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Avoid: the big society

Avoid: the big society. Erica Burman Discourse Unit/RIHSC/ESRI Manchester Metropolitan University e.burman@mmu.ac.uk. A sideways look at ethics, interdisciplinarity and the ‘ state ’ of the society and world in which children are growing up. Two senses of ‘ avoid ’ : Three concerns.

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Avoid: the big society

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  1. Avoid: the big society Erica Burman Discourse Unit/RIHSC/ESRI Manchester Metropolitan University e.burman@mmu.ac.uk

  2. A sidewayslook at ethics, interdisciplinarity and the ‘state’ of the society and world in which children are growing up

  3. Two senses of ‘avoid’: Three concerns • Elaborating strategies for distancing/disentangling ourselves from neoliberal ‘Big society’ agendas • Navigating a way through the complex discussions around the question of disciplines in childhood studies • Thinking through practices of managing disciplinary interpellations in both public policy and in methodological discussions

  4. Two – very idiosyncratic - associations…(and inter/disciplinary contributions?) #1. Kessen (1979; 1993) on ‘The child as a cultural invention’: ‘The tendency to assign personal responsibility for the successes and failures of development is an amalgam of the positivistic search for causes, of the older Western tradition of personal moral responsibility, and of the conviction that personal mastery and consequent personal responsibility are first among the goals of child-rearing. It is difficult to imagine an American child without a core commitment to the proposition that someone is responsible for what happens in development…

  5. ‘… The child – like the Pilgrim, the cowboy, and the detective on television – is invariably seen as a free-standing isolatable being who moves through development as a self-contained and complete individual.’ (Kessen, 1979: 819) source: Kessen (1979) ‘The American child and other cultural inventions’, American Psychologist, 34, 10: 815-820. Also inspired the inter/cross disciplinary collection: Kessel, F. and Siegal, A (eds.) (1983) The child and other cultural inventions. New York: Praegar.

  6. Kessen (1993) on ‘Avoiding the emptiness’ ‘The assignment of cognitive capacities to the new infant frees the baby of dependence on environmental – specifically cultural and parental influences; his intellectual growth is safe regardless of variations in his surrounding context. Whether or not western culture is the epitome of historical evolution, whether or not American child-rearing patterns are optimal, the child contains shielded knowledge that will exist independently of his nation or handling…

  7. ‘Avoiding…The full child’ cont. ‘… [P]art of the strength of a developmental psychology that stresses what the infant’s tissue gives to his future lies in the freedom from responsibility that it affords parents. Nor does the assignment of cognitive richness to the infant escape political implications; the new baby of current research is conservative, protected from the vagaries of an unpredictable environment, holding the truths steady in the winds of cultural change… The baby has become the guardian of stability in an uncertain life.’ (my emphasis)

  8. So (discipline,) theory and method are integrally linked, and cover the gaps in each The ‘full infant’ … ‘may have been constructed to save us from the disorder of no longer having shared conceptual models, or even assured research procedures’. (Kessen, 1993: 415) source: Kessen (1993) ‘Avoiding the emptiness: the full child’, Theory & Psychology, 3, 4: 415-427.

  9. Obvious point here • What model of the social inhabits the Big society? • (And what/how do disciplines contribute to and bolster this?) • The ‘Big society’ is an empty society, without complex large institutions (and cities), composed of active but flexible subjects in small, friendly, local associations: ‘Like his literary predecessors, Blond, when he thinks of England, sees mainly its church-spire-haunted countryside’ (p5 of 7, of Raban, J. 2010. ‘Cameron’s crank: review of Red Tory’, London Review of Books, 32, 8: www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n08.jonathan-raban/camerons-crank/print)

  10. From new labour to con-dems ‘New labour pulled out our teeth and filled them with gold’ (children’s NGO) now that the gold has gone, all that is left is… a void?

  11. Seductions for childhood researchers…. Identifies the right problems: Eg Participation as active citizenship in the UK, usually limited to: having a say, = consultation, = inclusion (see Percy-Smith, 2010: 108) Giving a voice to young people to shape an intervention programme to help young people out of disadvantage is likely to have less impact in addressing that disadvantage and improving young people’s lifechances than direct work which widens opportunities and choices for young people and that helps young people to realise and develop their interests and abilities to engage with the world’ (p112) Dilemma: the focus on political participation privileges existing structures (and so runs the risk overstating their influence or, alternatively, their malleability?) and ignores the influence of many informal organisations and processes Need to shift the focus from LA decision-making a service development to community spaces But suspiciously compatible with Big Society discourses of ‘Social Entrepreneurship’ Percy-Smith, B. (2010) ‘Councils, consultations and community: rethinking the spaces for children and young people’s participation’, Children’s Geographies, 8, 2: 107-122.

  12. #2 Association Perec, G. (1969/2005)– A Void (trans. G. Adair) Harmondsworth: Penguin Some writings semi autobiographical (especially W: or The Memory of Childhood), but subject to…. ‘author’s license to deceive’ (Sturrock, 1999,pxiii), and in particular a ‘willed objectivity… commitment to the “infra-ordinary”’ (pxiv); (‘shallow’) marxism but ‘..unregenerate materialism’ (pxv)

  13. ‘Materialists of language are distinctive for taking full advantage of the fact that language’s constituents, words, are so many objects existing materially… All materialists do is to exploit the possibilities inherent in words as things, or signifiers, rather than what most of us do most of the time, which is to overlook the materiality or thingness of words and pass directly onto their meaning, or signified.’ (Sturrock, J. 1999. ‘Introduction’ pxv to Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces)

  14. Cross/Interdisciplinary relations ‘Perec was a writer waiting, you might say, for Structuralism to happen.’ (Sturrock 1999 p.xv) In 1967 he was ‘co-opted’ (ibid.) by Ou-Li-Po (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle /Workshop for Potential Literature) Collaboration between writers and mathematicians; lipograms and palindromes were… ‘a test for Perec and a solace: demonstrations of verbal expertise freed from the need to be expressive’ (pxvi) (my emphasis) (Perec maintained his paid position as a full-time archivist in a science laboratory until 4 years before his death) Sturrock, J. (1999) ‘Editor and Translator’s Introduction’ to G. Perec. Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

  15. ** does it help us to try to think beyond ‘being expressive’??? In the context of the over-expressiveness of ‘childhood’…? ‘Routinely accused of being too fluffy or, conversely, too worthy for its own good, the study of the child entails its own superfluity.’ (Caselli, 2011: 122) ‘If the child, as a cultural notion, is still in the position in which ‘the woman’ was before the impact of feminist theory in the 1960s and ‘70s….[w]hat remains to be fully accounted for is the peculiar way in which the self – stubbornly and familiarly – stares back every time we constitute the child into an object of study.’ (Caselli, 2011: 129) Caselli, D. (2011) ‘Eerie changelings’, New Formations, 74: 122-129.

  16. Visual metaphors of disappearance ‘Lost generations’ vs. ‘invisible children’

  17. vs. ‘Invisible Children’Cf phenomenon of Kony2012(approx 100 million viewers to date…) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

  18. Back (again) to disciplines • And the role accorded/assumed by specific disciplines

  19. Barthes (1986: 71) The Rustle of Language ‘Interdisciplinary work. So much discussed these days, is not about confronting already constituted disciplines (none if which, in fact, is willing to let itself go). To do something interdisciplinary it’s not enough to choose a ‘subject’ (a theme) and gather around it two or three sciences. Interdisciplinarity consists in creating a new object that belongs to no one.’ (my emphasis)

  20. Questions of… • Ownership • Responsibility (memories of institutional problems of women’s studies…belonging nowhere, and no one has commitment/obligation to support it)

  21. Disciplinary-specific ethical challenges? • Arising through public/policy appeals to particular disciplinary knowledges • Alongside the changing relationship to the state – Free schools, new illusion of individual freedoms/autonomies under neoliberalism - Threatening to return more power/authority to the already privileged upper middle classes

  22. Dilemmas • Colonialist appropriation • Secessionist disavowal • Fragmentation/proliferation or collaboration? • How to usefully acknowledge and draw upon tensions and differences?

  23. An example From Beazeley et al’s (2009) otherwise fantastic article: ‘Within childhood, age differences probably outweigh gender, ethnicity, religion and other discriminator factors… working with the youngest children requires special skills and sensitivities, which one can get away with not having for children between 10 and 17 years…’ (p368) Beazeley, H., S. Bessell, Ennew, J. And Waterson, R. (2009) ‘The right to be properly researched: research with children in a messy, real world’, Children’s Geographies, 7, 4: 365-378.

  24. Psychology’s responsibilities/opportunities…. Resisting psychologisation in relation to: • Parent-blaming • Children’s rights • ‘worklessness’ e.g. 7 March 2012 ESRC briefing on 'education and social mobility': "The adverse attitudes to education of disadvantaged mothers are one of the most important factors associated with the lower educational attainment of their children...” (source: ESRC Social Mobility briefings series.  http://www.esrc.ac.uk/publications/evidence-briefings/index.aspx page 2)

  25. Thorne (2007): on the work of crafting interdisciplinarity – whose labour? I regret the continuing wall of silence between ‘the new social studies of childhood’ and the field of child development because I believe that the complex articulation of different types of temporality – historical, generational, chronological, phenomenological, developmental, biological – should be central to the study of children and childhoods. Questions about individual growth and the shifting constitution of persons over time, which are central to the study of human development, have the potential to enrich the anthropology, sociology, geography and history of childhood. But this will only happen if approaches to human development are more fully historicised, informed by meaningful attention to culture and social structure, and enriched by close attention to the ways in which children negotiate the process of growing older and participate in a range of social institutions. It will take extensive mutual dialogue to transcend this particular wall of silence. It’s a tall order, methodologically and conceptually, but surely no one believes that understanding the whole of children’s lives will be a smooth and easy task. (Thorne, 2007: 150) Thorne, B. (2007) ‘Editorial: crafting the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies’, Childhood, 14: 147-152.

  26. Childhood as critical social science? Alanen (2011) • Critical Childhood Studies implies being critical not only of our own research practices and social arrangements that we study in the ‘real’ world of children and childhood. Thus, making explicit the normative foundations of childhood research requires that we also address a number of normalised issues concerning the practices and arrangements ‘out there’, and specify in what particular respects they are problematic. It also asks us to specify what constitutes a good, or at least a better life for children and for human beings in general. This means to endorse a ‘normative turn’ also in Childhood Studies. To do so is in line also with the very interdisciplinary nature of Childhood Studies as it would engage childhood researchers in discussions on issues that need to be explored and developed in a multi- and interdisciplinary frame, with colleagues in a range of other disciplines…. (Alanen, 2011: 150) Alanen, Leena (2010) ‘Critical Childhood Studies?’, Childhood, 18, 2: 147-150.

  27. ‘To fail to take into account children’s own self-perceptions when describing their lives is to violate their dignity’ (Beazley et al., 2009) (p374) But ‘current enthusiasm for practical, “policy-relevant” social research on children is closely connected to adult anxieties about young people: how to improve them, make them more employable, more productive and healthier; how to encourage and regulate their moral conduct and to participate in democratic politics. That is, it is concerned with the production of ideal future citizens (Rose, 1999)’ (Gallagher & Gallagher 2009: 503-4)

  28. ‘Making do’, rather than false promises • ‘methodological immaturity’ (Gallacher & Gallagher, 2009) ‘participatory methods are no less problematic, or ethically ambiguous, than any other research method… Methodological immaturity privileges open-ended process over predefined technique. It does not aim to discover or uncover a pre-existing world, offering instead experimentation, innovation and “making do”. While “participation” may seem laudable, it does not and cannot deliver all that it promises – perhaps simply because in the face of the unpredictability of the social world, it tries to offer some kind of guarantee.’ (p513)

  29. Participation as postdisciplinary or:towards a ‘timid disciplinarianism’? ‘in its original and most profound sense, participatory research is not a methodological shift but an epistemological and ontological one, about who asks and answers research questions. This is a different take on postdisciplinarity.. [or] involves a timid disciplinarianism: stepping back, decentring ourselves as knowledge producers, listening a bit more, telling a bit less, opening up to the many other sites of knowledge production. ’ (Pain, 2010:224) Pain, R. (2010) Ways beyond disciplinarity’, Children’s Geographies, 8, 2: 223-5

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