Gramsci Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Longish Description, concentrating on the theoretical content: The book has a very broad purview. It examines paradigm change in several areas, including economic policy and welfare provision, but focusing on education reform.... more

Longish Description, concentrating on the theoretical content:

The book has a very broad purview. It examines paradigm change in several areas, including economic policy and welfare provision, but focusing on education reform.

Accordingly, it has as one, among several alternative titles, including
SOCIAL LEARNING IN AN ERA OF TRANSNATIONALISM:
Coalitions and the Effect of Neo-Liberalism on Institutional Models and
SOCIAL LEARNING AND HEGEMONY: Framing Education Reform in the US

Most relevant, however, are two other alternates:
MARKET EMULATION MODELS IN EDUCATION REFORM,
4th Order Change and Cultural Development Pathways:
Aristotle's 4 Causes, Social Learning and Theories of Hegemony
and
4TH ORDER CHANGE AND EDUCATION REFORM:
Market Emulation Models, Aristotle's 4 Causes,
Peter Hall's Social Learning and Theories of Hegemony

The phrase '4th order change' references Peter Hall’s 1993 article on social learning, compares his 3 orders of change to Gramsci's theory of hegemony, suggesting the struggles of hegemony are the arena of a 4th order of change.

I add a 4th order of paradigm change – what I call changes in ideo-utopian visions – to arrive at 4 Levels of Analysis of Social Learning, the first three more or less from Hall, the last from Gramsci, although I will argue that some of the other levels are also present in his work:
1. 'Settings' – how policy makers experiment with policy instruments, such as tax rates or the federal reserve rate.
2. 'Instruments' – Methods by which policy goals are realized (or sought to be realized), such as choosing between an Income Tax, Tariffs, Value Added Taxes, etc.
3. 'Policy Goals and Political Coalitions' – The selection of goals and the forming of decisive political coalitions, such as those behind Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's electoral victories, but which could be extended to the creation of historic blocs that supported the implementation of Neo-liberal policies in Chile and other countries.
4. 'Ideo-Utopian Visions' – The shared understandings Political Coalitions use to justify their policies, whether by ideology (i.e., Keynesian and Social Welfare approaches versus Monetarist and Hayek-infused approaches), through campaign and their slogans (i.e., The New Frontier and Morning in America or manipulation of language (i.e., 'The Death Tax' and the meaning of the word 'trust').

This obviously casts a wide net. However, it puts these in historical context by looking at the conditions that made possible the advent of neoliberalism through several pathways: by force of arms in Chile, through the ballot box in the UK and the US, and with the aid of International Financial Institutions, such as the IMF, in much of the developing world.

The main topic is how public K-12 education in the US has been affected. Robert Slavin once noted that education in the US has been in “an uninterrupted state of reform . . . since the publication of A NATION AT RISK “ in 1983 under the first Reagan-Bush Administration. RISK, like other influential documents before it, linked the nation’s temporary failures in international competition to the systematic failures of the school system. Purposes of education were narrowed, with civics, art and music, physical education being marginalized and Science Technology Engineering and Math programs (STEM) programs expanded. The emphasis became job and college readiness. Accountability became a watchword of those called for systematic reform and a single metric of 'achievement' – achievement measured by standardized tests – became ascendant.

Herbert M. Kliebard's THE STRUGGLE FOR THE AMERICAN CURRICULUM, 1893-1958, there are four types of curricula that have vied for dominance in American schools: 1) Social Efficiency, which urges that schools be oriented to economic needs and training of the work force. 2) Humanism, or the Liberal Arts tradition, emphasizes general intellectual skills and familiarity with the cultural traditions of society and understanding of other cultures. 3) Social Meliorism sees the schools as an instrument for social, political and economic change. 4) Developmentalism which starts with the psychological development of the learner and the needs of the individual learner.

For the last 40 years, the first goal has eclipsed the others. Moreover, Social Efficiency had been defined in terms of economic goals and the Humanist perspective has been challenged by the ideal of a 'modern individual,' competitive, entrepreneurial and acquisitive, in keeping with the creation of a 'nation of owners'.” Accordingly, Social Meliorism has a new, highly influential school, with roots in the works of Joseph Schumpeter and Ayn Rand, in which the entrepreneur is the hero of history. Finally, Developmentalism, in the Neoliberal view, can be adequately addressed through Skinneresque theories and a type of mechanical causalism in which incentives, primarily monetary incentives, create the motive force of social change.

The central enquiry is theoretical – a connection between the theory of Gramscian hegemony and accounts of Social Learning in the social sciences literature. Gramsci's work is concerned. in large part, with how we conceive of things. Hall is concerned with the paradigms by which we understand phenomena and implement policy. My argument is that thery are complimentary – that what we normally refer to as cultural or ideological hegemony constitutes, is an extension of Hall's terminology, a 4th order of change.

Hall famously (if you an academic with a taste for macro-economic policy analysis) built on accounts of social learning and policy learning, such as those put forth by Hugh Heclo. Of his three orders of policy change and social learning, two were based on the study of state-centric models in which the decision makers were relatively insulated from public pressure.

Third order change was something different, however – a paradigm change usually caused by (or at least occasioned by) the failure of policy and involving sociological and discursive factors. Thus something like the concept of hegemony seems to be implicit in Hall's original 1993 article.

I point to the most general epistemological paradox: Facts without concepts are blind, concepts without facts are empty. This is directly descended from Kant's statement, “Thoughts without content [observations, facts] are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”

In Kant's framework, all mental activity results either from affection (receptivity) or from the mind’s self-prompted activity (spontaneity). Kant conceives of the mind as constituted by two fundamental capacities, which he labels “receptivity” [Receptivität] and “spontaneity” [Spontaneität]. The former is the mind’s capacity to be affected and produce “representations” [Vorstellungen]; the latter, however, comes from the mind itself without any external stimulus.

This leads to his distinction between “sensibility” [Sinnlichkeit], “understanding” [Verstand], and “reason” [Vernunft]. Sensibility is very much in the moment, Understanding has a largely analytic function (trying to break down the objects of sensibility), while Reason has a largely synthetic function (trying to unify the objects of sensibility into a coherent system). This tension between Reason and Understanding manifests itself in the antinomies, which are the core paradoxes of the Kantian system. Moreover, the tension presents a general danger; as argued by Gramsci, analytical distinctions which are treated as organic realities are worse than blind facts – they not only blind us, but can point us in the wrong direction and keep us from seeing properly.

Eventually, I argue this is not a paradox because there are always feedbacks and interactions between the two. In fact, I think of them not as two things, but as two faces of the same thing which we distinguish analytically and sometimes forget how they are organically united. And paradoxes, apparent or real, are important: The force of paradoxes is that they are not contradictory; they rather allow us to be present at the genesis of the contradiction.

My reconstruction of Hall adds a 4th order or change, applying Aristotle's 4 causes and the introduction of theories of hegemony to explain 3rd and, especially, 4th order changes. It also makes reference to Kant's antinomies, of which, like Aristotle's causes and the revamped orders of change, there are 4.

I seek to make a connection between Aristotle's 4 causes and Kant's 4 Antinomies, but it is the latter which is most relevant. For Kant, each antinomy describes a tension between the analytic and synthetic faculties of consciousness. I argue that this corresponds to the tension between the Incremental and the Constructionist. It is a long argument, but I believe it is worthwhile and provides insight into paradigm change, whether in education, welfare provision or economic policy.