The school as an arena of political contestation: towards a post-Marxist account of education (original) (raw)
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The school as an arena of political contestation: education policy from a post-Marxist perspective
Praktyka Teoretyczna, 2013
the school as an arena of political contestation: education policy from a post-marxist perspective Marxism was and still seems to be a dominant theoretical perspective within critical education policy analysis. Author describes distinctive "images" of the school present in marxist theory and criticised for their economic determinism and class reductionism. Drawing on the works of Ernesto Laclau, author proposes alternative theoretical frameworks, which can be used in critical research of education policy production and implementation. From this perspective, school and education policy are interpreted as spaces of political contestation and struggle for hegemony.
Social Order, Regimes of Truth and Symbolic Disputes: A Framework to Analyse Educational Policies
2021
This article offers an epistemological framework to analyse how hegemony is constructed in the field of education, as part of current debates in the social sciences on the aperture and closure of the social. Our central thesis is that, beyond the post-struc-turalist tendency that dominates these debates, we must reconsider the potential effects of its theoretical assumptions on the social world, i.e. not only on its representation, but also on its structures, subjects, objects, and phenomena in general. To that end, we will analyse by the way of example the discourses on quality of education, core in education policies since 1980s, from this epistemological framework. Moreover, this type of discourses also allowed the instituted powers to connect the traditional forms of production and reproduction of 'the social' to new forms that help consolidate its hegemony by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the ways to produce and accumulate capital, and thus legitimize them. Indeed, as a framework, quality had and still has a totalizing effect on the hegemonic readjustment and reworking of capitalism that began in the late 1970s.
Prelude: Marxist Educational Theory After Postmodernism
Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory, in: D. Hill, P. McLaren, M. Cole & G. Rikowski (eds.), Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2002
This book is powered by three drives: first, the critique of postmodernism (with special reference to educational theory); second, the rethinking and renewing of Marxist educational theory after postmodernism; and third, the generation of a politics of human resistance to capitalist social life and its educational forms. However, the primary drive of these three is the critique of postmodernism. Our original text, Postmodernism in Educational Theory: Education and the Politics of Human Resistance by Dave Hill, Peter McLaren, Mike Cole and Glenn Rikowski, was published in 1999, and an assessment of some recent developments is now essential. Furthermore, as Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur indicate in chapter 3, the extension of our initial text yields more to a consideration of Marxist educational theory than did the original. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the prospects for Marxist educational theory 'after postmodernism.' Why I choose Marx rather than anyone else as starting point for generating a critique of capitalist education and training, and why I stand on his shoulders rather than stand on the tainted ground of capitalism all by myself requires brief explanation. Certainly, my own biographical and intellectual history, as illustrated in Red Chalk: On Schooling, Capitalism and Politics 1 indicates leading facts about my personal and political development that inclined me toward Marxism. In particular, my experience as an educator and as an education researcher has catapulted Marxism to the forefront of the
Marxism and Education: Fragility, Crisis, Critique, Negativity, and Social Form(s)
2018
Why Marxism? Why Marxist educational theory? Through addressing these questions, this paper proclaims the importance of Marxism as a theory that intellectually disrupts and ruptures capitalist society and its educational forms. With reference to the work of John Holloway, it is argued that the significance of Marxism resides in its capacity to pinpoint fragilities and weaknesses in the constitution of capital. Grasping these fragilities in the rule of capital in contemporary social life sharpens the critical edge of any politics aimed at social transformation. Marxist educational theory plays an important role in this enterprise. These points are illustrated through consideration of the following ideas and phenomena: fragility, crisis, critique, negativity and social form(s). It is argued that fragility must be the starting point as Marxism is primarily a theory of capitalist weaknesses, and not the opposite: a theory of capitalist domination. Following Holloway, Marxism is a theory against society, rather than just another mainstream theory of society. Against Holloway, it is argued that the forms that fragilities for labour take also need to be understood. Paradoxically, our strength vis-à-vis capital is also the place for apprehending the fragilities and dependencies of labour. This vicious duality also exists in terms of crises in capitalism, and this flows into the phenomena of critique and negativity too. Finally, on the basis of this theorisation, the doors of capitalist hell are opened through a consideration of social forms in general and commodity forms in particular and their relations to educational processes and institutions. It is at this point that Marxist educational theory enters the stage, although in a transfigured form. In 1997, I wrote an article for the British Journal of Sociology of Education called ‘Scorched Earth: Prelude to Rebuilding Marxist Educational Theory’. Twenty-one years later, this paper can be viewed as my definitive first element in a programme of rebuilding Marxist educational theory.
The 'Mini-Renaissance' in Marxist Educational Sociology: a critique
British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2001
This paper argues that the recent'mini-renaissance'in Marxist educational sociology as propounded in particular by Rikowski (1996, 1997) is fatally flawed, not only denying the sui generis (autonomous) properties of the educational system but also precluding practical social theorising per se. The reason for this centres on the adoption of a universal internal relations social ontology, which results in the reduction of concrete social reality to the narrow abstraction of the omnipresent'Capital Relation'. At the same time, such theorising remains conspicuously silent on the issue of the feasible alternatives to capitalism implied by the (albeit flawed) explanatory critiques of such recent Marxist theorising within the sociology of education.
Marxism and Education: International Perspectives on Theory and Action, 2018
Marxism and Education offers contemporary Marxist analyses of recent and current education policy, and develops Marxist-based practices of resistance from a series of national and international perspectives. The first chapters of the book identify and critique pressure points, impacts of, and developments in capitalism and education, as these pertain to education policy, teacher education, and assessment. In the second half of the book, chapter authors develop Marxist praxis, critical education practices, and resistance against the intensification of neoliberalism and authoritarian conservatism. With contributions from leading, globally-recognised Marxist theoreticians, this book addresses the impacts and developments of neoliberal and authoritarian-conservative education policies across the UK, US,
Scorched Earth: Prelude to rebuilding Marxist educational theory
British Journal of Sociology of Education, 1997
This paper focuses on the internal degeneration of the Marxist educational theory flowing from Bowles & Gintis (1976) and Willis (1977). It explores five interlinked ‘debilitating problematics’ ‐‐ the base/superstructure metaphor, Left functionalism, relative autonomy, resistance theory and the education for autonomy/revolution dilemma ‐‐ which have simultaneously formed the backbone of Marxist educational theory and constituted the roots of its theoretical weaknesses. The general argument is that these weaknesses are so deep‐seated that Marxists interested in theorising capitalist schooling need to start afresh. The paper points towards some possible starting points for new Marxist thinking on capitalist schooling, the preferred option being an analysis of labour‐power. One consequence of taking labour‐power as the starting point for a Marxist analysis of education is that it entails the dissolution of Marxist educational theory’. Instead, educational theory and politics become subordinated to a concern with the social production of labour‐power in capitalism.
Schooling as an Ideological State Apparatus
While secondary schooling has developed much over the past century, its original impetus has remained. This includes the doctrine of social efficiency which may be understood as the ease of transition from student to workforce. In a socially efficient classroom, students are shaped into factory workers and students. Regardless of the lip-service paid to the “learning” and “understanding” that the contemporary secondary-classroom ostensibly facilitates, these are by no means the chief goal. The present paper compares a socially efficient classroom to the schooling described by Althusser (1970) in his discussion of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). Even today, schooling may well be understood as an ISA, indoctrinating students into the prevailing ideology first by alienating students from their role as democratic citizens, and secondly by employing controls—ideological and then repressive. Together, this facilitates the de-democratization of the classroom and its students and effectively eliminates any possibility of an amendment to the prevailing ideology. The consequences of these are considered which includes the increasing superfluousness of diplomas and degrees as well as incarceration rates of drop-out students. So considered, Marx is used to explain how schooling protects the power of those in power while subjugating those without, and Deleuze is used to demonstrate the manner by which schooling is used to enact societal control.