Class

Analysis

and

Social

Transformation,

Buckingham: Open University Press. Waugh, C. (2005), ‗Teaching, learning, cognition‘ in Post-16 Educator 25, pp.20-4. Wexler, P. (1992), Becoming Somebody, Toward a Social Psychology of School, London: Falmer Press. Wright, E. (1984), ‗A General framework for the Analysis of Class Structure‘ in Wright, E. (ed.) The Debate on Classes, London: Verso.

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Chapter 4

Teaching Social Theory: Reflections from a Teaching Diary Joyce E Canaan [F]or me . . . the educational practice of a progressive option will never be anything but an adventure in unveiling (Freire 2003:8). Introduction This paper is part of my own ‗adventure in unveiling‘; through writing it I have come to appreciate more fully the possibilities and limits to my attempts thus far to realise critical pedagogy through teaching social theory. The paper explores discursive themes I produced in the research diary I kept whilst conducting funded research1 during autumn 2002-03 on strategies for engaging students more fully in social theory. I show how a Butlerian feminist poststructuralist framework allows me to begin to dislodge some regressive aspects of my pedagogy whilst maintaining my commitment to critical pedagogy. This paper has three sections. I first locate my efforts to implement critical pedagogy and students‘ take up of these efforts in the context of: a. changes in Higher Education (HE) due to the recent introduction of practices of marketisation, managerialism and accountability and b. feminist poststructuralism, especially the work of Judith Butler. Second I examine two discourses with which I framed this diary—what I call the discourses of anxieties and of critical hope. I suggest that whilst the first discourse is indicative of the constraining circumstances under which I (like many others) teach, it is accompanied by a more progressive second discourse indicative of my efforts to implement critical pedagogy. I conclude by considering how others and I might implement critical pedagogy more fully in future teaching of social theory and other modules.

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Reflections from a Teaching Diary The State we’re In: British HE Today My research on teaching Contemporary Social Theory thus far has explored how I have sought to develop a pedagogy of critical hope for HE through this teaching.

My definition of critical hope rests on the

recognition from Freire and others that education can be considered a dialogue in which we listen to students and support their efforts to articulate and understand limits to their lives so that they can recognise and work to lessen these limits and to improve their own lives and those of others.

This framework argues that these limits are produced by the

structuring of the social world from and for the most advantaged groups. Critical pedagogy is thought to seen as that which can help students think more reflexively about their circumstances and use that reflexivity to help build a more progressive world (Freire 1996, 2003, Darder et al 2003, Giroux 1983). Clearly this immodest goal is only partly realisable in HE today (Ainley and Canaan forthcoming a, forthcoming b, Canaan 2002a, 2002b). But this does not mean that we should not continue to work to realise it as critical hope seems more necessary now than ever as HE like other educational levels is being marketised as part of the wider erosion of the public sector and the welfare state in this nation and others.

HE is

consequently being restructured similarly to private sector organisations as government resources are squeezed and institutions and the individuals in them compete for students and other sources of funds. Lecturers are being under-resourced, under-paid, work-intensified and forced to demonstrate their keenness to be ‗players‘ in a more managerialised system in which they are held to account for their work more than ever (Ball 2003, Levidow 2002, Moser 20041, Naidoo 2000). This process is radically transforming teaching and teachers‘/lecturers‘ identities: New roles and subjectivities are produced as teachers are re-worked as producers/providers, educational entrepreneurs and managers and are subject to regular appraisal and review and performance comparisons. We learn to talk about ourselves and the relationships, purposes and motivations in these new ways (Ball 2003:218).

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Students‘ identities are also being transformed; they are increasingly conceptualised as customers buying a product or service in an educational marketplace. Many of them, especially those from less privileged backgrounds, are also work-intensified as rising fees require more of them to work whilst studying. approach education

Further, HE students have long learnt to

instrumentally

as

marketisation was

initially

introduced during their primary and secondary education with the 1988 Education Reform Act (Ball 1990). Marketisation and accountability in particular have made formal learning more intellectually stifling, as learning is linked more closely with the teaching of skills of employability and as institutions and the individuals in them compete to demonstrate that the service they deliver offers ‗value for money‘ to student customers. But the picture is not completely bleak. New groups of students entering HE today may be more amenable to critical hope than prior generations given that they come from groups previously excluded As Naidoo notes, such ‗Widening Participation‘ students come from ‗those socio-economic and ethnic minority groups that have been historically excluded from postsecondary education‘ (Naidoo 2000:25). Their relative disadvantage is likely to have resulted in them experiencing and internalising symbolic violence as individual inadequacy prior to entering HE relative to groups historically included whose material and symbolic interests enabled them to occupy the dominant position in the social formation (Bourdieu and Passeron1977:9). Many new students may have been deemed average or deficient ‗cognitively, culturally and/or linguistically‘ in an increasingly stratified primary and secondary education system in which ‗schools and their personnel‘ fail to recognise how pedagogic strategies discriminated ‗against many culturally different groups‘ and thereby denied ‗their humanity‘ (Bartolme 2003:408, 411, see also Gillborn and Youdell 2000). These students are likely to ‗choose‘ to enter former polytechnics, where those committed to teaching working class and minority ethnic students have sought to help these students

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Reflections from a Teaching Diary reflect upon social processes that brought them to internalise feelings of inadequacy. Critical hope also seems more visible in the world today, a world in crisis as governments stoke the flames of fear and hatred of others through anti-terrorist legislation and anti-asylum/refugee legislation respectively, and as the threat of global warming looms larger and is either ignored or accepted fatalistically as our unavoidable future (see, for example, Monbiot 2005a, Pilger 2004). At a moment when HE knowledge production is needed to focus on issues and help realise broad humanitarian goals, its vision and focus is being narrowed to meet utilitarian economic ends. But critical pedagogues are not alone in desiring critical hope; as Maxine Green put it there is a growing recognition that: the world we inhabit is palpably deficient: there are unwarranted inequities, shattered communities, unfulfilled lives. We cannot help but hunger for traces of utopian visions, of critical or dialectical engagement with social and economic realities (Green in Darder, Baltadano and Torres 2002:97). We can work with students to nurture that hunger for utopian dreams. This hunger seems to be growing post the largest ever anti-war marches in 2003, the ‗no‘ vote against European Union neo-liberalisation in 2005, and in the wish by the world public in summer 2005 as I write, to ‗make poverty history‘ even if the means being proposed may actually increase that poverty (see Monbiot 2005b, Pilger 2005). This is not to deny that nurturing such hunger is difficult; I write this paper in moments stolen from a process of producing documents that never needed to exist before in the now audit obsessed HE culture in which we teach and research (Strathern 2000). But I cannot give up hope given its necessity and am affirmed in my efforts by Judith Butler‘s assertion that the discourses with which we articulate, understand and live the world rest on profound and generative contradictions that enable progressive possibilities to be produced. On the one hand, this government and others have ‗the power to produce—demarcate, circulate, differentiate—the bodies [and identities they control] . . . through [introducing] certain highly regulated practices‖ (Butler 1993:1). Considerable efforts are being made

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory to transform our students and our identities which are resulting, as Ball noted, in us expending more effort in producing ―a spectacle, or gameplaying or cynical compliance, or what one might see as an ‗enacted fantasy‘ . . . which is there simply to be seen and judged—a fabrication‖ (Ball 2003:222). On the other hand, this process is always partial and requires reiteration in discourse because it rests on the creation of a ‗‖constitutive

outside‖—the

unspeakable,

the

unviable,

the

nonnarrativizable that secures and, hence, fails to secure the very borders of materiality‘ (Butler 1993:188). Butler maintains that what is excluded through the process of producing the subject ‗continues to determine that subject . . . and persists as a kind of defining negativity‘ (1993:190). Thus the creation of an ‗outside‘ to discourse results in the production of an identity necessarily partial as that which lies outside can haunt the ‗inside‘. The significance of this idea for radical politics is considerable. Because signifiers cannot fully: describe the constituency they name . . . [they are therefore open] to new meanings and new possibilities for political resignification. It is this open-ended and performative function of the signifier that seems to me to be crucial to a radical democratic notion of futurity (1993:191). Butler‘s insight can be applied to HE. On the one hand, the neo-liberal ideology that generates the regimes of managerialism, marketisation and accoutnaability encourages our students and us to see ourselves as competitive individuals engaged in a struggle of survival of the fittest (Bourdieu 1999). It also encourages us to transform the curriculum so that we inculcate skills of employability in students. On the other hand, these efforts are only ever partial because we experience traces of that which has been pushed outside—fuller humanity and respect for all and more protection of the environment. The analysis of my diary below is also guided by feminist poststructuralists. Britzman suggests that whilst it is often initially difficult to analyse our own words and thoughts, we can do so by considering ‗both the structure of the narration we produce and what it is that structures its modes of intelligibility‘ (2000:27). With her suggestion, I have examined the textual conventions with which I situated my students, myself and our

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Reflections from a Teaching Diary interactions in the reflective diary I kept in which I wrote before the semester began and then for one day a week after each teaching session. Britzman‘s insights encouraged me to explore the ‗styles, figures of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances‘ with which the narrative is produced (Said in 2000:27) and thereby ‗read [this diary] . . . with suspicion‘ (2000:30). I do so in order to undermine ‗previously (unquestioned or unquestionable) power of those discourses that have had a monopoly on consciousness‘ (Davies 2000:179) and thereby to speak against this power. Such undermining is possible, Davies suggests, partly by making ―visible the ways in which power shifts dramatically depending on how subjects are positioned by and within the multiple and competing discourses they encounter‖ (2000:180). With these insights and those of Butler, I also look beyond the discourses operating to see what they exclude and how that which is excluded can be re-introduced, so that another way of being can be imagined and efforts can be made to realise it. Thus below I examine how I discursively position myself and my students and show how my students and I began to ―imagine how to reposition‖ and ―realign‖ ourselves, and thereby to ―use the power of discourse . . . to disrupt those of its effects‖ we wished to resist (2000:180), and, further, to nurture critical hope in the current climate. Developing a Suspicious Reading of My Diary The Frame of a Discourse of Anxieties I framed the initial diary entry —in the first two paragraphs of the first diary entry—and later entries with what I call a discourse of anxieties 1: I return to this research project with anxiety, which is not how I wanted to return. I really enjoyed the first phase of this project, . . . of planning my syllabus for the autumn . . . I began to look forward to doing a load of reading around social theory, and around teaching, that would enable me to make this module really exciting both for the students and for myself. However, as the term approaches, I am filled with anxiety. Anxiety because it is the beginning of term and there is so much preparatory work even though I have been relieved of some teaching by getting funds to do this research, anxiety because Dave is now getting a

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory brain scan which may mean that he has a tumour, anxiety because I see all these books on my shelves that I haven‟t read, . . . and I feel inadequate and how can I therefore do this grant justice, anxiety because I know that the teaching will be exhausting and that during the term everything goes at a rapid pace that makes it difficult to do anything, anxiety because the students I am teaching do not seem to be at the level that I would like and I fear that I am losing respect for them (2002c:1). Framing this diary with these anxieties demonstrated that I sought to acknowledge to myself and others with whom I anticipated I would share parts of this diary (including C-SAP and UCE funders), that teaching today is more fraught than previously as lecturers teach and students learn under increasingly intensified circumstances—indeed, I noted later in the same entry that my Faculty cut down on time allocated for marking students coursework and dissertations, which meant that we had fewer ‗hours‘ on our timetables which were then filled with other tasks. . The anxieties I was articulating centred prinmarily on time. I first noted that I faced time constraints on my research. Even though I received funds to replace teaching, before the term began I feared that I could not engage as fully as I hoped with the pedagogic and curricular challenges of teaching social theory. Later in the extract I suggested that this fear made me feel inadequate intellectually.

Whilst here I located the problem

internally, on the next page I suggested that the reasons for me feeling intellectually inadequate lay outside, pointing to ‗pressure in my job‘, which meant that I could only ‗take in so much [intellectually] and no more‘ (2002c, p. 2). Thus work-pressures for productivity inhibited my intellectual engagement (Strathern 1997). I referred to another aspect of time pressures when mentioning the rapid pace at which time proceeded during the semester. Having just gone through the summer months when there were fewer external constraints on reading and writing, I was reminding myself of how time was shifting as I moved into the semester when there were multiple constraints on me. Nonetheless, the grant gave me time to articulate and reflect upon internal and external processes that produced these anxieties.

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Reflections from a Teaching Diary Seven of the remaining 13 diary entries that semester were also framed by time constraints1. On 25 October I noted that, ―It feels as if there is a never-ending stream of work to do― (Canaan 2002c, p. 46). This feeling of a ‗never-ending stream of work‘ was encapsulated in a dream I recorded at the beginning of my diary entry on 4 October (the weekday morning when I was teaching social theory): Haven‟t had a minute to write in here since last week and didn‟t have adequate time to think about and develop the lecture and seminar as I would have liked. I am really stressed and am not sleeping at all well. I awoke on Wednesday morning at 4am from a dream in which planes with bombs were coming after people who were standing still. So I had to keep moving. I think that this dream . . . reflects on how I am feeling incredibly swamped, pushed, at the beginning of term (2002c, p. 12). Whilst I consciously tried to deal with work pressures, they prevented me sleeping and were aptly captured unconsciously in my dream. Another theme in the above extract was anxiety about my partner‘s health.

I mentioned this anxiety self-consciously, as a feminist who

recognised the linkage ―between passion and intellect, analysis and subjectivity‖ and the impact of one upon the other (Behar 1996:174-175). Fortunately, my partner‘s illness was much less serious than we initially feared; otherwise there might have been further constraints on this research. Including my emotional concerns in an examination of teaching and learning is something other researchers are doing; Smith, Beard and Clegg (2005) have sought to map students‘ emotional journeys during their first year at university. The above extract also mentions my fear about my changing representation of students. By juxtaposing two assertions—that students were not ‗at the level that I would like‘ and that I was ‗losing respect for them‘, I was locating current students as inadequate relative to prior generations and thereby creating a discourse of derision about students. I failed to recognise that the entry of Widening Participation students into my university and others was part of ―the move from an elite to a mass higher education system‖ (Leathwood and O‘Connell 2003:599) which fits well with a critical pedagogy framework that aims to empower students through engaging in dialogue that builds on their current understandings.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Rather than considering, as critical pedagogy does, that students had insights that could be built further, I reproduced a common assumption of lecturers that such students represented: “‟the masses‟: [they are] homogenized, pathologized and marked as „Other‟ compared with existing students who are perceived to be there „as of right, representing the norm against which the others are judged and found to be wanting‟” (2003:599). I was thus discursively placing the onus ‗on students to adapt themselves to the institution and its rules rather than . . . [considering a more progressive and alternative construction of these students as bringing a] ‗fresh perspective‘ to HE‘ (Bowl 2001:157). I therefore failed to consider that these students might find HE an alienating and unfamiliar place whose ‗norms and values‘ they did not understand: In the new higher education, „the learner‟ may be a person who is experiencing tremendous difficulty in the face of unexplained norms and values . . . In addition, he or she may be exhausted from part-time work or parenting, distracted by family or financial problems, or lacking the fundamental confidence, self-esteem or health to engage in the ways that are assumed [by lecturers] to be both desirable and possible (Haggis 2003:98). Haggis‘ observations suggest that a discourse of derision can be contained by locating new students in a wider context, considering the circumstances that brought them to approach learning as they do. Her suggestions could be read within a Freirean framework that encourages lecturers to appreciate the conditions within which their students enter HE by engaging in dialogue with these students about their lives. Given my commitment to critical hope, why did I produce such a discourse? First, I had a privileged education and still held on to some assumptions from that education. Second, receiving grants allowed me to begin to reflect on my teaching and student learning. But if receiving grants enabled me to challenge my own discourse of derision, what about lecturers without such grants? Why did my institution not train me or my colleagues previously to meet new students‘ learning needs? How many other institutions provide such training? In asking these questions, I am shifting blame from myself and other lecturers to institutional responsibility for such support—again repeating the shift I made in my

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Reflections from a Teaching Diary diary when reflecting on time factors preventing me from realising initial research goals. The fact that I can make such a shift highlights Butler‘s point that the discursive production of regulatory ideals—in this case the ideal that lecturers should support increasingly diverse HE students— operates through a process of exclusion that can later haunt that which is included. I initially excluded institutional pressures on time and support for lecturers teaching new students; being able to articulate this exclusion in my diary and in writing this paper indicates possibilities for contesting such pressures. Further my diary was not just initially framed with a discourse of anxieties; indeed this discourse was produced partly in reaction to prior feelings of enjoyment, anticipation and excitement about teaching mentioned in the first paragraph of the diary extract. As this suggests, even giving small funds to help lecturers reflect upon and improve teaching can renew lecturers‘ hope for and commitment to teaching as it did with me. But this hope can be dashed if it is accompanied by growing pressures. I now discuss the second key discourse in this diary, that of encouraging students to see themselves as social theorists who could develop critical hope. I show how I was partly able to lessen the discourse of derision through doing so. Strategies for Engaging Students Theory and Developing Critical Hope

in

Learning

Social

I used at least three interconnected discursive strategies to engage students in learning social theory and thereby developing critical hope. The first strategy was to invite students to reflect upon my strategies for teaching social theory and how these strategies impacted on their learning. I did so by including reflections on my teaching in lectures/seminars and asking students to think about and comment upon these reflections. The second strategy was to encourage students to see themselves as social theorists who could use this module to develop their theorising about the world. I did so by asking students to consider the impact of my teaching on their learning and how they approached learning social theory. I also was

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory asking myself which pedagogic strategies would bests help me understand how they theorised so I could help them theorise better in future. The third strategy was to use students and my own reflections on learning and teaching to encourage students to develop critical hope and to nurture my own through doing so. With regard to the first strategy, I set aside four minutes at the lecture‘s end when I asked students to write down what they thought they learnt. As I wrote after the first session, I did so because ―I hoped that it would make them think, at the beginning of a lecture, or, rather, make them anticipate, at the beginning of a lecture, what they would get from a lecture‖ (2002c:5)1. I wanted students to actively engage in learning by utilising their awareness that they would need to write down what they thought they were learning during the lecture. I also told them why I was introducing this exercise as I was introducing it, thereby making my teaching strategies explicit. Students who participated in seminars—and numbers lessened as the seminar progressed, as they did and do in all classes I (and my colleagues) teach—stated that they found this technique helpful. I then told them my prior doubts about this strategy: as it meant that I couldn‟t pump information into them in a manner that presumed that I was the active one and they were the passive ones . . . [E]ven though part of me believed that students should be engaged in active learning, part of me also clearly felt that learning was this more passive process in a lecture (2002d, p. 5). I now realise I was using the banking model of pedagogy and sought to replace it with a more problem-posing method. But how problem-posing were my efforts if I posed problems rather than building on those students posed, and if they could only respond to problems I posed in the last four minutes of a lecture I gave and they received? Whilst mass education lectures are clearly constrained, they allow more than I imagined then. Nonetheless, the fact that in this mass education system I was seeking to create a pedagogy that was more humane, engaged and attuned to

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Reflections from a Teaching Diary students‘ needs is indicative of my commitment to bring into my pedagogy more of what was excluded in an era of growing instrumentality in HE. My second strategy was to suggest that students were social theorists, which I did in the second lecture, elaborating upon a point in my first lecture that, as Gramsci said, we are all philosophers who seek to understand the world. I suggested that I wanted to help them ‗become aware of your scheme of thought, the theory or theories with which you think about and seek to make sense of the world and to help you realise the implications that stem from that social theory‘ (Canaan 2002d:1). I was offering students the subject position of theorising agent, which was taking me beyond the discourse of derision in my first diary entry and toward a pedagogy that could help students develop their own theories about the world. I asked students, during this lecture, to write down, before I presented other theorists‘ ideas about human nature and society, their theories for them to compare to those of the theorists we were studying at the lecture‘s end. As I reflected in my diary on 4 October: What better way to teach students that they are social theorists than to demonstrate to them that they have their own theories of human nature and of society? And if I can keep this going all semester, then by the end they may not just know their own theories better, but have questioned some aspects of these theories (2002c, p. 13). Here I was first using lecture space somewhat more creatively than in the prior session by having students write down their theories before I presented those of others.

But I now wonder if students might feel

intimidated by me asking them to articulate something as abstract as ‗a theory of human nature and society‘.

I was offering them the pre-

designated subject position of social theorist rather than working with them from the subject positions they already occupied. Nonetheless, as my comments of 4 October indicate, I was creating an alternative discursive position for myself to that of the discourse of derision—although I question the impact that this had on students. This alternative discursive position was and is not stable. In that same entry I observed that ‗I have been in the situation I am now in before, where, several weeks into the module I am thinking that the students are

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory pretty engaged, but when I get their essays in a few weeks, I know that I will . . . see that they are not very literate‘ (2002c p. 24). Whilst having the time to study and reflect upon my teaching enabled me to more fully elaborate such a discourse, it existed—and exists—alongside the discourse of derision. Furthermore, how much of a dialogue is possible by having students write down their thoughts in a few minutes during the lecture? Why did I not disrupt the lecture format more fully? I did not do so partly because this pedagogy was new to me. Also, it is difficult to do so in the current climate. For example, one strategy I wanted to initiate in autumn 2005 that might have helped disrupt the idea that I am the active teacher and students are the passive learners would have been to hold seminars first, followed by lectures, with the latter building upon points students made in seminars. I was unable to do so because there was space neither in the timetable nor the buildings for such a shift. constraints

limit

possibilities

for

implementing

Clearly external critical

pedagogy

strategies. And such an effort could go further still—like asking students during the first week to introduce key issues of concern to them that could then use to organise the module. Whilst that would enable me to pursue a Freirean pedagogy, it is not possible in a system of module aims and learning outcomes and where lecturers have less time and energy to devote to teaching given regimes of accountability. Clearly, then, regulatory practices limit such efforts. Why bother then with critical pedagogy given how limited its possible realisation is in HE today? I will now explore this question through considering how I used my reflections about student learning and my teaching to develop the third strategy of encouraging students to develop critical hope and nurturing my own. I introduced the idea of critical hope in the first lecture where I said I wanted students to use social theory to understand the world because: the world in which we live today is very uncertain and tumultuous— and is even more uncertain and tumultuous than it was last year. I take it as my responsibility to demonstrate to you how you might use social theory not just to understand the world, but to work to make it a better, more secure and sane place in the future (Canaan 2002d, p. 2).

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Reflections from a Teaching Diary I located my suggestion that students could use social theory to develop critical hope in the shadow of the events of 9/11 and their aftermath— which I knew, from teaching the module the prior autumn, had radically disrupted students (and my own) prior understandings (Canaan 2002a, 2002b). I sought to suggest that sociological theory was not just abstract, but useful, and sought to demonstrate this by considering how each theorist might address the post 9/11 world. But how effective was this strategy? Students were not taking Contemporary Social Theory by choice; it was (and is) a core module. Perhaps I was only giving them a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine of theory go down in a less painful way than it might otherwise have done. Further, I was telling them how I wanted them to use social theory; perhaps they had resolved the disruption many of us experienced the prior year and I was foisting my agenda on them, which hardly Freirean problem-posing pedagogy. Nonetheless, I felt in this initial class, and indeed in those that followed that year and in years since, that students are hungry to understand the world. In the third lecture, I elaborated upon my suggestion in the first lecture that I was teaching critical social theory, in which a central element was immanent critique which ―worked from within the categories of existing thought, radicalized them, and showed in varying degrees both their problems and their unrecognized possibilities‖ (Calhoun in Canaan 2002d). I suggested that students could use critical social theory to scrutinise their assumptions about the world to develop more progressive assumptions. I thus was at least partly indicating to students what the subject position of critical social theorist entailed—albeit by starting with theory rather than their understandings. In two of three seminars after this lecture, which, like other seminars were structured around questions students brought from the lecture and their lives, students asked if action, like going on a mass demonstration such as the one 10 days previously (on 30 September), helped bring about change. As we discussed this fatalistic response, another student elaborated upon such fatalism by asking, ―but what difference does that [going on a demonstration] make because the government is going to go to war anyway?‖ (Canaan 2002c:23). These

97

Learning and Teaching Social Theory questions made me wonder, ―how I, as a progressive, seek to encourage students to believe that action is necessary . . . How do I move students from liberal disquiet at best to progressive politics?‖ (2002c:23). Students were considering the active subject position that engaging in critical hope entails, yet found reasons for rejecting it, hardly surprising in the current TINA [There Is No Alternative] logic era. As Freire reminds us (and in response to the questions I raised), it is important, in an era when there seems to be no alternative to the neo-liberal agenda and we have less time to think creatively with students, to remind students (and ourselves) that this feeling is socially manufactured. What I should have done, and would try to do in future when confronted with such fatalism, would be to bring to students‘ attention ‗examples of the vulnerability‘ [of the government] . . . so that a contrary conviction can begin to grow within them‘ (Freire 1996:46). I could mention, as I noted earlier, the momentous anti-war demonstrations in 2003, followed by public disillusionment with this war and its aftermath and the growing anti-capitalist/anti-globalisation movement.

As Butler also reminds us, government discourse is not

seamless; it needs continuous reiteration to contest its haunting by that which it excludes—a point difficult to sustain in these fatalistic TINA times. In addition, some strategies for answering students‘ question about why bother to go on a demonstration emerged in the fourth lecture and seminar on Gramsci and Althusser. I used Gramsci‘s ideas about the possibility of moving from common sense to good sense to suggest that students could engage in a comparable movement: I want you to think about the way you think about the world. I want you to question your assumptions and see the contradictions in them. I want you to then consider which bits of your thinking you want to hold on to and why, and which bits you want to change (Canaan 2002e: 6). On the one hand, I was suggesting to students that theorists like Gramsci could help them critically understand the world. I was also indicating that Gramsci exemplified my assertion in the first week that social theorists used theory to question the world and seek to change it. Some students in all seminars responded to this idea with considerable enthusiasm. Indeed,

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Reflections from a Teaching Diary I noted at the end of this diary entry that lecture and seminars ‗went really well‘ (Canaan 2002c:38). Students kept asking questions that built on one another. In one seminar group students asked if good sense was always open to question. Another asked in response ‗Is it ever the case that we stop asking questions‘, to which another then said ‗Once you answer the first why [question], you are then open to the second, which opens you to the third‘ and another then asked ‗how do we get away from accepting halftruths?‘ (2002c:36).

As this movement from one question to another

indicates, at least those students discussing these questions were thinking critically about what questioning generally entailed and how far it could go. The same process happened in another seminar where a student I call Susie expressed surprise: that these theories seemed so relevant . . . [W]hen she read Gramsci she came to recognise that common sense is about how our society encourages us to think in certain ways. She said that this is . . . hard to resist . . . [Then] I asked her what were the pleasures and pains of learning that our society shaped us in certain ways. She said that the pleasures were about coming to recognise that she had taken so much for granted, hadn‟t questioned very much at all. She said that this meant that she could think thoughts she had never thought before. But she said that it was also painful . . . [S]he was arguing with people she had known for a long time (2002c34). Susie found Gramsci‘s notion of common sense helpful to her developing understanding of how most people lived their lives and how and why she found good sense compelling—and painful for her close relationships. Whilst Susie could move from the subject position of ‗dominated subject‘ to ‗active and contestatory social agent‘ (Smith 1988:152) which was intellectually affirming, it was also emotionally threatening. This suggests that, notwithstanding my repeating three times to students that ‗I want you to . . . ‗, which indicates my imposing of my ideas on them, some students took up my suggestion that they should question the world and were considering the positive and negative consequences of doing so. As this suggests, my rather limited efforts to engage students struck a chord with them, which they then responded to. I am heartened by this. Indeed, it fits with Butler‘s idea that efforts to impose regulatory practices must be continuous because they are unstable. Even or perhaps especially in the

99

Learning and Teaching Social Theory current climate, limited efforts like mine can have a positive and powerful impact on students. Conclusion I cannot end on a singularly positive note, as the present era is not an easy one in which to be an academic. Like many other academics, I am often mindful of the ways that my current circumstances as a teacher and researcher were unimaginable when I was training to be an academic and sometimes seem unbearable. Writing papers like this one makes me recognise that my efforts to be a critical pedagogue are more limited than I initially imagined, that even if they were fuller, the external circumstances I face would stymie these efforts, and, consequently, that it is difficult and wearing to keep go against the stream. And yet . . . in writing this paper I have gained a greater appreciation of how I can try to realise critical pedagogy more fully in the future even in the current climate. I have also gained a greater appreciation of how students positively responded even to my feeble efforts to date. This affirms my current belief that students are keen to question the world, take pleasure in doing so and through this process, can develop answers that help them create good sense, even if this means living more uncomfortably in the world thereafter. This suggests that it is important to keep the flame of critical pedagogy alight in the current era and to keep focusing on what we can do whilst recognising how difficult this is. Acknowledgements Thanks to Elizabeth Atkinson, Dave Harris and Wes Shumar for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes 1 I kept the diary as part of a C-SAP grant (2002-2003) and UCE teaching fellowship (2002-2005). The aim of these funds was for me to encourage greater student engagement with learning social theory, a module students

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Reflections from a Teaching Diary were terrified of, through researching how students responded to changes I made in my pedagogy. 2 Lord Moser said that HE is currently ―dramatically underfunded‖ and academics are ―grossly under-rewarded‖ (2004 talk). 3 This initial framing of this diary with a discourse of anxieties was partly a conscious effort on my part. I viewed the diary as having an audience beyond myself and realised that that view impacted on how and what I wrote, because ‗I know that I want to use it for research purposes, which inevitably shape[s] it. . . . I am aware that . . . parts of this will be included in a public document, so I am watching what I say and have some selfconsciousness about the process‘ (Canaan 2002c:12). 4 I framed two additional entries with the emotional stress my partner and I were experiencing as we sought to buy and sell a house that semester. 5 I must confess that I had just read Habeshaw, Habeshaw and Gibbs 53 Interesting Things to Do in Your Lecture (1984), which looked at lectures in what I now realise was an acontextual manner. References Ainley, P. and Canaan, J. E. (forthcoming a), ‗Critical Hope at the Chalkface:

View from Two English Universities‘, Cultural

Studies/Critical Methodologies, special issue on Critical Pedagogy, Antonia Darder (ed). Ainley, P. and Canaan, J. E. (forthcoming b), ‗Critical Hope in English Higher Education Today, Constraints and Possibilities in Two New Universities‘, special issue of Teaching in Higher Education on "Transformative Purposes, values and identities for higher education", 10(4) (October 2005). Ball, S. (2003), ‗The Teacher‘s Soul and the Terrors of Performativity‘, Journal of Education Policy 18(2), 215-228. Ball, S. (1990), ‗Markets, Morality and Equality in Education‘, London: Hillcole Group Paper 5.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Bartolme, L.(2003), ‗Beyond the Methods Fetish: Toward a Humanizing Pedagogy‘, in A Darder, M. Baltodano and R. D.Torres, (eds) The Critical

Pedagogy

Reader

New

York

and

London:

RoutledgeFalmer, pp. 408-429. Behar, R. (1996), The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart, Boston: Beacon Press. Bourdieu,

P.

(1999),

‗The

Essence

of

Neoliberalism‘

at

http://www.analitica.com/bitblioteca/bourdieu/neoliberalism.asp Bourdieu, P. and Passerion, J.-C. (1977), Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture London and Beverley Hills: Sage. Bowl, M. (2001), Experiencing the Barriers:

Non-traditional Students

Entering Higher Education, Research Papers in Education 16(2), 141-160. Britzman, D. (2000), ‗―The Question of Belief‖: Writing Poststructural Ethnography‘, in E. St Pierre, and W. S. Pillow (eds) Working the Ruins: Feminist Poststructural Theory and Method in Education London and New York: Routledge, pp. 27-39. Canaan, J. E. (forthcoming), ‗Developing a Pedagogy of Critical Hope‘, in LATISS (Learning and Teaching in Social Science). Canaan, J. E. (2003), ‗Strategies for Engaging Students More Fully in Social Theory‘, Final Report for C-SAP, (http://www.csap.bham.ac.uk/resources/project_reports/admin/extras/16_S_0 2.pdf). Canaan, J. E. (2002a), ‗Teaching Social Theory in Trying Times‘, Sociological Research Online, 6(4). Canaan, J. E. (2002b), ‗Theorizing Pedagogic Practices in the Contexts of Marketization and of September 11, 2001 and Its Aftermath‘, in "Anthropology and Education in the Aftermath of 9/11/01", Special Issue of Anthropology and Education Quarterly, September 2002, 33(3), pp. 368-382. Canaan, J. E. (2002c), Reflexive Teaching Diary Autumn 2002.

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Reflections from a Teaching Diary Canaan, J. E. (2002d), Introduction: Why Do Social Theory?, Lecture notes 25 September. Canaan, J. E. (2002e,) What Explanations Do Gramsci and Althusser Provide to Explore How Individuals and Individualism Are Socially Produced Today?, Lecture notes 16 October. Davies, B. (2000), ‗Eclipsing the Constitutive Power of Discourse: The Writing of Janette Turner Hospital‘, in E. St Pierre and W. S. Pillow (eds) Working the Ruins: Feminist Poststructural Theory and Method in Education, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 179-98. Freire, P. (2003), Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed New York and London: Continuum. Freire, P. (1996), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York and London. Habeshaw, T., S. Habeshaw and G. Gibbs (1984), 53 Interesting Things to Do in Your Lectures Bristol UK:

Technical and Educational

Services Ltd. Gillborn, D. and Youdell, D. (2000), Rationing Education: Policy, Practice, Reform and Equity, New York and London: Routledge. Giroux, Henry (1983), Theory and Resistance in Education Minneapolis: Bergin & Garvey. Green, M. (2002), ‗In Search of a Critical Pedagogy‘, in Darder, A., M. Baltadano and R. D. Torres (eds) The Critical Pedagogy Reader New York and London: RoutledgeFalmer, pp. 97-114. Haggis, T. (2003), Constructing images of ourselves? a critical investigation into ‗approaches to learning‘ research in higher education, British Educational Research Journal, 29(1), 89-104. Leathwood, C. and O‘Connell, P. ( 2003), ‗It‘s a Struggle‘:

The

Construction of the ‗New Student‘ in Higher Education‘, Journal of Education Policy, November-December, 18(6), pp. 597-615. Levidow, L. (2002), ‗Marketizing Higher Education: Neo-liberal Strategies and Counter-Strategies‘, at http://www.commoner.org.uk/03levidow.pdf

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Monbiot,

G.

(2005a),

‗Junk

Science‘

at

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/05/10/junk-science/ Monbiot

G.

(2005b),

A

Game

of

Double

Bluff

6/6/05

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/06/06/a-game-ofdouble-bluff-/. Moser, Lord (2004), ‗The Future of Our Universities‘, talk to the British Academy,

at:

http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2004/abstracts/2004-moser.htm Naidoo R. (2000), ―The ‗Third Way‘ to Widening Participation and Maintaining Quality in Higher Education: Lessons from the United Kingdom‖,

in

Journal

of

Education

Enquiry,

1(2),

at:

http://www.literacy.unisa.edu.au/jee/Papers/JEEPaper7.pdf. Pilger, J. (2004), ―The Most Important Terrorism is ‗Ours‘‖ 16/9/04 Znet, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&Ite mID=6238 Pilger, J. (2005), ‗The G8 Summit:

A Fraud and a Circus‘ Znet

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-06/24pilger.cfm. Smith, K., C. Beard and S. Clegg (2005), ‗Mapping Students‘ Emotional Journeys‘, presentation to 11 March Student Experience Network. Smith, P. (1988), Discerning the Subject Minneapolis:

University of

Minnesota Press. Strathern, M. (2000), ‗Introduction: New Accountabilities‘, in Strathern, M. (ed) Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy London and New York: Routledge, pp. 118. Strathern, M. (1997), ‗Improving Ratings: Audit in the British University System‘, in European Review 5:305-21.

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Reflections from a Teaching Diary

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Chapter 5

Commodification verses Civic Engagement: Service Learning in the Sociology Curriculum Wes Shumar Introduction Increasingly researchers have talked about the way that the consumer culture is at odds with the values of a liberal education and how that consumer society may be undermining education as well as civic participation in a modern democracy (Barber, 1992, 1995, 1998; Milner, 2004 Putnam, 2000; Shumar, 1997). Further, the culture of consumption distracts from some of the most pressing current social and environmental problems (Sklair, 2004; Appadurai, 1996; Jameson, 1997) This paper looks at the service learning major in sociology that we have developed at Drexel University and how that major provides a critique of the consumer culture that helps students creatively resist the dominant forms of power and ideological control in their personal and professional lives. The program begins by introducing students to service learning and civic engagement through a unique course for majors called ―Participatory Sociological Theory‖. In this course, students work in local social service organizations while reading about the ―Decline of Social Capital in America‖ and ―The Call of Service‖ (Putnam, 2000; Coles, 1993). The sociology major then moves to developing specialized courses in Participatory Action Research, where students work with local social service agencies planning and carrying out research that the agencies need to meet their community needs. Through the service learning and action research work students raise their own consciousness as they think about the ways media and the culture of consumption distract people from important issues. Further they engage with local community activists and community members as

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Service Learning in the Sociology Curriculum they attempt to creatively leverage resources and support to help community development. In this paper I reflect on my current work with the service learning orientation in the sociology major. Service learning is a movement in the United States that draws heavily on the progressive educational ideas of John Dewey and is oriented toward "learning by doing". The sociology major in my department defines itself as a ―service learning‖ program and I have been responsible for the last four years for two central service learning courses in the program. Each of the courses are offered once during an academic year. Drexel University has a quarter system with four ten-week quarters. The courses rotate between the fall, winter and spring quarters. In these courses we send students out into the community to work with community organizations on programs that serve people. Students then return to class and reflect on those experiences through the literature that they are reading and the classroom lectures. It is a format that allows for the merging of theory and practice as well as giving students a more active role in the learning process. Social movements in education in the United States, like service learning, have a significant discursive component where adherents and detractors air everything from practical problems to larger theoretical concerns. The movement is a utopian response to the current (and very instrumental) orientation of American higher education. It hopes to bring new life meaning and excitement to the educational process that is becoming increasingly marketized. As such the service learning movement produces what Bernstein (1996) would refer to as prospective social identities. This paper explores these utopian visions tying this ―universe of consciousness‖ to the macro-economic changes in American capitalism commonly referred to as globalization and transnationalism. I suggest that the pressures upon the state and state institutions coming from the contradictions of the current arrangement of global capitalism have produced two types of legitimacy crisis in higher education. The first targets the meaning and purpose of education. The second produces a deeper challenge of how to pay for the production of new knowledge and

107

Learning and Teaching Social Theory indeed what institutions will control the production of new knowledge. Service learning is one way the legitimacy crises in higher education are being addressed. While service learning hopes to address the crises of American higher education, there is a dystopian side to it as well.

The service

learning discourse has its dark side as it is imagined as a way to fill in the gap in social services no longer provided for by the state. In this way, service learning is similar to the progressivism of Jane Addams and her generation and is subject to the same critique. There has been a long history in the United States of volunteerism and individualism on the part of affluent groups as a means of providing for the poor and making up for the lack of state support. The counter forces show us that the struggle to produce a progressive vision that might rescue American higher education is one that is deeply conflicted. The paper will explore some of the implications of these conflicts as well. And while I don‘t want to suggest there is some list of essential functions of the university in American society, I would suggest a Bourdieuian framework would allow us to talk about social actors and their strategies within a system of social constraints. Bourdieu‘s (1988) notion of the social field is an interesting and complex one; it allows us to imagine a complex overlapping social space that never the less has an identifiable structure which can be explored. We also must acknowledge that the social field of higher education has been historically produced and understanding that production is as critical as thinking about the field itself. Universities have several claims to their central role in modern society and the ways that they are central to the reproduction of that society. The first two have to do with knowledge. Knowledge is something that is accumulated at universities and so they have for a long time been the central archives of our civilization.

The research library is often seen as one of the key

facilities of modern universities as well as other parts of the university that collect information, research labs, computer centers, etc.

The other

knowledge arena in the university is the generation of new knowledge that takes place through social interaction. In discussions, lectures, informal

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Service Learning in the Sociology Curriculum chats, and solitary work, university faculty and student critically engage with what has been known, generate new ideas and make new discoveries. This process of knowledge generation is not instrumental but involves critical thinking skills that are not easily transmitted but are inculcated in the students as they work with their professors. The last two claims the university makes about its central role are related to the generation of new knowledge and the necessary critical thinking skills for that task. They are the socialization of youth and the bestowing of credentials that are the legitimate mark of expertise in a professional society.

These last two

activities are normalizing activities and as such are involved also in the political dimension of knowledge productions. Power operates through the university fields to constrain who gets to produce or control the production of knowledge which effectively determines what is official knowledge and what is illegitimate (Apple 1993). There is a great deal that can be said about the power relations within the university fields and the symbolic violence that goes on therein, but to use Bourdieu‘s phrase my immediate concerns are the way the economic

is

overrunning

other

arenas

of

social

life

and

the

commodification and marketization (Fairclough 1997, Shumar 1997, Barber 1992) processes going on in higher education and their long term consequences. The pressures of the marketplace are having a dramatic effect on the knowledge generating activities and the normalizing activities within universities. These effects are producing their own contradictions that threaten the institutions of higher education in fundamental ways. Those threats then in turn have generated a series of responses from different groups within the university. I‘d like to sketch out how I see these forces playing out and then talk about two social movements I have been involved in that are specific responses the contradictions of contemporary American higher education. Post Fordism and the Fiscal Crisis of the State My

earlier

work

College

for

Sale:

A

Critique

of

the

Commodification of Education, attempted to locate the commercializing

109

Learning and Teaching Social Theory pressures

on

higher

education

within

the

contradictions

of

Fordist/Keynsian capitalism that developed after World War II and also within a set of historical contradictions that were part of the growth and development of higher education in the United States. Briefly, theorists like Harrison and Bluestone (1988) argued that post World War II cycle of capitalist development produced a period of boom in the United States because the U.S. led the way in the rebuilding of the economies of the industrialized world. American currency was the basis of the post-war financial system, and American products sold around the world. But as the economies of the world were rebuilt a crisis of overproduction occurred as these economies began to match U.S. production and more goods were produced globally than could be bought. This crisis in the late 1960‘s and 1970‘s according to Michel Aglietta is due to capitalism‘s inevitable unstable and contradictory nature. In A Theory of Capitalist Regulation Aglietta (1979) argues that capitalism is never laissez-faire as the neo-liberals would have it, but only flourishes when there are a complex arrangement of institutional regulations that contain the contradictions of capitalism to allow for accumulation to occur and benefit a large number of constituents.

Such was the case in the

Fordist/Keynesian postwar system. This developing contradiction in what Aglietta called the ―regulation school‖ of economics led first to financial deregulation (Harvey1989, Strange 1986) and eventually to the calls for neo-liberal economics that have come to dominate the current period. The collapse of Fordist/Keynesianism not only led to the calls for neo-liberalism but also came at the moment of the information revolution which helped press for certain re-organizations within capitalism and to what Harvey called ―flexible accumulation‖ and then later to the information society (Castells 2000) and the new ideological configuration of globalization (Hardt and Negri 2000). For my purposes the two points to make out of all of this is that in the first calls for neoliberalism there is a withdrawal of state support for a number of institutions including higher education which has led as we know also to the larger crisis for the welfare state in general. The second moment of globalization has led the university

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Service Learning in the Sociology Curriculum to not only become a site of consumption as I mentioned above but also to be a key player in the new knowledge economies and to have a critical role in the production of new sites of consumption as the landscape throughout the industrialized world is being turned into consumer spaces (Harvey 2000).1 The more recent pressures of globalization have had a profound impact on the commodification of higher education in the U.S. In my research I have been focusing on the building and rebuilding of the infrastructure of consumer capitalism and the way that consumer culture is having an impact on higher education. I have suggested that the American University is becoming a bit like the American shopping mall in the way that it treats students as consumers. University infrastructures are starting to literally construct shopping mall spaces where students can hang out, consume goods, and study.. The process of commodification in the university (especially American universities) is beginning to reach new levels dramatically transforming knowledge-production, the knowledge itself and the identities of those who produce that knowledge. This process of

commodification

within

the

university

is

itself

part

of

the

hypercommodification of culture, where all social spaces are re-imagined as consumer spaces and all interactions are consumer transactions. This is one aspect of the effect of globalization. The further evolution of consumer capitalism involves transformation of the ways that space and place are part of the processes and contradictions of the territorialization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization in different locals. Specifically I have suggested that in the current era, the production of new sites of consumption, and the transformation of old sites of production into sites of consumption is one of the key (economic?) activities in the United States (Shumar 2004). So then the crises in higher education are multidimensional. There are still the forces that are driving universities to market to more students to increase tuition revenues. Also as Slaughter and Leslie (1997) maintain, the emphasis today is on applied research that can be turned into a marketable commodity. This is true even in the social sciences as we

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory turn away from basic research and look for ways to make ourselves more ―sustainable‖ by engaging in evaluation research or bioterrorism, or other forms of applied research that might have market value. My argument is that not only is knowledge production more instrumental in its orientation than previously, but the very social space that the university inhabits is that of the consumer society and so the practices we engage in in these spaces shape our consciousness as faculty and as students.

We have

marketed to the students and promised them a credential that is valuable. But at the same time the world we inhabit does not value traditional social science or social theory that might have had a better ability to explain or critique current conditions. And so basic knowledge production is in its own sort of legitimacy crisis. Students today come to universities in the United States expecting a kind of country club atmosphere and expecting to get a credential that is valuable. There is at the same time a kind of nervousness especially around traditional liberal arts degrees from nonelite universities like mine.

The fear is, ―is this degree really worth

anything.‖ Credentialism and Its Discontents It is at this juncture that I would like to turn to Randall Collins work to think about credentials. Collins (1979) raises two important points about the nature of credentials and their role in the rise of the new professional class. First the credential is a sign. The semiotic aspects of the credential are necessary in the legitimacy conferring function it provides for the professional. But that sign-nature in a capitalist system leads to two effects itself, the reification of social knowledge and the raising of the importance of appearance over substance. In other words the credential itself is like the commodity in Marx‘s description of the commodity fetish in that the actual skills and knowledges one accumulates are secondary to the quality of the image of the credential. Second, because credentials are signs, reified fetishized tokens in a token economy, they are subject to inflation especially as the economy of credentialism heats up.

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Service Learning in the Sociology Curriculum It is these facts about credentials, and the context of globalization of the 1980‘s and 1990‘s, that has led to what I would call a legitimacy crisis in higher education. As state funding has declined and universities have sought more paying students, credentials have become inflated. As colleges consequently compete for students, grant money and corporate partnerships, appearance becomes much more important than substance. There is an increased emphasis on the look of the program, the way it is advertised and the ―status‖ of the offering institution.

Increasingly

universities will engage in a whole host of techniques to raise their ―status‖ in the various college rating schemes. Students are drawn into this circulation of university credential commodities and encouraged to ―buy‖ but as they do there is an inflation of credentials. As the advertising value of the credential goes up, the actual value of the credential goes down. Another effect of these financial pressures is that they have influenced the way universities are run directly is that they have made college presidents glorified fund-raisers. University presidents spend more of their time traveling, meeting with business leaders, venture capitalist etc. Other portions of the administration have been equally influenced, in the 1980‘s several articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the popular press pointed to the increasing power of the admissions office as it became

more

of

a

marketing

department.

Overall,

university

administration has become structured more like a business and the culture of business has replaced the administrative culture of the older public service institution (Shumar 1997). The above set of structural contradictions, from the macrostructural shifts in the current run of capitalism and the neo-liberal ideologies that have been engendered, to the shifts in higher education finance and the accompanying cultural shifts, have each in their way helped lead to the new ways universities are strategizing about knowledge. From the Reagan administration to the present, one of the changes has been to shift the production of new knowledge from basic research concerns to those research concerns that have a ‗practical‘ and market outlet.

Knowledge increasingly here becomes a commodity and as

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Bernstein (1996:87) point out, one that is completely severed from those who produce it. So what we see as the state has moved to marketize higher education in the U.S. there is more pressure to sell a product to an audience. And with that the actual process of the production of knowledge is being brought more into line with corporate processes, while the consumers of education are increasingly be marginalized (all except for a few) from the actual production process (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997). On the other hand, many of our colleges and universities in the U.S. are not ―Research I‖ universities and therefore are more in the business of disseminating knowledge rather than producing it. Many of the new administrators in these universities, influenced by the culture of business, have realized that the knowledge economy has opened fissures for new loci of credentialism even if not actually realized yet. Many see the web and the Internet university as a panacea bringing in new ―customers‖ and eliminating unnecessary ―faculty laborers‖. This perspective involves a reified view of knowledge as product that fits well with the fetishized worldview of the business culture.

From this perspective knowledge

becomes information and the issue increasingly becomes how to package that information into more product wrappers to sell more of it to a buying public. But the students and their families, the buying public are in a very contradictory position themselves. They are well aware that a university degree is necessary for upward mobility. But it is also clear that, except for some fields, a university degree does not confer the kind of status that it used to and a liberal arts graduate is very likely to spend time postgraduation in menial tasks. Further, the culture of consumption tends to circumscribe the imagination in that a large corporation is creating the vision of what the consumption means and how consumer should live their lives(Shiller 1985). And so a university degree is also no longer seen as conferring the knowledge for a person to be one of the architects of the future society but rather one of the things that a middle class consumer has on their bookshelf. The moral, aesthetic, political and economic discourse that goes into deciding the future of a democratic society is more and more

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Service Learning in the Sociology Curriculum given by the structure of consumption (See Harvey‘s Spaces of Hope) and hence decided in corporate boardrooms. Commodification then is also an interesting form of tightening of social control by limiting the imaginarysociety can no longer be an open entity-it must involve the logic of persuasion and the call to consume at all levels. In a practical way this leaves university students and their families alienated. They can enjoy the benefits of the consumer society without studying and studying does not much improve income or quality of life for many graduates.

Hence

university students tend to see studying, thinking about social problems and issues as a less then interesting activity. They are alienated from the production of these forms of knowledge. In Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity, Basil Bernstein suggests that the globalization of capitalism is pressuring toward new forms of pedagogic practice. He certainly sees these practices as part of learning institutions but also sees the idea of pedagogic practice broadly within society to any ―social context through which cultural reproductionproduction takes place‖ (Bernstein 1996: 17). Bernstein argues that the shifts in pedagogic practice involve new relations of power and control which further separates producers and consumers of knowledge and that pressure for new institutional structures and the disembedding of identities allowing for new kinds of identity formation to emerge, specifically what he calls decentered, retrospective and prospective identities.

Loosely the decentered identities are a product of

commodification and involve the commodification of the self, retrospective identities are nostalgic for a past with strong foundations, and prospective identities are identified with new social movements seeking new ways to create solidarity. And while the dominant discourse in universities today agitates for the decentered, marketized, commodified imagination, the costs of this vision (including the credential inflation and the separation of producers and consumers of knowledge) are so great to individuals‘ identities and the contradictions so great for the institution that the situation is ripe for a utopian social movement to come out of higher education.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Bernstein‘s model involves a very careful mapping out of how relations of power and control influence institutional structure, the forms of discourse and the identities that group out of the institutionally based pedagogic practices and forms of communication (See for example Bernstein 1996:24, 49-52). While I would not wholly support Bernstein‘s tendency to map strict models of institutional structure and strict rules of interaction, his careful working out of how ideologies are produced through interaction and not a given static piece of culture is in my mind very valuable. Further he helps to illuminate how consciousness is related to the institutional structures we inhabit and to the larger political economy. It is in the spirit of Bernstein‘s work that I would like to suggest that the above discussed alienated context for students and their families produce the fertile ground for the emergence of kinds of identities that Bernstein discusses. But the institutions and their contradictions likewise create the context for the different forms of identity. Some examples are the service learning, community service, participatory action research models developing in higher education.

I would suggest that service

learning is both a prospective discourse, but also one that works to combat the decentered, marketizing, commodifying discourses and pressures in the university as I will now show. Service Learning and Participatory Democracy Service learning in the U.S. has grown out of the long history of progressivism in the United States. That progressive tradition going back to people like John Dewey and Jane Addams in the early 20th century is a complex combination of pragmatist philosophy, a kind of American civil libertarianism that focuses on individuals and communities supporting each other and filling in for the inability or unwillingness of the state to provide social welfare for citizens.

This tradition has because of that

history had both its progressive and regressive aspects. More recently community service and service learning were part of the progressive work of the 1960's and 1970's with the student democracy movement and the civil rights movement. In higher education there are several key service

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Service Learning in the Sociology Curriculum learning organizations. Higher education administrators can belong to an organization called campus compact. Most states have a campus compact and administrations from universities and colleges in that state are members. There is also an organization called the Invisible College (It has just changed its name to Educators for Community Engagement) which holds a national gathering each year. It is primarily an organization of faculty members doing service learning in their classes. University students can belong to the Campus Outreach Opportunity League (COOL) and the National Youth Leadership Council is an organization for k-12 education. There is also the National Society for Experiential Learning and a section of the American Association of Higher Education that focuses on service learning. All of these organizations share some key ideas about what service learning is. Central to service learning is Dewey‘s (1938) notion of learning that is tied to real experiences. In service learning, local communities and their needs are linked to professors and students and student both work theoretically in the classroom while being engaged in the local community in a direct way (Barber 1992). Further the plan of work is developed cooperatively between the different constituencies.

The idea behind

service learning is that all constituencies win in the cooperative learning structure. First local communities and their needs can be met through the service work of university students. This work can be everything from working in soup kitchens, to literacy tutoring, to designing community research projects.

The students and faculty win because the learning

occurs in a real world context and so there is the possibility for intrinsic interest in learning to develop on the part of the students and examples from real life can be linked to theory not just fictional examples from a text.

Finally universities can become good institutional neighbors by

supporting the communities in which they are situated and good relationships between universities and local communities improve the daily life of each group. In my department I have become one of the service learning advocates and I was for a while co-academic director of service learning for

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory the university. While I think the ideals around service learning are right, I have found in practice there are many impediments to ―real‖ relationships between students/teachers and community leaders/their organizations. First, often much of what we have to offer is bounded by the structure of the university course. Our courses are ten weeks long and it is hard to invest in a community for ten weeks and then have it be over. Many of the community organizations in West Philadelphia where Drexel is located have a lot of need and in ten week things are just getting started. Further, because of time pressures on the students it's hard to continue projects beyond the ten weeks. I teach a sociology of education course and have worked regularly with a literacy provider in the city and so I am constantly sending students to tutor in this organization. Here we have overcome some of the problems of the ten-week term by having a stream of students continually providing literacy support. But there are larger structural forces that restrict our pedagogical practices.

This literacy agency is not trying to empower

citizens in the Freirian sense, it is trying to help people find minimum wage jobs and make it easier for corporations to use low skilled people in jobs they need filled.

Right now with the job market tight, many

corporations are supporting the efforts of literacy agencies. Further the state is leaning on the literacy agencies to facilitate welfare to work getting more people off the welfare roles quickly and without protest. In other words the literacy agency and my students and my class are all part of the new corporate and state agenda in the era of global capitalism. We are helping to discipline the new low end workforce making inculcating them into a work ethic and a particular form of literacy while encouraging us to see ourselves as doing progressive work. After all we aren‘t making the big corporate bucks. Bernstein is right; we are engaged in the process of producing our own ideological positions and the ideologies that then come to define us. It reminds me of an earlier scholar who if he were alive today might say that ideology interpolates us as subjects. More successfully is one of our core service learning courses which we call applied sociological theory, students read Bowling Alone by Robert

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Service Learning in the Sociology Curriculum Putnam and think about the decline of social capital in America. This work requires students to use their sociological imagination and think about whether things really were different in the past, and if so why there is less community service work now as well a just general community involvement. The book also offers much data to think about but it does not have a strong explanation for why social capital has declined. Putnam essentially argues that the strongest forces for the decline of social capital are generational decline and TV. So on the one hand students are able to see that the data supports the argument. But at the same time Putnam‘s answer to the question is not a terribly theoretical one and one that leaves a lot of questions unanswered like the declining trust in the government in the post-Vietnam era. The book allows them to make connections with their personal experience with civic involvement and their wider sphere of experience related to what they know about their parents involvement and their larger family. And then they can think theoretically about what has happened to civic involvement in the U.S. After this initial work in the course with Bowling Alone, student then move on to works like Robert Coles Call to Service and other work on Action Research. This work is coupled with their own community service work. Their own community service work allows them to think more deeply about the decline of social capital in local communities as they contribute to reversing that trend.. It also helps them think about how social science can meet community needs through action research. All of this creates a curriculum that is ―de-commodified‖ and less alienated. Students get to see real valuable work in a real context. The most recent incarnation of our applied theory course spun off a very special group of students who have been working together with myself and one other faculty member and a community partner, Episcopal Community Services (ECS). This seminar was first focused on helping ECS do an evaluation of their community programs and assess where they ought to be heading next. This group has grown very close and is getting excellent training in research theory and methodology in a live context. One of the very interesting things to grow out of this seminar is our

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory realization of a kind of commodification of community services. Literally community service providers are being driven by the funding priorities and so they all compete with each other for smaller pots of money going only in the areas that some groups of officials think are important. Increasingly those social service agencies are less true to their mission and more driven by the funding priorities, or if necessary by the need to market themselves to the general public for direct financial outreach. Learning about these issues from our community partners coupled with the seminars interest in the culture of consumerism led to some very big realizations about the ways the commodification of culture is affecting not just the university but other public sector organizations too. It also helped us see some of the Bernsteinian issues of how power was being re-organized through the community service organization as it was disciplined to be more market oriented and compete with other agencies for scarce resources. Currently the seminar has moved from evaluation and assessment to working with ECS to try and get an informal science education grant from the National Science Foundation. The group thought that it would be valuable to build on ECS‘s strengths as a literacy provider by designing a statistics education website around vital statistics. The plan is to make the website interactive so that people in the neighborhood could learn to do some basic statistic calculations on health data about their own neighborhood. Perhaps this statistics website could also be a place for consciousness raising and community organizing around health issues like asthma, diabetes, etc. The development of the project is to follow the model that we developed with our seminar, a very exciting example of what Lave and Wenger (1991) call ―legitimate peripheral participation.‖ First the undergraduates in the seminar are helping us put the NSF grant together; this in itself is very unusual. Second, kids from ECS‘s afterschool programs would help the Drexel undergrads design and put together the final statistics education website. Finally the neighborhood kids in the project would also act as docents teacher community members how to use the website and get information they want and need from the site. This

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Service Learning in the Sociology Curriculum would be done at community locations like community centers and local libraries. While there is institutional resistance to service learning in a lot of schools there is also some money and support for service learning. There has developed a service learning infrastructure especially under the support of the Clinton administration and the National Service Corporation that has continued to the present. But debates against and for service learning rarely deeply address the dramatic social changes that would be necessary for a truly democratic process to take place that would engage everyone. Further there is a larger question about the tendency to romanticize the past with a utopian imagination of community and whether it is the best way to resist the infiltration of the market. Is the image of community developed by service learning advocates another form of retrospective nostalgia for the past, for an era when people living in neighborhoods took care of each other and met there needs and had richer lives without the intervention of the State and the market? I suspect there is a good bit of this imagination among those in service learning. That is not to say that all comparisons with the past are suspect. It is possible to lose good things over time or learn from a past perspective or way of life. But if service learning helps to battle the commodified vision of education, it sometimes does so by returning to Bernstein‘s retrospective identity where we glorify the past. This is something that Barber (1992) is very sensitive to as he suggests that education should neither be nostalgic for a golden era nor commodified but rather it should be a more progressive vision of the questions we have and the problems we face and how to address these issue democratically. The kind of project our students are developing with ECS goes beyond some of these concerns. There has been a sustained effort that is organic and not just nostalgic for community as evidenced by the multiple term commitment that the university students have made and the level of discourse they have engaged in as they struggle with these issues. The exciting challenge in this work is that it could have an impact and raise the statistics literacy levels in poor Philadelphia communities as well as raise

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory expectations for change. If that occurs it will be interesting to see how local government meets people‘s demands. Conclusion I am left wondering from these experiences what is necessary to keep a utopian vision alive today. And in a world where so many of our institutions are under commodifying pressure and where many of us, significantly intellectuals, spend more of our time in these commercialized institutions how are we to change our consciousness around what we are doing and what our doing does? Ideology as Bernstein says is not content but process and we are living this process right now in Starbucks, Borders Books, and conference hotels. community.

For the middle class this is their

And what of the working class and neighborhood

associations, will they lead the way in the development of civil society and its resistance to the market? At least in the U.S. there seems to be little hope of that. Within service learning there is a powerful potential model for change, it is the university and community partnership. This model does not have to imagine a past where the community once met needs. Rather it looks to the future where professors in universities with the skills they have acquired and the resource of the university that they can marshal can become partners with local communities to build a better and stronger neighborhood for all who are part of that neighborhood.

This vision

reunites the production of knowledge with the producers and consumers of the knowledge. The members of the university community are also members of the local community in which their university is found. As such they can act as good neighbors to work with other community members and organizations to meet the needs of the people in that community. But this vision will not be an easy one to make real.

The

overwhelming influence of the pressures of commodification is rapidly turning

many

American

universities

into

what

George

Ritzer

(http://virtualsociety.sbs.ox.ac.uk/matcon/keynote.htm#Cathedrals)

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has

Service Learning in the Sociology Curriculum called ―cathedrals of consumption.‖ The university is becoming both resort and shopping mall at the same moment with Sodexho Corporation providing dining and other hospitality services and Barnes and Noble creating temples out of bookstores that become the anchor in a mini-mall of university shopping. And this rapid transformation of the landscape parallels the transformation of the idea-scape (Appadurai 1996) where more and more knowledge is being seen as information that can be repackaged and sold in a variety of outlets. These commodifying forces are moving rapidly and the rapidly changing infrastructure has the effect of limiting the consciousness of the people who inhabit these worlds. Already, American college students have trouble imagining a decommodified university. The university they know is already the one that looks more like a shopping mall than a public institution. Reaching these students and encouraging them to become advocates for the local community is a large challenge. Further, we who seek to reach and encourage such students face other large challenges. Like many other academics, I am often mindful that my current circumstances as a teacher and researcher were unimaginable when I was training to be an academic and sometimes seem unbearable. Writing papers like this one has helped me recognize that my efforts to be a critical pedagogue are more limited than I initially imagined, that even if they were fuller, the external circumstances I face would stymie these efforts, and, consequently, that it is difficult and wearing to keep go against the stream.

And yet, in writing this paper I have gained a greater

appreciation of how I can try to realise critical pedagogy more fully in the future even in the current climate. I have also gained a greater appreciation of how students positively responded even to my limited efforts to date. This affirms my current belief that students are keen to question the world, take pleasure in doing so and through this process, can develop answers that help them create good sense, even if this means living more uncomfortably in the world thereafter. This suggests that it is important to keep the flame of critical pedagogy alight in the current era and to keep focusing on what we can do while recognizing how difficult this is.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory

Notes 1 What I am suggesting here is that the re-organization of capitalism after each crisis is always a spatial organization as well. This is something Harvey is very aware of and talks about at some length in Spaces of Hope. It is also the case that more social theorists are thinking about this spatial dimensions of the latest phase of globalization see for example Arrighi, Giovanni, Hegemony Unravelling in New Left Review 32 March/April 2005, pp. 23-80. What I want to suggest for the university in the U.S. is that commodification has proceeded on two fronts, each of which having its spatial dimensions. First universities are being sold to students has country club/consumer places to be.

And that involves rebuilding the

university infrastructure in particular ways. But it is also the case that universities are often part of the ―urban renewal‖ projects that Harvey discusses in Spaces of Hope. They help provide expertise to re-imaging the inner city landscape as a site of consumption that often turns former sites of production into tourist spectacles.

References Aglietta, Michel (1979), A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: the US Experience. London: New Left Books. Aglietta, Michel (1998), ‗Capitalism at the turn of the century: regulation theory and the challenge of social change‘. New Left Review NovDec 232 (5) p41. Appadurai, Arjun (1996), ‗Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy.‘ in Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press. Apple, Michael (1993), Official Knowledge: Democratic Education in a Conservative Age. New York: Routledge. Barber, Benjamin R. (1992), An Aristocracy of Everyone: the Politics of Education and the Future of America.

New York: Oxford

University Press. Bernstein, Basil B. (1996),

Pedagogy, Symbolic Control, and Identity:

Theory, Research, Critique. London; Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis. Castells, Manuel (2000), The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd ed. Oxford; Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

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Service Learning in the Sociology Curriculum Harrison, Bennett & Barry Bluestone (1988), The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America. New York: Basic Books. Bourdieu, Pierre (1988), Homo Academicus.

Stanford: Stanford

University Press. Collins, Randall (1979), The Credential Society : an Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification. New York: Academic Press. Dewey, John (1938), Experience and Education. New York: The Macmillan Company. Fairclough, Norman (1995), Critical Discourse Analysis: the Critical Study of Language. London; New York: Longman. Hardt, Michael &Antonio Negri (2000), Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harvey, David (1989), The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Harvey, David (2000), Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jameson, Fredric (1991), Postmodernism, or, The cultural logic of late capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Jameson, Fredric (1997), ‗Culture and finance capital‘. Critical Inquiry Autumn 24 (1) p246-266. Noble, David (1997-99) Digital Diploma Mills, Parts 1-4. available at http://communication.ucsd.edu/DL/ Readings, Bill (1996), The University in Ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shumar, Wesley

(1997),

College for Sale: A

Critique of the

Commodification of Higher Education. London: Falmer Press. Shumar, Wesley (2001), ‗The Culture of Consumption as Idolatry: Meaning and Commodification in Bridges: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Theology, Philosophy, History and Science, Spring/Summer. Shumar, Wesley (2004), ‗Spatial Transformation in The New Information Economy: The New University‘. Paper presented at Crossroads

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory 2004, conference of the Association of Cultural Studies, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, June 25-28. Sklair, Leslie (1991), Sociology of the Global System, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press. Slaughter, Sheila and Larry L. Leslie (1997),

Academic Capitalism:

Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Smart, Barry (1993), Postmodernity. London ; New York: Routledge. Strange, Susan (1986), Casino Capitalism . Oxford (UK) and New York: Basil Blackwell. Waters, Malcolm (1995), Globalization. London and New York: Routledge.

Acknowledgements I‘d like to thank the members of the C-SAP theory seminar; Jon Cope, Joyce Canaan, Ruth McManus, Dave Harris, Paul Sutton, Nikita Pokrovsky, Patrick Ainley, Andrea Kenkmann, Johann Graaff, and David Jary for their thoughtful feedback and the good discussion around issues of teaching theory. I would particularly like to thank Jon Cope for organizing the seminar and for all his hard work pulling the monograph together. Finally I would like to thank my dear friend and colleague Joyce Canaan for her multiple and careful re-readings of my paper. It has many fewer flaws thanks to Joyce‘s tireless work, for which I am very grateful.

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Chapter 6

IN SEARCH OF THE GENERATIVE QUESTION: A HERMENEUTIC APPROACH TO PEDAGOGY Johann Graaff Among the greatest insights that Plato‟s account of Socrates affords us is that, contrary to general opinion, it is more difficult to ask questions than to answer them. .. To someone who engages in dialogue only to prove himself right and not to gain insight, asking questions will indeed seem easier than answering them. .. In order to be able to ask, one must want to know, and that means knowing that one does not know. (Gadamer 1989:363) “… The logic of the human sciences is a logic of the question.”(Gadamer 1989:370)

Introduction1 This paper has a slightly perverse thrust to it. Many of the papers in this collection go bent under the load of the rampant managerialism presently sweeping through higher education globally and the depressing implications this has for the teaching of theoretical sociology (McManus 2004, Harris 2004, Jary 2004, Canaan 2004, Shumar 2004, and Ainley 2004). At the same time, and contradictorily, some of them show evidence of the startling and beneficent changes which students undergo in studying sociology (Canaan 2004; Jary 2004; Harris 2004). This paper continues in that contradictory space by focusing in on these transformations. Students say things like ‗this course has been an eye-opener‘, and ‗I had not realized that a criminal can be anybody and that criminals need my support and care...‘ At the same time, this paper adds its voice to the chorus of critique against managerialism, in general, and outcomes-based education, in

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A Hermeneutic Approach To Pedagogy particular. There are two points of critique here. First, the important changes investigated here cannot be predicted or specified in ‗outcomes‘. The second is that these crucial changes are affective rather than rational. This does not make education a mystical experience that cannot be evaluated. It just means that the criteria presently being used for this purpose are destructive of good education. Finally, most of the other papers in this collection have a slightly different take on social theory from this one. In this paper I consider social theory to be embedded within the teaching of much of sociology, even at first year level. Other papers take social theory in the strict sense of, for example, the classical writings of Marx, Durkheim and Weber or postmodernism. These two notions of social theory are combined in C Wright Mills‘ idea of the sociological imagination which I unpack in the paper. Theoretical framework: questioning and the Human Sciences ―… The logic of the human sciences‖, says Gadamer ―is logic of the question‖. (Gadamer 1989:370) This paper is an investigation of the various forms which questions can take in Gadamer‘s thinking. In one form, living everyday life is a process by which long-held views and practices are challenged by (even very slightly) unexpected circumstances. In this form, questioning is an ontological condition of existence. We would not be able to exist without this ongoing process. In a second form, a questioning attitude is a prescription for the good life. A great deal of Gadamer‘s work, Truth and Method, is a meditation on the aspects of just this issue – how to take up a questioning attitude, what it is that is being questioned, what the aim of questioning is, how questioning relates to dialetics and debate, the roots of questioning in Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the central role of practical wisdom or phronesis in this issue. In the following sections I investigate these two forms of questioning.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Ontological Questioning Gadamer‘s discussion of the matter of questioning starts by confirming the ontological status of questioning in hermeneutics. That means that everyday life is constituted by the challenge which the unfamiliar poses to the familiar. It is the task set for the accumulated knowledge and experience which we have in their meeting with the problems and tasks of everyday living. Life gets lived at that luminous edge where consciousness is engaged in the practical issue of getting on with the not-quite-expected problems of daily living. Those practical issues might entail making a sandwich or speaking to someone or reading a text. This process Gadamer calls the fusion of horizons. Plato (through his mouthpiece, Socrates) points to this very issue in what has now come to be known as Meno‘s paradox in teaching. In Socrates‘ words: It is thus impossible for a man to inquire either into what he knows, or into what he does not know. He cannot inquire into what he knows; for he knows it, and there is no need for inquiry into a thing like that. Nor would he inquire into what he does not know; for he does not know what it is he is to inquire into. (Allen 1984:163) This is a paradox which engages Gadamer centrally, and for which he finds an answer in the notion of the fusion of horizons. In their everyday lives, people always find themselves embedded in a particular tradition. They start with what they know. But they are, on an ongoing basis, confronted by the challenge of daily reality, i.e. what they do not know. They solve this by application, by applying the knowledge that they have to situations and problems that they have not encountered before. The fusion of horizons between the known and the unknown is an ontological condition of existence. Meno‘s paradox is being solved at every moment of our living. The issue for teaching, then, is not whether old principles can be applied in new situations, but how to use the exercise of application most fruitfully.

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A Hermeneutic Approach To Pedagogy Prescriptive Principles The second form of questioning concerns a move from the ontological to the prescriptive. This move starts with the recognition that in everyday living, negotiating the challenges of living has the potential for taking on a mechanical and lifeless character. People can and do develop technical formulae for solving problems even with issues of considerable importance. In this mode of thinking (akin to positivism) the aim is, via rigorous and disciplined method, to find final truth such that no more needs to be said, to achieve mastery and closure, ‗to render the world a harmless picture for our indifferent and disinterested perusal‘ (Jardine 1992:119). It is in this sense that Gadamer says ‗the method of modern science is characterized from the start by a refusal: namely, to exclude all that which actually eludes its own methodology and procedures‖. (quoted in Jardine 1992:126) In this situation, says Jardine, the task of hermeneutics is to ‗return life to its original difficulty‘, to re-instill in the negotiation of life a sense of personal engagement and value, to bring back a consideration of the bigger issues of living like the meaning of life, death, birth, pain, or mortality. To the extent that these issues are not amenable to final solutions, engaging them entails a necessary measure of ambiguity and uncertainty. Translated into questioning, this approach means adherence to Socrates‘s docta ignorantia, the knowledge of not knowing (Gadamer 1975:362). Kerdeman has a slightly different interpretation of Gadamer‘s view of change. (Kerdeman 2003). For her, the essence of transformation is that people are ‗pulled up short‘. They discover that their long-held views are mistaken, that they need to re-assess their opinions in a way that is unforeseen and indeed unforeseeable. ―Being pulled up short discloses attitudes, qualities and behaviours we would prefer to disown, deny or recognize only insofar as we project them on to others.‖ (Kerdeman 2003:296) Being pulled up sort is to puncture a condition of self-inflation which fails to recognize the limits of being human:

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―What a man (sic) has to learn through suffering is not this or that particular thing, but insight into the limitation of humanity ... into the absoluteness of the barrier that separates man (sic) from the divine.‖ (Gadamer quoted in Kerdeman 2003:297)(my own parentheses). In the parable of the prodigal son, a young man goes out from his father‘s home, squanders his inheritance, and finally finds himself feeding with someone else‘s pigs. Here Gadamer talks of the meeting the alien: It is oneself that one finds in the alien, even while feeding with the swine. There is always this sense of chastening and deflation when we discover that there is something more, something other than ourselves. But even in the humiliation of recognizing oneself in the other, there is also a sense of elation and expansion, of coming into one‟s own that Scripture depicts as homecoming and coming into one‟s inheritance. (Weinsheimer 1985:70) It is worth underlining that this meeting the alien is not the same as meeting the other. In its most common form, meeting the other derives from Freudian theory, the other being the suppressed image of a significant other, like a parent (Hall 2001). As used by Edward Said, the other is that which is feared and/or secretly desired, projected on to other (often foreign) people but likewise suppressed (Hall 1992). Meeting the other is the dramatic process whereby what has been projected is now reclaimed, and re-integrated into the psyche. In contrast with meeting the alien, this process sounds more like the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus than the prodigal son, that which was hated and feared turns into something to be respected. Meeting the alien, by contrast, is more a deflation of hubris and arrogance than the transformation of hatred and disgust (cf Edinger 1972)1. For Gadamer, the prescriptive ideal of the good life, the summum bonum, is the pursuit of phronesis, or practical wisdom. Phronesis stands in contrast with episteme, or pure theory, on the one hand, and techne, or technicism, on the other. While there is much debate around the definition of phronesis, for our purposes, it entails the following elements: (1) it retains a connection with questions of normative import, it asks, ‘is this worthwhile?‘,‘where are we going?‘; (2) it starts from practical situations or

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A Hermeneutic Approach To Pedagogy case studies rather than from theoretical principles, it promotes ‗thick knowledge‘ as a basis from which to pursue questions of value; it engages in contemporary dialogues and debates, and participates in public debate; (3) it promotes open-ended conversation rather than conclusive solutions, it continues asking questions (Gallagher 1992); (4) it is a holistic, rhetorical, tactful approach to knowledge and skill rather than one pursuing mechanical, principled, rule-bound practice (Flyvbjerg 2001); (5) it puts people in the way of transformation, and more specifically in the way of being ‗startled out of themselves‘, of being ‗pulled up short‘, of being caught unawares (Kerdeman 1998)1. How do these philosophical principles translate into practical pedagogy? In brief, they entail the following: 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Teaching should be a process of sensitive listening to students. So, for example, assessment should be flexible to ongoing student responses. It should be continuous assessment that shifts to accommodate new enthusiasms and difficulties. Learning is a matter of ongoing practical execution. Students should be engaging hands-on with material via discussion, multiple exercises and assignments. Curriculum content needs to draw strongly on contemporary and current debate around public issues and case studies. The skills of logical argument need to be combined with committed rhetoric. The outcomes of teaching cannot be planned. Individuals respond to the curriculum in an infinite variety of ways. Students can only be ‗put in the way‘ of learning. Good teaching entails personal transformation, for both teachers and students. Curriculum content and pedagogic practice needs to engage participants in the learning process on an immediate and intimate basis, to speak to their everyday concerns.

The first four of the above principles I have discussed in some detail elsewhere (Graaff 2004, Graaff et al. 2004). This paper focuses on the last two aspects, the elaboration of the notion of being pulled up short, and the nature and origins of transformation in teaching sociology. Up to this point, then, I have examined two forms of questioning in Gadamer‘s hermeneutics, the ontological and the prescriptive. The latter I have elaborated through Jardine‘s idea of ‗returning life to its original difficulty‘ and Kerdeman‘s notion of being ‗pulled up short‘. In addition, I

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory have looked at the way in which the idea of phronesis translates into teaching practice. In the next section, I investigate the goals which a first year sociology course set itself and how this relates to Gadamer‘s ideas. First Year Sociology’s Agenda What were the explicit aims, then, of this first year sociology course in 2004 at the University of Cape Town? In the language of Peter Berger, the sociological imagination aims to do three things: first, to debunk the public images which individuals and social entities present of themselves (Berger 1966). This parallels critical theory‘s goal of unveiling and undermining the subtleties of power in society. Examples used in the course were the awful ‗sweatshop‘ conditions which lie behind glossy advertising; the salaries paid to company CEO‘s compared to those of their unskilled workers; Marx‘s depiction of religion as the opium of the masses; Marx‘s analysis of the compulsions and coercions of the so-called free market. The second aim was to relativize opinions which see themselves as unique and absolute by comparing them with equivalent cultural phenomena in other times and other societies. This breaks down into two contrary moves. One is to de-familiarize things that seem very ordinary and banal – for example, to bring out the oddness and curiousness of a can of Coke or a cup of coffee. The other task in relativizing was to familiarize what seems foreign and outrageous. One example of this approach concerned the topic of Crime and Deviance. At the start of the module on Crime and Deviance in the course, I asked students to respond in writing to three questions: (1) Who do you think are the most vile/disgusting/despicable criminals? List one or two types. (2) What do you think they are up to, these types, when they are committing this crime? (3) How do you think they should be dealt with? Here are some answers. “1. Rapist. 2. Revenge … 3. They thrown (sic) in prison for life/ their penis should be chopped off like the bible says “If your hand causes you to sin, remove it.” The word rapist should be written on their forehead.”

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A Hermeneutic Approach To Pedagogy “1. a) pedophiles b) mercenary killers 2. They are sick people who are selfish and convince themselves that it is okay. They mess up innocent people‟s lives. 3. I think that both types act fully consciously and they‟re lucid and know what they‟re doing. It is their fault – so they should punished accordingly. Savagely. They should be put in solitary confinement for 30 years then death sentenced.” “1. Murderers and rapists. 2. murderers are driven by hate some are just psychotic, rapist I believe are driven by the sick pleasure they derive and a need for power over their victim. 3. I think both murderers and rapists should be tortured and made to suffer and they shouldn‟t be killed. They should just be made to suffer & get a glimpse into how they made others suffer.” These are precisely the kinds of views that sociology would aim to relativize. They are examples of absolutist, highly emotional, punitive, pathologizing and individualized thinking around a sociological problem. It is exactly against this kind of view that a social, culture and structural view of crime would be pitted. In response to this sociological approach a number of students went through quite dramatic transformations. At the end of the course one student wrote ‗I have come to see that criminals also need my empathy.‘ The final task is to show how seemingly free-floating entities connect up into wider societal systems and theoretical frameworks, which I have called system-relating. One way to do this is to show how apparently impersonal phenomena ‗out there‘ have very tangible personal effects ‗in here‘. An example here is the case of globalization and its effects on identity, religion, personal leisure and pathology. It is in response to this that one student writes: ―I have been tak(ing) culture, politics, technology and many other developments as things that does not affect me or does not need my input but as other people‘s responsibilities. I have now realized that

I

am

part

and

parcel

of

everything

that

happens.

i.e.

globalization.‖(sic) In short, we see here examples of students who have gone through interesting changes in their approach to topics like crime and globalization. How is one to think about these changes in relation to Gadamer‘s ideas?

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Psychological Investigations One way to investigate the nature of these transformations is though a psychodynamic approach following Stuart Hall (Hall 2001). Seen through this lens the process which students undertake in this course is the movement from stereotype to empathy, from anger to understanding, from repression and projection to a meeting with the Other. Stereotypes function to essentialize, reduce and naturalize. That means, that they reduce a phenomenon to one or two characteristics which are said to represent the whole. Stereotypes simplify and exaggerate. They work to exclude all those characteristics which do not fit the essence. And those characteristics are fixed (Hall 2001:257). In practical terms, students start by saying of rapists, that they are monsters who are consumed by lust and sadism, and should be tortured, castrated and branded. They end, quite remarkably, by saying ‗I understand that criminals also need my empathy‘. Which are the methods by which people shift from one pole to the other? Well, most of the methods which we have investigated, either as part of the sociological imagination, or as part of Gadamer‘s questioning, are part of this process. Let us look at these in more detail. Seen through a psychodynamic lens, relativizing is an important way of challenging stereotypes. It is not simply a cognitive skill. It also entails an emotional transformation. For it challenges those attitudes which are angry, individualizing, pathologizing, essentializing and punitive, and presents an alternative which ascribes some causality to society rather than the individual, and is tolerant of difference. It replaces a sense of blaming and judgment with one of understanding. Emotionally it is less charged and less heated. From another angle, relativizing presents alternatives to truths which believe themselves to be unique, universal and absolute. Where there was one holy book with a single truth, there are now many. Where there was one culture, one nation, one ideology which were inviolable and flawless, there are now many, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Where there was clear and absolute truth, there are now

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A Hermeneutic Approach To Pedagogy grey areas of ambiguity. In these circumstances it is difficult to sustain beliefs which are based on unsubstantiated exaggeration, i.e. stereotypes. In discussion of theories this process happens on an implicit basis. Students discover that no theory is perfect, that all have their flaws and their benefits, that theorizing is very much a matter of debate and weighing up rather than an easy black-and-white judgment. Another mechanism which confronts stereotypes is the encounter with the detail of real lives. Being driven by strong emotions of fear, disgust,

and

disapproval/outrage,

stereotypes

tend

to

construct

exaggerated and monstrous images. Confronted by ‗real‘ people who do not conform, stereotypes are challenged. In this course students read accounts of individuals who were rapists, the communities they came from, and the cultures which produced them, what they said about themselves, and how they explained their actions. Rapists suddenly appeared as ordinary and small compared to the enormity of the stereotypes. In these cases students can begin to feel a measure of sympathy with criminals. The final and most dramatic shift occurs when individuals can acknowledge that stereotypes are suppressed parts of themselves and recognize the criminal or the monster in themselves, they can themselves feel the temptation to commit crime. This is the true case of empathy. The mechanism of system-relating has the function of emphasizing the social embeddedness of individuals, the degree to which individuals are unable to choose who they are, the hidden root of much of their social behaviour, and the degree to which they cannot carry full responsibility for who they are. In psychological terms it serves to deflate the importance of the ego vis-à-vis the unconscious, and the belief that the world can be planned and controlled. It serves to underline the inscrutability and unpredictability of the unconscious to which they are bound. These then are some of the conventional cognitive aspects of the sociological imagination with important psychic implications. For Gadamer‘s hermeneutics, on the other hand, there are close parallels with these sociological perspectives. Gadamerians speak of perplexity, original difficulty, phronesis and being pulled up short.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Inasmuch as these arise from philosophical considerations of the good life, they are not far removed from individual psychic concerns in the way that academic concerns are. They do not here operate explicitly as mechanisms for challenging stereotypes or doing psychodynamic work. Yet it is a fairly simple task to show, for example, the overlap between Kerdeman‘s ‗being pulled up short‘ and what Jungians would call deflation. (Edinger 1972) Deflation for Edinger, a Jungian writer, is the process whereby overconfidence or hubris, is brought back to earth. The Icarus legend of what happens to overly ambitious and grandiose high-flyers explains this principle in mythic form. Deflation is a developmental stage on the road to individuation. In this section then I have argued that there are important affective underpinnings to what are conventionally seen as cognitive sociological skills. In the next section I examine in some detail the responses of one student in the sociology course who was a participant in a focus group discussion at the end of the course. As facilitator of the group, I have asked students to talk about what made an impression on them in the course. One student tells a story in which she goes through an important transformative experience, a meeting with the alien, but it is an incomplete and contradictory experience. Jennifer: “I suddenly realized, you know, what it was” In the focus group, a white woman student (I will call her Jennifer) brings up her experience of affirmative action. She says that she comes from a relatively well-off family, has been to a private school, has a strong sense of religion, and has led quite a sheltered life. She had not met many blacks in her life before coming to university. In the focus group discussion, I have gone round the circle of the group inviting participants to speak. Other students have mentioned the parts of the course that struck them. It is now Jennifer‘s turn. She starts by saying that it was affirmative action in the course that struck her. It was a new concept for her. She explains that children ―take

138

A Hermeneutic Approach To Pedagogy on the opinions of their parents‖, ―I‟d never really thought it through myself‖. Later on she elaborates, ―at varsity you are given the chance to experience and explore your own point of view and substantiate to form your own opinion and you learn to stand up for it and um it‟s a really good thing to be able to do that”. Now she has an opinion on something she never really thought about before. A different world has impinged on hers. Of course, she says, affirmative action can be threatening to people who might be disadvantaged by it, but it‘s different when you understand the reason behind it. ―And naturally someone will be against a policy that is against you and then I realized it‟s not so much against me but its for people who haven‟t had the opportunity before. And so I kind of got a chance to take on … I got an understanding‖. She has had a significant new insight. Then Jennifer relates the event that shook her in quite a profound way. “… with the assignment I interviewed a black girl in my res and it really hit home and I sat and cried after that. Because I suddenly realized, you know, what it was...” She goes on to explain “ … (the black girl) said, “The school that I went to I didn‟t receive education that was good enough for me to get good enough marks to get into university”. And I thought, that‟s shocking, because I‟ve had a privileged education, been to a private school, had really competent instructors in all my subjects. And I thought, this girl, it‟s not her own fault that she didn‟t have … like her parents couldn‟t afford to send her, like she went to a government school, where she just didn‟t receive like the same level of education that I did, and now she‟s doing Chemical Engineering and now she‟s in third year, and she‟s in the Golden Key Society1. And I just thought, it‟s amazing that someone who started off so badly with such a poor kind of education could bring herself up to this level.‖ This black girl, says Jennifer, got into university through a quota. In this event Jennifer‘s stereotypes are confronted by a real living person. Her monster evaporates in the light of day. Her preconceptions crumble in the face of concrete experience. But, I would argue, this is a

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory ‗soft‘ stereotype. It is one which she inherited from her parents, and as such it has no unusual emotional hold on her. Which is not to say that this is merely a cognitive, rational re-adjustment of her views. It has some energy for her, and she sits and cries. She is pulled up short. It has just come upon her and found her present views inadequate. At the same time, this is not a case of a full move to empathy. She has not put herself in the shoes of her black neighbour. She says things like ‗that‘s shocking‘, ‗it‘s amazing‘ and ‗it‘s not her fault‘. Jennifer sympathizes rather than empathizes, she feels ‗for‘ rather than ‗with‘ her interviewee. There is something else that‘s curious in Jennifer‘s experience, and that is that she appears not to take into account the effect of racial segregation (apartheid) on the life-chances of a black student. When she says ‗it‘s not her fault‘, or speaks of ‗someone who started off so badly‘, she speaks of a lack rather than a deliberate discrimination and holding back of black people. Here is a liberal approach that is shocked at inequality, but the answer to inequality is legal and social equality, not structural change in a fundamentally unjust society. The group has been discussing whether criminals are monsters. There have been a number of participants who say, no, criminals are not monsters. Jennifer intervenes in the conversation in a very strong way. ―All criminals are monsters, there‟s no way that someone, in their right mind, will commit a crime. If you give them a chance to think through it, why – there‟s got to be some sort of mental imbalance if someone has committed a crime. If someone‟s been raped, someone‟s been murdered, someone‟s hi-jacked, there has got to be something in their mind that just isn‟t right, you know? They are normal people but they‟ve got mental imbalances.‖ People who rape, murder and hijack are monsters, they have a mental imbalance, their mind just isn‘t right. Here is the other in a very powerful sense. This is a much more powerful and angry stereotype. It has a very different kind of energy from her views on affirmative action. And, despite her experience of the course, it has remained unmoved. How do these two different responses sit alongside each other? Is there a necessary

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A Hermeneutic Approach To Pedagogy uniformity across the parts of a personality? Or has Jennifer had a traumatic experience, been mugged or attacked, which anchors this anger? She goes to explain her view by calling on religious reasons. ―And I think all of us are born with that sort of nature. Kind of the nature to have criminal tendencies, but it‟s about controlling it. You don‟t always have to (give in to it) ….. (it‟s) ridiculous how we can kind of actually(?) blame everything on how we were brought up. I am a Christian and I listened to a preacher …. … and she said you need to „re-parent‟ yourself. You can‟t rely on the way you have been brought up.‖ All people are capable of crime, but normal people are able to control these urges, they need to take responsibility for themselves and their behaviour. There is a hint of empathy here. ―All of us are born with that kind of nature … but it‟s about controlling it‖. Or is this a rhetorical device to underline ‗its ridiculous how we can kind of actually blame everything on how we were brought up‘? There is more anger in the word, ‗ridiculous. But then curiously she backs away from full-blown anger and from a call for punishment. The anger is tempered. ―The Bible says, or God says, „Vengeance is mine‟ and I think ultimately um death and life choices are not ours. You can do as much as you can with the human justice system. So you kind of punish, but I don‟t think you can decide death and we all have to pay for our acts.‖ This fragment ends on the ambiguous note, ‗we all have to pay for our acts‘. It is not clear what she means here; that criminals must carry responsibility for their acts? Or that we, as judges, will pay if we kill criminals? In summary, then, a most curious mixture arising out of Jennifer‘s experience of the course: (1) the threat of affirmative action for her, and for all whites, is suspended by an intense experience which amazes her by its situation of injustice; a sense of understanding and sympathy follows; she has gone through a changing experience - ―I suddenly realized, you know, what it was‖; together with (2) a strong statement of the Other – ―there‟s no way that someone, in their right mind, will commit a crime‖, people must take responsibility for their own acts – again muted by conceding to a higher authority in judgment – ―God says „Vengeance is mine‟‖.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Conclusion This paper has undertaken an investigation into what happens to students in the sphere behind the acquisition of cognitive skills. I have argued that while conventional sociology pursues things like debunking, relativization and system-relating as intellectual attributes, these attributes have wider implications which are reflected in Gadamer‘s hermeneutics and in Freudian and Jungian psychology. While these aspects are not obviously reflected in student essays, they are a crucial basis for learning. Concentrating only on cognitive skills is like focusing on the leaves of a tree while neglecting its trunk and roots (cf Canaan 2004, in this regard). Second, Gadamer proposes that an important virtue is meeting the alien which Deborah Kerdeman interprets as ‗being pulled up short‘. I investigate in some detail the narrative of what happens to a particular student in a sociology first year course. Jennifer is, I argue, pulled up short in her experience of affirmative action, but this transformation is contradictory and fragmentary. She will, arguably, go through many such experiences in her life. It is important that Jennifer‘s experience is of her own making and is a very particular result of her personal circumstances. No one could have predicted that this would happen. It is Kerdeman‘s point that the important learning experiences cannot be predicted, that good education must allow for this loss of control, and that striving for competence and mastery denies this opportunity. Does that mean that good education is a magical experience which cannot be evaluated, that all criteria of judgment on teaching must be abandoned? I do not think so. The principles of phronesis militate against this normlessness. So, for example, a principle of good teaching is that material must connect with the immediate and personal concerns of students. Good teaching can be evaluated. It is just that those criteria presently utilized in evaluation set sterile targets, and are destructive of good teaching.

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A Hermeneutic Approach To Pedagogy Notes 1 I am immensely grateful for the contributions by the members of the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED) in discussions around this material, and particularly to Lucia Thesen. 1 Hall notes that there are at least three notions of the Other alongside Freud‘s. One derives from the Saussurian notion that meaning derives from syntagmatic difference or absence, the notion that there are always meanings which were rejected in favour of one chosen. Another is Bakhtinian, originating in the dialogic notion of meaning, i.e. that meaning is created only in dialogue with others. Mary Douglas‘s structuralism is a third. In this notion what is Other (fearsome, disgusting, outrageous) is that which is out of its place. Hall, S. (Hall 2001). 1 In his discussion of phronesis Flyvbjerg includes the critical investigation of power as a prominent element, i.e. a strong critical theory component. He puts the work of Foucault alongside that of Aristotle as exemplary of good research. But there is no power vacuum at the heart of hermeneutics, as some would argue. In some ways hermeneutics is more radically critical than Foucault‘s critical theory – which is not to say that Foucault is not a brilliant example of anamnesis. (Flyvbjerg 2001) 1 The Golden Key Society is an internationally selected group of high achievers.

References Allen, R. (1984), the Dialogues of Plato, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Berger, P. (1966), Invitation to Sociology - a Humanistic Perspective, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Canaan, J (2004), ‗…‘ Paper delivered at the C-SAP seminar, Birmingham Fanon, F. (1968), the Wretched of the Earth, New York: Grove Press Inc. Flyvbjerg, B. (2001), Making Social Science Matter: why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gadamer, H.-G. (1975),Truth and Method, London: Sheed & Ward Ltd. Gallagher, S. (1992), Hermeneutics and Education, Albany: SUNY Press.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Graaff, J. (2004), ‗Progress In Teaching Sociology: From Cognitive Skills To Hermeneutics And Phronesis‘, Society in Transition, 35, 287301. Graaff, J., Reed, Y. and Shay, S. (2004), ‗Validating Academic Assessment: A Hermeneutical Perspective‘, Journal of Education. Hall, S. (1992), ‗The West and the Rest‘, in Gieben, H. (ed) Formations of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell and The Open University, pp 275-332. Hall, S. (2001), ‗The Spectacle of the Other‘ in Hall, S (ed) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, London: Sage Publications in association with the Open University. Harris, D (2005), ‗Social Theory and Strategic Communication‘, Paper delivered at the C-SAP seminar, Birmingham Jardine, D. (1992), ‗Reflections on Education, Hermeneutics, and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics as a Restoring of Life to Its Original Difficulty‘ in Pinar, W. and W. Reynolds, W (eds) Understanding Curriculum as Phenomenological and Deconstructed Text, New York: Teacher's College. Kerdeman, D. (1998), ‗Hermeneutics and Education: Understanding, Control and Agency‘, Educational Theory, 48, 241-266. Kerdeman, D. (2003), ‗Pulled Up Short: Challenging Self-Understanding as a Focus of Teaching and Learning‘, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 37, 293-308. McManus, R (2204), ‗Marketing the Monster: teaching social theory in the globalized market of

New Zealand higher education‘, Paper

delivered at the C-SAP seminar, Birmingham. Nixon, S. (1997), ‗Exhibiting Masculinity‘, in Hall, S (ed) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, London: Sage Publications Inc., pp 223-290. Sutton, P (2004), ‗Extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers? A pedagogic strategy for engaging students in social theory‘, Paper delivered at the C-SAP seminar, Birmingham.

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A Hermeneutic Approach To Pedagogy Weinsheimer, J. (1985), Gadamer's Hermeneutics: a Reading of Truth and Method, New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

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Chapter 7

Marketing a Monster?: Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand higher education Ruth McManus Introduction Nowadays, many regard teaching social theory as trying to market a monster. It is a hard beast to sell to students because it is unwieldy, complex, exasperating and extremely difficult to teach and learn in an effective and comprehensive manner (Barcan, 2002). At the same time it is also a cowered beast, beaten by the winds of globally fuelled disciplinary and institutional change that have swept tertiary education (Muller, 2000). ‗Marketing a Monster?‘ seeks to challenge this view by means of an account of the impact of neoliberal policies upon New Zealand sociology and an engagement with higher education debates on globalisation and neoliberalism. In New Zealand, sociology degrees and sociological research are the preserve of the state funded university system. Obviously, transformations in that sector necessarily impact upon all disciplines in the academy. However, in this discussion, I concentrate on the effect that recent policy changes in the New Zealand university system - toward a market funding regime and a commodification of teaching and research relationships - have had upon New Zealand sociology. I use New Zealand sociology to examine how these policies have unfolded in part because New Zealand is well known as a key site for the widespread and rigorous implementation of neoliberal policies and partly because sociology‘s particular characteristic - critical social reflection - is seen to be particularly threatened by neoliberal policy activities. This means that the fate of sociology under such policy shifts has especial resonance in broader theoretical

debates

about

the

impact

of

marketisation

and

commodification on higher education. The present configuration of

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Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand sociology in New Zealand suggests conflicting outcomes of current education policy initiatives. These unexpected outcomes indicate that the monolithic and deterministic attributes accorded to globalisation and neoliberalism in education writings can be effectively questioned by an examination of the messy actualities of these higher education politics and policies. The first section of the paper outlines the theoretical debate to which the paper contributes and the conceptual approach I take to examine the effect of the shift to neoliberal higher education policies for New Zealand sociology. I then chart the fate of sociology degrees and undergraduate social theory courses in recent years. I then develop an account of the place of New Zealand sociology within the current policy agenda toward a knowledge economy. I do so in order to highlight the existence of discrete and at times contradictory neoliberal and postneoliberal political projects within tertiary education, and to point to the ―messy actualities‖ of the turn to neoliberal policies to suggest that it is possible to realise an alternative to the hegemony of globalisation. Theoretical concerns Much

higher

education

writing

on

marketisation

and

commodification rightly locates recent shifts in higher education policy perspectives and practices to the rise in neoliberal discourses. However, there is much debate in the education literature, as elsewhere, over the best way to understand the impact of this turn to neoliberalism, its character and ultimately ways in which it can be questioned. There is an overriding tendency for education writers to ascribe this shift to what Angus calls ‗strong‘ theories of globalisation structure that

that imply a totalising

‗imposes its will without much consideration of agency,

local politics, or resistances‘ (2004: 23, 24). This perspective will be summarised in more detail below with regard to higher education. This approach is also found in education writers who deliberately focus upon New Zealand because it is an unparalleled site for social experimentation and observation. As a relatively small nation state with a

147

Learning and Teaching Social Theory well entrenched institutional infrastructure, the impact of alterations to the policy frame and ethos are relatively easy to discern (Kelsey, 1995). Further, ‗the neoliberal experiment in New Zealand is the most ambitious attempt at constructing the free market as a social institutions to be implemented anywhere this century‘ (Grey, 1998:39). Recognising that it is a particularly fruitful analytical site to examine the interplay of neoliberalism and globalisation, Roberts (1998) and Olssen (2002) both seek to raise awareness about the ways in which globalisation and neoliberalism have come together in recent policy shifts of New Zealand higher education. Roberts sees that in New Zealand education policy transformation mirrors in ‗chillingly close detail the move toward the commodification of knowledge and learning signalled in Lyotard‘s The Postmodern Condition‘ (Roberts, 1998:5). According to Olssen (2002), this commodification of knowledge at the heart of current New Zealand education policy is clearly neoliberal - as the policy directives, in their aim to marketise and commodify the provision of higher education, embody a ‗positive conception of the state‘s role in creating the appropriate market by providing the conditions, laws and institutions necessary … to create an individual who is an enterprising and competitive entrepreneur‘ (Olssen, 2002:59). Not only are the policy transformations neoliberal in character, this neoliberalism is said to be synonymous with globalisation: ‗At an economic level, neoliberalism is linked to globalisation, especially as it relates to the ―freedom of commerce‖, or to ―free trade‖. In this sense, neoliberalism is a particular element of globalization in that it constitutes the form through which domestic and global economic relations are structured‘ (Olssen & Peters, 2005: 313). As questions raised in other arenas about the conceptual status of globalisation are emerging (see for instance Larner & Walters, 2004), so some educational writers are turning their critical faculties toward a consideration of

the assumed relationship between globalisation and

neoliberalism. As Angus (2004) points out, there is a habit in education writing to use globalisation simultaneously as a description and explanation which entails ‗economic essentialism and reductionism as it

148

Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand implies a totalising structure (or force)‘. As noted previously, this writing constructs globalisation as that which‘ imposes its will without much, if any consideration of agency, local politics, or resistance‘ (Angus, 2004: 23). Further, ‗globalisation is typically presented as an external phenomenon that results, at the school level, in such neoliberal features as managerialism, competition, and market arrangements (Angus, 2004:24). According to Angus‘ post-structuralist critique of current education writings, the priority given to globalisation submerges and absorbs neoliberalism into globalisation as an explanation for many ills in education systems around the world. For Angus, the slippage between globalisation and neoliberalism is actually part of the problem that these writers seek to address. In effect these writings reproduce the logic of those they criticise by accepting a grand theory of globalisation as an uncontested truth. Angus is not alone in his critique of grand theories of globalisation. Post-structuralist commentators such as Larner and Walter (2004) and Tickell and Peck (2003) seek to open up this issue for debate by interrogating the relationship between the two and Larner‘s work has grown out of an extensive critical engagement with transformations in New Zealand governance (see for instance Larner, 1997; Larner, 2000; Larner, 2005; Larner & Craig, 2002). Whilst other commentators have interrogated the relationship between globalisation and neoliberalism through governance, I do so by focussing on New Zealand higher education reforms. I question the elision between neoliberalism and globalisation and the assumption that these operate as a monolithic, deterministic political project that is hegemonically imposed in the existing New Zealand based higher education literature. I argue, like Tickell and Peck (2003) that these researchers are perhaps replicating in their work a monolithic and deterministic understanding of the policy domain (Tickell & Peck, 2003). Following the lead of Angus, Larner and others, I view current times as highly contingent and contested. Consider, for example, the assumptions that underpin the notion of neoliberalism. The ethos that informs neoliberalism in higher education (HE) and elsewhere rests on the

149

Learning and Teaching Social Theory notion of freedom. On the one hand, neoliberals believe that tertiary education has been recalibrated to ensure the freedom of choice inherent in the market mechanism. On the other hand, those against neoliberal HE seem to accept that the recalibration of higher education has reduced the capacity to exercise academic freedom at the heart of universities and of liberal democracies themselves. As argued elsewhere (McManus, 2005), despite the profound influence and longevity in the annals of political analysis, this way of conceptualising political order through freedom has been contested and alternatives have been proffered. Embodied in Foucault‘s work on governmentality and taken up more rigorously by Nicholas Rose, one alternative approaches the notion of liberal freedom as a practice rather than a principle of liberal rule (Foucault, 1991 [1982]; Rose, 1999). This governmentality approach rests upon an understanding of liberal rule as alignments between projects of formal rule, strategies and calculations of independent authorities, and relays forged between these calculations of authorities and aspirations of free citizens (Rose, 1999:68). Within that, neoliberal claims to freedom frame up these loosely articulated strategic alignments and calculations in terms of market mechanisms and individualism (Larner, 2002: 148). This perspective which understands current neoliberal policies toward HE as an outcome of stitching up diverse and discrete alignments, shifts neoliberalism from being a political response to the exigencies of the global economy, to a particular moment where diverse political projects get tied together in an ‗ad hoc, post facto rationalisation in which connections are made across discrete and at times contradictory‘ political projects (Larner, 2005). This means that higher education is marked by discrete and sometimes contradictory political projects only one of which is orientated by an attention to the discourses of market mechanisms and individualism. At the same time it also approaches neoliberal policies as collections of located, ad hoc and contingent alignments between diverse actors that delineate particular fields of possibility rather than the strategic unfolding of a coherent and homogenous political logic. Further, the delineation of

150

Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand fields of possibility always operates with the proviso that actors can traverse the field in new and creative ways. When the current terrain of higher education policies is examined through a governmentality lens, a different kind of landscape comes into view that challenges conventional readings of New Zealand‘s marketisation and commodification of higher education. Below, I use this lens to chart the fate of sociology degrees and social theory courses in recent years. The New Zealand Tertiary Education System 1869-2005 Institutionalised funding systems shape the provision of tertiary education in profound ways. Looking back, 1870, 1962 and 1992 were auspicious years for the New Zealand higher education system as each denotes a significant landmark in the organisational ethos of state education funding. 1870 marked the transition from a provincial to a federal university system, and a shift from local provincial to national state funding of higher education that lasted for 120 years. Prior to 1870, New Zealand‘s sole university was founded and funded locally by the Otago Provincial Government (Gardner, 1979:26). Parliament passed legislation in 1870 to instigate a ‗federated university model‘ that held sway until 1961, whereupon the colleges that

made up the federation

gained

independent university status (Toombs & Harman, 1988: 12). As detailed by Toombs & Harman (1988), there were institutional changes throughout the period of federation. However, even though the New Zealand tertiary landscape was transforming throughout this century, the system of financial provision remained stable relative to the changes that were to come. Tertiary education was funded directly by central government through quinquennial block grants to approved tertiary institutions. In 1962, the university colleges of the federation gained their independence and existed side by side with polytechnics, colleges of education and a few private education providers. This was part of a more global expansion in tertiary education systems linked to post world war two economic affluence, an associated population boom and a change in attitudes toward and expansion of comprehensive education that reached into the tertiary

151

Learning and Teaching Social Theory sector. The system of direct tertiary funding remained intact until the early 1990s. In 1992, as a result of five years of tertiary education review1, government funding was fully transformed. Prior to this, the state funding system worked by direct state subsidy. The funding reform involved adopting a system of targeted bulk funding where universities had - on an annual basis - to compete for funding against other registered tertiary education providers. Called the tertiary EFTS (Equivalent Full Time Student) bulk funding system, all public sector tertiary institutions received funding on the same basis regardless of differential overhead and running costs. EFTS cost categories were established according to the approximate cost of delivering different programmes and funding was determined by the numbers of EFTS each institution attracted in each cost category (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 1990). All operating expenses (including research) and capital development were jointly funded out of EFTS payments. Since the early 1990s, there has been one other wave of tertiary reform. Instigated by a newly elected new Labour government in 1999, the Education (Tertiary Reform) Amendment Act 2002 established the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) and created a new funding system (the Integrated Funding Framework) in 2004. This system has three funding components, (1) teaching and learning, (2) research and (3) strategic development. Research is no longer funded primarily out of EFTS allocations but on the basis of performance from the Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) (Scott & Scott, 2005). Called ‗student component funding‘, this way of commodifying education places universities in direct competition with each other for students as a means to provide income to support running costs. Currently, there are five categories of tertiary provision and four types of state owned tertiary education institution in New Zealand; universities (eight), polytechnics (twenty three), colleges of education (two) and Wananga (Māori centres of learning) (three). The fifth and final type is Private Training Establishments (PTEs). Over the last decade polytechnics, traditionally specialising in vocational training, have

152

Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand expanded their role. Many are involved in research activities, particularly in applied and technological areas and other degrees. Colleges of education provide programmes for early childhood, primary and secondary school teaching qualifications. The three Wananga in New Zealand were established as tertiary education institutions in the last decade. These offer advanced study and research programmes where ahuatanga Māori (Māori tradition) and tikanga Māori (Māori custom) are an integral part of the programme. As

well

as

state-owned

education

providers

there

are

approximately 860 private training establishments (PTEs) in New Zealand. These PTE's are privately owned and funded, although some of their courses attract government funding. They offer a wide variety of courses that lead to qualifications in a large range of vocations from scuba-diving to hospitality to business (NZQA, 2005). The deregulation of tertiary provision has standardised the way in which degree courses are offered in New Zealand. The direction of standardisation was for all higher education providers to adopt the modular degree structure initially developed in and for polytechnic institutions. All degrees available in New Zealand higher education are now based on a degree structure in which individual subjects are subdivided into discrete packages of learning called ‗modules‘, each of which has a specific content, assessment tasks and credit value. It forms the basic building block of a degree programme. The academic year is divided into two semesters of approximately 15 weeks, each of which corresponds to the length of a teaching module. A degree has three types of modules: core modules that must be taken as part of a designated degree programme, optional modules where students can exercise some choice about which they take within the major subjects of their degree, and elective (or free choice) modules. Although all undergraduate degrees are offered through the modular system in New Zealand, these degrees vary in terms of whether they have a cored or uncored major. A cored major is when students have to complete compulsory papers to meet their major requirements. An uncored major is when students are required to pass a

153

Learning and Teaching Social Theory proportion of disciplinary papers and can choose which disciplinary papers to take up as long as they fulfil the allotted proportion. The recent higher education policy agenda of deregulation and bulk funding has rescaled the higher education landscape as never before. Whereas prior to the early 1990s, state tertiary establishments made direct application to the government for funding, upon deregulation, universities had to compete with other tertiary education providers for students‘ fees and for the bulk funding linked to the total number of students registered. The deregulation of higher education has transformed tertiary education providers into competitors. The deregulation has also transformed the student population profile. The numbers of students in tertiary education course has risen dramatically and the tertiary student population is more ethnically and economically diverse than ever: ‗The share of students from Maori and Pacific ethnic groups increased from 9 per cent in 1990 to 24 per cent in 2001‘ and there has also been ‗an explosion of small, innovative vocational education providers who better reached students from nontraditional ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds‘ (OECD, 2004:7). Maori and Pacific Island students were encouraged into higher education, and international students were seen as a growth area whose population has significantly increased over the last 15 years (Lewis, 2005). Deregulating the funding of tertiary education commodifies the provision of tertiary education as the core business of the sector shifts from providing consistent and high quality tertiary education on a fixed though predictable income to provide at worst, a cost neutral tertiary education within a competitive market. This transformation of university core business leads to the commodification of tertiary education because the relationship at the heart - between student and teacher - is now predominantly understood at the policy level as a relation of exchange - of customer and provider. As a means to place the principles of the market together with individual self-interest at the centre of higher education provision, these policies can be understood as neoliberal. This brief history of tertiary education in New Zealand gives a sense of the regularity and profundity of the ideological, institutional and

154

Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand structural shifts that are characteristic of New Zealand society as a whole as well as New Zealand‘s higher education system (Tennant, 2004). The New Zealand tertiary education system is now characterised by bulk funding modular degrees. The recent transition from a state provision to a bulk funding market model brings about the marketisation and commodification of tertiary provision and so is most relevant to the debate about neoliberalism and globalisation. For the remainder of this essay, I concentrate on the most recent and, as Olssen and other New Zealand commentators argue, the most radical philosophical turn around from a Keynesian welfare statism that regarded education as a state supported right, to what is sometimes called a neoliberal or economic rationalism that regards higher education as a market orientated privilege (Olssen, 2002:58). Academic Sociology in New Zealand The interdependence of the global and the local are an enduring feature of the New Zealand sociological landscape. Placed on the far edge of the world by a discipline that locates its historical origin in Western Europe and its contemporary strongholds in the northern hemisphere, New Zealand sociologists are well versed in conducting long-distance professional relationships and disciplinary disputes (McLennan, 1996). As well as operating on a global plane, New Zealand sociology prioritises New Zealand local issues. This concern with the local can be seen in the New Zealand sociology‘s struggle for a sense of identity evident when SAANZ (the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand) split into two independent associations in 1988, The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) and Sociological Association of Aotearoa-New Zealand (SAANZ) (Western, 2004). It is also seen in New Zealand sociology‘s public presence. New Zealand sociology - particularly during the late 1960 and early 1970s - has had a public profile as a source of advice to government. Within the New Zealand academic community, sociology marked itself off by its commitment to and involvement in local policy and community issues

155

Learning and Teaching Social Theory (Hancock, 2003). Massey and Canterbury had particularly explicit orientations to the public sector and community (Du Plessis & Fougere, 1998). Consequently, within the political community, New Zealand sociology has currency. Helen Clarke, the current Prime Minister had sociological training and the Honourable Steve Maharey, Minister of Social Development, is a former lecturer in Sociology. New Zealand sociology is also exclusively located within and dependent upon the state funded university system. Sociology has had a place within the New Zealand university curriculum since the expansion of tertiary education in the late 1960s. Six sociology departments were set up in the early 70s; in Auckland University, Victoria University, Canterbury University, Massey University, Lincoln University and Waikato University. Even though the recent deregulation of tertiary provision has led to an expansion in the type of education providers, the only expansion in sociology has been in universities (Auckland University of Technology and Otago University set up sociology majors in 2000 and 2002 respectively). No sociology majors are offered in any of the other non-university tertiary education providers that can tender degrees and certificates. Thus New Zealand sociology only exists in a professional capacity within the arenas of tertiary education or government policy. There are no think tanks and a scant handful of private social science research companies. Consequently, most sociological teaching and research takes place in the government funded university system. Conflicting Outcomes of Distinct Policy Agendas Given New Zealand sociology‘s location within and dependence upon the state funded university system, it is no surprise then that transformations in the broader tertiary education sector have had an unprecedented impact upon sociology. Though surprisingly, the ways in which sociology has changed over recent years challenges the assumption that the higher education policies have proceeded in a homogenous and linear manner.

156

Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand I now examine how sociology is currently hailed into two distinct policy arenas - each of which is a separate political project that has forged a particular alignment with sociology (as an independent authority) that relays a particular understanding of what it means to be a participant in the knowledge economy. The disparity across different policy aims and strategies places sociology in a double bind, which problematises a reading of current higher education policy agendas as a coherent roll-out of the neoliberal political agenda. Universities are traditionally a place where research and advanced teaching merge. ‗Universities are unique because most of their teachers are themselves active

in creating new knowledge‘ (McCutcheon, 2005:17).

Just because a university teacher engages in teaching and research, we should caution against the presumption that the policy discourses that shape the provision of teaching are automatically the same discourses that inform research - even though they may converge in a university lecturer‘s responsibility to link research and teaching. What we find is that the policy discourses that inform social research are not the same as the policy discourses that shape the provision of teaching.

New Zealand social

research is shaped through a distinct discursive arena that is characterised by entwined discourses of evidence based policy and globalisation. Identified as ‗post-neoliberal‘ by Larner and Craig (2002), it is historically separate and conceptually distinct from the discourse of neoliberalism that informs university teaching. The two policy arenas most relevant to sociology‘s place within the current higher education terrain are those of social policy and higher education policy, and currently each is

informed by post-neoliberal and

neoliberal modes respectively. These are distinct policy arenas with their own government ministry. Both arenas forge alignments with sociology through the evolving notion of the knowledge economy. Sociology is inculcated in current social policy initiatives because of the rise in the discourse of evidence based policy as the core strategy to develop accurate and effective policies that will foster inclusion in the knowledge society and assure New Zealand‘s performance on the global

157

Learning and Teaching Social Theory market. In the Ministry of Social Development, current policy agendas are explicitly shaped through the idea that a flourishing knowledge economy is the key to New Zealand‘s future success (Maharey, 2003) that is best achieved through policies of inclusion that foster cooperation across government, industry and education (Larner et al., 2006). Furthermore, this approach relies upon placing evidence based evaluation methods at the centre of policy activity and implementation. Thorns (2003: 694) notes that the centrality of an evidence base to inclusion orientated policies marks a reawakening of interest in long term social analysis and with that, a re-recognition of sociologically orientated research. If we examine how sociological research gets located within current evidence based social policy as a knowledge economy strategy, it can be said that there has been a new alignment between a project of rule based on policies toward inclusion (as opposed to market driven individualism) and sociological research. This alignment fosters a particular notion of New Zealanders as active participants in the knowledge economy.

In one sense then sociology is undergoing a

renaissance through policies that foster an inclusive approach to the knowledge economy and as such represent what Larner and Craig term post-neoliberal political projects (2002). Sociological research is also cut across with another set of policy strategies that clearly maintain a neoliberal political project. Market orientated policies have resolutely intensified academic work. The growing focus on budgetary management has seen the emergence of ‗just in time‘ education. Work that can be contracted out is contracted out. The teaching responsibilities traditionally linked to an academic position are beginning to get casualised as tutorial staff are being called in to work on piecemeal (hourly) rates at the beginning of each course on an as needed basis, with no security of employment or security of facility use (like library card etc.). De-regulating tutorial staff means that departments can trim costs to match their budgets and respond seemingly quickly and effectively to either drops or increases in student numbers. Budgetary management has also seen the emergence of rapidly escalating lecturer:student ratios. New

158

Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand Zealand universities have undergone radical restructuring that has entailed a significant loss of permanent academic and general staff. Accordingly staff-student ratios have increased from 1:12.5 in 1979 to 1:20 by the late 1990s (Crozier, 2002:4). Neoliberalism introduced market instruments in order to increase efficiency and was a key aspect of the political projects of the 1980s. In contrast, globalisation began to enter knowledge economy discourse in the 1990s as a pro-active strategy focussed on the need to seek out niche market, high value activities. As Larner comments, ‗it was at this point that the globalisation project began to be explicitly linked to a new political project; that of the Knowledge Economy‘ which was not, in and of itself, linked to globalisation (2005:152; Larner et al., 2006). Although eventually subsumed under a broad discourse of globalisation, if we consider when the central motif of each project emerged in public discourse, it becomes apparent that social policy‘s political project of inclusiveness and higher education‘s policy of commodification are distinct and independent of each other. The knowledge economy is a site where multiple policy agendas come together, and where sociology is cut across by post-neoliberal and neoliberal political projects that lead to contradictory outcomes. While at the vanguard of collaborative and evidence based research, sociology is hamstrung by severely depleted education funding.

At present, the

character of sociological research is collaboration though ‗the research underpinning our discipline comes mostly from the vote education funding‘, (which is research connected to a lecturing position rather than research funded over and above an academic salary) and remains meagre ‗relative to both other countries and other areas of scientific research‘ (Thorns, 2003: 699, 696). The next section turns to examine how exactly neoliberal policies unfold in the messy actualities of everyday academic life in the provision of sociology degrees leading again to contradictory outcomes.

159

Learning and Teaching Social Theory The Imperfect Accomplishment of Neoliberal Policies Within educational writing, there is a presumption that the logic of commodification brings with it a change in the ways that students are taught and also a shift in the type of knowledge that is offered. In the education literature, very often, there is a coincidence between both the proponents and critiques of student choice. Both have a tendency to assume that student choice leads to a vocationalisation of education - that students will naturally gravitate toward those courses which fulfil their rational wants for a return on their financial investment. The courses that make up degrees are seen to change from being understood as one of a series of cumulative courses that when taken together build upon each other to provide a coherent and ‗induction‘ orientated curriculum (Muller, 2000) to being a discrete entity focussed on the transferable skills aspects of the subject. This gravitation toward transferable skills is also taken to imply a necessary move away from critical analyses and more theoretical and disciplinary orientated courses (Naidoo & Jamieson, 2003). The day-to-day teaching of sociology and in particular social theory, both of which are characterised by conceptual learning, are potentially more affected by changes to the learning relationship brought about by commodification. This means that the fate of social theory papers is a particularly useful place to examine how these transformations have impacted upon the teaching of sociology. Standardisation is a key strategy for aligning the neoliberal political project with the everyday strategies and calculations of higher education

providers

and

aspirations

of

consumer

students.

Standardisation works on the logic that increasing compatibility across degrees,

reducing

compulsion

within

degrees

and

accentuating

transferable skills of degrees allows market mechanisms to meet student demand.

Standardisation is

fostered

through

three techniques:

modularising degree programmes; reducing compulsion within degree programmes; and vocationalising degree content. I will examine these three techniques in turn.

160

Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand Modularisation has been a key and successful alignment technique. Modular degrees have been fully implemented in all sociology degrees across New Zealand and are a significant and effective mechanism for implementing the discourse of choice (see for instance Hall, 1998) because courses are now easily interchangeable.

Institution

Fully semestered by Fully de-cored by

Auckland Uni 1982

2002

Canterbury Victoria Uni Otago Uni Waikato Uni

2000 2001 2002* 2000

2000 2001 Cored Cored

Lincoln Uni Massey Uni AUT

pre 1980 1996 2000*

Cored Cored Cored

Fig 1. New Zealand sociology degrees: extent of semesterisation and compulsion as of March 2005. * new sociology programme

Modularisation results in shorter courses whose point weight of the course toward the overall degree is reduced. The teaching format intensifies as there is a very strict time limit in terms of contact hours per week and the number of weeks a course is taught. Clearly modularisation does bring about an alignment of the neoliberal project and the everyday strategies of higher education providers. The timing alone indicates a close relationship. As can be seen in figure 1 above, all bar two of the institutions in New Zealand have modularised their degrees since the onset of neoliberal education policies. Moreover, the modularisation of teaching provision allows for accurate comparisons to be made by students across the range of courses and degrees and it also eases the practicalities of co-ordinating student timetables i.e. modularisation supports student consumer choice. That all undergraduate sociology degree programmes are now semesterised

161

Learning and Teaching Social Theory bespeaks a successful elaboration of market orientated policies associated with a neoliberal political project. Another key technique to foster alignments between market mechanisms, teaching and student choice is to reduce compulsion within degree programmes. In terms of sociology teaching, the technique of reducing compulsion - or de-coring majors - is not as effective as elaboration of neoliberalism as semesterisation. This is because the move to reduce compulsion does not align positively with either the aims of those who teach sociology or of the choosing students. Figure 1 above suggests that with regard to compulsion, three out of the six institutions with longstanding sociology degrees have retained their compulsory theory courses and the two recently established sociology programmes degrees have compulsory social theory courses. Overall, the balance of sociology degrees favours compulsory theory courses. Significantly, the recently established sociology programmes both have compulsory social theory courses. The limited and it may be argued passé move toward de-cored sociology degrees signals a failed alignment between the various actors and a mismatch between policy expectations and actual events, at least with regard to sociology modules. The last technique of alignment examined - the move to accentuate transferable skills over the intrinsic worth of courses - has had an unanticipated outcome. With increased modularisation and decreased compulsion comes the expectation that there is a shift toward short, discrete, skills orientated courses that student consumers can choose from, to best fit their desired degree outcome. With this presumption comes the expectation that social theory courses will lose out. Upon closer inspection, a much more complex situation is revealed. When examined, it is evident that the way social theory courses are now constituted signals a quite unexpected alignment between key actors. On the one hand, the teaching of social theory increasingly emphasises a focus on transferable skills that aims to vocationalise social theory. My own experience through this significant transformation suggests that there has been a move away from getting students to engage

162

Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand with the disciplinary canon through reading large amounts and producing long, scholarly essays, toward getting students to view social theory as a conceptual toolbox. With this toolbox, students are encouraged to break down, examine and critique particular concepts rather than produce the more traditional critical essay. This nascent move toward doing social theorising (as something students learn how to do that can be applied in a multiplicity of future contexts within or outside of academia) is coupled with a move to applied approaches adopted in new sociology majors. Here ‗applied‘ is used to mean a concern with current issues that overshadow enduring disciplinary debates. Social theory courses also increasingly focus on New Zealand society, or are located in and through New Zealand issues full stop. One colleague commented that ‗…the two theory papers are well supported, especially as our pedagogical approach is always to teach theory by integrating each theoretical approach within a case study from NZ society (e.g. Springbok tour, student loan scheme).‘ (Source: new sociology programme (2002), emphasis added). Another academic from a different institution repeats the same point - that students like and want locally orientated critical theorising. ‗A lot depends on how the theory course is taught, for example the third year Modern Social Theory paper has inter alia a weekly workshop where students get to use theory to unpack current issues - this through group work, role play, etc. This is seen as making theory work - instantiation and is also enjoyed by the class.‘ (Source: longstanding sociology programme that has remained cored. Emphasis added). This double move to applied social theory that looks at New Zealand specific social issues and social conflicts, instantiates social theory as process. The Springbok tour is a good example to demonstrate New Zealand instantiation of social theory as process.

As an event it was

uniquely divisive of New Zealand society and is crucial to understanding New Zealand‘s recent socio-political history, particularly in relation to post-colonialism and indigenous politics. In brief, rugby is the New Zealand national sport and there has been a long tradition of intense and

163

Learning and Teaching Social Theory friendly sporting rivalry between the South African Springboks and New Zealand All Blacks. However, by 1981 public protests and political pressure against apartheid had escalated to such a point that the New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon cancelled an All Blacks tour to South Africa. He did permit the South African team to come to New Zealand in mid-1981, arguing that New Zealand was a free and democratic country, and that ―politics should stay out of sport‖. The ensuing public protests polarised the New Zealand population as no other issue has in the nation‘s history (McLean, 2000). The Springbok scenario could only have happened in New Zealand because of the pivotal role rugby plays in configuring a national male identity built on ‗comradeship‘ (Phillips, 1987: 115). As such it is a crucial site to demonstrate key analytical techniques and concepts (such as ethnicity, gender and social conflict and national identity) and accurately analyse New Zealand‘s social terrain. The Springbok Tour is an apocryphal moment in the socio-political construction of contemporary New Zealand national identity as ‗Springbok tour protesters represented a challenge to (and reincorporation of) traditional male values‘ (Phillips, 1987:263) and as such is still very much alive in the national consciousness today.

By using the tour to

demonstrate and apply key sociological themes and concepts, there is no guaranteed learning output in the form of detailed facts or information. Instead, students are given the tools and the problem to come up with their own synthesis and solution and in doing so, demonstrate their skills in self-directed learning. Thus the crucial issue to consider is that the undeniable emergence of explicitly localised and vocationalised social theory papers marks an unexpected alignment between the neoliberal project, student choice and sociologically orientated critical analyses of New Zealand society. Students are in an unprecedented position to build their degree as they choose. Contrary to popular belief that given the choice, and in the face of a very wide array of courses to choose from, students will avoid critical social theory courses, students continue to choose critically driven papers because they facilitate a critical capacity. ‗From a variety of different

164

Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand channels we understand that students find theory papers challenging, enjoyable, and necessary for developing a critical capacity‘ (Source: longstanding sociology programme that has remained cored, emphasis added). Thus there is an emerging trend of strengthening the disciplinary boundary in sociology in New Zealand and a movement toward instantiating social theory through the local and particular New Zealand scene. In effect, new ways of linking theorising to the world are appearing in exactly the places where they are least expected, according to the neoliberal rhetoric of student choice. As they are appearing in new courses offered by more recently appointed faculty,

this commitment to critical

social theory is not solely the preserve of an aging staff group. The strategy of using the discourse of transferable skills to align academic practitioners and student consumers under the neoliberal project is a success in the sense that social theory courses have become more skills orientated, but at the same time, the alignment challenges the implied logic that such a strategy would undermine the provision of courses with a critical and theoretical orientation. There is, then, an unexpected alignment of student choice and social theory amongst a field of possibilities that projects the opposite to happen. The policy logic associated with student choice is imperfectly and unexpectedly accomplished. Recognising that failed and unexpected alignments are just as present as desired policy outcomes serves to define the limitations of policy projections. As a contested domain, sociology allows us to see practical, real, effective alternative elaborations that create spaces for new fields of possibility within higher education in New Zealand. We see then that sociology has resisted the neoliberal logic of higher education by critiquing the policy rhetoric in powerful and productive ways. Conclusion The commodification of higher education is usually understood as an elaboration of neoliberalism which is itself either simply a policy response to the exigencies of the global economy or the capturing of the

165

Learning and Teaching Social Theory political agenda by the ‗New Right‘ - a monolithic political project associated with minimalistic state (Angus, 2004). However, an account of the place of New Zealand sociology within the current policy strategies toward a knowledge economy highlighted the existence of discrete and at times contradictory neoliberal and post-neoliberal political projects that questions the presumed homogeneity of the global neoliberal project. Further, whilst the marketisation of tertiary education has had a profound impact upon the ways in which sociology is taught in New Zealand, this impact is contradictory - at the same time as we have a severe escalation of workloads and social research pressure, new ways of linking theory to the world are emerging that signal unexpected linkages between student choice and critical social analysis. Through an examination of how sociology is placed in the current configuration of higher education in New Zealand, multiple political projects were found to frame sociology in discrete and at times conflicting ways. This serves to undermine the assumed slippage between neoliberalism and globalisation. At the same time, an examination of the impact of the neoliberal project on academic sociology underscores that higher education is a highly contested terrain where critiques of, and alternatives to, the neoliberal project are emerging. Both analyses seek to challenge and offer alternatives to the homogeneity and linearity of current education writings on the globalisation of higher education.

166

Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand Notes 1 The reports on education and training were the Probine-Fargher report on polytechnics (New Zealand, Office of the Minister of Education 1987), the Shallcrass Report on non-formal education (New Zealand, Interim Advisory Group on Non-Formal Education, 1987), the Treasury briefing paper (New Zealand, Treasury 1987), the Watts report on Universities (New Zealand Universities Review Committee, 1987), the Tertiary Review (New Zealand, Department of Education, Tertiary Review Project Team, 1988), and the Picot Report on educational administration (New Zealand, taskforce to Review Education Administration 1988).

References Angus, L. (2004), 'Globalization and Educational Change: Bringing about the Reshaping and Re-norming of Practice', Journal of Education Policy, 19(1):23-41. Barcan, R. (2002), 'Problems without Solutions: Teaching Theory and the Politics of Hope', Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 16(3):343-356. Crozier, R. (2002), 'From AUT to AUS 1979-2002', AUS Bulletin, 54, July, 3. Du Plessis, R. and Fougere, G. (1998), 'Practicing Sociologies/Sociological Practices: An Introduction', in Du Plessis, R. and Fougere, G. (eds.), Politics, Policy & Practice: Essays in Honour of Bill Willmott, Department of Sociology, Christchurch, New Zealand, Working paper no. 17, pp. xvii-xxvii.. Foucault, M. (1991 [1982]), 'Governmentality', in Burchell G. Gordon C. Miller P. (ed.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Chicago, University of Chicago Press pp. 87-104. Gardner, W.J. (1979), Colonial Cap and Gown: Studies in the MidVictorian Universities of Australasia. Christchurch: University of Canterbury.

167

Learning and Teaching Social Theory Gray, J. (1998), False Dawn: The Illusions of Global Capital, London, Granta Publications. Hall, L. (1998), Student-centred Learning: A Flexible University Internal Assessment

System that Works, The Higher Education and

Development Society of Australasia: Auckland. Hancock, M. (2003), 'Beyond the Walls of the University', New Zealand Sociology, 18:115-20. Kelsey, J. (1995), The New Zealand Experiment : a World Model for Structural Adjustment?, Auckland, N.Z.: Auckland University Press ; Bridget Williams Books. Larner, W. (1997), '"A Means to an End": Neo-liberalism and State Processes in New Zealand', Studies in Political Economy., 63, 5-26. Larner, W. (2000), 'Neo-liberalism: Policy, Ideology, Governmentality', Studies in Political Economy, 63:5-25. Larner, W. (2002), 'Neoliberalism and Tino Rangatiratanga: Welfare State Restructuring in Aotearoa/New Zealand', in Kingfisher, C. (ed.), Western Welfare in Decline: Globalisation and Women's Poverty, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 147-163. Larner, W. (2005), 'Co-constituting ‗After Neoliberalism‘: New Forms of Governance in Aotearoa New Zealand', Studies in Political Economy Annual Conference: ‗Towards a Political Economy of Scale‘, Carlton, Canada. Larner, W. and Craig, D. (2002), 'After Neo-liberalism? Local Partnerships and Social Governance in Aotearoa New Zealand', Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston. Larner, W., Le Heron, R. and Lewis, N. (2006), 'Co-constituting 'After Neoliberalism?':

Political

Projects

and

Globalising

Governmentalities in Aotearoa New Zealand', in K. England and K. Ward

(eds.),

Neo-liberalization:

States,

Networks,

People,

Blackwell Publishers. Larner, W. and Walters, W. (2004), 'Globalisation as Governmentality', Alternatives, 29, 24.

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Teaching social theory in the globalised market of New Zealand Lewis, N. (2005), 'Code of Practice for the Pastoral Care of International Students: Making a Globalising Industry in New Zealand', Globalisation, Societies and Education, 3(1):5-47. Maharey, S.H. (2003), 'Connecting Policy, Research and Practice', Social Policy Research and Evaluation Conference, Wellington, Ministry of Social Development. McCutcheon, S. (2005), 'Investing in Quality', The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand. McLean, M. (2000), 'Football as Social Critique: Protest Movements, Rugby and History in Aotearoa/New Zealand', International Journal for the History of Sport, 17(2/3):255-277. McLennan, G. (1996), 'On Centrism in (New Zealand) Sociology', New Zealand Sociology, 11(1):114-131. McManus, R. (2005), 'Freedom and Suicide: A Genealogy of Suicide Regulation in New Zealand 1840-1970', Journal of Historical Sociology, 18,(4):. Muller, J. (2000), Reclaiming Knowledge: Social theory, Curriculum and Education Policy, London, Routledge Falmer. Naidoo, R. and Jamieson, I. (2003), Empowering Participants or Corroding Learning? Towards a Research Agenda on the Impact of Student Consumerism in Higher Education', Journal of Education Policy, 20(3): 267-281 NZQA

(2005),

Tertiary

providers

in

New

Zealand,

available:

http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/for-learners/nzstudy/#4. OECD (2004), Economic Survey of the United Kingdom, Paris, OECD. Olssen, M. (2002), 'The Restructuring of Tertiary Education in New Zealand:

Governmentality, Neo-liberalism, Democracy', McGill

Journal of Education, 37(1):57-78. Olssen, M. and Peters, M. (2005), Neoliberalism, Higher Education and the Knowledge Economy: From the Free Market to Knowledge Capitalism, Journal of Education Policy, 20(3):313-345. Phillips, J. (1987), A Man's Country? The Image of the Pakeha Male - A History, Auckland, Penguin.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Roberts, P. (1998), 'Rereading Lyotard: Knowledge, Commodification and Higher Education', Electronic Journal of Sociology, 3, 3. Rose, N. (1999), Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Scott, G. and Scott, H. (2005), 'A Longitudinal Study of New Zealand University Income and Student Numbers', New Zealand Journal of Tertiary

Education

Policy,

1,

(2).

available

at:

http://www.aus.ac.nz/publications/Ejournal/Vol1No2/2-Scott.pdf Tennant, M. (2004), 'History and Social Policy: Perspectives from the Past', in Dalley, B. and Tennant, M. (eds.), Past Judgement: Social Policy in New Zealand, Dunedin, New Zealand, Otago University Press, pp. 9-22. Thorns, D.C. (2003), 'The Challenge of Doing Sociology in a Global World: The Case of Aotearoa/New

Zealand', Current Sociology,

51(6):689-708. Tickell, A. and Peck, J. (2003), 'Making Global Rules: Globalisation or Neoliberalisation?' in Peck, J. and Yeung, H.W.-C. (eds.), Remaking

the

Global

Economy:

Economic-Geographical

Perspectives, London, Sage. Toombs, W. and Harman, G. (1988), Introduction, in Toombs, W. and Harman, G. (eds.), Higher Education and Social Goals in Australia and New Zealand, Pennsylvania & Armidale, Australia - New Zealand

Studies Centre, Pennsylvania

State University;

Department of Administrative and Higher Education Studies, University of New England, Armidale, NSW. Western, J. (2004), The History of Australian Sociology', Nexus: Newsletter of the Australian Sociological Association Inc., 16(1):9

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Chapter 8

Ritzer’s ‘McDonaldization of Society’ Thesis as a Vehicle for Teaching Weber and General Social Theory’ David Jary Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI), Open University

„Since using Ritzer‟s text, enrolment in [my] class has grown …We think the text will serve as „launching pad‟ for our majors.‟ US college lecturer „This book has attracted the most animated response from students I have ever experienced…‟ Lecturer, Arizona State University „invaluable as an illustration of how classical social theory can be applied‟ Stephen Miles Social Theory in the Real World „Genuinely succeeds in communicating the sociological imagination … and would serve as a wonderful catalyst for an extended discussion on rationalization, modernity, and …related issues‟ Endorsement of The McDonaldization of Society by Peter Kollock This chapter is in part a discussion of general issues in teaching social theory in a, to some extent, ‗McDonaldalized‘ higher education. It is more specifically a consideration of – and an aid to – teaching Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization Thesis‘ as a ‗launching pad‘ for teaching Max Weber and general social theory. In the course of this, it also provides an exposition and critique of Ritzer‘s thesis.

1

Introduction It is widely accepted that social theory is among the most challenging areas of teaching and learning in the social sciences. Finding effective ways of winning students‘ hearts and minds is a perennial quest. Can ‗best selling‘ popularisations of social theory provide an effective way into social theory?

171

Learning and Teaching Social Theory 1

This chapter began life as a contribution to C-SAP Project 25/S/01 „Teaching Max Weber‟, directed by David Chalcroft of the University of Derby. Behind the project was the feeling that teaching the classics should remain a central part of the core of a sociological education but that teaching classical theorists like Weber was a difficult enterprise. Accordingly the project aimed to produce a series of teaching resources.

Successful popularisations are often disparaged by social theory teachers. But their popular success indicates that they have the potential to play a helpful role in teaching social theory by overcoming the ‗difficulty‘ and apparent ‗remoteness‘ of social theory from the everyday concerns

of

students. But can they do this without misrepresenting social theory or selling students short? In this chapter we explore the potential as a vehicle for introducing social theory of one recent highly successful best selling sociological text, George Ritzer‘s The McDonaldization of Society (1993). Ritzer‘s work is in part conceived with the intention of being used in this way. Explicitly a popularization of aspects of Weber‘s general theory of the rationalization of modern societies, which applies Weber‘s theory to a racy topic close to student interests, the production of ‗fast food‘, Ritzer‘s volume possesses an obvious prima facie value as a means of enticing students into more general engagement with theory. And, as suggested by the endorsements at the head of this chapter, Ritzer clearly has a range of supporters testifying to the student friendliness and effectiveness of his text. Also he has won awards for teaching! As advanced in The McDonaldization of Society, ‗McDonaldization‘ is the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of society.‘ McDonald‘s, Ritzer suggests, is becoming the model for the ‗efficient‘, ‗formally rational‘ delivery of an increasing range of goods and services, including such diverse areas as shopping, religion, health care, the management of death, many areas of sports

and

leisure

and

also

higher

education.

For

Ritzer,

‗McDonaldization‘, possessing clear continuities with Taylorism, has ‗not only revolutionized the restaurant business‘ but is also transforming American society, and ultimately may ‗transform the world‘. What Ritzer‘s thesis seeks to exhibit is the steady advance and insidious effects of the

172

Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization of Society‘ spread of a process of formal rationalisation that drives out other forms of production and organisation. The thesis is explicitly conceived as a ‗modern‘ rendition of the process of rationalisation identified by Max Weber. The chapter will examine ways in which, in enabling the exploration of theoretical questions via an intentionally student-friendly topic, a work like Ritzer‘s can provide an accessible and effective introduction to Weber and Weber‘s derived key concepts,

including

‗rationalization‘,

types

of

‗rational

action‘

(‗instrumental‘, ‗formal‘, ‗substantive‘, etc.), ‗bureaucracy‘ as an ideal-type, ‗disenchantment‘ and the rationalised ‗re-enchantment‘ of disenchanted societies. Utilising The McDonaldization of Society in this way will be pretty much in line with what Ritzer himself would claim as the pedagogic potential of his thesis. However, if approached more critically, a discussion of the Mcdonaldization thesis can also be used to provide a far broader route into wider issues about modern society and more general issues in classical and contemporary sociological theory. For example, Ritzer‘s thesis can be regarded as tending largely to reiterate Weber‘s concerns about rationality including a pessimistic message of all-pervasive social control and dehumanisation, in a manner which arguably underestimates the nuances of consumer society and the complexities of modernity/post modernity. As Weinstein and Weinstein (1999) suggest, since Ritzer‘s ‗McDonalds‘ metonymy is a substitute for more carefully defined and more cautiously applied concepts this means that a ‗particular instance of a process always contains [both] more and less than can be subsumed under that process‘. In the most general terms it will be apparent that Ritzer‘s thesis lacks extended consideration of the forces that lie behind the accelerating diffusion of formal rationality such as the globalisation of capitalism or the extension of styles

of

private corporate management

to

public

management. Ritzer‘s rendition of his thesis is also associated with the conspicuous lack of a grounded empirical analysis of the ‗subjectivities‘ served and/or constructed by global food and leisure corporations such as McDonald‘s or their continuous reinterpretation/reconstruction by

173

Learning and Teaching Social Theory consumers. How far in fact are people simply seduced or trapped? Faced with such questions, Ritzer‘s account appears over-deterministic, too totalising

(Miles,

2001).

The

manifold

cultural

complexity

of

McDonaldization, e.g. its association negatively and positively with ‗the American dream‘, is plainly underanalysed as well as underestimated by Ritzer. Thus scope exists for additions and alternatives to both Ritzers‘ and Weber‘s accounts, including the following areas:       

Marx and Critical Theory Labour process theory A range of organisation and management theories Simmel Theories of post modernity and consumer society Theories of Globalisation Environmental theories, and theories of ‗risk society‘.

In his later discussions and revisions of his thesis (e.g. Ritzer, 1998, 2000) Ritzer acknowledges some at least of these under-considered aspects of the context of his thesis. Missing elements in his initial rendering of his thesis can thus be introduced to students via his discussions as well as in their own right. An interesting aspect of Ritzer‘s discussion pertinent to our consideration of the pedagogic potential of The McDonaldization of Society is that he suggests that sociology and universities are increasingly subject to McDonaldization, though exempting his own work! His examples of McDonaldized sociology include: teaching by text book and ‗standardized theory‘. The phenomenon of the ‗McUniversity‘ (see also Parker and Jary, 1998) includes processes such as: semesterization, modularization and ‗audit culture‘. However, it is precisely this context that makes Ritzer‘s work ‗palatable‘, ‗bite size‘, ‗fun‘ and thus particularly amenable for consideration as a teaching resource in the to some extent McDonaldized present day academy. John O‘Neill‘s (1999) view – Ritzer‘s writings as ‗theory burgers‘, akin to ‗McNuggets‘ – is that the influence of Ritzer‘s rendering of social theory is on balance malign. But the view taken in this chapter is that it can be used with profit to both introduce theory and stretch students in ways already suggested that are elaborated in the rest of

174

Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization of Society‘ the chapter. On a continuum of popularising sociological best-sellers from say Reisman‘s The Lonely Crowd (1950) on the one hand to Vance Packard‘s The Hidden Persuaders (1959) on the other, Ritzer‘s work stands somewhere in the middle ground, somewhat less significant and symptomatic of its times than the former but a far more well-founded contribution to social analysis and theory than the latter. Ritzer‟s Core Thesis and its Relation to Weber‟s Conception and Critique of Rationality Key works by Ritzer on McDonaldization or relevant to the general thesis include: The McDonaldization of Society (1993, 1996, 2000) Enchanting a Disenchanted Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption (1999) The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions (1998) Explorations in the Sociology of Consumption (2001) McDonaldization: The Reader (2002) Ritzer‘s ‗abstract model‘ of McDonaldization is as an ‗ideal-type‘ of rationalisation with four dimensions: Efficiency Calculability Predictablity Control The pursuit of rationalisation, McDonaldization – not simply McDonald‘s restaurants but all those production processes for which McDonald‘s is paradigmatic – involves: Automated Technologies plus Rigid Rules Least cost Measured outcomes The same outcomes from the same inputs on repeated contexts Managers and deskilled workers Controlled service provision and service consumption. Overall efficiency arises from the continuous pursuit of the most efficient means, including making the customers work by fetching their own food and clearing their tables. Control of workers is achieved via non-human technology such as the manufacture of strictly standardized portions,

175

Learning and Teaching Social Theory microwave ovens and drink dispensers. Control over customers is achieved, for example, by chairs that are relatively uncomfortable to discourage long stays. Aside from the fast food industry, and universities , examples of increasing number of production processes and services identified by Ritzer either as McDonaldized or increasingly becoming so include: Shopping Malls Theme Parks and Disneyfication Tourism, especially packaged tours Hotels Health Care Both Participant and Spectator Sports On the frontiers of McDonaldization, displaying many signs of McDonaldization, are such developing trends as: Sex Industries The Internet Designer Babies McCitizenship. McDonaldization is the ‗culmination of a series of rationalization processes that has occurred throughout the 20th century‘. It is seen as continuous with Weberian ‗rationalisation‘ – for Ritzer, Weber‘s ‗ideal type‘ of bureaucracy is a ‗paradigm case of rationality‘. It is grounded in Taylorism and ‗scientific management‘ and in the Fordism of assembly line technologies and management. McDonald‘s own promotional stance is: ‗Quality food, good Service, Cleanliness and good Value‘. However, although the proliferation of McDonaldized processes occurs as the outcome of the economic effectiveness of the pursuit of ‗Rational Efficiency‘ this outcome according to Ritzer, as for Weber, is also associated

with

ultimately

negative

‗dehumanising‘

effects:

the

‗irrationality of rationality‘. How does Ritzer see his work? It is, he says: ‗Essentially a work in social

criticism‘

(Ritzer)

…

that

applies

Weber‘s

conception

of

rationalisation and his concept of an ‗iron cage of rationality‘, in which rationalisation ultimately imprisons by its limits on choice and

176

Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization of Society‘ individuality. It is a ‗timely‘ rendition of the process of rationalisation identified by Max Weber. It underlines both the steady advance and the insidious effects of the spread of formal rationalisation that drives out forms of organisation with other qualities. In summary, specific Weberian (and also Marxian) key concepts employed and in some cases extended by Ritzer include: From Weber: The general processes of rationalization Types of rational action (‗instrumental‘, ‗formal‘, ‗substantive‘, etc.) Bureaucracy (and Ritzer‘s ‗Hyperrationality‘) as ideal-types and bureaucracy as the ‗paradigm case‘ of rationality Disenchantment (and Ritzer‘s rationalised ‗re-enchantment‘ of disenchanted societies; disenchantment arises from rationality but also occurs as a reaction to post modernity and hyperrationality) From Marx: Alienation Commodification, commodity fetishism. Why Teach McDonaldization? Why teach Ritzer and McDonaldization? Because it offers a seductive alternative to conventional ways into sociological theory – a panacea, a intellectual viagra even for ancient theories. We should note again the quotations at the head of this chapter Since using Ritzer‘s text, enrolment in [my] class has grown US college lecturer This book has attracted the most animated response from students I have ever experienced… Lecturer, Arizona State University Further evidence exists in its reported adoption: ‗at over 200 colleges in the US and translated worldwide.‘ Nor is this simply a North American phenomenon. In his Social Theory in the Real World – a general text on social theory aimed at helping students relate social theories to ‗their, everyday life experiences‘ the English sociologist – Stephen Miles‘ rates The McDonaldization of Society : invaluable as an illustration of how classical social theory can be applied.

177

Learning and Teaching Social Theory And the wider potential of The McDonaldization of Society in teaching social theory we suggest in this chapter is also seen in the endorsement of Ritzer‘s volume by Peter Kollock: Genuinely succeeds in communicating the sociological imagination … and would serve as a wonderful catalyst for an extended discussion on rationalization, modernity, and …related issues. There is a good deal of general support that it can provide an accessible ‗way into social theory‘, breathing live into old theories and applying classical theory to contemporary issues of immediate interest to students. Regarding Weber it can be argued that the thesis provides a means of entry to discussion of the importance, and continued value, but also the limitations and problems of Weber‘s concepts and world-view, including a way into alternatives to Weber. Significant further endorsements of Ritzer‘s Thesis as ‗Theory‘ come from Jonathan Turner on the cover of Ritzer‘s Explorations in Social Theory: the most creative theorist in sociology on rationalization in the last two decades. And from Jonathan Turner again, on the back cover of Ritzer‘s Explorations in the Sociology of Consumption there is the suggestion that: This …body of is work has reoriented sociology to the importance of consumption dynamics and to the new forms that consumption takes with hyper rationality, easy credit, e-net exchanges, and rapid globalization … Against this, the far more equivocal or simply negative rating of the ‗McDonadization Thesis‘ as theory must also be acknowledged, especially arising from the fact it is a popularisation. Ritzer, understandably, wants to be seen as a making a significant theoretical contribution in his own right, but the accessibility and in some respects formulaic character of his books that leads to their success can also be seen, as earlier suggested, as themselves part of the ‗phenomenon‘ of McDonaldization. Ritzer is gratified that ‗McDonaldization‘ has made it into dictionaries, seeing this

178

Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization of Society‘ as vindication and confirmation of his thesis, and HE? is hostile to criticism and resents having pointed out such ironic elements of his own success. As noted, Ritzer is himself clear that sociology and universities are becoming increasingly McDonaldized while resisting the suggestion that the success of his own texts either owes anything to or contributes to this. But it can be argued that to some extent the McDonaldized character of Ritzer‘s McDonaldization of Society text and theorising is a significant element in what makes them a valuable teaching and learning resource in the partially McDonalidised University. Written in a way that adds up to a consumer friendly approach to theoretical issues The McDonaldization of Society undoubtedly contains elements of ‗fast theory‘. But at the same time – or so it will be argued here – it can be seen as more nutritious than merely ‗fast theory‘, providing clear avenues for a weaning process leading to substantial ‗real food‘. It does so partly because of the connections it makes with ‗real theory‘ and partly because it provokes questions about what it omits or deals with in only limited ways. Take as an example the phenomenon of modern sport as analysed by Ritzer. As argued in Jary (1999), while Ritzer is strong on some modern developments well captured as ‗McDonaldiation‘ his discussion simplifies or ignores other aspects, including the strong loyalties and iconography and that occur in connection with sports teams and sports stars that McDonalds associates, via sponsorship and promotions, with its products and identity. As Cole and Hribar (1995) comment, sports and leisure corporations such as Nike that have grown up in connection with sport and leisure become global brands ‗through a complicated network of economic, cultural and psychic relations‘. The same applies to McDonalds, the ‗success‘ of which is not reducible to ‗McDonaldization‘ simply in Ritzer‘s terms. Box 1 summarises a number of the virtues that I would see of Ritzer‘s McDonaldization thesis as a teaching resource. Some we have discussed. Others are considered as we proceed. Box 1: Summary of Reasons for Teaching This Topic as a Way Into Weber and Social Theory

179

Learning and Teaching Social Theory

Relation to student culture/lifestyle and media amplified interests and issues Shows that sociological theory not just dead theorists, or simply „abstract‟ Accessible, contemporary application of Weber and context for wider discussion of classical theory Via a consideration of the strengths but limitations, and the partially McDonaldized character of Ritzer‟s theory, also shows how any one theory is likely to be suggestive but limited and leads readily to consideration of alternative theories. A way into current as well as classical theory: not only Weber, but Weber and Marx, Simmel and theories of rationalization and modernization more generally, leading to consideration of consumerism, post-modernity; etc. A „fast‟ form of „critical‟ theory; an introductory treatment of the „adverse‟ and the „emancipatory‟ in contemporary globalising society, including consideration of „anti-globalization‟ (exploitation of Third World labour and cultural colonialism) and ecological and environmental issues, including BSE Can be used to raise issues about the empirical warranting of claims about social trends and associated cultural evaluations. Also important in all of this is that the McDonaldization of Society thesis is also a thesis that students can readily subject to critical analysis.

Issues about Weber’s Conceptions of Rationality and Rationalisation seen via Issues about Ritzer and the McDonaldization Thesis The following is a longer list of conceptions of rationality/rationalisation in Weber and Ritzer‘s work: Formal rationality (instrumental rationality) Substantive rationality Value rationality Legal rationality (systematic following of rules) Capitalist accounting Practical and theoretical rationality Non-rational action, including traditional and affectual action Rational adjustment to the world compared with rational mastery of the world

180

Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization of Society‘ Bureaucracy Rationalization of society ‗Disenchantment‘ The ‗Iron cage‘. A first area for consideration is Weber‘s overall historical account of rationality and rationalisation. The ‗Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930), Weber‘s account of a significant manifestation and source of the origins of the distinctively modern Western capitalist ‗instrumental rationality‘ (aimed at mastery of the world) is but a fragment within Weber‘s ouvre. Virtually the entirety of Weber‘s extensive comparative historical empirical and theoretical studies of European and Asian societies can be seen as centred on ‗rationalization‘ as a pervasive historical process that permeates society and potentially all societies. Such rationality is also a feature of the emergence of western forms of political administrative

structures

including

‗legal-rational

authority‘

and

‗bureaucracy‘. Fundamental features of western rationality according to Weber include: ‗Causal‘ empirical analysis of the sources and implication of modes of rational control in a ‗disenchanted‘ world The development of specialised technical rational knowledges, e.g. in relation to the economy, administration, warfare Increasing ‗objectification‘, regularity and calculability of differentiated social realms Progressive increases in rational technical control over the natural and social world A displacement of traditional and value-rational action by instrumental rationality. In his ultimately pessimistic account of the implications of rationalisation Weber sees conflicts between different elements of ‗rationality‘, e.g. between ‗formal‘ and ‗substantive‘ rationality (i.e. what serves wider human interests). The rationalization of society, associated with the ‗disenchantment‘ and ‗desacralisation‘ of society, leads to dehumanisation and an ‗iron cage‘ of social control arising from the ‗technical superiority‘ of formal rationality, bureaucracy. etc. As Brubaker (2003) puts it in the

181

Learning and Teaching Social Theory Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought (pp. 557-8), ‗technical rationality‘ – ‗a generalised means‘ rather than an end – ‗indiscriminately facilitates the pursuit of all substantive ends‘. Above all, ‗McDonaldization‘ as a process both illustrates and establishes a model for significant phenomena of production and consumption in the contemporary extension of the general process of rationalization. The process also illustrates the adverse effects of ‗formal rationality‘ envisaged by Weber and is at odds with ‗substantive rationality‘. In building on and extending the application of Weber‘s formulations Ritzer‘s McDonaldization of Society provides an accessible, contemporary application of Weber and the context for referring backwards into more direct consideration of Weber‘s work and a wider discussion of classical theory. As well as building from and leading students back into Weber‘s general ouvre, since both Ritzer‘s and Weber‘s key general concepts – including the types of action, including rational action – are formulated as ‗ideal types‘, a consideration of McDonaldization can also be used a vehicle for general discussion of the role of ideal types in social theory. For Weber, ideal types – logical idealisations of a phenomenon – are clearly identified as ‗heuristic devices‘. Rather than concepts that directly accord with empirical reality or stand or fall by virtue of empirical testing, these assist empirical comparisons and the assessment of ‗causal‘ tendencies, e.g. via ‗thought experiments‘. Since for Ritzer, ‗McDonaldization‘ is an ideal type related to rationality, key questions that arise regarding the McDonaldization thesis are: How far it is a new ideal type or does it simply reiterate Weber? Note here the centrality of terms like ‗calculability‘ and ‗control‘ in Weber‘s account of rationality within Ritzer‘s model of ‗McDonaldization‘, which raises the question is McDonaldization merely rationalization? How far does ‗McDonaldization‘ share features associated with Weber‘s ideal types that their utility is to be assessed in terms of their heuristic utility or ‗suggestiveness‘ in illuminating particular cases (e.g.

182

Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization of Society‘ as departures from the general type) or is a more direct ‗testing‘ intended by Ritzer for what is an historical rather more than a generic type (cf. the ‗protestant ethic‘). Central

issues

regarding

Weber‘s

evaluation

of

rationality

and

rationalization and his metaphor of the ‗Iron Cage‘ can be raised via consideration

of Ritzer‘s

McDonaldization thesis. Though raising

important issues, Weber‘s finally pessimistic, disenchanted conception of rationalised modernity is plainly questionable. Weber acknowledged that rationalisation is in practice a ‗world of different things‘, paralleling the many-sidedness and ambiguities of rationality and rationalism. For example, ‗rational bureaucracy‘ as an ideal type is framed as associated with technical efficiency but empirically bureaucracy and the narrow pursuit of technical efficiency is known to be associated with unwanted side effects that in fact limit its inexorability and its necessity in practice compared with other modes of organisation. There are many issues regarding Weber‘s estimation of the implications of rationality that clearly carry over into Ritzer‘s use. Does Ritzer tend to repeat (or even oversimplify) Weber‘s concerns about rationality, largely reiterating

Weber‘s

pessimism

and

message

of

control

and

dehumanisation? In this, does he arguably also underestimate the complexity of consumer society and the modern/‘post-modern‘ context? Ritzer sums up conflicts that can occur between formal and substantive rationality with the example of Ford‘s (not Henry but the company‘s) cynical calculation of the balance of profit from continued selling, rather than redesigning, a defective model and thus risking litigation. However, that organizations like Fords or McDonalds do in fact often modify their behaviour when faced with market or political pressures points directly to the limits in practice of the ‗iron cage‘. Elsewhere, Ritzer provides an account of an emerging ‗Hyper-rationality‘ that avoids many of the problems of bureaucratic rationality but this does not figure very large in his discussion of the McDonaldization thesis. All of this raises the question – and obvious area for student discussion – whether, like Weber, Ritzer is

183

Learning and Teaching Social Theory too pessimistic, too fatalistic, in his reading of the McDonaldizing tendency. Limitations of Ritzer‘s analysis such as the above are in large measure associated with problems of method. These limitations in method may in part be a consequence of its popularised form of The McDonaldization of Society, a consequence of the genre. But the limitations are a source of fundamental failings of the thesis that can again be an important focus for student consideration.

Largely The McDonaldization of Society is an

illustrative, one-dimensional, repetition of generalised grand assertion and is lacking in any great concern to tease out any more complex multidimensional effects such as the positive as well as negative effects of rationalisation and anti-rationalising influences associated with postmodernity as well as modernity. As Gilling (1996) has suggests ‗Places like McDonald‘s are proliferating, but so are extremely congenial cafés and sandwich bars‘.

In an era now described as involving post-Fordist

production, product variety and consumer choice have greatly increased. Where then is the ‗iron cage‘? Too often the author of The McDonaldization of Society simply seems content to pile up ‗examples‘ that appear to fit the general case with little care to distinguish strong from weak instances. In contrast Weber‘s comparisons deploying ideal types to tease out cause and effects are far more penetrating and far more systematic. Commentaries on Ritzer and his Thesis and General Issues about Contemporary Society Seen via the McDonaldization Thesis The McDonaldization Thesis contains but perhaps conflates two parallel theses: 1. a simple thesis about the ‗rationalising process‘ involved in the development and impact of McDonalds (and comparable outlets) as a fast-food business. 2. a wider, grander, but more questionable thesis that the fast-food business and in particular

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Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization of Society‘ McDonald‘s has become a metonym for or general model of rationalization. There are ambiguities and conflations of 1 and 2 and within 2. Weinstein and Weinstein (1999) suggest that The McDonaldization of Society contains ‗abundant examples of contemporary social phenomena, metaphors, propositions.‘

images

and

metonymies

[that]

illustrate

theoretical

However, for Weinstein and Weinstein ‗the advantage of

rich descriptions is usually counterbalanced by scanty clarification of general principles, leading to imprecision in the application of concepts‘. As Weinstein and Weinstein suggest metonymy is used as a substitute for carefully defined and applied concepts meaning that a ‗particular instance of a process always contains more and less than can be subsumed under that process‘. Weinstein and Weinstein make a ‗charitable‘ reading of Ritzer‘s thesis, identifying three elements, where 2 and 3 are ‗extra‘ elements: 1. Weber‘s concept of rationalization, and also Fordism 2. Whatever specific extensions of 1 that ‗McDonaldization‘ might contain 3. Ritzer‘s generalised ‗humanist critique‘. But as well as any inadequacies of 1 deriving from Weber, questions about 2 and 3 remain. In a similar vein, Barry Smart (Smart, 1999) asks two fundamental questions: Smart‘s first question Has the theory an analytic value beyond rendering Weber‘s original thesis in a more timely and (for students) appetizing form? As Weinstein and Weinstein also put it: is it simply‘ old theoretical cola‘ in ‗a glitzy new cup‘? Sometimes Ritzer appears to suggest that he deals with new and qualitatively different developments, but elsewhere is more ambiguous on this. Smart‘s second question Does the thesis suffer from the lack of a possible articulation between the spread of formal rationality and the relentless pursuit of capitalist

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory accumulation? The ‗merits of Ritzer‘s ambitious thesis is that it does carefully document and discuss examples of the rationalization of the everyday lifeworld. However, what lies behind the accelerating diffusion of strategies of formal rationality is another matter, one to which Ritzer really devotes scant attention?‘ (Smart 1999:5) Regarding the missing (or at least only implicit) economic analysis (political economy) in Ritzer 1, Beilhartz (1999) asks the question: Should we look for the truth of MacDonald‘s in further analysis of Scientific Management etc rather than vice versa? The missing (or only implicit) economic analysis (political economy) in Ritzer 2: Is capitalist logic, not simply McDonaldization, the key underlying causal factor? As well as raising issues about the specific terms of Ritzer‘s thesis, consideration of the above opens the way for student discussion of alternatives to Weber‘s or Ritzer‘s theories, including: Marx and Critical Theory Labour process theory – as well as McDonaldized consumption, the focus of the discussion here can be on the nature, creation and implications of ‗McJobs‘ Organisation theories Globalisation theory Environmental theories, including theories of ‗risk society‘. Discussion could include consideration of the ramifications and implications of McDonaldization for agricultural and industrial production in both the developed and developing world, including consideration of ‗anti-globalization‘ (exploitation of Third World labour and cultural colonialism) as well as ecological and environmental issues, including BSE and more general issues associated with ‗healthy eating‘ . As suggested by a number of commentators (including Kellner, 1999 and Jary, 1999) a further understated aspect of Ritzer‘s thesis – arising from its largely Fordist grounding – is the relatively limited attention Ritzer gives to the cultural dimensions as against the organisational dimensions of

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Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization of Society‘ McDonald‘s and McDonaldization. Relevant theories here include theories of post-modernity and consumer society, including major contemporary theorists such as Baudrillard and precursors of these such Simmel. Ritzer argues that his later work has incorporated consideration of relevant theories (see his reply to his critics in Smart, 1999). However, the power of McDonald‘s – and similar branded, labelled products – as positive or negative ‗symbols‘, e.g. the purchase of ‗life style‘, the buying or repudiation of ‗the American dream‘ requires far more analysis than provided by Ritzer. This needs to include actual empirical analysis of the ‗subjectivities‘ served and constructed by global food and leisure corporations such as McDonald‘s. As well as the role of McDonald‘s and similar McDonaldized brands in constructing gratifications and personal identities, the reinterpretation and reconstruction of the implications of products and brands by ‗consumers‘ also requires attention. How far are people simply seduced or trapped? Ritzer is perhaps over-deterministic, too totalising in his accounts and assumptions (Miles, 2001). As emphasised by Kellner (1999), and Jary (1999), Ritzer understates what for many appear to be the fun gained in consuming McDonaldied products or services alongside a range of still available non-McDonaldized products. Increases in the gratifications seen as associated with post-Fordist, postmodern ‗flexible‘, Just-in-Time forms of production and distribution, which

increasingly

exist

as

competitive

market

alternatives

to

McDonaldized processes and products are also largely neglected by Ritzer. Ritzer does examine institutional attempts at ‗Re-enchantment‘ – e.g. theme parks – but his verdict is that these are largely unsuccessful faced with the logic of rationalisation. What all of the above adds up to it that the empirical phenomenon of McDonald‘s – and similar enterprises – is not fully captured simply by McDonaldization in Ritzer‘s sense. Phenomena like McDonald‘s are far too complex and paradoxical to be captured by the more singular process that Ritzer suggests. The result could be, after commencing with Ritzer‘s ‗fast‘ form of ‗critical‘ theory, the leading of students to consideration of a more

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory comprehensive analysis of the adverse and ‗emancipatory‘ potential of contemporary globalising society. It is not possible to expand further on the detail of the above possibilities within the confines of a short chapter. What can be noted however, is that the possibility exists for approaching discussion of alternative theories via Ritzer‘s own more general theoretical writings (e.g. Ritzer, 2001), which include his discussion of the ‗architectonics‘ or underlying themes of social theory (Kalberg, 1983). Ritzer employs ‗architectonics‘ – focussing on such themes

as

‗philosophical

anthropology‘,

‗reification‘ and ‘domination‘ –

‗institutionalisation‘,

and

to inform his ‗meta-theoretical‘

comparison of Weber, Marx, and Simmel, theorists all seen by Ritzer as sharing the same basic model – in contradistinction to theorists such as Durkheim. A Brief Note on Possibilities of Utilising Ritzer in Teaching Specific Topics in McDonaldization – the Example of Higher Education A further route to discussion of McDonaldization in student friendly ways to be noted briefly is via detailed discussion of its application beyond the fast food sector to areas also of interest to students (as listed earlier on p. 7). One particular example is the opportunity that exists for discussion of its application to higher education. Considering that it is a directly shared experience of staff and students, higher education is a surprisingly neglected resource within the undergraduate sociological curriculum but it has the potential to engage students. As the result of semesterization and modularisation in a massified and more marketised higher education, are teaching and learning more McDonaldized? Are teaching and learning now subject to new regimes of accountability and audit becoming more standardized, more routinised? Seminal works on student behaviour such as Becker et al‘s (1968) Making the Grade could be considered alongside discussions of McDonaldized higher education by Ritzer and others (e.g. Parker and Jary, 1998; Pritchard, 1997). Such focus could potentially

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Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization of Society‘ provide rich opportunities for cashing direct student experiences in empirical and theoretical terms. It might also lead to a more understanding and reflexive student (and also staff) engagement with issues in learning and teaching. A number of the chapters in the present volume, for example those by Wesley Shumer, by Dave Harris, by Nikita Potkrovsky and by Patrick Ainley can also serve as a resource in such a discussion. Conclusion As Douglas Kellner (1999: 186) remarks ‗The widespread reception – and the controversy it has evoked – suggest that Ritzer has touched upon some vital nerve centres of the contemporary era‘.. What has been suggested in this chapter is that as an inventive if ultimately flawed application of Weber, Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization thesis‘ offers a student friendly route not only into Weber but to related areas of social theory. Popularizations such as Ritzer‘s have the great advantage of relatively easy reading on topics of immediate public and student interest. Of course, any popularisation has limitations but a popularisation such as Ritzer‘s has the potential to assist an enhanced student engagement with sociology and with social theory. References and Resources Ritzer Bibliography Ritzer, G. (1993), The McDonaldization of Society, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge (Revised editions, 1996, 2000) Ritzer, G. (1998), The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Ritzer, G. (1998), Enchanting a Disenchanted Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Ritzer, G. (2001), Explorations in the Sociology of Consumption: Fast Foods, Credit Cards and Casinos Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Ritzer, G. (2002), McDonaldization: The Reader, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Ritzer, G. (2001), Explorations in Social Theory: From Metatheorizing to Rationalization, London: Sage Weber „Texts‟ and Commentaries Bendix, M. (1960), Max Weber: an Intellectual Portrait, London: Heinemann Brubaker, R. (2003), entry on ‗Rationality‘ in W. Outhwaite (ed.) Blackwell Dictionary of Social Thought, Oxford: Blackwell Brubaker, R. (1984), The Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Moral Thought of Max Weber, London: Allen and Unwin Collins, R. (1986), Max Weber A Skeleton Key, London: Sage Gerth, H and Mills, C Wright: From Max Weber, London: Routledge Kahlberg, S (1983), ‗Max Weber‘s Universal-Historical Architectonic of Economically-Oriented Action: A Preliminary Construction‘ in McNall, S., Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Greenwich CT: JAI Press. Vol. 4, 253-88 Kahlberg, S (1997), ‗Max Weber‘s Sociology: Research Strategies and Modes of Analysis‘ in C. Camic. (ed) Reclaiming the Sociological Classics, Oxford: Blackwell Lockwood, D. (1964), ‗Ideal-type Analysis‘ A Dictionary of the Social Sciences London: Tavistock Weber, M. (1978), Economy and Society, Vol. 1 (ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich), Berkeley: Ca.: University of California Press, (based on the 4th. Ger. ed. 1964) Weber, M. (1936), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London: Allen and Unwin (original Ger. ed. 1904-5, rev. ed. 1920) Key Volumes of Commentaries Alfino, M., Caputo, S. and Wynyard, R. (eds),(1998) McDonaldization Revisited: Critical Essays on the Commodification of Culture Westport CT, Greenwood. Contains a number of wide-ranging general essays and critiques.

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Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization of Society‘ Hayes, D. and Robin Wynyard, R. (Eds.) (2002), The McDonaldization of Higher Education, Westport. Conn: Begin and Garvey 15 essays on the McUniversity thesis. Smart, B (ed.) (1999), Resisting McDonaldization London: Sage. Concerned with resistance to McDonaldization in a double sense, not simply resistance to McDonaldization as a process, but resistance to Ritzer‘s McDonaldized theory. Contains 15 essays and a final chapter by Ritzer ‗Assessing the Resistance‘. Individual Commentaries Bryman, A. (1999), ‗Theme Parks and McDonaldization‘, Ch 7 in Smart, B (ed.) Cole, C. and Hribar, A. (1995 ), ‗Celebrity feminism: Nike style, postfordism, transcendnace and consumer power‘, Sociology of Sport Journal‘, 12: 347-69. Gilling, A. (1996), ‗Where there‘s Mc there‘s brass‘, The Higher, 18 August Jary, D. (1999), ‗The McDonaldization of Sport and Leisure‘ Ch 8 in Smart,B (ed.) Kellner,

D.

(1999),

Theorizing/Resisting

McDonaldization:

A

Multiperspectivist Approach, Ch 12 in Smart, B (ed.) Miles, S. (2001), ‗A McDonaldized Society?‘ Ch 6 in Steven Miles Social Theory in the Real World, London: Sage O‘Neill, J. (1999), ‗Have You Had Your Theory Today?‘ Ch 3 in B. Smart, (ed.) Parker, M. and Jary, D. (1998), ‗McUniversity: Organisation, Management and Academic Subjectivity‘, Organization, 2(2): 319-38 Pritchard, C. (1997), ‗How Managed is the McUniversity‘, Organisation Studies, 26(2): 287-316 Smart, B (2001), ‗Resisting McDonaldization: Theory, Process and Critique‘, Ch 1 in B. Smart (ed.) Weinstein, D. and Weinstein, M. (2001), ‗McDonaldization Framed‘, Ch 4 in B. Smart (ed.)

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Other References Becker, H. et al (1960), Making the Grade: The Academic Side of College Life New York: Wiley Packard, V. (1957), The Hidden Persuaders New York: McKay (Penguin, 1961) Reisman, D. (1950) (with Glazer, N. and Denney, R.), The Lonely Crowd, A Study of the Changing American Character, New York: Doubleday Web resources About George Ritzer Ritzer is Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland. The Web contains a range of biographical accounts and on-line resources on Ritzer and the McDonaldization thesis including the contents pages and ‗key extracts‘ from his work. Here are some existing on-line resources: Available at: ‗George

Ritzer

Room‘:

www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/RITZER.html Two interviews of George Ritzer: Available at: www.mcspotlight.org/people/interviews/ritzer_george.html www.derrickjensen.org/ritzer.html McDonaldization website: Available at: www.mcdonaldization.com/ritzer.shtml Dave Harris and Co: essays. Papers and courses: Available at: www.arasite.org/ McLibel website: Available at: www.mcspotlight.org/case/ This site is useful for engaging students in humanistic and environmental critiques. Also see: Vidal, J. (1997), McLibel, London: Macmillan. Students will soon find abundant related resources using Google. On Weber:

192

Ritzer‘s ‗McDonaldization of Society‘ There are also a number of websites on Weber and general theory that may be helpful in gaining a summary overview of Weber‘s position on rationality. For example: Available

at:

www.faculty.rsu.edu/%7Efelwell/Theorists/Weber/Whome.htm#I deal Students Exercises 1. Weber on Rationality and Rationalisation – ‗Economy and Society‘ based Exercise What does Weber mean by formal rationality? Distinguish formal rationality from substantive rationality. What part do these concepts play in Ritzer‘s McDonaldization thesis? Key readings: Weber, M. (1978), Economy and Society, Vol. 1 (ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich), Berkeley: Ca.: University of California Press, pp. pp 24-5 (types of social action), pp 63-109 (categories of economic action, including formal and substantive rationality) Gerth, H and Mills, C Wright (1948), From Max Weber, London: Routledge I have also found it effective to ask students to assemble and discuss relevant entries from Dictionaries of Sociology such as Collins Dictionary of Sociology (Jary, D. and Jary J., Glasgow: HarperCollins, 3rd ed. 2000)! 2. Evaluating „McDonaldization‟ Choose one area from your own experience - e.g. your own education, sport and leisure, shopping, health and medicine, holidays – and list features that seem to fit the McDonaldization thesis and those that don‘t. Which list is longest? What implications does this have?

193

Learning and Teaching Social Theory Conduct an overall ‗audit‘ of the ‗adverse‘ and the ‗emancipatory‘ potential of contemporary society as seen by Weber, Marx, Ritzer and any other social theorist of your choice. What features make the ‗McDonaldization thesis‘ a good theory – not necessarily the same as thing as a ‗true‘ theory, but perhaps a suggestive theory? What features make it a less than satisfactory or a bad theory? Students can pursue these issues through websites and especially using the ‗Key Volumes of Commentaries‘ above.

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Chapter 9

Extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers? A Pedagogic Strategy for Engaging Students in Social Theory. Paul Sutton Introduction: Theorising is Useless ‗He had been 8 years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers; which were to be put in vials, hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air, in raw inclement summers‘ (Jonathan Swift 1992:135). Re-reading Gulliver‘s Travels recently, my imagination was captured once again by this bizarre image. Subsequently I decided to deploy it in the introductory lecture and seminar to a social theory module in an endeavour to pique students‘ curiosity concerning the nature of theoretical and experimental thought. The image‘s purpose therefore is to serve as a playful springboard for discussion rather than as a metaphor for my futile efforts to engage vegetable-like undergraduates in theorising. The quotation from Jonathan Swift is taken from the third voyage of Gulliver, the Voyage to the Island of Laputa. Swift satirises the activities of various academics of that island‘s Grand Academy of Lagado -experimental scientists, linguists, mathematicians, political scientists and biologists -- and refers to them as ‗projectors‘. The text is typical of 17th and 18th century satires upon the uselessness of academics in general and of the English Royal Society in particular. Swift was dismissive of all forms of speculative and experimental learning and research. Swift‘s satire on the infamous cucumber projector is not entirely fictitious but is based on the reports of actual 18th century botanical experiments concerning the effect of the sun on plant respiration. Swift‘s genius lay not in inventing absurd scenarios but in taking actual research reported in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, (‗the first

195

Learning and Teaching Social Theory scientific journal in the English speaking world‘ Smith 1990:139), and exaggerating and combining their elements to produce a biting satire on the absurdity of intellectual activity. Swift was resolutely anti-intellectual, championed common sense and reason and saw theory as useless.1 I suggest to students that Swiftian pragmatism fails to see that ostensibly theoretical learning can often have practical outcomes and that intellectual curiosity is a valuable end in itself. The strategy I use to engage students in theorising emphasises the creative nature of theorising, emphasises that theorising is an integral dimension of the sociological imagination. Learning social theory is part and parcel of developing a sociological imagination. But what exactly do I mean by the sociological imagination? My understanding starts from Wright-Mills‘ (1970:11) classic definition of the sociological imagination as that ‗quality of mind‘ that enables sociologists to develop reasoned, lucid explanations of the world that explore the connections between biography, history and social structure. This involves the capacity to shift from one sociological perspective to another and, perhaps what is not so often emphasized is Wright-Mills

(1970:233)

insistence that

developing a

sociological

imagination requires a ‗playfulness of mind‘, otherwise the sociologist is in danger of becoming a ‗mere technician‘. Cultivating the sociological imagination involves playful creativity as well as reason. Exploring the connections between ‗personal troubles of milieu‘ and ‗public issues of social structure‘ (Wright Mills 1970:14) requires a critical creative imagination to which I believe the ability to theorise is central. But what might that creativity consist of? At its most rudimentary in an undergraduate module original creation, the creation of new theory/concepts is not an expectation. What is expected is that students learn about and use theory to create different ways of viewing their own familiar worlds. Studying social theory enables students to explore the connections between their own biography, history and the social structures that shape their life-course within a variety of analytical frameworks. I see learning social theory as central to the sociological project, central to

196

Extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers? becoming a sociological projector, as it enables students to challenge their own common sense assumptions about the social world. And as WrightMills (1970:138) observes, common sense is replete with reductionist assumptions and stereotypes which ‗determine what is seen and how it is to be explained‘. The creative power of theory then lies in its potential to open different ways of seeing and explaining social reality. My desire to explore the nature of creative thinking has led me to the work of Cornelius Castoriadis, Gaston Bachelard, and Jeanette Winterson. However, before discussing aspects of their work it is necessary to discuss the conditions that either inhibit or enable the ability to theorise and therefore the development of the sociological imagination. The Socially Structured Conditions of Student Performance In Making the Grade, Becker et al (1995: 12-13) analyses ‗the patterns of collective action students develop in their academic work‘ and ‗how the environment they operate in constrains them to see things as they do.‘ Students‘ engagement with their academic work is powerfully shaped by what (Becker 1995:131) calls the ‗socially structured conditions of student performance‘. As Becker‘s work suggests the ways in which students perform their academic work is not simply the result of ability and interest nor is it a simple response to what is offered by teaching staff. Rather, performance is the outcome of the negotiation and balancing of a range of other interests and the diverse demands that are made upon students – economic, cultural, personal etc. The socially structured conditions of student performance on the core social theory module of the BA Sociology programme upon which I teach are as follows. The module is situated in semester A of year 2. All sociology students, both majors and minors study on this module. The students tend to come from a narrow range of backgrounds. The majority are white, female, and largely recruited from within the South West peninsula particularly from Devon & Cornwall. A significant number are from socially disadvantaged groups and approximately one third of students are mature. Virtually all students are engaged in part-time

197

Learning and Teaching Social Theory employment and a significant number have family commitments. The degree to which mundane, material, social and economic forces shape students‘ commitment to learning and teaching had been indicated in a small piece of in-house research conducted by my colleagues and myself (Casey et al 2003). The idea that student performance is the outcome of the negotiation and balancing of other interests and diverse demands economic, cultural, personal etc.-Becker argues is often not adequately acknowledged by lecturing staff. Becker (1995:130) states that there is a disjuncture between the perspectives of students and tutors. The ‗faculty perspective‘ (Becker 1995: 66) is faulty as it tends to underestimate the complex network of social relationships, collective definitions of the situation and obligations to peers, family, friends etc. This is the context, the environment that structures students‘ perspectives and performances on and in their academic work. Research conducted at the College of St Mark and St John (Casey et al 2003) tends to support the claim that student perspectives are often quite different from those of their teachers. Students, as Becker suggests, operate with their own rationality. A rationality it seems to me that is increasingly instrumental and consumerist. Becker (1995: 133) also makes another interesting point that I think is of significance to the structured conditions of student performance. That is, he argues that students‘ perspective and performance is, in part, the result of their position of ‗loose subjection‘ to faculty and administration. This point can usefully be addressed using a Foucaultian perspective on power in teaching and learning. An important structuring dimension of student performance not considered by Becker is that students‘ definitions of the learning and teaching situation are powerfully shaped by both fear and curiosity: fear about their ability to comprehend and use theory to theorise for themselves that coexists with curiosity about the often strange ideas of social theorists. I will now discuss rationality, subjection and fear/curiosity in order to explore the ways in which they structure the ability of students to engage in theorising.

198

Extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers? Instrumental Rationality During the last ten years it is my impression that instrumental rationality has become the dominant mode of student engagement with teaching and learning. I generally associate the instrumental approach with the surface or strategic approaches to learning identified by numerous pedagogic researchers (for example Ramsden 1993). Viewed from my faculty perspective, I tend to define the instrumental approach as ‗wrong‘ and contrast it with the ‗right‘ deep approach. The deep approach I consider the authentic way to engage with learning theory and for theorising to realise its creative potential. I have therefore resisted the instrumental rationality of my students as an approach that is inherently and irrevocably wrong as for me teaching theory is not about securing students their grade point average or simply about the transmission of knowledge and the achievement of competence in theorising. For me, the goal of teaching theory is to open up students‘ imaginations to the aesthetic pleasures of theorising for theorising‘s sake but also to facilitate ontological transformation, a change in the very being of the students. I want social theory to change students into more rational imaginative and creative citizens. David Harris‘s (2003) Teaching Yourself Social Theory helped me to begin to consider instrumentality with less moral opprobrium (see also Harris‘s paper in this volume). After all instrumentality is a form of engagement albeit one that is limited. Harris (2003) set me thinking about the need to work with and hopefully transgress this limiting instrumental rationality, particularly if my goal of ontological transformation was to be achieved. Central to any endeavour to work with the limits of instrumental rationality in order to overcome it must be an understanding of the particular structures within which it emerges - economic, cultural and biographical etc. Effecting any change within the economic and cultural domains is perhaps largely beyond the influence of one social theory tutor to achieve. Effecting a change to instrumental rationality in the biographical domain through teaching and learning theory is I believe both

199

Learning and Teaching Social Theory possible and desirable (see the paper by Jon Cope in this volume for the emancipatory potential of learning social theory). Perhaps this rather utopian faith in the transformative power of education is as delusory as trying to extract sunbeams from cucumbers. To proffer alternatives and dream of better times is for me a necessity. Without a utopian impulse I could not carry on the art and craft of teaching sociology. Nevertheless, such utopianism does not blind me to the fact that teaching and learning occurs within an asymmetrical power relationship, what I shall call the anatomo-politics of teaching and learning. Loose Subjection or the Anatomo-Politics of Learning and Teaching Becker et al (99:133) argues that students‘ perspective and performance is, in part, the result of their position of ‗loose subjection‘ to faculty

and

administration.

Leaving

subjection

to

the

corporate

managerialism of higher education bureaucrats1 to one side, subjection to academics, Becker (1995:75) argues, is of import because the culture of learning and teaching within any institution is profoundly effected by the tutor‘s power to ―reward or punish through grades‖. I read this through a Foucaultian prism as referring to the anatomo-politics of teaching. I see the practice of learning and teaching, in what appears to me to be an increasingly corporate higher education (Wright 2004) in which economic and managerial priorities dominate academic and pedagogic practice. The discipline of sociology is subject to the corporate imperative of optimizing students‘ and tutors‘ capabilities and increasing their usefulness whilst simultaneously rendering them docile in order that they can be function in the global knowledge economy with greatest efficiency (Foucault, 1977 1981). In a society in which labour is becoming increasingly immaterial (Hart & Negri 2000) the intellect is increasingly becoming part of the means of production. Corporate higher education appears to me to be becoming increasingly dominated by the needs of the knowledge

200

Extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers? economy for immaterial labour power. Part of the preparation for taking up a position in this economy is the disciplining of the mind. The disciplining of the mind is effected through the inquisitorial techniques of hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement and the examination (Foucault 1977) regularly employed in teaching and learning regimes. The resulting microphysics of power also includes the specification of detailed learning outcomes, assessment criteria etc.1 the disciplinary power of sociology is reinforced by the key skills and employability agenda that seems to me to be in danger of turning some higher education providers into vocational training centres. So much for the power/knowledge relations that constitute the conditions of loose subjection under which both tutors and students labour. Both are subject to the discourse of sociology that offers a number of possible subject positions. How those subject positions are occupied depends, in part on prior and other discursive interpellations (see Joyce Cannan in this volume for a lucid explanation of feminist poststructuralism on the subject as multiple and contradictorily positioned). This creates the possibility of resisting disciplinary power. For, as Foucault argues, power is not simply repressive it is also creative. The power to discipline and reward through grades exercised by tutors by virtue of their institutional location also contains the possibility for both tutors and students to resist the limitations of instrumental reason. For example by enticing students with better grades if they display the ability to reflect on the disciplinary power of sociology and the nature of their own instrumental rationality through discussion of not only Foucault, but Bourdieu‘s concepts of economic and cultural capital, symbolic violence and the cultural arbitrary and Althusser‘s notion of ideology as both a lived relation and an imaginary relation to real conditions of existence. Encouraging such reflexivity is a part of the emancipatory potential of social theory. Realizing this possibility however requires the recognition and negotiation of the nexus of fear and curiosity that I think characterises students‘ approaches to learning social theory.

201

Learning and Teaching Social Theory Fear-Curiosity Complex Many students, then, adopt an instrumental approach to learning within a relationship of loose subjection. This nevertheless coexists with a curiosity about theory. Instrumentality may limit but does not eradicate curiosity. It is my impression that some students continue to manifest an eager desire to know about theory and are inquisitive as to the nature and possibilities of what theory can do. However this curiosity about theory is often blocked by fear. This is what Bachelard (1994:111) refers to as ‗the fear-curiosity complex‘. Just as Foucault links power with knowledge so Bachelard links fear with curiosity. He writes ‗We want to see and yet we are afraid to see. This is the perceptible threshold of all knowledge, the threshold upon which interest wavers, falters, then returns‘ (Bachelard 1994:110). The student imaginary is characterised by instrumental reason, (the correct means for achieving the desired end of a good grade), but it also has a powerful and complex emotional dimension. The emotional dimension of the socially structured conditions of student performance is characterised, in part, by fear of failure, embarrassment, appearing ‗uncool‘, fear of changing the way that their reality has been perceived hitherto and the impact this may have on family and friends, fear of the strange and different. Furthermore, as Furedi (2002) argues, we live in a culture of fear, and such fear undermines the potential for exploration and experimentation. Structural, cultural and biographical factors then combine to make fear an integral dimension of students‘ sociological imaginations. This fear is the threshold of knowledge. Students want to cross this threshold to engage with theory but are often afraid to do so. An important dimension of overcoming this fear is I believe the importance of building confidence in approaching and handling theory. Allowing students to use a concept or concepts to analyse the quotidian, the familiar has proved a successful foundation upon which to build a more confident broader theoretical engagement.1 The making strange of the familiar through

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Extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers? conceptualization can then become less threatening and concepts cease to be useless abstractions and begin to come alive. Given that the student body I teach have modest A level points, often come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds etc., confidence building is an important part of overcoming fear and stimulating curiosity. With confidence students‘ sociological imaginations can start to ‗reverberate‘. Bachelard uses this auditive metaphor to signify active and imaginative engagement. Although writing within the context of a response to poetic images, I think his work can also be usefully applied to the reception of sociological images and ideas. Reverberation signifies the movement or change in perception that enables real engagement with theory, the moment in which theory comes alive, when knowing and being are no longer separated. Certainly this moment may be short-lived, initial engagements are often faltering; students‘ interests do waver but also return. To really come alive, theorising must become part of students‘ being. I.e. an ontological state rather than simply an epistemological and technical exercise. Only then will ‗reverberations bring about a change of being‘ (Bachelard 1994: xxii). Although seemingly New Age in nature, the notion of reverberation I think captures something of the need for students to become active theorisers if a change in the way in which the social world is perceived and lived in is to be effected. For me a real rather than a notional engagement with theory necessitates that move from a conception of theory-as-instrument to one of theory-as-reality (Bachelard. 1994: xxvii). Yet for the majority of students the socially structured conditions of their performance would seem to militate against such a whole-hearted embrace of theory. Thus perhaps a modest change in thinking is the most one can realistically hope for. Bachelard‘s phenomenology of the imagination though stimulating requires the supplement of

a stronger sense of the enabling and

constraining effects of social structure and culture on an individual‘s potential to change both their mode of perception and being in the world. Such changes are surely only possible within a context that supports such a

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory change. Part of that context is provided by a supportive pedagogic strategy for learning and teaching social theory. A Pedagogic Strategy The strategy I use is designed to demonstrate that theory is useful, not the speculative endeavour satirised by Swift, and acknowledges the constraining effects of the socially structured conditions of student performance. The theory module is taught using two heuristic metaphors, (the labyrinth and the toolkit), places an emphasis upon learning to read sociologically, and uses a student centred format of lectures and seminars.

Metaphor Metaphor is an integral dimension of the sociological imagination. Students come upon it early in their sociological studies, for example, the dramaturgical or the base-superstructure metaphor or other surface-depth metaphors. I first became interested in the power of metaphor whilst teaching the sociology of health and illness when I encountered the work of Susan Sontag (1991: 91). Her work led me to think about the ways in which the perception and experience of theory was shaped by metaphor. Metaphors work through the power of association. They associate two different phenomenons and highlight their similarities thereby effecting a change in meaning. As Lakoff and Johnson (2003:5) observe: ‗The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.‘

The cognitive or constructivist approach to metaphor

deployed by Lakoff and Johnson seems to me to constitute a persuasive argument that metaphor is not simply a literary device but rather actually structures our conceptual systems, experience and interactions. The constructive power of metaphor lies in its ability to create new ways of conceptualising social reality. Metaphor ‗unites reason and imagination‘ (Lakoff and Johnson 2003:193) and can I believe enable the movement from instrumental to imaginative rationality. Drawing on the work of Castoriadis (1984:xviii), I use the metaphor of the labyrinth to try to give students a new understanding of theorising,

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Extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers? to pique their curiosity, to open up their sociological imagination to the ‗project of theory‘, to the delights of

the ‗making/doing of theory‘.

Although Castoriadis is not studied on the theory module I have found his work of great assistance in trying to understand the nature of the imagination and its creative possibilities1. I invite students to reflect upon the following quotation: To think is to enter the Labyrinth; more exactly, it is to make be and appear a Labyrinth ... It is to lose oneself amidst galleries which exist only because we never tire of digging them; to turn round and round at the end of a cul-de-sac whose entrance has been shut off behind us - until inexplicably, the spinning round opens up in the surrounding walls cracks which offer passage (Castoriadis (1984::x). I use the building metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 2003:46) of the labyrinth as a way of addressing the difficulties and complexities of learning how to theorise. The labyrinth symbolises the path to be followed, however long and complex, to reach the goal, the object of the quest, at the centre. In this case that goal or quest is to develop students‘ understanding and ability to use theory, to think sociologically. This process requires that one enters the conceptual labyrinths created by theorists through reading social theory. Following the paths of these sociological labyrinths enables students to begin thinking their own labyrinths, thinking through the labyrinthine connections between history, biography and social structure. This quotation is also useful in that it suggests that movement through theoretical labyrinths involves the difficult exploration of cul-de-sacs and that passage through what can often appear to be impenetrable is hard won. In addition to the labyrinth metaphor, I use a more mundane metaphor that has some currency within sociological discourse, that of the toolkit (for a recent example see Parker et al 2003 but also Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992):

theory as a set of thinking tools). Theories are

represented as intellectual toolkits that are used to probe deeply into the nature of social reality and think through sociological problems (Anderson

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory et al 1985). Concepts are represented as the particular tools within the theorist‘s toolkit that are used to make sense of problematic aspects of social reality. This problem based approach seems to assuage student fears and reverberate with the pragmatic tendency of their instrumental reason. I also draw on Wright-Mills‘ notion of the project of sociology as an intellectual craft: the sociologists as artisan requires a toolkit if sense is to be made of society. I am aware, however, of the dangers involved in using the metaphor of the toolkit. As Fairclough (1992:194) observes: ‗When we signify things through one metaphor rather than another, we are constructing our reality in one way rather than another.‘ Metaphors are not neutral ways of representing the world but rather are part of ideological struggles around meaning. Furthermore, as Lakoff and Johnson (2003:158) argue metaphors not only shape the way we think but the ways in which we act: ‗we define our reality on the basis of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphors‘.1 Thus, students‘ ideas about and possibilities for engagement with theory are, in part, formed by the metaphors tutors teach by. For example, the choice of the metaphor of the toolkit whilst a useful heuristic device that students find intelligible, also runs the risk of reinforcing the ideology and practice of instrumentalism I seek to transcend. Learning to Read Sociologically A central aspect of my learning and teaching strategy is an emphasis on critical reading. As Anderson et al. (1985:144) argue, learning to read sociologically is crucial to the development of a sociological imagination. Reading sociologically involves ―attempting to draw out the author‘s project‖ (Anderson 1985: 146): to what end was the author‘s sociology directed and what interests did the author express? Anderson et al. (1985:152, 153) use Gofffman as an example: his project was to make the self and the interaction order visible sociological phenomena. I use a quotation from Bachelard (1994: 21) in the theory module handbook to reinforce this point:

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Extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers? But every good book should be re-read as soon as it is finished. After the sketchiness of the first reading comes the creative work of reading. We must then know the problem that confronted the author. The second, then the third reading … gives us little by little, the solution of this problem. The emphasis here is not only on the need for application when reading but on reading as a critical and creative activity. The solution consists in identifying the problem of the author and assessing how effectively that problem has been addressed. However, as Winterson (1996:138) argues, ―time in plenty, and an abundance of ideas are the necessary basics of creativity‖. The socially structured conditions of student performance make time a somewhat scarce resource and idle reflection a luxury most can scarce afford, but at least we provide students with an abundance of ideas. Winterson also argues that creativity demands self-discipline. Emphasis upon the disciplining of the self can be emancipatory enabling students to think for themselves. The need for disciplined application is a prerequisite as theoretical proficiency requires sustained effort. Both Winterson and Bachelard also stress the importance of daydreaming to creative activity. Sadly, since my time as a student supported by a grant and housing benefit, the opportunities for students to indulge in sociological reverie have become rare. Given the limitations imposed by the socially structured conditions of student performance, how can theorising be made into a creative activity?

Creativity begins by

encouraging students to participate in the work of the theorist by adding their own personal experiences to that work (Bachelard 1994:71). That is, by encouraging students to apply concepts to their own everyday life experience (the value of the quotidian again). A connection of understanding can then be established between reader and writer, between student and theorist.1 This gives theory the opportunity of taking root in their being.

The conjunction of reading theory

and

expressing

understanding in seminar presentations and discussions enables theory to become part of student discourse. Articulating theoretical discourse, in discussion, presentation, and in essay and exams not only helps students

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory to express their sociological imagination it actively constitutes that imagination: ‗expression creates being‘ argues Bachelard (1994:xxiii). Through articulation students constitute themselves as sociological theorists, a process that, in part, often takes place without students even realizing it has happened. Student Centred Lectures and Seminars The social theory module is taught in a traditional lecture/seminar format. Lectures focus upon the work of particular theorists selected on the basis of importance and staff expertise. It is however emphasised that the content of the module is a particular selection of social theorists and students are invited to reflect upon those theorists who are absent. Each lecture is accompanied by a handout. Handouts are not uniform in type but range from power-point slide handouts to more interactive ones that demand more active engagement from students. Handouts allay a degree of fear that students have got the ‗right‘ information but also I believe possess the danger of fostering passivity, and dependence upon the lecturer to tell the student what is important. The module handbook also details a selection of recommended ‗essential readings‘ from standard texts,(e.g. Stones 1998 or Layder 1994) to accompany each lecture. Every student is expected to read at least one essential reading before attending the seminar, and preferably before attending the lecture. I initially resisted the inclusion of essential texts as being too prescriptive but students find them reassuring, they help to build confidence and given the limited time our students have available to study this has proved an effective way of facilitating minimal engagement. Seminars focus upon particular conceptual tools in theoreticians‘ toolkits and consist of student presentations and a plenary session. The presentations are currently un-assessed but, partly in response to student feedback from module evaluations and our C-SAP research, we are moving toward assessed presentations. Presentations consist of students defining and applying selected concepts to aspects of their everyday life and

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Extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers? evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of such concepts. As Wright Mills (1970: 207) argues: An educator must begin with what interests the individual most deeply, even if it seems altogether trivial and cheap. He (sic) must then proceed in such a way and with such materials as to enable the student to gain increasingly rational insight into these concerns and into those he (sic) will acquire in the process of his education. Encouraging students to apply sociological concepts to the everyday makes the process of theorising less intimidating. The quotidian becomes the bridge between fear and curiosity. Each presentation is accompanied by handout giving an overview and bibliography. The aim here is not only for students to demonstrate sociological awareness and competence but also to instruct others in the group. We try to encourage students to learn from each other, to take up the subject position of student as teacher. There appears to be some resistance to the taking up of this subject position. Seminar sessions also have a plenary for discussion, supervised by a member of staff, covering the broad parameters of theorists‘ work, concepts and evaluation not covered in student presentations, and general issues emerging from lectures and students‘ self-directed learning. This strategy, by and large, seems to reverberate with our students‘ approach to learning and enables a more confident engagement with primary and more advanced secondary texts in research for written assessments. Of course this could be just another expression of instrumentalism – only really engaging in theory when work is assessed. Conclusion: Theorising is creative Nothing is worse (I know it) than when curiosity stops. Nothing is more repressive than the repression of curiosity. Curiosity begets love. It weds us to the world. Its part of our perverse, madcap love for this impossible planet we inhabit (Graham Swift 1983:178).

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Students‘ perspectives on and performance in social theory is socially structured. Other interests and demands external to the curriculum powerfully shape the possibilities for engagement with theory. The instrumental reason that seems to characterise this engagement is a patterned response to social and cultural conditions. A significant dimension of these conditions is the anatomo-politics of learning and teaching, the loose subjection of students to the corporate power of higher education that seeks to make them both docile and useful. Resistance to this disciplinary power is however possible but requires the fear-curiosity complex that surrounds theorising to be overcome. The bridge between fear and curiosity is confidence and the quotidian. Inspiring confidence in the ability to theorise particularly through the analysis of the everyday allows curiosity to flourish. Curiosity, as Graham Swift (1983:178) observes, ‗weds us to the world‘. Curiosity enables students to begin the reflexive analysis of their worlds. To achieve this end requires a pedagogic strategy

that

encourages

students

to

develop

their

sociological

imaginations through the use of metaphors that ‗unite reason and imagination‘ (Lakoff and Johnson 2003:193), learning to read in a critical sociological manner, and through the creation of student centred learning and teaching environments. Hopefully this will enable theorising to become not just a technical exercise but part of student life. Once this has been achieved the creative power of the sociological imagination can begin to be realised. For me the aim of teaching social theory is not simply a facilitation of the acquisition of knowledge. Rather it is to change students‘ perceptions of their worlds. Although the wholehearted embrace of theory is, and possibly always was, a minority pursuit, I think most students continue to be curious about it. This curiosity is occluded by fear and the limitations of instrumental rationality. Whilst I acknowledge that instrumentality is, and probably will remain, the dominant approach adopted by students, I think it important to retain a utopian impulse in learning and teaching. Theorising is above all a creative enterprise: creating new or different ways of understanding and explaining the

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Extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers? complex and enigmatic reality we call social life and creating new possibilities of becoming rational, critical and imaginative citizens.

References Anderson, E. et al (1985), The Sociology Game, London: Longman. Bachelard, G. (1994),

The Poetics of Space, Boston: Beacon Press.

Becker, H. et al. (1995), Making the Grade. The Academic Side of College Life, London: Transaction Publishers. Casey, N., Sutton, P. et al. (2003), ‗What‘s it worth? Comparing Seminars and Workshops: students views on learning sociology‘ C-SAP resources, available at http/www.csap.bham.ac.uk/ resources Cameron, L. & Low, G. (1999), ‗Metaphor‘, Survey Article, Language Teacher 32: 7796 Castoriadis, C. (1984), Crossroads in the Labyrinth, Brighton: Harvester. Fairclough, N. (1992),

Discourse and Social Change, Oxford: Polity.

Foucault, M. (1977), Discipline and Punish The Birth of the Prison, London Penguin. Foucault, M. (1981), History of Sexuality: 1. The Will to Knowledge, London: Penguin. Furedi, F. (2002), Culture of Fear, London: Continuum. Harris, D. (2003), Teaching Yourself Social Theory, London: Sage. Hart, M. & Negri, A (2002), Empire, Harvard: Harvard University Press. Lakoff, G. &. Johnson, M (2003), Metaphors We Live By, London: University of Chicago Press. Layder, D. (1994), Understanding Social Theory, London: Sage. Nicholson, M. & Mohler N. (1968), Voyage to

‗The Scientific Background of

Laputa‘ in N. Jeffares (ed.) Modern Judgements:

Swift, London: MacMillan Parker, J.

et al (2003), Social Theory A Basic Tool Kit, Basingstoke:

Palgrave. Ramsden, P. (1992), Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, London: Routledge.

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Learning and Teaching Social Theory Smith, F.N. (1990), ‗Scientific Discourse: Gulliver‘s Travels and the Philosophical Transactions‘ in The Genres of Gulliver‘s Travels, London: Associated University Presses. Sontag, S. (1991), Illness as Metaphor, London: Penguin. Stones, R. (1998), Key Sociological Thinkers, Basingstoke: Longman. Swift, G. (1983), Waterland, London: Pan Books. Swift, J. (1992), Gulliver‘s Travels, Ware: Wordsworth Classics. Winterson, J. (1996),

Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery,

London: Vintage. Wright, S. (2004), ‗Markets, corporations, consumers? New landscapes of higher education‘, Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences, 1(2): 71-93. Endnotes 1

As Nicholson and Mohler (1968:215-216) observe as well as the Royal Society of England, the Paris Academy was also the source of Swift‟s attack on mathematics and natural philosophy. The French academician. Fontenelle: was satirised by Swift on this and other occasions. Fontenelle (cited in Nicholson and Mohler 1968:216) argued „People very readily call useless what they do not understand. It is a sort of Revenge‟. 2

The loose subjection created by administrative bureaucracy is eloquently articulated by Geddes in his introduction to Brock‟s Health and Conduct (1923:xix): The keynote of bureaucracy is distrust of the people, a radical disbelief in the possibilities of human nature. As a consequence of this disbelief, bureaucracy is less concerned with helping (or even allowing) people to do things for themselves than with telling them what to do. For why should it try to „develop‟ what isn‟t there? Bureaucracy believes in Discipline with a big D, but always only discipline from without; its drab, sub-conscious aim is a complete standardization of humanity. Patrick Geddes exercised a profound influence on both The Sociological Review in the decade after its foundation and on Arthur J. Brock who had been the poet Wilfred Owen‟s physician at Craiglockart during World War I. See Hibberd, D. (1976) “A Sociological Cure for Shellshock: Dr Brock and Wilfred Owen”, Sociological Review 25: 377-86.

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Extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers? 3

Indeed assessed presentations on a year 1 sociology module at my institution use „Eye Contact/Body language‟ as an assessment criterion. As Wright-Mills (1970:216) extols “…you must learn to use your life experience in your intellectual work: continually to examine and interpret it.” 4

The nature and creativity of the imagination is explored in Castoriadis (1997) The Imaginary Institution of Society, Cambridge: Polity 5

Lakoff and Johnson (2003:5-6) in their discussion of the argument is war as conceptual metaphor beautifully articulate this point: Try to imagine a culture where arguments are not viewed in terms of war, where no one wins or loses, where there is no sense of attacking or defending, gaining or losing ground. Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, people would view arguments differently, carry them out differently, and talk about them differently. How different the socially structured conditions of student performance would be if we did indeed encourage our students to view engagement with theoretical arguments as a creative dance rather than warfare. 6

Winterson (1996:111) is also stimulating on the process of learning to read: Learning to read is more than learning to group the letters on a page. Learning to read is a skill that marshals the entire resources of body and mind. I do not mean the endless drossskimming that passes for literacy, I mean the ability to engage with a text as you would another human being. To recognise it in its own right, separate, particular, to let it speak in its own voice, not in a ventriloquism of yours. To find its relationship to you that is not its relationship to anyone else.

I cite this quotation as it eloquently highlights the embodied nature of reading and the necessity of respecting the otherness of texts.

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