From Binary to Full Spectrum: Black and White to Living Color

From Binary to Full Spectrum:
Black & White to Living Color
Gender Studies with Judith Butler

Gender studies inform education

      In the 1990's, Gender Trouble (1990) by Judith Butler questioned the categories through which we see men and women. By exposing the cultural binary bias of what is categorized as men and women, Butler at once causes us to perceive human beings beyond biology. Instead a continuum of the expression of who a person is, beyond the biology of male and female, reveals an entire spectrum of expression in the human race. Historically, education has similarly locked students into binary categories: the accomplished learner or those who "get it" and the rest of us - the other. However, pedagogy in the last twenty years has developed a spectrum of differentiation initiatives that are learner-centered. This study is an examination of Butler's gender theory and its relevance to excellence in education.

Judith Butler exposes the simple binary

Butler argues that sex as a physical characteristic does not define the expression of a man or a woman. "The multiplications of gender possibilities dispose and disrupt the binary reitifications of gender," (Butler, p. 171). The rigid binary definitions of male and female are culturally constructed and regulated as if the obvious binary biological definition of sex actually becomes gender. Furthermore, both in language and perception, norm is considered male while what is not male is simply the other. 

The binary boxes humanity

                "The binary relation between culture and nature promotes a relationship of hierarchy in which culture freely 'imposes' meaning on nature, and, hence, renders it into an 'Other' to be appropriated to its own limitless uses, safeguarding the ideality of the signifier and the structure of signification on the model of domination," (Butler, p. 50). Butler goes on to elaborate with the arguments of several anthropologists that note how culture bestows agency, reason, and domination upon the male whereas the female is thus categorized as a physical, subordinated, emotional response. This system is established in language, religion, politics, and education. Humanity is boxed into the binary categories of what is male (agency) and what is female (subordination).

Biology embraces the full spectrum

          Apart from culturally established binary black and white categories of human beings, biology exudes a full spectrum in living color of human beings in the human race. The binary says there are two races: black and white. Biologically, in truth, the full spectrum illuminates an array of humanity that has a variation of colors and features that is infinite. The binary is us and them, point and counterpoint, two points of view and that is all. The full spectrum reveals human position and agency that is varied, nuanced, with shades of opinions and points of view that also are infinite. "The further question emerges: What plausibility can be given to an account of the Symbolic that requires a conformity to the Law that proves impossible to perform and that makes no room for the flexibility of the Law itself, its cultural reformulation in more plastic forms?" (Butler, p. 73). 

Tradition teaches to the binary boxes

      Traditional education has also used the binary boxes of the learners and the rest of us, a one-size-fits-all delivery system - which mandated that everyone learn the same thing at the same time, no matter what their individual needs were (Sarason, 1990). Intelligence was viewed as binary: either literacy/language or mathematical/spatial. Today multiple intelligences have replaced the binary with recognition of many more categories of skills: verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical-rhythmic, interpersonal, intra-personal, and naturalistic, (Gardner, 1997).  We develop, think, and learn in different ways. Achieving our potential involves the interaction of what we are learning and agency of our particular intelligences.

Transition to the full spectrum of students

With secondary students, state and national standards delineate what students need to know and what they need to be able to do. Differentiated teaching promotes getting students there in the ways that accomodate students' learning styles, cultures, interests, prior knowledge, socialization needs, and comfort zones. Pedagogical options are selected and used according to students' needs for their achievement and advancement. The theory that drives differentiation is constructionism or the belief that learning occurs when the learner - the focus is on the learner - makes meaning out of content. Within constructionism are found a core group of design characteristics. These include: student choice, learning how to learn, reflection and think aloud, tradition and variety, collaboration, communicativeness, open-endedness, multiple learning modes, connections to experiences, and a variety of teaching styles (Benjamin, 2002, p. 8). Focusing on the student instead of the material, the goal is for student productivity and performance to increase. From the content, what they need to know, we build a process, facilitating learning, that results in a product, students demonstrating what they have accomplished. With respect for students' culture, teaching has moved beyond the binary process of dishing out one-size-fits-all content and separating those who get it from those who don't. By focusing on the student, as teachers we have moved to a higher calling. Moreover, we dignify our students by recognizing who they are and where they are coming from.

Differentiation dignifies learners

By focusing on the students instead of the content, differentiation dignifies the variety of learners we have in our classroom. We first assess a student's readiness to learn a concept or a skill. Readiness is the prime factor for beginning the process. If the student is not ready, the steps that lead to readiness must be decided and put into the plan. Secondly, we gage the student's interest or interests. By examining their interests, we are aware of their motivation in learning the particular concept or skill. Interests are used as a motivation factor in teaching the lesson. Lessons can be changed to fit a variety of interests. A book about dinosaurs will tap into a different interest than one about motorcyles. Finally, their style of learning is addressed. For some students, the visual aspect is key while for others the auditory piece is essential. By including both auditory and visual information and stimulation, a teacher has included both learning styles in the lesson. Practical means for assessing readiness, interests, and learning styles, include student inventories or surveys, documenting each student with a profile with classroom notes are them, portfolios with student work, interviewing students, student journals and reflection pieces, student artwork and collages, student speeches and collaborative dramas, student files with standardized test scores and reading/math assessments (Northey, 2005). A teacher's greatest honor is to be an observer of students growing and becoming in their classroom. To be a part of this incredible process, teachers must attend to it.

Differentiation does NOT assume individualization

"As in an orchestra composed of individuals, varied ensemble groups, sections, and soloists, the differentiated classroom is built around individuals, various small groups, and the class as a whole. They all work to 'learn and play the score,' albeit with varied instruments, soloparts, and roles in the whole, (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 13). Differentiation is NOT each student on a separate plan. To the contrary, students work together collaboratively and are reaching for the same or similar learning goals. However, flexibility with a wide range of instructional strategies that all focus on the students' needs, assist a teacher to focus on individuals, small groups, and the class at the same time. Connecting all students with the necessary essential understandings and standardized skills, at the individual appropriate time and in a variety of ways, distinguishes differentiation. The illustration comparing the teacher to the orchestra conductor best illustrates this skill of working with the whole, groups, and individuals in tandem.

Differentiation demonstrates learner-centered instruction

"A coach never achieves greatness for himself or his team by working to make all his players alike. To be great, and to make his players great, he must make each player the best he can be. No weakness in understanding or skill is overlooked. Every player plays from his or her competencies, not from a sense of deficiencies," (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 13). 

Performativity underpins gender & educational theory

          Butler writes: "There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; ... identity is perfomatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results.' (Butler, p. 25). This is to say that gender is a performance or an individual expression. It is agency. It is what one does at a specific time rather than a universal definition or categorization of who one is. The concept of gender performativity is central to Butler's work.

References

Benjamin, A. (2002). Differentiated instruction: A guide for middle and high school teachers. NY: Eye on Eye Education.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble. NY: Routledge.

Gardner, H. (1997). Reflections on multiple intelligences: Myths and messages. Phi Delta Kappan, 78 (5), 200-207. 

Northey, S. (2005). Handbook on differentiated instruction for middle and high schools. NY: Eye on Education. 

Sarason, S. (1990). The predictable failure of educational reform: Can we change course before it's too late? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.   

Tomlinson, C.A. (1999). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 

                    

Judith Butler and Gender Trouble

The cultural assumptions of the norm of human sexuality and gender are explored by Judith Butler. Butler traces the question of gender via the writings of 20th century social theorists.

1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire

i. "Women" as the subject of feminism

Butler begins with Foucault's political/social systems of power that regulate with limitation, prohibition, regulation, control, and what is considered for the good of all. The system, with regulatory hegemony, forms, defines, and reproduces its subjects. Butler claims that feminism therefore suffers presumed universality (p. 6) where the subject of "women" should nowhere be presumed (p. 8).

ii. The compulsory order of sex/gender/desire

The binary gender system predisposes women as a reaction or mirror of men: sex resulting in gender definition and thus desire for the opposite sex. The question of how sex and gender were constructed discursively begs the question of should gender then be reformulated sans constructionism and prediscursive (p. 10).

iii. Gender: the circular ruins of contemporary debate

Butler quotes de Beauvoir: "one is not born a woman, but, rather, becomes one" (p. 11, from The Second Sex, Vintage: NY, 1973, p. 301). Therefore, Butler asks, since gender is constructed by the agent, can gender be determined by choice. This would be in contrast to the hegemonious phallogocentric language of masculine dominance - man as It - and woman as Other (p. 13).

iv. Theorizing the binary, the unitary, and beyond

Butler compares Luce Irigaray's masculine philosophy underlying language to de Beauvoir's theories and adds that "feminist critique ought to explore the totalizing claims of a masculinist signifying economy, but also remain self-critical with respect to the totalizing gestures of feminism," (p. 18).

v. Identity, sex, and the metaphysics of substance

The cultural matrix defining gender requires that gender follow from sex and sex follow from desire (of the opposite sex), (p. 24). Monique Wittig writes that there is actually no binary - only general, which is masculine and then other, which is feminist and therefore sex. The answer is a universal subject, which is unfortunately prohibited in language as language requires gender, (p. 27). The linguistic constraints result in gender-specific attributes "produced and compelled in the regulatory practices of gender coherence," (p. 34).

vi. Language, power, and the strategies of displacement

Language defines, subordinates and excludes women. Butler introduces Jacques Lacan's analysis of gender biases and imposed roles, (p. 38), and goes on to critique the forces that police the compulsory frames and social appearance of gender (p. 45).

2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix

Butler, along with cultural/anthropologist theorists, speculates on pre-law notions of gender, while assessing the law's historical self-justification of patriarchy and the subjugation of women, (p. 48).

i. Structuralism's critical exchange

Structuralist discourse [including Confucianism, Mao, institutionalized religion] structures human relations; the woman is a gift of exchange, as explained by Claude Levi-Strauss, who applied Ferdinand de Saussure's structural linguistics to anthropology, (p. 53).

ii. Lacan, Rivier, and the strategies of masquerade

Butler returns to Lacan's theory of language structured by paternal law and its mechanisms of differentiation, (p. 59). Men embody the agressor, however, via masquerade a woman can assume the role of the agressor (p. 63). Joan Riviere takes this a step further with feminism as a masquerade, blurring the boundaries of heterosexual and homosexual (p. 68). Lacan attributes the divide of masculine and feminine, or the binary - the divide -, to the law (p. 74). The law is at once prohibitive and generative, guaranteeing a slave morality under the Symbolic or religion.

iii. Freud and the melancholia of gender

The conflict of two heterosexual desires within a single psyche produce a melancholy or suffering, theorizes Freud (p. 82). The ego ideal regulates gender identification cognizant of taboo, prohibition, and the norm. (p. 86). The repressive law dictates cultural discourse distinguishing the speakable from the unspeakable, the legitimate from the illegitimate (p. 89).

iv. Gender complexity and the limits of identification

Lacan, Riviere, and Freud all theorized differently regarding the formation of the gender in the self. Beyond them, Butler declares that "incorporation" or assimilation of a gender identity (p. 93) to go beyond the law and incorporate a variety of attributes.

v. Reformulating prohibition as power

In The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex Gayle Rubin writes of the historical cultural social mechanisms by which gender is produced, forcing women into subjugation in the human race, oppression, (p. 100).

3. Subversive Bodily Acts

i. The body politics of Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva suggests multiple sexual identities as opposed to a unified feminist code. However, she interprets the lesbian experience as psychotic (p. 118). She views the law as paternal and the culture into which a child is born. The semiotic experience, however, included the maternal or poetic. The child is engaged in the discourse of the two and thus formulates their own identity (p. 119). Culture, kinship, and family necessitate defining the world for the child even as they engage in a maternal discourse that is more open and free-thinking (p. 115).

ii. Foucault, Herculine and the politics of sexual discontinuity

Foucault writes of a hermaphrodite/intersexed person conflicted in their sexuality. Butler explores the conflicts of the inner and the outer person, as well as societal influences. Her conclusion is that the law produces only those who are subject yet conflicted.

iii. Monique Wittig: bodily disintegration and fictive sex

Wittig understands "sex" to be discursively produced by a system oppressive to women, gays, and lesbians (p. 154). Language powerfully creates what is socially real (p. 157). Women must assume agency and overthrow the system, formidably in the system of language (p. 158).

iv. Bodily inscriptions, performative subversions

Gender formation and transformation are found in the abiding gendered self, not true or false - not original or derived - but rather evoked through agency choice and determination, rendered through expression and performance. However, this is not in relation to law or a masculine general (p. 192).

Conclusion: From Parody to Politics

Language is not an "exterior medium or instrument into which I pour a self and from which I gleam a reflection of that self," (p. 196). By describing possibilities for gender that exist albeit unintelligibly, cultural configurations of gender are able to proliferate within discourse that assures their intelligibility and legitimacy. This serves to confine the binarism of sex and expose its unnaturalness (p. 203).

Michel Foucault: Discipline and Punishment

In the end, Foucault greatly influences Education in the notion of the Discourse and of the relationship between Power and Knowledge. Analysis of this text will lead to this theme.

Part 1: Torture

i. The body of the condemned

In the 1700-1800's, the public spectacle, festival or carnival, of public torture or punishment is abolished. Punishment gradually becomes hidden and individual, (p. 8-10). Secondly, punishment no longer is a process visited upon the body (p. 10-16), but is replaced by a non-corporal penal system. Foucault proposes studying the penal system as a part of Human Science (p. 23). Furthermore, Power and Knowledge relations (p. 27) as a part of the Body Politic (with elements, resources, and forces) and the Technology of Power over both body and soul (p. 30), are intricately involved in understanding both human relations and human science. 

ii. The spectacle of the scaffold

Historically, though the punishment was a human spectacle, the legal process leading up to was concealed in secrecy (p. 35). With interrogation under torture (p. 42-46): the accused self-condemned, in confession, leading to public execution which is public and slow for political purposes (control or political ritual). The right to punishment was the sovereign's right to make war on "his" enemies or "enemies of the people" (aka, Homeland Security or any Communist leadership "of the people" initiative). Punishment was triumph (p. 52) revealing truth and power (p.55). (A counter-power spectacle via literature produced a hero-villain who triumphed in crime against the powers that be, p. 68-9).

Part 2: Punishment

i. Generalized punishment

Since the industrial revolution gave rise to new common wealth and therefore new material crime, judicial/penal reform shifted the object to material and the scale to punishment that matches the crime. The goal was to reach a target that is subtle yet widespread (p. 89). Thus eventuated "the political project of rooting out illegalities, generalizing the punitive function and delimiting the power to punish," (p. 101).

ii. The gentle way in punishment

Reform progresses with appropriate penalties to prevent, punish crime, and thus control the body of society: reduce attractiveness of crime, increase fear of penalty, modulate punishment, and above all make punishment seem natural and in one's own interest, (p. 104-110). Control of behavior results from particular knowledge of individuals, (p. 125). The power to punish still exudes from: 1. super-power (like the monarchies) but extends to 2. society as a whole conforming individuals, and 3. keeping individuals in line (p. 130-131). These three develop into three technologies of power.

Part 3: Discipline

i. Docile bodies:

The birth of the individual is the moment of subjugation for discipline, as a soldier or citizen of the regime. Obedience and usefulness go hand-in-hand, (p. 138).

a. The art of distributions

Disciplined individuals are distributed in time and space, (p. 142). This extends to education where students are arranged and controlled in time and space according to their usefulness to the regime, (p. 147).

b. The control of activity

The time-table or schedule controls activity, (p. 149). Students are assessed, classified and assigned.

c. The organization of geneses

Capitalize on the time of individuals, mechanically adding up and arranging them, in sequential steps for training (p. 159).

d. The composition of forces

A precise system of command is required to control the masses of individuals (p. 166). Four types of individuals emerge: cellular (spatially distributed), organic (activities coded), genetic (timely), combinatory (composition of forces), (p. 167).

ii. The means of correct training

Disciplinary power trains, (p. 170).

a. Hierarchical observation

Architecture is designed to provide hierarchical view of all in subjection constantly (p. 173).

b. Normalizing judgment

Punishment and Reward are both used to control human behavior, all under the auspices of bringing every individual into or under the power of the Norm (p. 184).

c. The examination

School, with successions of examinations, is uninterrupted exercise of power (p. 186-187). Furthermore, the examination is documentation of the individual (p. 189) and creates each individual into a case.

iii. Panopticism

Modern society seems to limit extreme exercise of power however, in reality, universal panopticism exerts a "machinery that is both immense and minute," (p. 223) supporting, reinforcing, producing a hierarchy of Power symbolically suspended by Law. Law represents the regime in power, which in the case of democracy is defined as of the people, by the people, and for the people. The "experts in normality" (p. 228), in administration, function as judge (from the penal system) in industry, education, government, and social organization.

a. Complete and austere institutions

The prison as an institution is always in the process of reform and certain codes prevail throughout: isolation or deprivation of social engagement, (p. 236); deprivation of imagination or reflection, (p. 239); deprivation of self-determination or complete knowledge and control of the "reformation" of the individual, (p. 244).

b. Illegalities and delinquency

A technology or science - penitentiary science - develops from the growth industry of the penal system (p. 257). However, the system cannot help but produce fraternity among offenders and thus profligates delinquency (p. 266). Reform measures, historically, simply repeat the past - mistakes (p.270).

c. The carceral

The penitentiary saint illumines the coercive technologies of behavior embedded in the prison, in education, industry, government, religion (1852 in Mettray, p. 293). The prison is transformed from "punitive procedure to a penitentiary technique, (p. 298). In the system is a new form of law: "a mixture of legality and nature, prescription and constitution, the norm, (p.304).

Foucault ends in concluding that he has laid a historical foundation, a background, to "various studies of the power of normalization and the formation of knowledge in modern society," (p. 308).

www.michel-foucault.com

Bauman and Globalization

Time and Class

Absentee Landlordship is the new global elite who operate unlimited in time and space while the rest in territorial political, cultural and economic units are increasingly confined.

Space Wars: a Career Report

Panopticon is the new social control. Above all, seeing all, and unseen by all - the global elite can hide but one cannot hide from them. Security and Privacy are reserved for the economically and thus politically advantaged. In the old system, walls and a mote confined the powerful while surfdom was left at the mercy of natural and political events. In the new system, the elite are mobile and hidden without walls, and in surveillance of all those at the bottom of the hierarchy.

After the Nation-state - What?

Political sovereignty is lost in the new paradigm of a global economy/society. The decision-making capacity of the local agent is completely lost to a New World Order of centralized power, not unlike the regime of Mao. However, what is interesting is the local control that is present through the tentacles that reach from the centralized power base to each locality through the neighborhood cadre (see later chapters).

Tourists and Vagabonds

The elite are able to move at will as witnesses but unaffected by the predicament of the masses. Their economic power allows them to separate themselves from the large-scale global paradigm that the masses must deal with and are thus labelled as the vagabonds. The elite and the masses are co-dependent because without the labor of the masses, there would be no elite. However, the elite operate with agency whereas the masses are locked into their roles of supporting the elite.

Global Law, Local Orders

The idealized norm criminalizes what is outside of what is defined as the idealized norm. For the sake of Sicherheit or security, whatever is defined as outside the norm is seen as a security risk and labelled as criminal. Panoptical control even down to the street level through the local cadre keeps everyone in line as defined by the political powers that be. Those who are out of order are left behind.

Most notable are the cries of those who are experiencing foreclosure, unemployment, or health crisis in our society right now. In their interviews on NPR, one senses their fear and anxiety of being left behind as society albeit via globalization, moves on without them. What will happen to them? They have no safety net.  http://www.npr.org/

Bourdieu et Moi

Bourdieu et Moi

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu frames culture in a social context that is relational, connecting individuals with their familial, community and national environmental influence. He advises educators and researchers to analyze or be aware of cultural social context which he labels as reflexivity. Agents or individuals (i.e., students) function in the context of the culture of their milieu, creating their habitus or patterns of thought and behavior, and gain cultural and economic capital or knowledge, experience and connections facilitating success. A tennis player, observes Bourdieu, moves into the net to successfully lob the ball, according to prior knowledge, experience and connections rather than an explicit directive from the coach, (Sayer, 2005, p. 26). Capital facilitates agency success.


Language (from the perspective of a second language teacher) can be defined as a type of cultural capital. Immigrants who resettle come with a first language that is often different from the national language in their new country. This first language knowledge and skill is a type of cultural capital. However, it is not always perceived as capital, and is often lost within the context of a larger dominant society.

“According to Michel Foucault, the official discourses occlude forms of knowledge that are different and distinct from them,” (Zayat, 2008, p. 1).

Zygmunt Bauman takes this a step further with his analysis of globalization where, on a global scale, a dominant culture pre-empts the individual and the cultural capital of their local milieu (including language). Humphrey Tonkin, in his article in the Winter 2001 ADFL Bulletin, explains this as lingual imperialism:

"Today, a key to entry into the community of the educated elite—or at least a necessary if not in itself a sufficient qualification for a membership card—is the English language... In short, English is the Microsoft of languages—the linguistic medium that has acquired such a dominant role in the marketplace that it seems to have become self-perpetuating. The parallel with computers is by no means far-fetched: just as the colonial powers laid down railroads and installed telephone systems that depended for their maintenance and spare parts on industries based in the mother countries, so the British Empire and, in its way, the United States, developed a linguistic software infrastructure that is today heavily dependent on the cultural products—everything from entertainment to education—of the English-speaking world. Apparently the only way for other countries to share this global market is to adopt its linguistic software. Accordingly, we find many countries whose languages are essentially local and marginal that use English as a medium of instruction in colleges and universities or in publishing or the entertainment industry,” (Tonkin, 2001, pgs.6-7).

As a language teacher, this is a study regarding developments in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) within the context of the works of Bourdieu and Bauman.

Social Context: Macro (Fields) and Micro (Habitus) with SLA

First language acquisition (or L1) and second language acquisition (SLA or L2) involve social contexts, including the macro-social factors of community and lingual hegemony (the linguistic context of a national language) and the micro-social factors of psychological and familial contexts. Due to social context, there are variables in SLA. We will consider two.

The national language (what is defined as literacy in schools) is established by which group is politically and economically dominant in a multi-ethnic society, often the one that has majority status. Two outcomes of SLA are two types of bilingualism, (Saville-Troike, 2005, p. 127): additive bilingualism, where a second language is added without interference with L1 competence or ethnic identity; or subtractive bilingualism, where members of a group learn the dominant language as L2 and experience loss of ethnic identity and attrition of L1 skills. Many social variables contribute to additive versus subtractive outcomes, including the degree of opportunity for continued contact with L1 community, family life, and whether the L1 fulfills a function or is valued as cultural and or economic capital.

Immigration and Additive Language Learning
My husband and his family came to the United States during his youth, fleeing the Cultural Revolution. The family speaks Chinese (Cantonese). My husband uses Chinese even as he added English as a second language from his US schooling, experiencing additive language learning. His parents use Chinese working in businesses, never learning English. We speak primarily English at home and but predominantly Chinese with relatives and in the Chinese community. Chinese is cultural capital that became economic capital for the family in what Bourdieu would label as the field of their business community. The family, Chinese community, Chinese businesses, and travel to China have kept the Chinese language alive for this family in the midst of an English-dominant society. These entities or fields (family, Chinese community, Chinese businesses, China) value the Chinese language as capital. Two years ago, with the Mandarin Initiative in the State of Minnesota, our State recognized Chinese language skills as economic and cultural capital. For me as a language teacher, and an alien member of this Chinese family, the Chinese language became economic and cultural capital with the opportunity to teach Chinese.

Immigration and Subtractive Language Learning
My grandparents were immigrants from Norway in the 20th Century. One set used some English and worked in accounting, crunching numbers with minimal literacy. The other farmed and never learned English; my father still has a Norwegian accent yet Norwegian is neither spoken nor passed on. English, at school and in the community, replaced Norwegian in a subtractive fashion. However, it is understood that we as an extended family are neither assimilated nor do we belong to the greater American community no matter what language we use. We, Norwegians from a remote mountain village, are from a small, obscure tribe and nation that is insignificant, backwards or unmaterialistic, and different. For example, there is little communication; language has a minimal role and is not considered capital. Work ethic is both communication and capital. I do not recall having an actual conversation with anyone in my family.

From Annihilation of Indigenous Cultural Capital to Re-establishment
Historically, sometimes the indigenous tribes suffer the great loss of their language and culture when another group moves in, dominates, and requires the annihilation of the original culture. This was the case with the native tribes in the United States and the aborigines in Australia. Native American children were plucked from their parents and forcibly schooled in English and Western ways.

These children were forcibly removed from their parents by soldiers and many times never saw their families until later in their adulthood. This was after their value systems and knowledge had been supplanted with colonial thinking. One of the foundations of the U.S. imperialist strategy was to replace traditional leadership of the various indigenous nations with indoctrinated "graduates" of white "schools," in order to expedite compliance with U.S. goals and expansion, (from www.learn.org).

This represents a shortfall of cultural capital for these children and for the society at large. When the dominant class eliminates languages and culture it is a loss for all.

The greatest linguistic diversity is found in some of the ecosystems richest in biodiversity. These regions are inhabited by indigenous peoples, who represent around 4 percent of the world’s population, but speak at least 60 percent of its 6,000 or more languages. For centuries, individual communities relied on traditional knowledge—much of it encoded in distinctive ways in their languages passed down orally for generations—and carried out resource management at local levels. Cultural, linguistic and biological diversity are related, and often inseparable, connected through co-evolution in specific habitats. Where there are indigenous peoples with a homeland, there are still biologically rich environments… Why Language Loss Matters…the world’s many languages encode critical knowledge of use in areas such as land management, marine technology, plant cultivation, and animal husbandry. Finally, linguistic diversity is an irreplaceable resource for future generations. Languages and Critical Knowledge...The next great steps in scientific development may lie locked up in an obscure language in a distant rain forest or on a remote island… Languages, like species, are highly adapted to their environments. Some of the detailed knowledge of the natural environment, encoded in human languages spoken by small groups who have lived for centuries in close contact with their surroundings, may provide useful insights into management of resources on which we all depend. The disappearance of hundreds of species of fish, birds, and other forms of life, along with their names and related knowledge of their habitat and behavior, represents an enormous loss to science at precisely the time when we most urgently need to manage local ecosystems more effectively, (Nettle, Romaine, 2008, p. 3).

Today, educators in general and language teachers in particular, are changing this paradigm of replacing one language with another. There are leaders and models that seek to build on the cultural capital students bring with them from their families and the community at large, into the educational system.

Educators Change the Paradigm
Two model programs capture the language children bring in that is not the majority language in the United States (English). The Dual Immersion School requires a elementary-aged body of students that have a language different from the majority, such as a group of students from Mexico who only speak Spanish. These students represent one-half of the dual immersion model; the other half is English-speaking wanting to learn Spanish. Paired together in an elementary school, each half teaches the other the second language, while the curriculum is presented in both languages; the staff is bi-lingual. A second school model is the Heritage Language Program. The Heritage Program has some classes in the native language enabling students to continue to use their language from home in the academic setting, while adding the societal dominant language in other classes. In a study of a Heritage Language Program among Inuit students in Canada, the Heritage Language Program students tested with higher literacy skills than those Inuit students who were simply school in English or French, the societal dominant languages in Canada.

Compared with Inuit in heritage language and mixed-heritage children in a second language, Inuit in second-language classes (English or French) showed poorer heritage language skills and poorer second-language acquisition. Conversely, Inuit children in Inuit classes showed heritage language skills equal to or better than mixed-heritage children and Whites educated in their heritage languages. Findings support claims that early instruction exclusively in a societal dominant language can lead to subtractive bilingualism among minority-language children, and that heritage language education may reduce this subtractive process, (Wright, Taylor, & MacArthur, 2000, p. 63).

Thus, the additive program produced a higher literacy than the subtractive program, even in the societal dominant language. The Dual Immersion School and the Heritage Language Program are two successful additive SLA models now found throughout the United States.

There are educational leaders who seek to build on what students bring to school, culturally and linguistically, instead of completely replacing or destroying their identity. One example is found on the blog of Professor Deborah Appleman with her teaching at Stillwater Prison, (Appleman, 2008, online). She is having her students identify their use of language and vernacular in their present environment and their past.

October 8th, 2008 “Last week, the students wrote ethnographies of the communication patterns they see in their daily lives at the prison. Monday’s class began with a lively discussion of what they discovered in their ethnographies, including a discussion of some of the factors that influence patterns of speech and communicative practices…” (Appleman, 2008, online blog).

This has produced interesting and enlightening results regarding student identity and how students use language. Rather than simply correct their use of English, she is having them identify how they use English. Appleman’s initiatives are in sharp contrast to the “No Spanish” rules prevalent, for example, in US schools as recently as the 1970’s (Fine & Weis, 1993).

A second example is the Harlem project of Geoff Canada. Canada has a birth-through-college program for 10,000 children in Harlem, seeing them through into professional educated positions from a drug and prostitution rich neighborhood. However, Geoff makes very clear that he wants the children to not leave their roots in Harlem behind, but rather build on them and never forget where they came from. He grew up in Harlem himself and values the culture of his youth. In his program to facilitate the South Bronx students achieving a college degree and a professional career, Canada would like to,

…borrow some of these new ideas from the manic superparents downtown and combine them with the hanging-out-on-the-stoop beliefs that he grew up with,… he thinks he can carve out a unique set of Harlem values that will make instinctive sense to both parents and kids,” (Tough, 125, 2008).

These are two examples of educational leaders facilitating students’ building on what they have brought with them while advancing their education.

Bauman Sounds the Alarm of Globalization

Since Pierre Bourdieu completed his work, Bauman now reminds us that the majority defined as global culture threatens to once again destroy the cultural capital of our local cultures and languages. Globalization would seek to make the world mono-lingual and controlled by one dominant cultural mindset, with the loss of the capital of what can be called localized culture and identity. When I was a teacher at Normandale French Immersion School, the language teachers had a particular disdain for what they termed as the “mono-linguals” among us. They could feel the lack of understanding and depth among those who had never ventured outside of their English milieu. Mono-lingualism may seem efficient and progressive but indeed it is in reality simply, again, the annihilation of cultural capital like the situation of aboriginal tribes. Each culture has unique understanding. By understanding each other, our capacities grow and develop. Globalization has the earmarks of cloning the human race into a mono and dominant culture with loss of identity and self-determination. Bourdieu uses the analogy of the tennis player who meets the ball at the net. His habitus enabled him to succeed at that moment, not the robotic directive of the coach. We all need our individual backgrounds to succeed at the game of life, both collectively and individually.

References

1. Appleman, D., 2008, retrieved October 10th, from http://blogs.carleton.edu/Stillwater/.
2. Bauman, Z. (2008). Consuming life. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
3. Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization: The human consequences. NY: Columbia University Press.
4. Bourdieu, P. (1990). In other words: essays towards a reflexive sociology. Translated by Matthew Adamson. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
5. Canada, G. (1995). Fist stick knife gun. Boston, MA: Beacon Press Boston.
6. Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton.
7. Fine, L. & Weis, L., eds. (1993). Beyond silenced voices: Class, race, and gender in United States’ schools. NY: State University of New York Press.
8. Learn.org. http://www.learn.org/hgp/aeti/aeti-1997/native-americans.html, retrieved October 10th, 2008.
9. Nettle, D. & Romaine, S. (2000). The last survivors. Retrieved October 25, 2008 fromhttp://www.culturalsurvival.org/ Protecting the rights, voices, and visions of indigenous people, linked to: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~romaine/The%20Last%20Survivors.htm. Daniel Nettle is an anthropologist who has conducted extensive fieldwork in Africa. Suzanne Romaine, a linguist, is Merton Professor of English Language at the University of Oxford, and has done fieldwork in the island Pacific. Together they wrote Vanishing Voices: The extinction of the world’s languages (2000), NY: Oxford University Press.
10. Nietschmann, B. (1992). The interdependence of biological and cultural diversity. In Center for World Indigenous Studies Occasional Paper, 21, 3.
11. Saville-Toike, M. (2005). Introducing second language acquisition. New York: Cambridge University Press.
12. Sayer, R.A. (2005). The moral significance of class. New York: Cambridge University Press.
13. Swartz, D. (1997). Culture and power: The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
14. Tonkin, H. (2001). “Language learning, globalism, and the role of English.” ADFL Bulletin 32, No. 2 (Winter 2001): 5-9.
15. Tough, P. (2008) Whatever it takes: Geoffrey Canada’s quest to change Harlem and America. NY: Houghton Mifflin.
16. Wright S. C., Taylor D. M., & MacArthur J. (2000). Subtractive bilingualism and the survival of the Inuit language : Heritage- versus second-language education. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, (1), 63-84.
17. Zayat, I. (2008). “Tunisian photographer blurs gender boundaries”, Alarabonline. Retrieved October 19, 2008 online: http://english.alarabonline.org/print.asp?fname=2008\10\10-18\zculturez\998.htm.

Bourdieu, Chapters 1, 3, and 4: in 3 parts

Part 1: Introducing Pierre Bourdieu

With empirical research and opposing intellectual viewpoints, French social scientist Pierre Bourdieu theorizes regarding culture, power, stratification or class, and social knowledge. The book we are using highlights Bourdieu's principal conceptual interweavings, (p.6).

Culture Power and Reproduction

He offers a genetic theory of groups that explains how systems of domination/heirarchy persist and perpetuate over time.

The Agency/Structure Problem

He unites the individual and society (micro and macro) into a structural theory connecting action (the individual or agency) to culture, structure, and power. From this stems his key concept of habitus.

Fields of Power

Practices occur in structured areas of conflict called fields.

Sociology as Socioanalysis

The sociologist's role is to tap into the social unconscious of society, exposing underlying interests that bind individuals and groups into unequal power relations.

For a Reflexive Practice of Social Science

Socioanalysis requires a systematic and rigorous self-critical practice of social science.

Sociology as Politics

Bourdieu posits his work as political intervention against the intelligentsia as carriers of universal cultural values freed from economic and political determinants.

Career

Bourdieu is a cultural and social outsider to the French intellectual elite.

Writing Style

Bourdieu's very style flies in the face of the French elite and the taken-for-granted world. How refreshing!

Part 2: Chapter 3 Bourdieu's Meta-theory of Sociological Knowledge

The Subjective/Objective Antinomy

Bourdieu opposes the subjective/objective modes of knowledge, preferring integration into a general science of practices.

The Relational Method

Preferring to break with objectivism and subjectivism, Bourdieu describes a relational or structuralist foundation to all scientific thought. Like geometry with lines and points defined relationally, so should social science do the same rather than consider individuals in isolation.

Part 3: Chapter 4 Bourdieu's Political Economy of Symbolic Power

Beyond Structuralist Marxism

Bourdieu develops a political economy of symbolic power that includes a theory of symbolic interest, a theory of power as capital, and a theory of symbolic violence and capital.

A Sociology of Symbolic Interests

All cultural production, in a political economy of culture, (including science), is reward-oriented for investment and profit.

There can be as many interests as there are institutionalized arenas of conflict over valued resources. Interest is whatever motivates action toward consequences that matter. Thus intellectual objectivity or disinterest is nil.

Power as Capital

Capital extends to all forms of power. Individuals and groups draw upon cultural, social, and symbolic resources to ameliorate their position in the social order.

Cultural capital has three forms:

1. 
   
   acquired through socialization by the individual


2. 
   
   objects that require special abilities to use (art, music, etc.)


3. 
   
   institutionalized through the educational system.

In spite of autonomy, culture is subordinate to economy (the starving artist).

A Theory of Symbolic Violence and Capital

Symbolic systems

1. 
   
   perform three functions: cognition, communication, and social differentiation.


2. 
   
   order the social world


3. 
   
   codes channeling deep meanings shared by members of a culture


4. 
   
   serve as instruments of domination.

Bourdieu thus combines structuralist and constructionist perspectives. Binary symbolic distinctions correlate with social distinctions turning symbolic classifications into social hierarchy. The power of domination through legitimation cements class hierarchy.

Symbolic violence intellectualizes the power struggle and legitimizes it through sociological explanation. Mis-recognition, false conscious, or denial is the mental state that perpetuates symbolic violence.

Symbolic capital is power that is perceived as legitimate need for recognition, deference, obedience, or the services of others. Many such practices would not be performed if they were recognized for what they are: self-serving.

Symbolic capital is the legitimation of power relations through symbolic forms. It is accumulated like material capital and can be exchanged for material capital.

Symbolic labor is specialized producers in the arenas of culture such as religion where there are symbolic producers.

Cultural producers (artists, writers, teachers, journalists, etc.) legitimate social order by producing symbolic capital through symbolic labor.

Bourdieu's work is the study of the political economy of forms of symbolic capital.

Bourdieu Fields of Struggle for Power, Part 2

Field Homologies

Within fields entities have structural and functional homologies, or resemblances within differences. Dominance and subordination co-exist as counter-axis holding each other in place, which seems to be co-dependency.

French education and the Catholic church are homologous. The educational system legitimizes the unequal distribution of cultural capital, like the church, p. 130.

Bourdieu parallels economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital and position in the various fields. Those who dominate, are in control across the strata. Those who are dominated, tend to be so consistently. Struggles in cultural fields produce cultural distinctions that are social distinctions: what is in and what is out. Thus the resultant homologous relations between fields.

The legitimacy of social class and inequality results from structural correspondence between fields, (p. 134).

Finally, Bourdieu supports two historic trends:

1. the increasing autonomy of cultural fields from the economy and polity


2. the ultimate dominance of the economic field, (p. 135), (which seems to be taking place right before our eyes).

In chapter 9, Bourdieu explains the capacity for political alliance between intellectuals and workers [this should be interesting]. Apparently both intellectuals and workers are in subordinate positions, though in different fields.

Status group co-membership, network ties, and common world views help explain reciprocal relationship between groups.

The Field of Power: Economic Capital versus Cultural Capital

The field of power is the principal field, conflict is fundamental to all social life, and essential to all social interaction is the struggle for power (p. 136), with two hierarchies at work:

1. economic capital (income, wealth, and property)


2. cultural capital (knowledge, culture, and education credentials).

The wider the gap in asset structure of these types of capital, the greater the power struggle for domination (p. 137).

Cultural fields vary in autonomy from economic and political authority (p. 140). Bourdieu poses a structural analysis expressing the deep structure of all social and political conflict.

Toward a General Science of Practices: A Research Program

[habitus) (capital)] + field = practice

is the equation summarizing Bourdieu's model.

Applying this model to our study, Bourdieu necessitates three steps for research:

1. 
   
   Relate the particular field of practices to the broader field of power.


2. 
   
   Identify the structure of objective relations between the opposing positions occupied by individuals or groups as they compete for intellectual or artistic legitimation.


3. 
   
   Analyze the class habitus brought by agents to their respective positions and the social trajectory they pursue within the field of struggle.

This would constitute Bourdieu's research method.

Bourdieu, Chapter 6, Intro Statements

In Chapter 6 of Culture and Power, The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, David Swartz discusses Bourdieu's context of fields (champs).

This will be Part 1 (114-129) to this chapter followed by an entry tomorrow with part 2 (129-142).

The concept of field reacts against positivism in that the boundaries are not definitely drawn, (p. 119). As opposed to reductionism and vulgar materialism, through the lens of field the effects of background and environment on individual behavior are perceived. Finally, field rejects cultural idealism.

With the concept of field, Bourdieu emphasizes social conflict rather than consensus (institutions), p. 120. Boundaries are not clearly defined. The broadest possible range of factors to explain behavior are exhibited through the concept of field (p. 121). Thus, a social scientist must not hasten to narrow the range of their investigation. The researcher must not yield to institutional pressure to limit their scope, producing symbolic effects lacking objectivity, p.122.

Fields are:

• arenas of struggle for control over valued resources (i.e., capital as objects of struggle, functioning as "social relation of power").
• centered around forms of capital such as economic, cultural, scientific, or religious.
• in relation to real life areas: such as the intellectual field (culture), economic field (business), science, religion.
• varied as the types of capital
• (p. 123) structured spaces of dominant and subordinate positions based on types and amounts of capital, and unequal distribution of relevant capitals.
• occupied by dominant conservative established actors (orthodoxy) and new subversive subhordinates (heresy)
• of these two opposing strategies dialectically aligned one generating the other (124), and a third which is (conservation), succession, (subversion).
• deeply structured with specific forms of struggle called doxa. (Rules of the game.)
• structured by their internal mechanisms of development, interconnected and independent from external factors, p. 126.
  
• an analysis shifting attention away from the particularistic characteristics of individuals and groups and toward the struggles and dynamics of arenas of social life that shape their behavior (129).

As a way of bringing this discussion to life, here are two Youtube videos for perusal with application of the concept of field. Note the actors, the conflicts, arenas of social life and interaction. In each example, identify orthodoxy, succession, and heresy or subversion. Also note the capital, various types and fields. Enjoy.

• WW2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6omQ5JjjLsE&feature=related

• religion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ope-1Zb5t-k&feature=related


Tomorrow: Part 2.

from Bauman to Bourdieu via Fresh Air

Last night Terri Gross interviewed Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's Zone and New York Times journalist Paul Tough regarding Canada's project in Harlem and Tough's book about the same, Geoffrey Canada: 'Whatever It Takes' To Teach Kids.

Terri Gross, in the interview, pointed out that Canada, over the course of his work in Harlem of about 30 years, had drastically changed his strategy. 

He explained that over a dozen years ago, he felt his intensive program of working with a smaller number of children was failing. He said to solve the problem, he expanded his program to include 8,000 children in Harlem.

Terri again pointed out that it was unusual to fail and then expand instead of fail and shrink.

Canada explained that the small number of students he was helping at first, were not succeeding because when they went home from school they had to face the gang culture which beat them up physically for thinking they could better themselves.

Canada said he needed to expand his program to include whole neighborhoods and change the very culture, so students could go home from school and feel safe. 

Canada made a very important point of how essential it is for him to actually change the culture in the neighborhoods so that his school programs will succeed.

Needless to say, this discussion, in light of our class, was fascinating.

His school programs begin with the parents, and then follow this students all the way up until they have graduated from college. In his Harlem schools, there are clinics, social workers, medical staff, and psychiatrists. Every need of the students is supported at school.

Canada, and Tough, feel this expanded program is successful. Obama wants to replicate the program in other cities.

A side note: Canada thinks that teaching to the test to pass No Child Left Behind mandates is what needs to be done. He wishes more teachers would teach to the test. He doesn't care if the test is culturally different from where the students are coming from (culturally). He says they must learn that culture anyway to succeed in college, so teach to the test and learn early how to succeed in college. The goal is a complete education with a college degree and a job that will elevate the children out of the gang neighborhoods where they have come from.

A FEW COMMENTS ON BOURDIEU:

p. 93. Bourdieu labels symbolic labor as well as symbolic power and symbolic capital. "Indeed, Bourdieu's sociological project is a study of the political economy of the various forms of symbolic capital. He focuses much of his work on the symbolic producers who specialize in creating symbolic power... he also thinks of his sociology as an instrument of struggle against the various forms of symbolic violence." (p. 94).

Perhaps the most interesting example I have personally witnessed was with a friend of mine in college, Loki Lincoln. Loki was from an obscure tribe in Southern Sudan. His father was the chief of the tribe with many wives. However, Loki was the firstborn son in his group of about 40 siblings. After Sudan became independent many years before, missionaries stayed on to promote education and health care. There were still missionaries in the area years later when Loki was born and growing up.

 A group of nuns in Loki's area requested that Loki attend school. Loki would become the first to learn to read in his tribe, or what his father called, "The White Man's Secret." This was no small event for this tribe, and certainly the chief. As a matter of fact, Loki's dad did not readily give his consent to the nuns to teach his son the White Man's Secret.

His dad thought long and hard about what would happen if Loki learned to read. It would change the tribe forever. Their tradition was oral passed on through tribal elders and not read in books. Their language had never been written down. The chief feared a Pandora's Box if Loki went to school.

In the end Loki attended the school of the nuns. He learned about the outside world. Eventually, he won a scholarship (also secured through the nuns) to go to college in the United States. The first born son was not taking over as the chief. He was getting an education to go back to Sudan (perhaps) and take his place in the greater society of Sudan.

This is what Loki's dad was afraid of. He regretted his decision but it was too late.

From Consumer to Citizen

Consuming Life by Zygmunt Bauman consumed my weekend. Upon reflection, it seems to me that Bauman uses a wide swathe to paint the big picture of the human community of global modernity, or what he terms liquid modernity.

Indeed, (p. 45) consumption as a way of life and road to happiness (latest car, clothes, house) in the west contrasts sharply with the traditional life I experienced when I lived in West Africa for a year, where relationships defined the person. Materialism was simply the urgency of rebuilding one's hut for the rainy season for real shelter, not the latest look. When Bokasa of RCA ordered his people to paint their huts like the civilization of France, the village folk did everything they could to scrape together the means to white-wash their huts, but this was not to keep up with the neighbors. They were not interested other than to escape the wrath of the emperor. A great night out in that venue was not Hollywood or Broadway but around the campfire sharing songs, stories and dance. No money or profit were involved. The new dawn came the next day when the sun came up, not according to a shopping trip schedule and purchasing new things.

The never-ending task of (p. 60) consumers is a daunting, uphill task, a never-ending path of earn, spend/consume, discard. The consumer becomes the consumed in this treadmill of work and consumption. The consumer is consumed by the process; the consumer is the product to be owned and controlled by the institutional entities that are at the forefront of this machine (government, business, religion - from the writings of Rick Warren himself: The Purpose Drive Life).

More importantly, however, is that this process leaves roadkill and that is as the consumer becomes the consumed, their health, relationships, inner soul, are destroyed. They are simply a cog in the grand machine. (p. 124). They become the failed consumers when they are no longer able to earn, purchase, and discard as expected. They are the throw-aways of society. Except they are not really thrown away. The discards are no longer considered people, true, but that makes them vulnerable to be used for even more evil purposes such as human traffiking, which is on the rise.

The case of the Lawrence King empire of Omaha which involved business, government, and the press, is a good example. King used a credit union as a cover, went into what was Boys/Girls Town to secure orphans (throw-aways) and made them available to higher ups in business and government for use in whatever manner. Thus the throw-aways become "useful" to the controlling machine in a less than human manner.

As an educator, the bigger picture of the failure of leadership to treat humanity humanely is an opportunity to provide a different type of opportunity for learners, wherever possible. Apathy, (p. 148) or not being responsive to the evils of the greater culture, is missing the opportunity to deal with the social realities of our society with the opportunities afforded in a classroom. A classroom need not be simply a breeding ground for the consumer society. Rather, each individual can be afforded opportunity for self-realization, self-management, and cooperative group engagement in learning.

Bauman mentions the Holocaust. Within the Holocaust, were the leaders who stood up to the Nazi machine and worked with others to save lives. 

If, indeed, modern liquidity is a modern holocaust, than those who see what is happening must stand up against the machine to save lives.

(p. 149) Democracy must be brought back to its original meaning. People must go from being consumers to citizens. Students must be recognized as life-long learners rather than as test scores (No Child Left Behind). 

I can't wait to read the next Bauman book.

Welcome!

Welcome to the L2 Class Culture Blog!

We are looking at culture from many points of view, beginning with the history of the actual word culture.

Stay tuned!