A recent article called "5 Stupid, Unfair and Sexist Things Expected of Men" by Greta Christina raises the important questions of how "sexism hurts men" and why feminists and pro-feminists should care, and goes on to discuss five key examples. I agree that this is an important conversation that men should be having with each other and with people of different genders, and her examples, though I might have chosen different ones and would have talked about them differently, are definitely important. However, I think the article falls down to the extent that it frames the issue largely as individual men wrestling with "expectations." It is more useful to see it as men who exist in specific social contexts struggling with norms that have material consequences far beyond how we as individuals listen to particular "cultural messages."
Those two terms -- "expectations" and "cultural messages" -- are how the article describes what men struggle against. Such messages act, it tells us, as "voices in the back of our heads" that "shap[e] our reflexes." The article urges us to seek "ways out of this, and around it, and through it" by "rejecting" these "cultural messages" or selectively embracing them. We need to "unload the...crap." We must start "unloading this junk." And to do that, at least some of us "need to consciously drag these messages into the light so we know how to recognize them and have an easier time tossing them overboard." In other words, the problem is some generally held ideas that many of us adopt even though they hurt or limit us, and we must decide (and, for many of us, work) to reject (or selectively embrace) them.
This captures one part of what goes on, I think, but it leaves a lot out. I would argue that unless we understand how what the article calls "expectations" and I would be more likely to call "norms" also play a role in the organization and regulation of our experiences in material ways and are not just ideas we can take up or reject, we will have a great deal of difficulty effectively resisting the ways in which masculinity harms and constrains us.
How We Relate To Expectations/Norms
Before I go on to talk about what this framework leaves out, I want to emphasize that "unloading this junk" -- how we relate to the content of the dominant norms of masculinity -- is important. In some moments, there is nothing standing between us and choosing to act in ways that more truly represent ourselves or that are in some sense more liberatory except how we understand ourselves in relation to these norms, and how we feel about these norms.
For instance, though I would go farther than the article and say this is not the only sort of pressure, how we feel about ourselves when we act deliberately counter to one of these dominant norms is important -- it shapes how likely we are to act in that way, and it determines the emotional cost to us of acting that way. A good example in both directions from my own experience is the first of the five "expectations" discussed in the article, the norm that men must be ready and willing to engage in physical fighting when it is called for. In most areas of my life, for whatever reason, I have tossed this one overboard. I don't understand myself in relation to it. I don't conform to it. Best of all, I don't feel bad or conflicted about not conforming to it. (This is, I acknowledge, eased by privilege of various sorts. My daily life contains basically no circumstances where my survival or thriving might be helped by the ability to engage in violence. And white middle-class masculinity has a strange, mediated relationship to this expectation, which in most circumstances for us makes it more about posturing, rhetoric, and vocal or tacit support for the violence done by/to others that maintains our privilege than about actually getting our own knuckles bruised.)
There is, however, one area of life where I still feel this expectation. That is around certain practices of street-based political militancy. My political analysis of such tactics is complicated and can be, for a variety of reasons, somewhat skeptical of them in the contexts in which I live, but I am definitely not dismissive of them. Yet I know that even if I thought them unequivocally called for in a given situation, I would have immense personal difficulty engaging in them. I know this. Yet this disjuncture and the lingering impact of this norm on my conception of what masculinity is/should be leads to moments of me feeling conflicted and inadequate.
Obviously, "unloading this junk" makes it easier to act as we wish in the world by reducing potential sites of inner conflict and self-criticism.
Another reason why taking up or rejecting these expectations of masculinity matters has to do with how we respond to the reactions of other people. Not all responses by other people grounded in these dominant norms are without significant material effect, but lots are -- a raised eyebrow, a tone of voice, a word of disagreement. At least when there is no other threat of consequences, how we react to these cues is largely up to us. And how we personally relate to the norms in question helps shape how we react to these minute signals of judgment. Can we just ignore them or do they profoundly effect us? Does the possibility of such reactions make us behave in ways that conform to norms of masculinity even when we would rather not? Or -- and this is the alternative that I struggle with on an ongoing basis -- does excessive sensitivity to such cues cause us to hide our true selves or to avoid certain contexts completely?
Organization
As the last example hints, these norms are not just ideas that we can choose to take up or reject. They don't just exist in some amorphous ether "out there" and in our own heads. They also shape the lives and actions of lots of other people and the ways in which institutions function, and those can have material impacts on us both subtle and gross. More specifically, they can shape the landscape in which we are making decisions about acting in the world, including decisions about how to enact masculinity, regardless of how we feel about the norm in question.
For instance, I was the primary, stay-at-home caregiver for L, my kid, from when he was 9 months old until he started going to school full-time. One strategy common for mothers with young children who are looking for support and solidarity is to attend either formally organized or informal public spaces frequented by other people in similar circumstances. I did lots of this too. Most of the parents in these places are women, though when I was doing it this was not as exclusively the case as it had been even ten years earlier. I never felt unwelcome and I had some very positive interactions over those years. Nonetheless, those spaces and the scope for interactions within them were organized by patriarchal norms around gender and caregiving, by patriarchal and heterosexist norms around gender and interpersonal relating, and by widespread social legacies of gendered violence. That meant that my experience of being a primary caregiver in and beyond those spaces was not just a reflection of my own feelings about the various norms that disdain men who take on that role. It was also shaped by the gendered organization of these spaces in ways that had nothing to do with how I felt. Again, these spaces were very positive and they definitely helped me make it through, but they just could not be a source of the same kind of support and solidarity that they are for (at least some) women. I don't say this to whine, and I acknowledge that my shyness and social reserve probably exacerbated things. Nor do I want to undermine the important role these spaces play for many women. It is just one example of how my experience of parenting was organized in gendered ways.
Or take another example, this time an illustration of a particular casual and seemingly innocuous interaction among men organized along the lines of dominant norms of masculinity. I'm thinking of a particular space constituted by myself and a handful of other men. Sometimes, the conversation turns to things like movies and books and music. Now, I have my own particular preferences around popular culture, which tend to be idiosyncratic and which sometimes conform to dominant understandings of "boy stuff" and sometimes do not. Moreover, I have particular ways that I talk about popular culture when I do not feel otherwise constrained, which involve close and critical readings and attention to lots of things that are almost universally not consistent with expectations of dominant masculinity outside a very restricted set of academic and activist spaces -- things like race and gender and queerness and struggle -- which this space is not. At times, in the space I'm talking about, I've found ways to engage with the conversation and inject some of what interests me. But at other moments, it has felt much less possible -- moments which feel like a self-conscious kind of bonding between other men who are present through talking about stereotypically masculine elements of popular culture in stereotypically masculine ways. In these moments, the fact that it is a part of the dominant commonsense that these are guys talking about guy things means that there is not much space to visibly deviate from the norms without seeming to be disagreeable and disruptive. That's not to say it is impossible. However, the landscape is such that someone wishing to comply totally with dominant norms about masculinity can do so in comfort and with minimal effort, whereas for someone for whom an authentic expression of self is not consistent with these norms has to choose between being less authentically present or engaging in particular kinds of work that the other people present do not have to do.
Obviously that is a very close dissection of one specific kind of moment, but gendered norms organize our interactions such that different moments like this happen all the time. Other oppressive norms function similarly. In fact, many situations in which the most superficially obvious impact of dominant norms around masculinity is the possibility of the putatively harmless cues of disagreement or disapproval are in fact organized in this way, so that even many of the areas in which our personal relationship to norms are most relevant are actually more complicated than that. Even if we can make ourselves not care what other people think, often deviating from dominant norms of masculinity imposes particular kinds of additional work in navigating situations. Individual instances of that work are not necessarily particularly onerous; having to do it all the time can become a significant burden.
Regulation
If the kinds of things discussed in the previous section are hard to see because of how integral they are to our lives, some of the examples in this section are so blatant that ignoring them is hard to understand.
The plain fact is that in certain workplaces, if you do not adhere to certain dominant standards of masculinity, you will face overt hostility or a silent limit on advancement. This is tightly tied to the barriers that women face in the same workplaces. If you deviate from masculine norms in certain ways on your recreational sports team, you may face overt hostility, and you may end up having to choose between the sport you love and behaving in ways consistent with your values and self. If you deviate from masculine norms too openly in many high schools, you may face ridicule and even the threat of violence. If you deviate from masculinity in certain ways, including but not limited to enjoying sexuality with other penis-bearing entities, you might get kicked out of your home. A non-trivial proportion of homeless youth are on the street because they came out and got kicked out. All of which is to say that if you consistently and overtly refuse to conform to some dominant norms of masculinity, and even challenge oppressive behaviours by other men, even if you don't face physical violence, you could still face ridicule and exclusion from social networks within a school, workplace, religious institution, or family.
In other words, refusing to comply with dominant norms around masculinity can result in very material punishment of various kinds. Not always, not for all renunciations, and in ways that are hugely dependent on intersecting experiences of privilege and oppression. But it happens.
Tying It All Together
All of this is to make the point that men struggling against what the article calls "expectations" and I call "norms" is not just a matter of changing our individual relationship to ideas. That matters, but it is only one part of the project. Instead, we need to be aware of the constant interaction among gender as an axis along which the field in which we act and make choices is organized, our conscious and not-so-conscious relationships to gendered norms, and the possibility of punitive responses to counter-normative enactments of masculinity.
Thinking about masculinity and the process of resisting its harms and constrictions in this way has a couple of implications. When we see the act of resistance as no longer solely centred on changing how we feel about amorphous "expectations," it makes a lot more sense to think about doing it with others instead of on our own. It is important to talk to other men, and to people of all genders, about these issues. And to find ways to act together to challenge the ways in which harmful norms organize our experiences and regulate us.
And it is important for men not to get so caught up in the ways in which patriarchal gender norms constrain and harm us that we lose sight of everything else. Even as we are constrained and harmed, our actions -- our practices of masculinity -- help shape the space that other people have to act. We, too, can play a regulatory role, even when we do not realize it. We are, in the context of patriarchal social relations, oppressors, even as we are harmed ourselves. So as we struggle to challenge the ways in which masculinity harms and limits us, we must simultaneously be conscious of acting deliberately to create space for others to act counter to patriarchal gender norms, including in ways that are very different from our own; and we must struggle to work against the ways we benefit from the oppressions of women and other gender-oppressed people.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Long Quote: How Male Violence Becomes Invisible
Linguistic shape-shifting is what Jackson Katz calls the nearly imperceptible practice of making men, boys, and masculinity disappear through how we use language. Katz explains that this "disappearing act" involves using gender-neutral language to obscure gender-specific events such as men's responsibility for violence. "We cannot achieve dramatic reductions in men's violence against women," Katz says, "until we can at least name the problem correctly."...
Katz explains that the way we structure language allows men to slip out of view. For instance, the sentence "Mary is a battered woman" emphasizes a woman's condition and diverts attention away from male violence. This lets men and our society collectively off the hook from taking a cold hard look at gendered violence. In his book The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women And How All Men Can Help, Katz cites linguist Julia Penelope's work in tracing the transition from male accountability to passive invisibility: 1) John beat Mary. 2) Mary was beaten by John. 3) Mary was beaten. 4) Mary was battered. 5) Mary is a battered woman. By the end not only has "John" disappeared from the equation, but "Mary's" identity is sealed by the status of her victimization.
This linguistic shape-shifting matters because the media frequently use passive descriptions when they report on male violence against women. This passive style reinforces ideas that domestic violence and sexual assault are "women's issues," and men are left out of the picture. "John left the conversation long ago, while Mary evolves into the active victim," Katz explains. "Victim-blaming is very pervasive in our society, because that is how our whole power structure is set up. We start asking why Mary put herself into a position to be beaten by John. If we really want to work on preventing sexual assault and male violence against women, we need to start asking questions about John, not Mary," Katz says. In other words, we need to shift the paradigm at the cultural level and start treating domestic violence and sexual assault as men's issues.
-- Shira Tarrant, Men and Feminism, pp. 99-100, emphases in original
Friday, July 23, 2010
Review: Liberalism and Hegemony
[Jean-François Constant and Michel Ducharme, editors. Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.]
About ten years ago, Canadian left historian Ian McKay published a proposal for reorienting the study of Canadian history. He called this proposal the "liberal order framework." In the years following, it generated significant interest among Canadian academic historians. This book republishes the original article by McKay and responses to it by about a dozen historians in different sub-disciplines and with diverse politics, as well as a lengthy response by McKay to some of the ways that his proposal has been criticized and taken up over the years.
The liberal order framework proposes examining the history of northern Turtle Island, particularly between about 1840 and about 1950, as a project of growing liberal rule. Much Canadian history written up until a few decades ago was grand nationalist narratives that erased much of what actually happened and the realities of many people who actually lived here. Much Canadian history written since that time has done important work of excavating erased stories and exploring the realities of oppressed peoples and neglected regions in northern Turtle Island, but has become increasingly fragmented. What McKay wants to do is encourage the specificities and insights of the latter period while regaining a limited version of the capacity to tell larger stories that dominated in the former. To do this, he does not propose some sort of new synthesis of Canadian history, but rather a set of tools that can allow for grounded, critical-realist explorations that create some limited and contingent but still real opportunities for drawing links among specificities. A key insight at the heart of this project is that everyone in this part of the world, especially after about 1840, had to deal with the growing project of rule (of hegemony) by settler elites and institutions, which had a distinctly liberal character.
I'm simplifying, but the essays responding to the liberal order framework take one or more of the following three stances. 1) Its treatment of liberalism is too simplistic and mechanical. 2) Hegemony is a problematic concept that simplifies how power and agency actually happen in the real world. 3) Here are some important ways of examining how power worked historically that aren't explicitly included in the liberal order framework, and here's how they do/don't/kind of/might fit with it. Overall, I think essays from all three categories make important points and need to be taken seriously, but I don't think any of the criticisms are sufficient to undermine the basic usefulness of the framework.
For instance, when it comes to liberalism, I think it is probably a fair criticism that the formulation of the framework presented in the original paper did not adequately reflect the complex and nuanced character of that particular strand of political thought. However, taking that complexity and nuance into account does not require fundamental change to the framework. Moreover, at least some of the criticisms in this camp seem to be quite idealist in character, and lose sight of the fact that McKay is making an argument not about the sum total of liberal discourse in 19th century Canada but about a particular project of rule that was integrated into and partially organized by particular, evolving strands of liberal ideology. There certainly remains room for debate about the key liberal features of the ruling project that became "Canada" and about their relationship to various liberalisms more generally, but it seems to me that fatal damage to the framework could only come from proving that there was no project of rule in northern Turtle Island in the 19th and early 20th centuries (highly unlikely) or that it was not liberal in character (moderately more possible). And I think that, along the latter line, it would be hard to get much further than shifting "liberal order" to "order with some significant liberal character, along with other things."
The criticisms of the framework's dependence on the Gramscian notion of hegemony are potentially much more serious, because -- and I suspect McKay wouldn't necessarily agree with this, but it feels this way to me -- hegemony is integral to its project in ways that particular understandings of liberalism are not. McKay's response to the responses takes an entire section to explore hegemony in some detail, an important theoretical section that I suspect I will return to in the future. He argues that most of the criticisms of hegemony in the volume are criticisms not responding to the latest and most sophisticated understandings of how Gramsci used the term, and certainly not to how he uses the term, but rather to particular, narrow ways the concept got taken up by orthodox marxists and cultural studies in the 1980s and 1990s. My own initial reaction to this strand of criticisms is not nearly as well informed as McKay's in terms of the latest Gramscian scholarship, but it has a similar shape -- that what I took to be the original understanding of hegemony (which is probably really the English-language orthodox marxist verison of the term) had limitations, but it offers a basis for a more grounded and complex version of how power-over happens that can easily draw from lots of other traditions. I would need to do a lot more thinking and a lot more reading to know if I agree with every detail of how McKay mobilizes the idea of hegemony to talk about relations of domination and subordination -- I suspect it does not do as much as I would like to foreground, or at least thoroughly integrate, relations that are organized differently than the ones that are of primary interest to him -- but it is, I think, basically useful.
The "what about this?" category of responses is a lot more internally varied than the others. For instance, a few of the essays look at power in ways informed by the work of Michel Foucault, and make some really important points about how ruling happened during the period of interest. I have the sense that there have been moments when at least some people have felt a great deal of polarization between Gramscian and Foucauldian ways of understanding power, and between marxism and post-whateverism more generally, but I've never understood why -- perhaps that is an indication of ignorance on my part, though it has always seemed to me that there is lots of scope for drawing on both families of traditions, even if it isn't always clear how. Perhaps my biggest concern emerging from McKay's response to the responses is its apparent dismissiveness of some of the "what about this?" suggestions. I can see the point of keeping the liberal order framework simple so it can be adapted to different uses more easily, but I think a greater attention to the ways it can hook into, say, examination of the changing forms of patriarchy during the same period would be important work for him to do.
Anyway. This is a fairly ponderous book, and I don't know how many people will want to read it from cover to cover. However, its essays provide a useful survey of different approaches, focuses, and politics within Canadian history. And, provided it is embraced in the grounded and provisional way that its originator recommends, I think the liberal order framework has a lot to offer.
[For a list of all book reviews on this site, click here.]
About ten years ago, Canadian left historian Ian McKay published a proposal for reorienting the study of Canadian history. He called this proposal the "liberal order framework." In the years following, it generated significant interest among Canadian academic historians. This book republishes the original article by McKay and responses to it by about a dozen historians in different sub-disciplines and with diverse politics, as well as a lengthy response by McKay to some of the ways that his proposal has been criticized and taken up over the years.
The liberal order framework proposes examining the history of northern Turtle Island, particularly between about 1840 and about 1950, as a project of growing liberal rule. Much Canadian history written up until a few decades ago was grand nationalist narratives that erased much of what actually happened and the realities of many people who actually lived here. Much Canadian history written since that time has done important work of excavating erased stories and exploring the realities of oppressed peoples and neglected regions in northern Turtle Island, but has become increasingly fragmented. What McKay wants to do is encourage the specificities and insights of the latter period while regaining a limited version of the capacity to tell larger stories that dominated in the former. To do this, he does not propose some sort of new synthesis of Canadian history, but rather a set of tools that can allow for grounded, critical-realist explorations that create some limited and contingent but still real opportunities for drawing links among specificities. A key insight at the heart of this project is that everyone in this part of the world, especially after about 1840, had to deal with the growing project of rule (of hegemony) by settler elites and institutions, which had a distinctly liberal character.
I'm simplifying, but the essays responding to the liberal order framework take one or more of the following three stances. 1) Its treatment of liberalism is too simplistic and mechanical. 2) Hegemony is a problematic concept that simplifies how power and agency actually happen in the real world. 3) Here are some important ways of examining how power worked historically that aren't explicitly included in the liberal order framework, and here's how they do/don't/kind of/might fit with it. Overall, I think essays from all three categories make important points and need to be taken seriously, but I don't think any of the criticisms are sufficient to undermine the basic usefulness of the framework.
For instance, when it comes to liberalism, I think it is probably a fair criticism that the formulation of the framework presented in the original paper did not adequately reflect the complex and nuanced character of that particular strand of political thought. However, taking that complexity and nuance into account does not require fundamental change to the framework. Moreover, at least some of the criticisms in this camp seem to be quite idealist in character, and lose sight of the fact that McKay is making an argument not about the sum total of liberal discourse in 19th century Canada but about a particular project of rule that was integrated into and partially organized by particular, evolving strands of liberal ideology. There certainly remains room for debate about the key liberal features of the ruling project that became "Canada" and about their relationship to various liberalisms more generally, but it seems to me that fatal damage to the framework could only come from proving that there was no project of rule in northern Turtle Island in the 19th and early 20th centuries (highly unlikely) or that it was not liberal in character (moderately more possible). And I think that, along the latter line, it would be hard to get much further than shifting "liberal order" to "order with some significant liberal character, along with other things."
The criticisms of the framework's dependence on the Gramscian notion of hegemony are potentially much more serious, because -- and I suspect McKay wouldn't necessarily agree with this, but it feels this way to me -- hegemony is integral to its project in ways that particular understandings of liberalism are not. McKay's response to the responses takes an entire section to explore hegemony in some detail, an important theoretical section that I suspect I will return to in the future. He argues that most of the criticisms of hegemony in the volume are criticisms not responding to the latest and most sophisticated understandings of how Gramsci used the term, and certainly not to how he uses the term, but rather to particular, narrow ways the concept got taken up by orthodox marxists and cultural studies in the 1980s and 1990s. My own initial reaction to this strand of criticisms is not nearly as well informed as McKay's in terms of the latest Gramscian scholarship, but it has a similar shape -- that what I took to be the original understanding of hegemony (which is probably really the English-language orthodox marxist verison of the term) had limitations, but it offers a basis for a more grounded and complex version of how power-over happens that can easily draw from lots of other traditions. I would need to do a lot more thinking and a lot more reading to know if I agree with every detail of how McKay mobilizes the idea of hegemony to talk about relations of domination and subordination -- I suspect it does not do as much as I would like to foreground, or at least thoroughly integrate, relations that are organized differently than the ones that are of primary interest to him -- but it is, I think, basically useful.
The "what about this?" category of responses is a lot more internally varied than the others. For instance, a few of the essays look at power in ways informed by the work of Michel Foucault, and make some really important points about how ruling happened during the period of interest. I have the sense that there have been moments when at least some people have felt a great deal of polarization between Gramscian and Foucauldian ways of understanding power, and between marxism and post-whateverism more generally, but I've never understood why -- perhaps that is an indication of ignorance on my part, though it has always seemed to me that there is lots of scope for drawing on both families of traditions, even if it isn't always clear how. Perhaps my biggest concern emerging from McKay's response to the responses is its apparent dismissiveness of some of the "what about this?" suggestions. I can see the point of keeping the liberal order framework simple so it can be adapted to different uses more easily, but I think a greater attention to the ways it can hook into, say, examination of the changing forms of patriarchy during the same period would be important work for him to do.
Anyway. This is a fairly ponderous book, and I don't know how many people will want to read it from cover to cover. However, its essays provide a useful survey of different approaches, focuses, and politics within Canadian history. And, provided it is embraced in the grounded and provisional way that its originator recommends, I think the liberal order framework has a lot to offer.
[For a list of all book reviews on this site, click here.]
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Queer Curriculum Conversations
As I've mentioned a time or two on this blog, last week was Sudbury Pride week. One of the events that I attended was called "Youth Speak Out!", which involved both queer youth and queer adult professionals who are employed in the school systems in Sudbury and in Toronto talking about the challenges that queer youth face.
At least at this point in its history, Sudbury is hardly overwhelmed with opportunities to have public, non-university-based discussions about important issues, so any time a group of people takes it upon themselves to put something like this together, they deserve to be applauded. I could probably come up with a few constructive suggestions about some of the details of how this event was put together, but I'm not going to do that.
I say that to make it clear that the following observation is not a criticism, just an observation about where the interests of the panelists and the audience took the discussion: Though the youth from Toronto made some important, strong statements about the need to pay attention to curriculum, the details of what might be wrong with curriculum in Ontario when it comes to queer youth did not actually get discussed very much. And I was a little disappointed about that.
I'm interested to know what queer youth have to say about curriculum. What is done well? What is done poorly? Where are they erased? What strategies have they developed to both privately and publically read themselves into the curriculum? How do different teachers take the curriculum up?
The reason I ask is, I suppose, connected to the sorts of things I had to think through in detail as I wrote my recently completed (but still not published) book on Canadian social movement history and history from below. Based on the reading and thinking and writing that I did over many years in the course of that work, I would suspect that there would be at least two different levels to understanding the problems of Ontario curriculum when it comes to queerness.
The first is obvious, and would probably have been more present in any discussion that happened at this event. It is most clearly about issues of representation. Are queer people ever visible in the unit on the family? In sex ed? In word problems in math text books? As writers or characters in English classes? In history?
Representation is important but when considered on its own it leaves much unchanged and unchallenged. When the focus is representation, the overall space remains centred on whatever is dominant or understood as "normal," while, in the spirit of liberal mutliculturalism, the Other gets to have a small space in which not to be erased. Who matters is left unchanged, and who is dominant is left unchallenged. But you over there can have your little bit of space to celebrate yourself as long as you behave and don't challenge the rest of us to rethink or change anything.
In that way, you might get a unit on the family that mentions the existence and even the acceptability of families with two moms or two dads. You might get some mention in sex ed that two people with the same bits can get it on. You might get a token novel by James Baldwin or a token short story with a lesbian protagonist in Grade 12 English. In history, there might be a passing mention of Pierre Trudeau's law reform in 1969 which, among many other things, decriminalized sex between men under certain circumstances, or there might be a call-out box in the text book that presents a one paragraph profile of a queer historical figure.
Part of what makes it tricky to talk about more than this is that even these things might be explosively controversial. Look at the rapid success that a small but well-funded group of right-wing malcontents had recently in Ontario in derailing new sex ed curriculum that contained modest but hardly earthshaking improvements, including around queer issues.
So a small space of non-erasure in the context of an overall environment that still centres the dominant group and subordinates the Other, while it may be important to fight for and important to defend, hardly solves the problem of curriculum that reflects and reproduces oppression.
What would it mean to have curriculum that did not just carve out a tokenistic niche for the visibility of queers (or Black people or women or indigenous peoples or people with mental illness or people with disabilities)? What would it mean to have a curriculum that put the Other at the centre? How could learning spaces be created that were multi-centric and that transcended liberal lets-just-get-along politics to name and challenge domination?
Following along with the focus of this post, what would it mean not just to have a picture of a family with two dads on the wall, but to approach the entire idea of family centering the hard-won insights and radical experiments of queers? What would it mean to do age-appropriate sexuality education that not only allowed for the existence of gay men and lesbians but that treated seriously the idea that everyone might benefit from thinking about sexuality starting from the insights and possibilities of queer cultures? How might discussions of literature be queered? What would it mean to examine Canadian history, from pre-contact times to the present, in ways that centred the standpoint of 21st century queer youth?
The fact that such questions are so close to unthinkable in the context of education as currently organized does not make the problem to which they are a response go away. The fact that retooling high school history curriculum to retell Canada in ways that centre a queer standpoint seems a total political non-starter even to those of us who think it would be a good thing is actually evidence for the seriousness of the problem -- for the ways in which domination is a core feature of how schooling is currently organized in ways that go far beyond questions of representation.
It seems to me that seriously attempting to end the marginalization of queerness and queer people in curriculum would result in more than just the transformation of specific subjects, however. It seems to me that if you were serious about starting to think about curriculum from the insights of historical and contemporary queer experience (or, really, from any other Othered experience), that would mean taking oppression and resistance as integral features of past and present much more seriously. It would inevitably mean a kind of openness and listening not just to one oppression but to all oppressions, and the seeking of interconnections among them. What would it mean to have schools that took seriously a commitment to see, name, and end violence and other forms of oppression against queer people, people of colour, indigenous people, women, people with disabilities? It seems that to really take that seriously -- not just a liberal response that substitutes representation for substance, but real serious responsiveness to the political and moral implications of such an understanding -- would result in a radically different understanding of the responsibilities of educators, learners, and institutions. I don't think schools could look anything like what they look like now.
So I'm not sure how much the discussion at the event would've touched upon issues that go beyond representation in curriculum. It's a hard conversation to have, particularly given how dominant norms make it so easy to see truly just and liberatory curriculum in truly just and liberatory institutions as ludicrous, as simply not practical. But I wonder, even if none of us there had a fully formed vision of what such a thing might look like, whether hints and pointers towards such a vision might have intruded into the discussion particularly from youth, in the face of all the self-imposed limits of practicality. What might those hints have looked like? Where might they have pointed?
At least at this point in its history, Sudbury is hardly overwhelmed with opportunities to have public, non-university-based discussions about important issues, so any time a group of people takes it upon themselves to put something like this together, they deserve to be applauded. I could probably come up with a few constructive suggestions about some of the details of how this event was put together, but I'm not going to do that.
I say that to make it clear that the following observation is not a criticism, just an observation about where the interests of the panelists and the audience took the discussion: Though the youth from Toronto made some important, strong statements about the need to pay attention to curriculum, the details of what might be wrong with curriculum in Ontario when it comes to queer youth did not actually get discussed very much. And I was a little disappointed about that.
I'm interested to know what queer youth have to say about curriculum. What is done well? What is done poorly? Where are they erased? What strategies have they developed to both privately and publically read themselves into the curriculum? How do different teachers take the curriculum up?
The reason I ask is, I suppose, connected to the sorts of things I had to think through in detail as I wrote my recently completed (but still not published) book on Canadian social movement history and history from below. Based on the reading and thinking and writing that I did over many years in the course of that work, I would suspect that there would be at least two different levels to understanding the problems of Ontario curriculum when it comes to queerness.
The first is obvious, and would probably have been more present in any discussion that happened at this event. It is most clearly about issues of representation. Are queer people ever visible in the unit on the family? In sex ed? In word problems in math text books? As writers or characters in English classes? In history?
Representation is important but when considered on its own it leaves much unchanged and unchallenged. When the focus is representation, the overall space remains centred on whatever is dominant or understood as "normal," while, in the spirit of liberal mutliculturalism, the Other gets to have a small space in which not to be erased. Who matters is left unchanged, and who is dominant is left unchallenged. But you over there can have your little bit of space to celebrate yourself as long as you behave and don't challenge the rest of us to rethink or change anything.
In that way, you might get a unit on the family that mentions the existence and even the acceptability of families with two moms or two dads. You might get some mention in sex ed that two people with the same bits can get it on. You might get a token novel by James Baldwin or a token short story with a lesbian protagonist in Grade 12 English. In history, there might be a passing mention of Pierre Trudeau's law reform in 1969 which, among many other things, decriminalized sex between men under certain circumstances, or there might be a call-out box in the text book that presents a one paragraph profile of a queer historical figure.
Part of what makes it tricky to talk about more than this is that even these things might be explosively controversial. Look at the rapid success that a small but well-funded group of right-wing malcontents had recently in Ontario in derailing new sex ed curriculum that contained modest but hardly earthshaking improvements, including around queer issues.
So a small space of non-erasure in the context of an overall environment that still centres the dominant group and subordinates the Other, while it may be important to fight for and important to defend, hardly solves the problem of curriculum that reflects and reproduces oppression.
What would it mean to have curriculum that did not just carve out a tokenistic niche for the visibility of queers (or Black people or women or indigenous peoples or people with mental illness or people with disabilities)? What would it mean to have a curriculum that put the Other at the centre? How could learning spaces be created that were multi-centric and that transcended liberal lets-just-get-along politics to name and challenge domination?
Following along with the focus of this post, what would it mean not just to have a picture of a family with two dads on the wall, but to approach the entire idea of family centering the hard-won insights and radical experiments of queers? What would it mean to do age-appropriate sexuality education that not only allowed for the existence of gay men and lesbians but that treated seriously the idea that everyone might benefit from thinking about sexuality starting from the insights and possibilities of queer cultures? How might discussions of literature be queered? What would it mean to examine Canadian history, from pre-contact times to the present, in ways that centred the standpoint of 21st century queer youth?
The fact that such questions are so close to unthinkable in the context of education as currently organized does not make the problem to which they are a response go away. The fact that retooling high school history curriculum to retell Canada in ways that centre a queer standpoint seems a total political non-starter even to those of us who think it would be a good thing is actually evidence for the seriousness of the problem -- for the ways in which domination is a core feature of how schooling is currently organized in ways that go far beyond questions of representation.
It seems to me that seriously attempting to end the marginalization of queerness and queer people in curriculum would result in more than just the transformation of specific subjects, however. It seems to me that if you were serious about starting to think about curriculum from the insights of historical and contemporary queer experience (or, really, from any other Othered experience), that would mean taking oppression and resistance as integral features of past and present much more seriously. It would inevitably mean a kind of openness and listening not just to one oppression but to all oppressions, and the seeking of interconnections among them. What would it mean to have schools that took seriously a commitment to see, name, and end violence and other forms of oppression against queer people, people of colour, indigenous people, women, people with disabilities? It seems that to really take that seriously -- not just a liberal response that substitutes representation for substance, but real serious responsiveness to the political and moral implications of such an understanding -- would result in a radically different understanding of the responsibilities of educators, learners, and institutions. I don't think schools could look anything like what they look like now.
So I'm not sure how much the discussion at the event would've touched upon issues that go beyond representation in curriculum. It's a hard conversation to have, particularly given how dominant norms make it so easy to see truly just and liberatory curriculum in truly just and liberatory institutions as ludicrous, as simply not practical. But I wonder, even if none of us there had a fully formed vision of what such a thing might look like, whether hints and pointers towards such a vision might have intruded into the discussion particularly from youth, in the face of all the self-imposed limits of practicality. What might those hints have looked like? Where might they have pointed?
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
One day longer? The Vale-Inco strike comes to a close
The following is an article by me on the recently ended Vale Inco strike. It was published at Linchpin.ca but I have also approached a number of other outlets to see if they might be interested in picking it up. It is, to my knowledge, the first major look back at the strike in the North American left media.
One day longer? The Vale-Inco strike comes to a close
by Scott Neigh
On July 7 and 8, 2010, striking members of United Steel Workers Local 6500 in Sudbury, Ontario, voted 75% in favour of a contract that ended a bitter strike against transnational mining giant Vale Inco. The 3300 strikers had been on the picket lines for almost one year (along with members of Local 6200 in Port Colborne, Ontario, who voted in favour by a similar margin).
Despite the immense effort and sacrifices made by workers over the course of the year-long ordeal, the settlement marks a defeat for a local with a reputation for strength in a town with a reputation for solidarity. It is a hard moment for those who are returning to work -- who endured so much and still lost significant ground -- but as the world faces the renewed neo-liberal assault promised by leaders at the recent G20 summit in Toronto, it is important to ask critical questions that might strengthen all of our struggles in the difficult times ahead.
The Strike
Though it was rarely framed this way during the dispute, this strike was all about neo--liberalism. The components of that agenda that are about reorganizing work, tying people's lives ever more tightly to the market, and taking gains away from ordinary people to the benefit of elites were reflected in the company's demands.
As has so often been the case with neo-liberal demands the world over, ordinary people could have chosen to acquiesce, but instead they chose to fight. Yet as has also happened in many places around the world, elites responded to this resistance by inflicting suffering on the bodies of those who resisted. For thousands of working-class families in Sudbury, this meant a year of doing without in significant ways. Some workers lost their homes. Other workers saw their relationships crumble.
It was also clear that the company intended to mount a serious attack on the union. In the earliest days of the strike, a former executive of Inco (as the company was known before being bought by Brazilian transnational Vale in 2006) was quoted anonymously in the Globe & Mail as saying, "They just want to break the union. They want to completely hit the reset button on the entire labour situation and the agreements that have been put in place in the past." There were occasions later in the strike where articles in the Canadian business press included in their headlines references to Vale trying to break the union, indicating that the business class in Canada did not take seriously the protestations by Vale spokespeople in those same articles that they were doing no such thing.
The company made skillful use of court injunctions in concert with the sophisticated surveillance, harassment, and legal capabilities of strikebreaking firm AFI to limit the possibility for effective, militant picketing. This was the first time since union recognition in the 1940s that a mining company in Sudbury has attempted to use scab labour to restart production during a strike. Though production remained significantly impaired throughout the strike, speculation was that within another two or three months, Vale would have been able to come close to full production using scabs.
The Deal
Nobody on the union side is happy with the contents of the settlement. It represents, according to one community activist I talked to, "a significant defeat." It contains some improvements over the offer made before the strike in a number of areas, but only very modest ones, and in the overall context of the company winning the substance of all of its major demands.
Though there is a small wage increase over the five-year life of the deal, the nickel price level at which the nickel bonus kicks in has been raised substantially and for the first time there will be a cap on the percentage of a worker's income that can come from the bonus. One rank-and-file worker that I talked to calculated that the new rules around the nickel bonus could lead to him losing as much as $30,000 per year compared to the height of the boom earlier this decade. The company was also successful in imposing new restrictions on seniority rights, greater freedom to contract out some kinds of work to non-union contractors, and a streamlined grievance procedure that will be less fair to workers. As well, all new hires will now be placed on a defined contribution pension plan, rather than the defined benefit plan in which current workers and retirees are enrolled. Some union activists see this is as one step in a larger plan by the company to get all of its current and former employees on the defined contribution scheme.
Beyond the deal itself, the back-to-work protocol has enraged many workers, not the least because it was not made available to them until almost the end of the voting on the deal. The terms include a six week period at the start of the contract in which the union has conceded immense power to the company to restructure the workforce. During this period, most union work can be done by non-union people and the company has great latitude to reassign and transfer workers. Most shockingly, the union has agreed to what one union activist, in only a slight exaggeration, has described as "no grievance procedure whatsoever" for those six weeks.
The company has also persisted in its attempts to weaken mobilizations by the union in future disputes by attacking its ability to protect members who have been active in strike activities. Though the back-to-work protocol called on both sides to drop all legal measures related to the strike, the company appears still to be proceeding with criminal charges against three individual workers and contempt proceedings for alleged violations of the picketing injunction against a number of others, claiming that the protocol only referred to legal actions against the union and its officials. Also, for what appears to be the first time involving a major union in recent Ontario history, nine workers who were fired during the course of the strike were not rehired as part of the deal. While the union has succeeded, with considerable effort, in getting the labour board to hear the cases of these workers and intends to pursue a constitutional case based on freedom of association, the refusal to rehire sets a dangerous precedent for other unions.
Raising Questions
Raising critical questions at such a difficult moment is a risky venture, particularly when they are being raised by someone like myself who is not one of those most directly impacted by the struggle. Yet it is also a moment in which learning from recent victories and defeats is crucial. Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney recently predicted a global "age of austerity," which was confirmed by the elite consensus announced at the G20 meetings in Toronto in June. Workers, communities, indigenous nations, women, queers, people living in poverty, the environment -- all will soon be facing reinvigorated neo-liberal assault.
Since the acceptance of Vale's offer I have interviewed a number of (mostly activist) members of Local 6500 as well as community activists who worked in support of the strike -- all of the former and some of the latter requested anonymity as a condition of the interviews. I have added this to the observations and informal conversations I had over the course of the strike. The picture that has emerged is of a struggle that was waged with traditional assumptions and tools in an environment and against an enemy that had changed in significant ways. One of the union activists told me, "We went into a gunfight carrying a pencil and they had laser beams."
At the very least, the loss of this strike at Vale Inco can teach us not to trust old assumptions about resistance in the current environment. And it may also point not just union and community spaces in Sudbury but also those across North America towards some of the questions that we must ask as we brace for what is to come.
Tactics
The dominant tactical orientation of Local 6500 seemed largely drawn from the mainstream traditions of industrial unions, particularly those with a more "business union" orientation, to borrow a label that one long-time community activist applied to the local. The kinds of preparations made by the leadership and their relationship to the other tactics that emerged over the course of the strike imply an assumption of the primacy of picket-line militancy and of a much more marginal role for other kinds of mobilizations.
There are a number of reasons why circumstances today mean that such tactics, which may have worked in decades past, could no longer seal the deal in Sudbury. For one thing, though Inco has long been a corporation with global reach (and a history of atrocious practices in the global South), Vale is simply a much larger company with much deeper pockets. Though the strike did impair production significantly and did cost the company money, the operations in Sudbury (and elsewhere in Canada) are such a small part of the company's empire that the level of harm that one group of workers can inflict by withdrawing their labour remains quite limited.
As well, the evolution of labour law in Ontario creates conditions that favour companies. While much local attention focused on the lack of legislation preventing the use of scabs -- something that was in force in the province briefly in the early 1990s, and has proven effective in other provinces as well -- it is far from the only problem. The combination of injunctions restricting picketing with firms like AFI, which specialize in strikebreaking and the harassment of workers, make the possibility of truly effective picketing even more remote.
Unions, including North America's remaining industrial strongholds, need to recognize that while picket lines are important, they are no longer the one and only site for struggle. As one union activist I talked to put it, "You won't win a strike on the picket line, but you sure can lose a strike on the picket line."
The question becomes how to respond to this reality. What tactics will work? What changes in organizational form, practices, and culture would support more effective tactics? Some of the questions in the following sections point towards some possible avenues for discussion by workers and other activists as we move forward.
Ordinary Members
Over the year that the Steel Workers were on the lines, at least two overlapping but distinct networks of rank-and-file activists emerged, as well as networks among the wives and partners of strikers. One of the worker-based networks was catalyzed as a result of some spaces and resources that came from the international level of the union and the other was a more spontaneous local formation.
These networks experimented with a range of tactics. They drew public attention to scabs. They protested at the hotels where AFI strikebreakers were staying. They successfully campaigned to get the city council to call on the province to pass anti-scab legislation. They rallied repeatedly against provincial and federal politicians, both from the city and farther afield. They mounted fast, short blockades of specific work sites at unexpected intervals. They participated in the G20 labour march. They protested businesses that were crossing the picket lines. Some wives and partners of strikers took on increasingly militant roles, both in some of these actions and in a few autonomously organized actions, as they were not vulnerable to the same threat of consequences as workers.
Discussions about what was effective and what was not still need to happen among the activists in question as the strike is debriefed, but what is clear is that ordinary members applying their energy, knowledge, skills, and willingness to take risks in creative, autonomous ways offered a greatly expanded scope for struggle compared to picket lines alone. There was a great hunger to try new things and to find approaches that might shift public opinion, political positions, and consequences for the company.
There are plenty of indications that much more could be done to make the most of this kind of struggle, whatever specifics workers decide are appropriate in a given instance. It was Gary Kinsman, a long-time activist and a scholar who has worked extensively on the history of Canadian social movements, including some work on Sudbury's labour movement, who described the local historically as a "business union" and also as "top-down" in its organization. One consequence of this is an internal culture that has not always fostered participatory governance or spaces and resources devoted to facilitating social movement-like mobilization of rank-and-file workers, though there have been moments of exception to this.
From the people I talked to, there seems to have been little attention to building this kind of capacity either in general in recent years or specifically in the lead-up to the strike. The international-sponsored training that lead to the formation of one of the networks happened shortly after the beginning of the strike, but from its content appeared to have been designed for use six months to a year before a strike was expected to occur.
During the strike itself, though the union had the information to mount all of the picket lines it needed from the beginning, it did not produce a coordinated means for mobilizing all of its members for other sorts of actions until several months into the strike. As well, at no point does there appear to have been anyone assigned to coordinate the strike-related activities originating from different spaces within the union. Information flow to and among members was another problem that activists identified. Despite the approval and even resources provided by the local leadership for rank-and-file activities at various points, activists I talked to identified a strong and consistent disconnection of the leadership from the activities organized by the rank-and-file networks.
What can be done to build on the experiences of ordinary members who became active in this strike? What can be done to create spaces and resources during non-strike periods that can build an ever-growing base of members with skills, political knowledge, and confidence to engage in the kinds of actions beyond the picket lines that can help unions win? What is the best role for leadership in doing this? What is the best role for rank-and-file networks? For the families of members?
International Links
Another key element in struggles against global companies (or other global institutions) is making links among those who face the same enemy in different places. North American unions are still in the early stages of figuring out how to do that effectively. The international level of the Steel Workers is, by all accounts, deeply involved in trying to make such linkages, and appeared to be doing a lot of that kind of work in relation to this strike. However, the knowledge among both community and union activists I spoke to in Sudbury was often vague on the details of this work. My sense is that a lot of good things were happening, but that, even when a few members of the local were directly involved, most members had little opportunity to learn about what was happening internationally or to get a practical sense of being involved in a global struggle in alliance with sisters and brothers half a world away.
It is also unclear what kind of barriers to effective solidarity might have been created by the choice at the beginning of the strike to politically frame it in strongly nationalist terms -- as Canadian workers and a Canadian community fighting a Brazilian enemy. Official statements after the initial period seemed to pull back somewhat from the blatant nationalism of the earliest period, but never completely, and it continued to exert a powerful influence over at least a segment of the membership. This is, of course, deeply connected to the troubling tendency of much of the broader left in North America to respond to neo-liberalism in nationalist ways.
How can substantive global links be forged among workers? How should international work be integrated into local struggles? What barriers do nationalist politics present for such work, as well as to developing deeper understandings of what neo-liberalism is and how it works?
Local Alliances
In the current strike, there were a number of barriers to effective mobilizations in the broader community in support of the strike. The following section examines those related to the community itself. However, a key one was, as far as many of us in the community could tell, that the union was not terribly interested or able to cultivate such support. In the early months, there were a number of instances of social justice groups (and quite a few more of individual activists) calling the union to ask what they could do, and never hearing back. Individual demonstrations of support were certainly encouraged, whether that was donating money or taking coffee to a picket line or putting a supportive sign in your window, but building relationships of alliance with activists and social justice groups in the community did not seem to be a high priority.
Again, this has some basis in history. Local 6500 does not have a strong record of building relationships of solidarity with social justice and community groups outside of the labour movement. For many community activists in Sudbury, this was epitomized by the decision of Local 6500 during the Days of Action campaign which swept across Ontario in the late 1990s in opposition to the right-wing provincial government of Premier Mike Harris to use its dominance at the Sudbury and District Labour Council to prevent that body from sponsoring the Sudbury Days of Action.
Given the importance of action beyond the picket line for winning against the neo-liberal agenda, how should unions relate to social justice groups in the community? What does reciprocal solidarity look like?
Beyond the Union
While the lack of attention to facilitating community alliances by the local was a significant factor, there was much less there to facilitate than in decades past. As one long-time community activist who requested anonymity sadly told me, this strike "debunked the myth that Sudbury is a union town."
According to Kinsman, "There was a lot of support for the strike, but a lot of it remained incredibly passive and inactive." This may explain why all of the union activists I talked to were moderately positive about the level of support they received in the community, while the community activists were uniformly negative.
Laurie McGauley is another long-time activist in the community, with many years of experience in the feminist movement and other social justice spaces. She said that in January, seven months into the strike, there was still "absolutely no community-lead support initiatives going on. Which is unusual for Sudbury in a big strike like this... It just blew my mind." So she and a few other people called together old contacts and allies, including many with roots in the women's movement, and put together a group called CANARYS, short for Community Activists Need Answers Regarding Your Safety. For the balance of the strike they held weekly meetings and regular events and protests, often highly theatrical ones, focusing on opposition to scab labour and the danger that under-trained workers posed to the community given the nature of the facilities they were operating. While community response to the group showed a hunger for ways to be more actively in support, no other centres of activity emerged in the community outside of the labour movement.
Even within the labour movement, the response was less vigorous than it could have been. While traditional forms of strike solidarity, like declarations of support and financial donations, began to arrive from other unions from Sudbury and from across the country soon after the strike began -- indeed, many unions were very generous over the course of the year -- it was also many months into the strike before a support committee focused on mobilizing people was formed at the local labour council.
The community activists I talked to offered a number of theories as to why the level of activism in support of the strike was so low in the broader community. Certainly the disinterest or inability of the union to engage with activism in the community was one. Another was the changes in the shape of the local economy -- once upon a time, the mining workforce involved tens of thousands of people, but the local was only 3300 strong at the start of the strike, so the impact on the community was much less.
McGauley also talked about the loss of a culture of activism in the city, which as recently as ten years ago was very vibrant. She noted that the incredible influence of the company, including its generous funding of many local recreational, cultural, and environmental initiatives, meant that many people were hesitant about coming out publicly against Vale. Other community activists pointed towards the material and cultural impacts of neo-liberalism. The former means that more people are having to put more time into making ends meet and so have less time for activism, and the latter tends to push a more atomized and individualistic view of the world that has little space for solidarity, social justice, or social change.
This seems to be consistent with the experience of many other communities across Canada. While there are signs in Canada's largest cities of the beginnings of a modest uptick in social movement activity, at least in specific sectors, this does not seem to have reached much beyond Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
What must be done to recompose sites of struggle in Sudbury and across the continent? What can we do to reconstitute a culture of activism? What questions do we need to be asking and what conversations do we need to be having to begin preparing for the renewed push for neo-liberalism promised by the G20?
Looking Forward
It is difficult to ask questions arising from a defeat without encouraging pessimism. Some community activists are worried that this defeat for Local 6500 -- an organization with a reputation for strength greater than any sort of people's organization that most of us in North America can dream of belonging to -- might discourage others in Sudbury and others in the larger labour movement from actively resisting when neo-liberalism comes knocking. This is certainly possible. But it does not have to be.
At the most basic level, the company wanted to break the union, break the workers, and it failed. The union lost, but it remains a powerful tool that the workers can use to fight another day.
Another consequence of this struggle was that it created activists. One union militant that I talked to estimated that there was a core of between 200 and 300 activists who were consistently involved throughout the strike. Some of these will not stay involved, of course, but many will. They will become a nucleus of struggle against the company and, potentially, of struggles against neo-liberalism more broadly in the Sudbury community for decades to come. In this way, the strike has left Sudbury stronger.
The strike also presented glimpses of possibility, little moments of anticipation of what might be. One such moment was a mass direct action near the end of the strike. After talks broke down yet again, a segment of the rank-and-file networks put up blockades at the main entrances to two company facilities with several hundred participants that lasted for multiple days. Many members who had not before been active in the strike outside of picket duty saw this as a chance to do something powerful, and they joined in. The company and the police insisted the action was in violation of the picketing injunction, yet the angry strikers, their families, and supporters from the community remained, even with the threat of police intervention. Yes, when senior union leadership intervened to end the action, there was great anger from many of the rank-and-file workers who were participating, and significant demoralization and demobilization afterward. But it was also a taste of the power of ordinary people, of what resistance in a Sudbury of reinvigorated movements might look like.
What if this kind of tactic was begun not in the late days of the strike but early on? What if there was a longstanding culture of activism within the local to draw on, and vibrant, already-existing rank-and-file networks? What if there were strong links to a highly mobilized community? In such circumstances, it is easy to imagine not 300 people but 3000 people willing to be present even in the face of police disapproval, which would have changed the balance of forces significantly. And what if that was coupled to strong bonds with workers overseas? Coordinated action against Vale at multiple sites around the world becomes imaginable.
It is impossible to know in any definitive way what could have turned a defeat into a victory. However, in thinking about the future, it is important to keep in mind that the speculations in the previous paragraph are not just imaginable, but possible. In fact, not only is the capacity to engage in actions like that possible, it may even be necessary as the "age of austerity" descends. The only way to get there is to begin asking questions like those arising from the Vale Inco strike -- questions about how to create participatory organizations; about how to build a movement by creating spaces and using resources such that all of us can grow in confidence, knowledge, and skills, to better act autonomously and creatively; about how to recreate an activist culture in smaller centres across the continent; about how to build real alliances around the world and across different sectors and social locations close to home. Wherever we are, we must begin talking about such things, so that we can move forward together.
Scott Neigh is a writer, activist, and parent who lives in Sudbury, Ontario. For more of his writing, visit http://scottneigh.blogspot.com. This article appeared originally on Linchpin.ca.
One day longer? The Vale-Inco strike comes to a close
by Scott Neigh
On July 7 and 8, 2010, striking members of United Steel Workers Local 6500 in Sudbury, Ontario, voted 75% in favour of a contract that ended a bitter strike against transnational mining giant Vale Inco. The 3300 strikers had been on the picket lines for almost one year (along with members of Local 6200 in Port Colborne, Ontario, who voted in favour by a similar margin).
Despite the immense effort and sacrifices made by workers over the course of the year-long ordeal, the settlement marks a defeat for a local with a reputation for strength in a town with a reputation for solidarity. It is a hard moment for those who are returning to work -- who endured so much and still lost significant ground -- but as the world faces the renewed neo-liberal assault promised by leaders at the recent G20 summit in Toronto, it is important to ask critical questions that might strengthen all of our struggles in the difficult times ahead.
The Strike
Though it was rarely framed this way during the dispute, this strike was all about neo--liberalism. The components of that agenda that are about reorganizing work, tying people's lives ever more tightly to the market, and taking gains away from ordinary people to the benefit of elites were reflected in the company's demands.
As has so often been the case with neo-liberal demands the world over, ordinary people could have chosen to acquiesce, but instead they chose to fight. Yet as has also happened in many places around the world, elites responded to this resistance by inflicting suffering on the bodies of those who resisted. For thousands of working-class families in Sudbury, this meant a year of doing without in significant ways. Some workers lost their homes. Other workers saw their relationships crumble.
It was also clear that the company intended to mount a serious attack on the union. In the earliest days of the strike, a former executive of Inco (as the company was known before being bought by Brazilian transnational Vale in 2006) was quoted anonymously in the Globe & Mail as saying, "They just want to break the union. They want to completely hit the reset button on the entire labour situation and the agreements that have been put in place in the past." There were occasions later in the strike where articles in the Canadian business press included in their headlines references to Vale trying to break the union, indicating that the business class in Canada did not take seriously the protestations by Vale spokespeople in those same articles that they were doing no such thing.
The company made skillful use of court injunctions in concert with the sophisticated surveillance, harassment, and legal capabilities of strikebreaking firm AFI to limit the possibility for effective, militant picketing. This was the first time since union recognition in the 1940s that a mining company in Sudbury has attempted to use scab labour to restart production during a strike. Though production remained significantly impaired throughout the strike, speculation was that within another two or three months, Vale would have been able to come close to full production using scabs.
The Deal
Nobody on the union side is happy with the contents of the settlement. It represents, according to one community activist I talked to, "a significant defeat." It contains some improvements over the offer made before the strike in a number of areas, but only very modest ones, and in the overall context of the company winning the substance of all of its major demands.
Though there is a small wage increase over the five-year life of the deal, the nickel price level at which the nickel bonus kicks in has been raised substantially and for the first time there will be a cap on the percentage of a worker's income that can come from the bonus. One rank-and-file worker that I talked to calculated that the new rules around the nickel bonus could lead to him losing as much as $30,000 per year compared to the height of the boom earlier this decade. The company was also successful in imposing new restrictions on seniority rights, greater freedom to contract out some kinds of work to non-union contractors, and a streamlined grievance procedure that will be less fair to workers. As well, all new hires will now be placed on a defined contribution pension plan, rather than the defined benefit plan in which current workers and retirees are enrolled. Some union activists see this is as one step in a larger plan by the company to get all of its current and former employees on the defined contribution scheme.
Beyond the deal itself, the back-to-work protocol has enraged many workers, not the least because it was not made available to them until almost the end of the voting on the deal. The terms include a six week period at the start of the contract in which the union has conceded immense power to the company to restructure the workforce. During this period, most union work can be done by non-union people and the company has great latitude to reassign and transfer workers. Most shockingly, the union has agreed to what one union activist, in only a slight exaggeration, has described as "no grievance procedure whatsoever" for those six weeks.
The company has also persisted in its attempts to weaken mobilizations by the union in future disputes by attacking its ability to protect members who have been active in strike activities. Though the back-to-work protocol called on both sides to drop all legal measures related to the strike, the company appears still to be proceeding with criminal charges against three individual workers and contempt proceedings for alleged violations of the picketing injunction against a number of others, claiming that the protocol only referred to legal actions against the union and its officials. Also, for what appears to be the first time involving a major union in recent Ontario history, nine workers who were fired during the course of the strike were not rehired as part of the deal. While the union has succeeded, with considerable effort, in getting the labour board to hear the cases of these workers and intends to pursue a constitutional case based on freedom of association, the refusal to rehire sets a dangerous precedent for other unions.
Raising Questions
Raising critical questions at such a difficult moment is a risky venture, particularly when they are being raised by someone like myself who is not one of those most directly impacted by the struggle. Yet it is also a moment in which learning from recent victories and defeats is crucial. Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney recently predicted a global "age of austerity," which was confirmed by the elite consensus announced at the G20 meetings in Toronto in June. Workers, communities, indigenous nations, women, queers, people living in poverty, the environment -- all will soon be facing reinvigorated neo-liberal assault.
Since the acceptance of Vale's offer I have interviewed a number of (mostly activist) members of Local 6500 as well as community activists who worked in support of the strike -- all of the former and some of the latter requested anonymity as a condition of the interviews. I have added this to the observations and informal conversations I had over the course of the strike. The picture that has emerged is of a struggle that was waged with traditional assumptions and tools in an environment and against an enemy that had changed in significant ways. One of the union activists told me, "We went into a gunfight carrying a pencil and they had laser beams."
At the very least, the loss of this strike at Vale Inco can teach us not to trust old assumptions about resistance in the current environment. And it may also point not just union and community spaces in Sudbury but also those across North America towards some of the questions that we must ask as we brace for what is to come.
Tactics
The dominant tactical orientation of Local 6500 seemed largely drawn from the mainstream traditions of industrial unions, particularly those with a more "business union" orientation, to borrow a label that one long-time community activist applied to the local. The kinds of preparations made by the leadership and their relationship to the other tactics that emerged over the course of the strike imply an assumption of the primacy of picket-line militancy and of a much more marginal role for other kinds of mobilizations.
There are a number of reasons why circumstances today mean that such tactics, which may have worked in decades past, could no longer seal the deal in Sudbury. For one thing, though Inco has long been a corporation with global reach (and a history of atrocious practices in the global South), Vale is simply a much larger company with much deeper pockets. Though the strike did impair production significantly and did cost the company money, the operations in Sudbury (and elsewhere in Canada) are such a small part of the company's empire that the level of harm that one group of workers can inflict by withdrawing their labour remains quite limited.
As well, the evolution of labour law in Ontario creates conditions that favour companies. While much local attention focused on the lack of legislation preventing the use of scabs -- something that was in force in the province briefly in the early 1990s, and has proven effective in other provinces as well -- it is far from the only problem. The combination of injunctions restricting picketing with firms like AFI, which specialize in strikebreaking and the harassment of workers, make the possibility of truly effective picketing even more remote.
Unions, including North America's remaining industrial strongholds, need to recognize that while picket lines are important, they are no longer the one and only site for struggle. As one union activist I talked to put it, "You won't win a strike on the picket line, but you sure can lose a strike on the picket line."
The question becomes how to respond to this reality. What tactics will work? What changes in organizational form, practices, and culture would support more effective tactics? Some of the questions in the following sections point towards some possible avenues for discussion by workers and other activists as we move forward.
Ordinary Members
Over the year that the Steel Workers were on the lines, at least two overlapping but distinct networks of rank-and-file activists emerged, as well as networks among the wives and partners of strikers. One of the worker-based networks was catalyzed as a result of some spaces and resources that came from the international level of the union and the other was a more spontaneous local formation.
These networks experimented with a range of tactics. They drew public attention to scabs. They protested at the hotels where AFI strikebreakers were staying. They successfully campaigned to get the city council to call on the province to pass anti-scab legislation. They rallied repeatedly against provincial and federal politicians, both from the city and farther afield. They mounted fast, short blockades of specific work sites at unexpected intervals. They participated in the G20 labour march. They protested businesses that were crossing the picket lines. Some wives and partners of strikers took on increasingly militant roles, both in some of these actions and in a few autonomously organized actions, as they were not vulnerable to the same threat of consequences as workers.
Discussions about what was effective and what was not still need to happen among the activists in question as the strike is debriefed, but what is clear is that ordinary members applying their energy, knowledge, skills, and willingness to take risks in creative, autonomous ways offered a greatly expanded scope for struggle compared to picket lines alone. There was a great hunger to try new things and to find approaches that might shift public opinion, political positions, and consequences for the company.
There are plenty of indications that much more could be done to make the most of this kind of struggle, whatever specifics workers decide are appropriate in a given instance. It was Gary Kinsman, a long-time activist and a scholar who has worked extensively on the history of Canadian social movements, including some work on Sudbury's labour movement, who described the local historically as a "business union" and also as "top-down" in its organization. One consequence of this is an internal culture that has not always fostered participatory governance or spaces and resources devoted to facilitating social movement-like mobilization of rank-and-file workers, though there have been moments of exception to this.
From the people I talked to, there seems to have been little attention to building this kind of capacity either in general in recent years or specifically in the lead-up to the strike. The international-sponsored training that lead to the formation of one of the networks happened shortly after the beginning of the strike, but from its content appeared to have been designed for use six months to a year before a strike was expected to occur.
During the strike itself, though the union had the information to mount all of the picket lines it needed from the beginning, it did not produce a coordinated means for mobilizing all of its members for other sorts of actions until several months into the strike. As well, at no point does there appear to have been anyone assigned to coordinate the strike-related activities originating from different spaces within the union. Information flow to and among members was another problem that activists identified. Despite the approval and even resources provided by the local leadership for rank-and-file activities at various points, activists I talked to identified a strong and consistent disconnection of the leadership from the activities organized by the rank-and-file networks.
What can be done to build on the experiences of ordinary members who became active in this strike? What can be done to create spaces and resources during non-strike periods that can build an ever-growing base of members with skills, political knowledge, and confidence to engage in the kinds of actions beyond the picket lines that can help unions win? What is the best role for leadership in doing this? What is the best role for rank-and-file networks? For the families of members?
International Links
Another key element in struggles against global companies (or other global institutions) is making links among those who face the same enemy in different places. North American unions are still in the early stages of figuring out how to do that effectively. The international level of the Steel Workers is, by all accounts, deeply involved in trying to make such linkages, and appeared to be doing a lot of that kind of work in relation to this strike. However, the knowledge among both community and union activists I spoke to in Sudbury was often vague on the details of this work. My sense is that a lot of good things were happening, but that, even when a few members of the local were directly involved, most members had little opportunity to learn about what was happening internationally or to get a practical sense of being involved in a global struggle in alliance with sisters and brothers half a world away.
It is also unclear what kind of barriers to effective solidarity might have been created by the choice at the beginning of the strike to politically frame it in strongly nationalist terms -- as Canadian workers and a Canadian community fighting a Brazilian enemy. Official statements after the initial period seemed to pull back somewhat from the blatant nationalism of the earliest period, but never completely, and it continued to exert a powerful influence over at least a segment of the membership. This is, of course, deeply connected to the troubling tendency of much of the broader left in North America to respond to neo-liberalism in nationalist ways.
How can substantive global links be forged among workers? How should international work be integrated into local struggles? What barriers do nationalist politics present for such work, as well as to developing deeper understandings of what neo-liberalism is and how it works?
Local Alliances
In the current strike, there were a number of barriers to effective mobilizations in the broader community in support of the strike. The following section examines those related to the community itself. However, a key one was, as far as many of us in the community could tell, that the union was not terribly interested or able to cultivate such support. In the early months, there were a number of instances of social justice groups (and quite a few more of individual activists) calling the union to ask what they could do, and never hearing back. Individual demonstrations of support were certainly encouraged, whether that was donating money or taking coffee to a picket line or putting a supportive sign in your window, but building relationships of alliance with activists and social justice groups in the community did not seem to be a high priority.
Again, this has some basis in history. Local 6500 does not have a strong record of building relationships of solidarity with social justice and community groups outside of the labour movement. For many community activists in Sudbury, this was epitomized by the decision of Local 6500 during the Days of Action campaign which swept across Ontario in the late 1990s in opposition to the right-wing provincial government of Premier Mike Harris to use its dominance at the Sudbury and District Labour Council to prevent that body from sponsoring the Sudbury Days of Action.
Given the importance of action beyond the picket line for winning against the neo-liberal agenda, how should unions relate to social justice groups in the community? What does reciprocal solidarity look like?
Beyond the Union
While the lack of attention to facilitating community alliances by the local was a significant factor, there was much less there to facilitate than in decades past. As one long-time community activist who requested anonymity sadly told me, this strike "debunked the myth that Sudbury is a union town."
According to Kinsman, "There was a lot of support for the strike, but a lot of it remained incredibly passive and inactive." This may explain why all of the union activists I talked to were moderately positive about the level of support they received in the community, while the community activists were uniformly negative.
Laurie McGauley is another long-time activist in the community, with many years of experience in the feminist movement and other social justice spaces. She said that in January, seven months into the strike, there was still "absolutely no community-lead support initiatives going on. Which is unusual for Sudbury in a big strike like this... It just blew my mind." So she and a few other people called together old contacts and allies, including many with roots in the women's movement, and put together a group called CANARYS, short for Community Activists Need Answers Regarding Your Safety. For the balance of the strike they held weekly meetings and regular events and protests, often highly theatrical ones, focusing on opposition to scab labour and the danger that under-trained workers posed to the community given the nature of the facilities they were operating. While community response to the group showed a hunger for ways to be more actively in support, no other centres of activity emerged in the community outside of the labour movement.
Even within the labour movement, the response was less vigorous than it could have been. While traditional forms of strike solidarity, like declarations of support and financial donations, began to arrive from other unions from Sudbury and from across the country soon after the strike began -- indeed, many unions were very generous over the course of the year -- it was also many months into the strike before a support committee focused on mobilizing people was formed at the local labour council.
The community activists I talked to offered a number of theories as to why the level of activism in support of the strike was so low in the broader community. Certainly the disinterest or inability of the union to engage with activism in the community was one. Another was the changes in the shape of the local economy -- once upon a time, the mining workforce involved tens of thousands of people, but the local was only 3300 strong at the start of the strike, so the impact on the community was much less.
McGauley also talked about the loss of a culture of activism in the city, which as recently as ten years ago was very vibrant. She noted that the incredible influence of the company, including its generous funding of many local recreational, cultural, and environmental initiatives, meant that many people were hesitant about coming out publicly against Vale. Other community activists pointed towards the material and cultural impacts of neo-liberalism. The former means that more people are having to put more time into making ends meet and so have less time for activism, and the latter tends to push a more atomized and individualistic view of the world that has little space for solidarity, social justice, or social change.
This seems to be consistent with the experience of many other communities across Canada. While there are signs in Canada's largest cities of the beginnings of a modest uptick in social movement activity, at least in specific sectors, this does not seem to have reached much beyond Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
What must be done to recompose sites of struggle in Sudbury and across the continent? What can we do to reconstitute a culture of activism? What questions do we need to be asking and what conversations do we need to be having to begin preparing for the renewed push for neo-liberalism promised by the G20?
Looking Forward
It is difficult to ask questions arising from a defeat without encouraging pessimism. Some community activists are worried that this defeat for Local 6500 -- an organization with a reputation for strength greater than any sort of people's organization that most of us in North America can dream of belonging to -- might discourage others in Sudbury and others in the larger labour movement from actively resisting when neo-liberalism comes knocking. This is certainly possible. But it does not have to be.
At the most basic level, the company wanted to break the union, break the workers, and it failed. The union lost, but it remains a powerful tool that the workers can use to fight another day.
Another consequence of this struggle was that it created activists. One union militant that I talked to estimated that there was a core of between 200 and 300 activists who were consistently involved throughout the strike. Some of these will not stay involved, of course, but many will. They will become a nucleus of struggle against the company and, potentially, of struggles against neo-liberalism more broadly in the Sudbury community for decades to come. In this way, the strike has left Sudbury stronger.
The strike also presented glimpses of possibility, little moments of anticipation of what might be. One such moment was a mass direct action near the end of the strike. After talks broke down yet again, a segment of the rank-and-file networks put up blockades at the main entrances to two company facilities with several hundred participants that lasted for multiple days. Many members who had not before been active in the strike outside of picket duty saw this as a chance to do something powerful, and they joined in. The company and the police insisted the action was in violation of the picketing injunction, yet the angry strikers, their families, and supporters from the community remained, even with the threat of police intervention. Yes, when senior union leadership intervened to end the action, there was great anger from many of the rank-and-file workers who were participating, and significant demoralization and demobilization afterward. But it was also a taste of the power of ordinary people, of what resistance in a Sudbury of reinvigorated movements might look like.
What if this kind of tactic was begun not in the late days of the strike but early on? What if there was a longstanding culture of activism within the local to draw on, and vibrant, already-existing rank-and-file networks? What if there were strong links to a highly mobilized community? In such circumstances, it is easy to imagine not 300 people but 3000 people willing to be present even in the face of police disapproval, which would have changed the balance of forces significantly. And what if that was coupled to strong bonds with workers overseas? Coordinated action against Vale at multiple sites around the world becomes imaginable.
It is impossible to know in any definitive way what could have turned a defeat into a victory. However, in thinking about the future, it is important to keep in mind that the speculations in the previous paragraph are not just imaginable, but possible. In fact, not only is the capacity to engage in actions like that possible, it may even be necessary as the "age of austerity" descends. The only way to get there is to begin asking questions like those arising from the Vale Inco strike -- questions about how to create participatory organizations; about how to build a movement by creating spaces and using resources such that all of us can grow in confidence, knowledge, and skills, to better act autonomously and creatively; about how to recreate an activist culture in smaller centres across the continent; about how to build real alliances around the world and across different sectors and social locations close to home. Wherever we are, we must begin talking about such things, so that we can move forward together.
Scott Neigh is a writer, activist, and parent who lives in Sudbury, Ontario. For more of his writing, visit http://scottneigh.blogspot.com. This article appeared originally on Linchpin.ca.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Critical Navigation of Mainstream Schools, Part 2
At long last, I'm returning to the topic of schooling. I hadn't meant to let it drag out this long, but a week-long trip, another week full of events, and an unexpected but urgent writing project got in the way.
As a few of you might recall, I began this series with a short post summarizing my rather fundamental objections to mainstream schooling. I followed up with a post explaining why, even though unschooling would be my approach of choice for my six year-old, for L nonetheless attends a mainstream school.
My next task was to reflect on whether this circumstance -- serious objections but participation nonetheless -- could be met with any kind of deliberate action on my part to make things better or change things. As I was writing about this, it became clear that it was more than one post's worth of material, so I restricted myself to the things that one household could do. My answers included doing things in the rest of life that are kid-focused and that ameliorate or inoculate against some kinds of harm that schools do, though this is unsatisfying as it amounts to saying I will keep doing what I would be trying to do anyway. It is also useful, I think, to affirm kids' own critical insights into schools as institutions, and to encourage further critical thought about them. And it is useful, though frustratingly partial, to think about the spaces that parents have to make decisions about how we are mobilized by the school into doing particular kinds of work that support schooling, and how we can best use that space to make decisions that protect and support our children. All of these answers are important, I think, but I don't find any of them all that satisfying.
This post is to map out some of the possibilities for responding more collectively. A response organized with other parents and community members has the potential to go much farther than one household alone -- the more people whose power-to-do is being co-operatively expended, the more that can be accomplished. At the same time, working in groups also comes with other kinds of limitations. I should also add that all of the single-household kinds of things named in the previous post and summarized in the previous paragraph are things that I do, while I have not yet had the opportunity to experiment with any of the more collective approaches I talk about in this post.
The first thing that comes to mind is actually an escape from the tension of objecting but participating through some kind of co-operatively run unschooling venture or alternative school. There are models of doing this that excite me, and if such a thing happens in Sudbury in the future I will definitely consider sinking energy into it. However, that is an enormous undertaking, and I don't have the sense that it is possible at this time. In order to seriously consider it, I would probably have to make organizing to make it happen the major focus of my time for the forseeable future, in a way that I just do not think I could do (as described in the post on why we don't unschool L.) However, back in the fall there was a brief glimmer of possibility for this alternative when a handful of parents that I know with kids of different ages who are in different schools experienced simultaneous disgruntlement. We never did actually sit down and talk about it all together and circumstances have changed to make it unlikely that we will at this point, but it was still an interesting moment.
Another possibility is organizing to change mainstream schools. I would, of course, be interested to hear about other people's experiences of trying to do this.
It seems to me that there are a few different possible approaches. There is, for instance, a province-wide parents' educational reform organization whose name I can't recall at the moment that has, as far as I remember, a vague mix of liberal and social democratic politics. Because I can't remember the name, I can't go to its web site and say more specific things about its goals. However, my sense is that an organization of that sort probably does some useful things and could possibly, through organizing inside of it, be pushed to do more useful things, but that, given the nature of my politics around schools, it would probably be an outlet for political energy with many, many frustrations for me.
It would also be possible to try and organize parents. This could be done at the level of the individual school -- I could go out and talk up the parents of kids at L's school. Even aside from how difficult shy, reserved me would find that particular mode of organizing, I'm not sure how productive it would be. I suspect that, at best, it would result in a formation with politics similar to the provincial organization I mentioned above. It is also my sense that the school system in Ontario is set up, probably with a certain deliberateness, to make it next to impossible for organizing focused on one school to achieve much of anything. Much more power lies at the level of the school board or the Ministry of Education. Nonetheless, it is not impossible that some useful things could be achieved this way. Again, there was an instance in the fall of shared frustration around a particular issue that almost resulted in conversations that might have lead to something further, but then the conversations didn't quite happen.
Another possibility would be beginning from networks of people in the city who have (vaguely) similar politics and finding parents interested in organizing at the board level. Again, I have lots of questions about political limitations and about the barriers built into the system to creating more than nominal change. The fact that Sudbury has four different school boards based on the French/English and public/Catholic divides makes it all that much more difficult. And if a few of us were to get together to do this, what would our agenda be? What impact would it actually end up having, even if we were successful, on the lives of our children?
I think all of these things are potentially interesting and useful despite their limitations, but none leap out at me and make me think, "Yes, this would be a great use for my political energy."
The final possibility would also, I think, be most effectively based around parents who have some political affinity regardless of what schools their children go to. And that would be for parents to come together to organize events aimed at children in the community. This is, I think, the possibility that interests me the most. These events would have some kind of pedagogical intent related to social justice and environmental issues, but they would attempt to be fun rather than heavy handed and didactic. For instance, with Sudbury Pride week just finished, one possibility that occurs to me is some sort of collaboration between this hypothetical group of parents and the Pride committee to put on some sort of pro-queer event for kids. Or maybe a collaboration with the rockin' local arts-and-activism group Myths and Mirrors. The thing is, I've only ever been involved in planning public education events for adults, so I have no idea what an event for kids of a broad range of ages might look like. And, in the grand scheme of things, no real sense of how useful a series of, say, six such events over the course of a year might be.
Any ideas?
As a few of you might recall, I began this series with a short post summarizing my rather fundamental objections to mainstream schooling. I followed up with a post explaining why, even though unschooling would be my approach of choice for my six year-old, for L nonetheless attends a mainstream school.
My next task was to reflect on whether this circumstance -- serious objections but participation nonetheless -- could be met with any kind of deliberate action on my part to make things better or change things. As I was writing about this, it became clear that it was more than one post's worth of material, so I restricted myself to the things that one household could do. My answers included doing things in the rest of life that are kid-focused and that ameliorate or inoculate against some kinds of harm that schools do, though this is unsatisfying as it amounts to saying I will keep doing what I would be trying to do anyway. It is also useful, I think, to affirm kids' own critical insights into schools as institutions, and to encourage further critical thought about them. And it is useful, though frustratingly partial, to think about the spaces that parents have to make decisions about how we are mobilized by the school into doing particular kinds of work that support schooling, and how we can best use that space to make decisions that protect and support our children. All of these answers are important, I think, but I don't find any of them all that satisfying.
This post is to map out some of the possibilities for responding more collectively. A response organized with other parents and community members has the potential to go much farther than one household alone -- the more people whose power-to-do is being co-operatively expended, the more that can be accomplished. At the same time, working in groups also comes with other kinds of limitations. I should also add that all of the single-household kinds of things named in the previous post and summarized in the previous paragraph are things that I do, while I have not yet had the opportunity to experiment with any of the more collective approaches I talk about in this post.
The first thing that comes to mind is actually an escape from the tension of objecting but participating through some kind of co-operatively run unschooling venture or alternative school. There are models of doing this that excite me, and if such a thing happens in Sudbury in the future I will definitely consider sinking energy into it. However, that is an enormous undertaking, and I don't have the sense that it is possible at this time. In order to seriously consider it, I would probably have to make organizing to make it happen the major focus of my time for the forseeable future, in a way that I just do not think I could do (as described in the post on why we don't unschool L.) However, back in the fall there was a brief glimmer of possibility for this alternative when a handful of parents that I know with kids of different ages who are in different schools experienced simultaneous disgruntlement. We never did actually sit down and talk about it all together and circumstances have changed to make it unlikely that we will at this point, but it was still an interesting moment.
Another possibility is organizing to change mainstream schools. I would, of course, be interested to hear about other people's experiences of trying to do this.
It seems to me that there are a few different possible approaches. There is, for instance, a province-wide parents' educational reform organization whose name I can't recall at the moment that has, as far as I remember, a vague mix of liberal and social democratic politics. Because I can't remember the name, I can't go to its web site and say more specific things about its goals. However, my sense is that an organization of that sort probably does some useful things and could possibly, through organizing inside of it, be pushed to do more useful things, but that, given the nature of my politics around schools, it would probably be an outlet for political energy with many, many frustrations for me.
It would also be possible to try and organize parents. This could be done at the level of the individual school -- I could go out and talk up the parents of kids at L's school. Even aside from how difficult shy, reserved me would find that particular mode of organizing, I'm not sure how productive it would be. I suspect that, at best, it would result in a formation with politics similar to the provincial organization I mentioned above. It is also my sense that the school system in Ontario is set up, probably with a certain deliberateness, to make it next to impossible for organizing focused on one school to achieve much of anything. Much more power lies at the level of the school board or the Ministry of Education. Nonetheless, it is not impossible that some useful things could be achieved this way. Again, there was an instance in the fall of shared frustration around a particular issue that almost resulted in conversations that might have lead to something further, but then the conversations didn't quite happen.
Another possibility would be beginning from networks of people in the city who have (vaguely) similar politics and finding parents interested in organizing at the board level. Again, I have lots of questions about political limitations and about the barriers built into the system to creating more than nominal change. The fact that Sudbury has four different school boards based on the French/English and public/Catholic divides makes it all that much more difficult. And if a few of us were to get together to do this, what would our agenda be? What impact would it actually end up having, even if we were successful, on the lives of our children?
I think all of these things are potentially interesting and useful despite their limitations, but none leap out at me and make me think, "Yes, this would be a great use for my political energy."
The final possibility would also, I think, be most effectively based around parents who have some political affinity regardless of what schools their children go to. And that would be for parents to come together to organize events aimed at children in the community. This is, I think, the possibility that interests me the most. These events would have some kind of pedagogical intent related to social justice and environmental issues, but they would attempt to be fun rather than heavy handed and didactic. For instance, with Sudbury Pride week just finished, one possibility that occurs to me is some sort of collaboration between this hypothetical group of parents and the Pride committee to put on some sort of pro-queer event for kids. Or maybe a collaboration with the rockin' local arts-and-activism group Myths and Mirrors. The thing is, I've only ever been involved in planning public education events for adults, so I have no idea what an event for kids of a broad range of ages might look like. And, in the grand scheme of things, no real sense of how useful a series of, say, six such events over the course of a year might be.
Any ideas?
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Filler Post
Hey kids. Just popping in to say I've been hard at work on an article that I am hoping to finish tomorrow. Once it's published on the site that is going to publish it, and hopefully on a few others as well, I'll publish it here too.
In the meantime, here is a politically sombre piece of electronic music that I like -- "Sentinel" by Transglobal Underground:
In the meantime, here is a politically sombre piece of electronic music that I like -- "Sentinel" by Transglobal Underground:
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Sudbury Social Justice News -- July 10, 2010 Edition
As I've mentioned before, I'm the temporary caretaker of a social justice events list for Sudbury, Ontario. I'm not planning on posting all of the mailings here -- though there are no more than 4 per month; contact me if you want on the list -- but I am going to put up some of them. There is a lot going on in Sudbury in the next week and a bit, thanks largely to the hard work of the wonderful folks at Sudbury Pride, but there is also a labour event on Tuesday and a couple of events that touch on the recent G20 protests in Toronto. Please note that the emailed form of this update included the full text of "Solidarity with the Defendants Now -- G20 Struggle Must Continue and Grow", a statement by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty.
Here are the events:
If you are in the area, please check out as many of these as you can!!
Here are the events:
Sudbury Social Justice News - July 10, 2010
Please note that this coming week is Pride Week in Sudbury, so there is a long list of great events. For more information on Sudbury Pride please see sudburypride.com.
UPCOMING EVENTS & MEETINGS:
1) Monday, July 12: Sudbury Pride Flag Raising
2) Monday, July 12: Meeting of Sudbury Against War and Occupation featuring Reportbacks from the G20 Protests
3) Monday, July 12: X=Posed: 3rd Annual Pride Art Show
4) Tuesday, July 13: USW Local 6500 Family Day of Solidarity
5) Tuesday, July 13: Gender in the City!
6) Wednesday, July 14: Queer Youth Speak Out!
7) Wednesday, July 14: Queer Voices of the North Film Screenings
8) Thursday, July 15: OUT and LOUD Open Mic Night
9) Friday, July 16: More Pride Events!
10) Saturday, July 17: And Even More Pride Events!
11) Sunday, July 18: Sudbury Pride March, Rally, BBQ, and Closing Ceremonies
12) Tuesday, July 20: Standing Against Civil Liberties Violations at the G20 Protests
(1)(1)(1)(1)(1)(1)(1)(1)(1)(1)(1)(1)(1)
Monday, July 12: Sudbury Pride Flag Raising
1 pm, Tom Davies Square
Official flag raising ceremony to mark the beginning of Pride week in Sudbury! Special guests, including the Mayor of Sudbury, John Rodriguez. Refreshments will be served.
(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)(2)
Monday, July 12: Meeting of Sudbury Against War and Occupation featuring Reportbacks from the G20 Protests in Toronto
6:30 pm, at Myths and Mirrors. Myths and Mirrors is the painted building (a community artspace) located in Victory Park in the Donovan. It is on Frood Road, north of Kathleen, between Dupont St. and Schevchenko Ave. It is across from 485 Frood.
In Sudbury the first part of the Sudbury Against War and Occupation
(SAWO) meeting this Monday, July 12th at 6:30 pm at the Myths and
Mirrors space will hear some brief report backs on the protests in
Toronto and the suppression of people's democratic rights. The Myths and
Mirros space is the painted building (a community artspace) located in
Victory Park in the Donovan. It is on Frood Road, north of Kathleen,
between Dupont St. and Schevchenko Ave. It is across from 485 Frood.
A larger public event is being planned for Tuesday July 20th to protest
the suppression of people's democratic righs. This will also be talked
about and planned for at the SAWO meeting this Monday night.
Other topics of discussion include indigenous solidarity, the case of John Moore, Palestine solidarity, and tabling at summer events.
(3)(3)(3)(3)(3)(3)(3)(3)(3)(3)(3)(3)(3)
Monday, July 12: X=Posed: 3rd Annual Pride Art Show
7 pm, 276 Cedar Street, Sudbury
Our 3rd annual Pride Art Show, X=Posed! Come and see the works of amazing artists from Northern Ontario! Refreshments by Northern Flavours.
(4)(4)(4)(4)(4)(4)(4)(4)(4)(4)(4)(4)(4)
Tuesday, July 13: Family Day of Solidarity with USW Local 6500
2 pm to 11 pm, Steel Workers Hall at 66 Brady Street
On Tuesday, July 13 USW Local 6500 will be hosting a Day of Solidarity for members and their families, community supporters and all unions that have supported us over the past year. The event kicks off at 2pm at 66 Brady Street and continues till 11:00pm. There will be family activities and music throughout the day as well as a complementary hot meal to be served at 6:00pm. Live music will be preformed by Old School Band between 8:00 and 10pm. Please come out and join us. LOTS OF FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!
Parking and shuttle service will be available noon til midnight at City Parking Lot behind Brewers Retail on Lorne St. and after 4:30pm at the Old Train Station on Elgin St. (Municipal Parking is free downtown after 6pm). Non-Perishable food donations for Sudbury Food Bank would be greatly appreciated.
(5)(5)(5)(5)(5)(5)(5)(5)(5)(5)(5)(5)(5)
Tuesday, July 13: Gender in the City!
7 pm, Fromagerie Elgin, 1a-5 Cedar Street, Sudbury
Jennifer Johnson, Nate Solomon, Dan Racicot with moderator Mike McDonough tackle some key issues concerning sex, gender, and sexuality. Cash bar.
(6)(6)(6)(6)(6)(6)(6)(6)(6)(6)(6)(6)
Wednesday, July 14: Queer Youth Speak Out!
5:00 - 6:30 pm, Radisson Hotel, Notre Dame Room
Join members of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and local high school students and teachers to hear what issues are of concern for our youth in school. Moderated by Steven Solomon, from the TDSB. Pizza dinner!
(7)(7)(7)(7)(7)(7)(7)(7)(7)(7)(7)
Wednesday, July 14: Queer Voices of the North – Film Screenings
First show, 7 pm. Late show, 10pm. Rainbow Theatre, in the Rainbow Centre Mall in downtown Sudbury.
Come out to see local shorts from those in the North, including films from the youth digital storytelling series from Sault St. Marie and our very own BAM girls, with “Little House on the Spanish!” Stay for the late show and see “A Single Man”, featuring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. Adults $5 for one show, $7 for both. 19 and under free with a canned good item, in support of the Access AIDS Network Food Bank (We hear the BAM girls, directors of Little House on the Spanish will be in attendance!)
(8)(8)(8)(8)(8)(8)(8)(8)(8)(8)
Thursday, July 15: OUT and LOUD Open Mic Night
8pm, Fromagerie Elgin, 1a-5 Cedar St.
Come read, laugh and sing at our annual open mic night. Hosted by Joshua McMillan. Cash bar.
(9)(9)(9)(9)(9)(9)(9)(9)(9)(9)
Friday, July 16: More Pride Events!
Pride’s 1st Annual Ladies* Golf Tournament
12noon, Cedar Green Golf Course, Garson
Nine hole best ball tournament, with dinner, celebrity MC and prizes, prizes, prizes! Think you can get a hole in one? Step up to the challenge and you could win an outstanding prize valued up to $10 000.00! Yup, you read it right!! Email golf.sudburypride@gmail.com for details and information on how to register
You can also click HERE to download our registration form in Word format. (*All those who self-identify are welcome to play!)
A Search for the Rainbow
11am, Tom Davies Square
Scavenger hunt, games and prizes! Join us for our 3rd annual Youth Pride Games, brought to you by the Youth Pride Committee. The LGBT Youthline from Toronto will be presenting a media project at the event.
A Dance under the Sky
7pm-11pm, Tom Davies Square
All ages outdoor dance with special guest, DJ Jazz!
Dining With the Guys
6pm, Howard Johnson Plaza-Hotel, 50 Brady St.
A buffet with a presentation on the Prime Timers organization by Arthur and friend from Toronto. Tickets $25. Contact Mike for tickets 705-674-8052.
ZIGS presents X Factor
Opens at 8 pm starts at 10 pm
Check out this year’s amazing show! Music, Dance, Drag. We got it ALL!
(10)(10)(10)(10)(10)(10)(10)(10)
Saturday, July 17: And Even More Pride Events!
Access AIDS Network and Sudbury Sexual Assault Crisis
Centre present
Mitts and Balls: Home Run Derby and Softball
Game!
12pm, Delki Dozzi Park, 3 Mary Street
$5 gives you a chance at some great prizes in our Home Run Derby. Join us for a game of softball afterward, with free t-shirts provided by our community partners, Access AIDS Network and Sudbury Sexual Assault Crisis Centre!
SnoBears Family n Friends BBQ
Time: 5:00 to 7:00 pm , Delki Dozzi Park, 3 Mary Street.
Join the SnoBears, their families and friends for their 4th annual BBQ. This event is open to everyone. This year is a choice of steak, chicken breast or a vegetarian alternative with salads and desserts. Tickets are $15.00, children 10 and under are free. Please pre-register for children meals. For Tickets contact Dallas at 507-9476 or dallas@snobears.ca
Taste The Rainbow - Pride Party @ Zigs
Opens At 8 pm
Showcase your colors
(11)(11)(11)(11)(11)(11)(11)(11)
Sunday, July 18: Sudbury Pride March, Rally, BBQ, and Closing Ceremonies
Annual Pride March and Rally
12:30pm Memorial Park
Come out to the 13th annual Pride March. Meet at Memorial Park with your noise makers, flags and signs!!
Family BBQ
Join hosts from HOT 93.5 and musical acts for our annual Family BBQ! Games for the kids all day, Community fair and more prizes!
1:30pm, Tom Davies Square
Closing Ceremonies
3:45pm, Tom Davies Square
Help us lower the flag and close out our week of celebration
(12)(12)(12)(12)(12)(12)(12)(12)
Tuesday, July 20: Standing Against Civil Liberties Violations at the G20 Protests in Toronto
Details to be announced.
If you are in the area, please check out as many of these as you can!!
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Critical Navigation of Mainstream Schools, Part 1
In recent posts, I have talked about my serious objections to mainstream schooling and also why those objections don't lead me to homeschool (or unschool) my six year-old, even though I think those approaches are the best. Having such objections yet deciding to put one's kid into a mainstream school leads to an obvious question: Now what do I do?
In writing about this, I don't feel like I have any answers. At best, I'm thinking through the shape of the problem and at least some of my options. If anyone out there has stories about how they deal with the disjuncture between radical criticism of mainstream schooling and lack of practicable alternatives, I would love to hear them. What do you do? Why do you do it? Who do you work with to make it happen?
I can think of at least two different distinctions that are useful in thinking about what to do in this situation. That is, activity might be focused on L and/or other children or it might be focused on the school system (or, more accurately, on acting to influence the relationship between the school system and one or many children). And it might involve doing things at the level of just one household or it might involve working collectively with others. This post talks about the household level, and a future post will talk about the collective level.
Household, Kid-focused
If, as I argue, mainstream schooling has a particular spectrum of detrimental impacts on children and youth, then it makes sense for parents and other caregiving adults to actively work against those impacts in their everyday practices with their children.
Some examples:
There are countless other examples, all of which sound pretty great when you describe them and all of which are important in and of themselves. However, I think these answers, as important as they are, constitute a very unsatisfying response to my dilemma. After all, these are not really responses to choices about schooling -- they are everyday practices that I would be doing anyway, whatever L did for school. I mean, yes, we need to think about how to do them, and talk about them more, and experiment, and I'm sure that I don't really do many of them very well. But L going to mainstream school means he spends that much less time in environments where these practices are a priority, so saying, "Oh, well, I'll compensate for that by doing what I would be doing anyway in the rest of the time" is more a cop out than an answer. It's good, it's important, but it belongs in a different category.
Household, Mediating Between School and Kid
This plays out in a couple of different ways. The simpler of the two has to do with how we talk to our kids about school and how we relate to them about their experience of school. That is, when they talk to us about being bored or annoyed or not enjoying it, I think it is really important to affirm that. We need to be open about our own ambivalence about school, too -- let them know that since we are following the path of institutional schooling, we think it is important to jump through hoops X and Y for reasons Z and Q, but we know it has problems and we don't expect them to necessarily like it all the time, and it is perfectly okay to express dissatisfaction and, yes, such and such a piece of homework is pointless busywork. This isn't much, but affirming kids in their own experiences rather than communicating to them that their experience is wrong in some way can matter quite a bit, and can be part of modeling a critical approach to all institutions. And, in fact, through tactful and deliberately understated asking of questions and expression of reactions, we can perhaps create an opening for our kids to further develop a critical attitude towards what happens in school.
The other way this can work is a bit more involved. One of the ways that I understand mainstream schooling to happen is through organizing parents to do particular kinds of work that accomplish the goals of schooling -- which, as I've said before, include some rather unsavoury things. (For those keeping score, this chunk of analysis is based in a particular understanding of what usually gets called "the state" as a cluster of relations and practices which ordinary people can be organized into, as per a mix of institutional ethnography and a kind of heterodox marxist analysis of the state like what you might find in this book, and it is consistent with the analysis of the family's role in pinning individuals to ruling regimes like schools and asylums discussed by Michel Foucault in one section of this book.)
Some of the more obvious areas where this happens are attendance, homework, and discipline. In each of these areas, a combination of moral blandishments with implicit or explicit threats of consequences to parent or (more often) child are used to get parents to participate in practices of mainstream schooling. Many of these practices are reasonably benign if understood only in terms of their direct impact on kids or on the relationship between parents and kids, though there are exceptions, but they function to increase the hold that mainstream schooling has on young people.
For instance, if we don't let the school know in advance on a given day that L will be absent, we get a call home. Also, parents of Grade One students who were absent more than a certain number of days this year for any reason got a phone call from the principal that consisted of cajoling and shaming parents into ensuring better attendance in the future. This mobilizes parents into actively inculcating particular habits of relating to school that are very central to the role of school in turning anarchic kids into future workers.
Something similar is true when it comes to discipline. Discipline in L's Grade One class was organized around bribes and public shaming as tools to ensure obedience. When the teacher thought it necessary, this included having the child bring her/his agenda (itself a technology of organizing parental involvement) to the front of the class and writing a note to the parent. The public writing of the note is shaming, and the function of the note is to reinforce the shaming through the parent "having a talk" with the child. I should add that the explicit content may or may not be good. For instance, I think that, in general, "Don't say mean things to classmates" is a solid message. But the way the form of this disciplinary technology operates is to use parental authority to reinforce the power of authority figures within the school to determine standards of behaviour, which inevitably happens in undemocratic and unaccountable ways.
Homework, again through the technology of the mandatory agenda and the requirement for parental engagement with and signature of said agenda, is used to communicate homework requirements, with the various sorts of messaging that kids benefit from homework and will face dire consequences if parents do not collaborate in ensuring it is completed (significant evidence to the contrary notwithstanding). The parenting relationship is mobilized in the service of surveilling the child and reinforcing school requirements to engage in work, much of which is arbitrary and pointless and of little pedagogical value, with the long term effect of inculcating habits around doing arbitrary work requested by authority figures rather than spending time doing work that is interesting or valuable in some way.
If parents accept that they are going to participate in the mainstream school system, we can't just refuse to participate in these processes. To do so would, I think, ultimately require a shift to home/unschooling. There would be disciplinary consequences. However, there is definitely space for parents to make decisions about how they play this mediating role. To be honest, I don't know if we make good use of this space or not, but I'll describe some of the ways we think about it or use it and see what other people have to say. For instance, in terms of attendance, probably keeping your kid home half the time would meet with consequences that couldn't just be ignored, and you'd be just as well to keep 'em home the whole time and unschool. However, there is space for parents to get away with taking their kids out of school some of the time so that they can spend their time in more useful ways -- to visit family (which was the most common one for us this year), to go to a museum or a concert, or just to play. It's a matter of figuring out the most strategic way to use this space and then using it.
In terms of discipline, we didn't have many occasions to make choices in this area as L is generally a pretty quiet kid, but there were a handful of times when we got notes home. I chose to respond by making as small a deal of it as possible. I would usually ask him what happened in a low key way and not dwell on it, rather than take the approach of some other parents who would do things like give or deny privileges based on this (and based on an in-class system whereby each child's behaviour on a given day was colour coded). This minimized the intrusion of dubious school-based disciplinary approaches into the ongoing process with L of figuring out together how to act in the world. I should add that there was one instance in which the description by the teacher seemed to be implying that there was some racist name-calling by a (multiracial) group of kids that included L, directed towards a child of colour. That's a serious thing, so we followed up with a phone call to the teacher to find out more about the situation and it turned out not to have been that at all. If it had, we would still have tried not to naturalize the school disciplinary mechanism, but would've taken it up more directly and thoroughly with L as well.
With homework, what we have done so far boils down to modelling a relationship to it that is at least a little bit healthier than the one encouraged by the school, that tries to divest it of its moral force while still recognizing the practical (in terms of disciplinary consequences) importance of getting it done, or seeming to get it done, or extracting the more interesting and useful bits as opportunities to learn while giving less attention (where possible) to the sillier and more arbitrary elements. All the while trying to keep real learning fun and inviting.
To be continued...
None of what I've talked about in this post is even remotely satisfying. It still involves lots of complicity as well as some resistance. It is imperfect, partial, tainted, tragic, and maybe even hypocritical. But I'm interested in hearing what other people do at the level of the individual household in response to the problems with mainstream schooling. And I'm going to keep thinking and writing, and hopefully soon put up the next post in the series, this one reflecting on the possibility of more collective ways of navigating this difficult situation.
In writing about this, I don't feel like I have any answers. At best, I'm thinking through the shape of the problem and at least some of my options. If anyone out there has stories about how they deal with the disjuncture between radical criticism of mainstream schooling and lack of practicable alternatives, I would love to hear them. What do you do? Why do you do it? Who do you work with to make it happen?
I can think of at least two different distinctions that are useful in thinking about what to do in this situation. That is, activity might be focused on L and/or other children or it might be focused on the school system (or, more accurately, on acting to influence the relationship between the school system and one or many children). And it might involve doing things at the level of just one household or it might involve working collectively with others. This post talks about the household level, and a future post will talk about the collective level.
Household, Kid-focused
If, as I argue, mainstream schooling has a particular spectrum of detrimental impacts on children and youth, then it makes sense for parents and other caregiving adults to actively work against those impacts in their everyday practices with their children.
Some examples:
- Given that schools tend to foster a particular kind of reflexive obedience to arbitrary authority, then we should parent in ways that do not encourage blind obedience and we should engage in practices in the rest of life that model anti-hierarchical relating.
- Given that mainstream schools reinforce and make invisible the privilege of white children and youth, white parents should, through our everyday engagement with media, in conversation with our children, and in our own everyday lives in which all of our actions are models for our children, take up critical race politics, challenge whiteness and white privilege, and act as allies to racialized people.
- Given that mainstream schools tend to function in ways that kill the natural curiosity that children experience, we should make a point of nurturing and modeling a love of learning, and of providing plenty of opportunities for children to encounter new ideas and new ways to explore and to playfully create.
There are countless other examples, all of which sound pretty great when you describe them and all of which are important in and of themselves. However, I think these answers, as important as they are, constitute a very unsatisfying response to my dilemma. After all, these are not really responses to choices about schooling -- they are everyday practices that I would be doing anyway, whatever L did for school. I mean, yes, we need to think about how to do them, and talk about them more, and experiment, and I'm sure that I don't really do many of them very well. But L going to mainstream school means he spends that much less time in environments where these practices are a priority, so saying, "Oh, well, I'll compensate for that by doing what I would be doing anyway in the rest of the time" is more a cop out than an answer. It's good, it's important, but it belongs in a different category.
Household, Mediating Between School and Kid
This plays out in a couple of different ways. The simpler of the two has to do with how we talk to our kids about school and how we relate to them about their experience of school. That is, when they talk to us about being bored or annoyed or not enjoying it, I think it is really important to affirm that. We need to be open about our own ambivalence about school, too -- let them know that since we are following the path of institutional schooling, we think it is important to jump through hoops X and Y for reasons Z and Q, but we know it has problems and we don't expect them to necessarily like it all the time, and it is perfectly okay to express dissatisfaction and, yes, such and such a piece of homework is pointless busywork. This isn't much, but affirming kids in their own experiences rather than communicating to them that their experience is wrong in some way can matter quite a bit, and can be part of modeling a critical approach to all institutions. And, in fact, through tactful and deliberately understated asking of questions and expression of reactions, we can perhaps create an opening for our kids to further develop a critical attitude towards what happens in school.
The other way this can work is a bit more involved. One of the ways that I understand mainstream schooling to happen is through organizing parents to do particular kinds of work that accomplish the goals of schooling -- which, as I've said before, include some rather unsavoury things. (For those keeping score, this chunk of analysis is based in a particular understanding of what usually gets called "the state" as a cluster of relations and practices which ordinary people can be organized into, as per a mix of institutional ethnography and a kind of heterodox marxist analysis of the state like what you might find in this book, and it is consistent with the analysis of the family's role in pinning individuals to ruling regimes like schools and asylums discussed by Michel Foucault in one section of this book.)
Some of the more obvious areas where this happens are attendance, homework, and discipline. In each of these areas, a combination of moral blandishments with implicit or explicit threats of consequences to parent or (more often) child are used to get parents to participate in practices of mainstream schooling. Many of these practices are reasonably benign if understood only in terms of their direct impact on kids or on the relationship between parents and kids, though there are exceptions, but they function to increase the hold that mainstream schooling has on young people.
For instance, if we don't let the school know in advance on a given day that L will be absent, we get a call home. Also, parents of Grade One students who were absent more than a certain number of days this year for any reason got a phone call from the principal that consisted of cajoling and shaming parents into ensuring better attendance in the future. This mobilizes parents into actively inculcating particular habits of relating to school that are very central to the role of school in turning anarchic kids into future workers.
Something similar is true when it comes to discipline. Discipline in L's Grade One class was organized around bribes and public shaming as tools to ensure obedience. When the teacher thought it necessary, this included having the child bring her/his agenda (itself a technology of organizing parental involvement) to the front of the class and writing a note to the parent. The public writing of the note is shaming, and the function of the note is to reinforce the shaming through the parent "having a talk" with the child. I should add that the explicit content may or may not be good. For instance, I think that, in general, "Don't say mean things to classmates" is a solid message. But the way the form of this disciplinary technology operates is to use parental authority to reinforce the power of authority figures within the school to determine standards of behaviour, which inevitably happens in undemocratic and unaccountable ways.
Homework, again through the technology of the mandatory agenda and the requirement for parental engagement with and signature of said agenda, is used to communicate homework requirements, with the various sorts of messaging that kids benefit from homework and will face dire consequences if parents do not collaborate in ensuring it is completed (significant evidence to the contrary notwithstanding). The parenting relationship is mobilized in the service of surveilling the child and reinforcing school requirements to engage in work, much of which is arbitrary and pointless and of little pedagogical value, with the long term effect of inculcating habits around doing arbitrary work requested by authority figures rather than spending time doing work that is interesting or valuable in some way.
If parents accept that they are going to participate in the mainstream school system, we can't just refuse to participate in these processes. To do so would, I think, ultimately require a shift to home/unschooling. There would be disciplinary consequences. However, there is definitely space for parents to make decisions about how they play this mediating role. To be honest, I don't know if we make good use of this space or not, but I'll describe some of the ways we think about it or use it and see what other people have to say. For instance, in terms of attendance, probably keeping your kid home half the time would meet with consequences that couldn't just be ignored, and you'd be just as well to keep 'em home the whole time and unschool. However, there is space for parents to get away with taking their kids out of school some of the time so that they can spend their time in more useful ways -- to visit family (which was the most common one for us this year), to go to a museum or a concert, or just to play. It's a matter of figuring out the most strategic way to use this space and then using it.
In terms of discipline, we didn't have many occasions to make choices in this area as L is generally a pretty quiet kid, but there were a handful of times when we got notes home. I chose to respond by making as small a deal of it as possible. I would usually ask him what happened in a low key way and not dwell on it, rather than take the approach of some other parents who would do things like give or deny privileges based on this (and based on an in-class system whereby each child's behaviour on a given day was colour coded). This minimized the intrusion of dubious school-based disciplinary approaches into the ongoing process with L of figuring out together how to act in the world. I should add that there was one instance in which the description by the teacher seemed to be implying that there was some racist name-calling by a (multiracial) group of kids that included L, directed towards a child of colour. That's a serious thing, so we followed up with a phone call to the teacher to find out more about the situation and it turned out not to have been that at all. If it had, we would still have tried not to naturalize the school disciplinary mechanism, but would've taken it up more directly and thoroughly with L as well.
With homework, what we have done so far boils down to modelling a relationship to it that is at least a little bit healthier than the one encouraged by the school, that tries to divest it of its moral force while still recognizing the practical (in terms of disciplinary consequences) importance of getting it done, or seeming to get it done, or extracting the more interesting and useful bits as opportunities to learn while giving less attention (where possible) to the sillier and more arbitrary elements. All the while trying to keep real learning fun and inviting.
To be continued...
None of what I've talked about in this post is even remotely satisfying. It still involves lots of complicity as well as some resistance. It is imperfect, partial, tainted, tragic, and maybe even hypocritical. But I'm interested in hearing what other people do at the level of the individual household in response to the problems with mainstream schooling. And I'm going to keep thinking and writing, and hopefully soon put up the next post in the series, this one reflecting on the possibility of more collective ways of navigating this difficult situation.
Sunday, July 04, 2010
Review: Red Planets
[Mark Bould and China Mieville, editors. Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2009.]
Discussions of marxism and discussions of science fiction are both at their best, their most interesting, when they come from a place of passion. I'm sure most of the contributors to this book feel both of those passions -- otherwise, why do work in this particular area? Unfortunately, academic discourse excels at absorbing passion and bleaching it out, and that happens in many, though not all, instances in this volume.
Similarly, science fiction and the eclectic body of theory related to social change of which marxism is one element are for me sites of great interest, enjoyment, passion, and reflection. Yet in both cases, I cannot claim an exhaustive or conventional grounding in any kind of 'proper' canon, but rather have wended my own idiosyncratic way through some relevant texts. These things, I think, shape my reaction to the book, such that people less interested or more expert in one, the other, or both areas might have quite different experiences with this book than me.
I had previously been vaguely aware of the existence of lefty-relevant science fiction studies, but knew nothing about it. In that area, the work of a writer named Darko Suvin is foundational, and his definition of science fiction as "a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition" with "the narrative dominance or hegemony of a fictional 'novum' ... validated by cognitive logic" has been very influential [214]. This definition is, as contributor Andrew Milner observes,
Embodied in this and other definitions, and encoded in much of science fiction studies, seems to be a kind of snotty attitude towards other sorts of genre fiction -- the power of imaginative, speculative play is displaced with the grim intellectuality of "cognitive estrangement" as a basis for articulating why it matters. This volume both recognizes the importance of Suvin's work and much that is derived from it, but also, at least in places, refuses to be limited by it.
After reading this book, I feel like I have a bit better understanding of what has the potential to interest me about theoretical writings on not just science fiction but popular culture more generally. That is, I'm interested in what we can learn about the social world and changing it through doing, reading, and discussing imaginative, synthetic projections rather than strictly analytical ones. And I'm interested about what can be learned about storytelling from theories about the social world. All of this includes an interest in what we can learn via stories about ideologies which organize and obscure the social world, about political choices in social change, and about how the social world could work differently.
In this book, there are a few essays that don't feel like they really do that. I'm thinking particularly of the essays that seem to come out of film studies, which were generally (although not completely) less interesting to me. I did enjoy the glimpse of the cultural environment of the German Weimar Republic between the World Wars, which was provided as context for one of these essays, though its actual analysis of a couple of sci-fi films produced in that environment was less interesting to me. I also felt that the first essay of the book, which was about understanding -- or, really, classifying -- mechanisms of estrangement in science fiction with reference to art history was kind of neat but it did not evoke a particularly engaged flavour of interest in me.
The rest of the essays feel like they touch what interests me when it comes to theory and pop culture, in one way or another, though obviously your mileage will vary depending on your own knowledge and predelictions.
I liked, for instance, William J. Burling's exploration of how art and music are envisioned in post-capitalist societies in the work of Ursula LeGuin and Kim Stanley Robinson. There were moments where his analysis of how LeGuin missed the mark in The Dispossessed felt more like the kind of cheap gotcha politics I associate with the academy and sectarian grouplets than useful criticism, but I'm not convinced he's wrong -- I have a feeling there is more to it than what he outlines in his theorization of the relationship between the arts and the mode of production, but I haven't been able to articulate quite what, and he makes some important arguments.
I also appreciated Steven Shaviro's examination of the sub-genre of post-Singularity science fiction, a la the work of Ray Kurzweil (which is science fiction even if it gets sold as grounded prediction). This kind of sci-fi story is based on the idea of a moment at which humanity's technological progress results in the crossing of a definitive threshhold after wihch we become postthuman. He argues that this sub-genre is both an example of the ways in which the neoliberal capitalist environment so insidiously turns our every utopian impulse into a product or marketing scheme, while also showing that the better instances of the sub-genre contain within them useful lessons about the dynamics of capital.
Sherryl Vint's use of the work of an author named Cordwainer Smith, of whom I had never heard, to argue for an extension of marxist theory related to alienation, commodification, and species-being to animals was really great. Philip Wegner's discussion of Ken Macleod's Fall Revolution Quarter -- I hadn't heard of him either -- was similarly exciting, though I think I'm less enamoured than Wegner with George Lukacs' idea of Augenblick when it comes to radical interventions in the social world. Similarly, I didn't really get some fairly significant chunks of Darren Jorgensen's contribution, which seeks to reorient science fiction studies around the work of Louis Althusser rather than its current more historical orientation -- I have a feeling like I wouldn't like either side of the '70s debate among marxist theorists his essay revolves around. But I found his assertion that we should read sci-fi not to decode contemporary ideology but as literal suggestions about what change we should try to create to be intriguing, if strange and a little ridiculous. And I would like to read more that follows up on Rob Latham's examination of urban sf in light of the radical geography of David Harvey and others.
I was disappointed that very few of the marxisms on offer seemed to be approaches that explicitly treated relations of gender, racial, sexual, and other oppressions as integral to capital. There was some useful discussion of the colonial origins and outlook of a lot of sci-fi, but that was about it. I know that there has been work on science fiction and these areas, which makes the narrow understanding of marxism embodied in most essays in this book even more discouraging.
The book ends on a good note, though, with a delightful piece by China Mieville. His academic prose has flair and humour, and you can tell it is written by a writer and not a mere technician-of-words. And he -- himself a writer of fantasy that is steeped in ideas of interest to the left -- pushes the Suvinian notion of science fiction to the breaking point and makes an ingenious preliminary case based on a materialist examination of what the "cognition" in "cognitive estrangement" can actually mean for breaking down the sharp and snobby distinction between science fiction and fantasy. I certainly recognize the criticism that lots of fantasy, particularly high fantasy, is politically very reactionary, but I've always felt it doesn't need to be so. As well, I've always loved all three legs of the science fiction/fantasy/horror tripod, but probably have read more fantasy than the other two. And my own sense of why such writing matters, which I need to think a lot more about, is that it has to do not with cognition but with imagination. So I'm enthusiastic that thinkers of the caliber of Mieville are beginning to give more serious consideration to fantasy as well.
[For a list of all book reviews on this site, click here.]
Discussions of marxism and discussions of science fiction are both at their best, their most interesting, when they come from a place of passion. I'm sure most of the contributors to this book feel both of those passions -- otherwise, why do work in this particular area? Unfortunately, academic discourse excels at absorbing passion and bleaching it out, and that happens in many, though not all, instances in this volume.
Similarly, science fiction and the eclectic body of theory related to social change of which marxism is one element are for me sites of great interest, enjoyment, passion, and reflection. Yet in both cases, I cannot claim an exhaustive or conventional grounding in any kind of 'proper' canon, but rather have wended my own idiosyncratic way through some relevant texts. These things, I think, shape my reaction to the book, such that people less interested or more expert in one, the other, or both areas might have quite different experiences with this book than me.
I had previously been vaguely aware of the existence of lefty-relevant science fiction studies, but knew nothing about it. In that area, the work of a writer named Darko Suvin is foundational, and his definition of science fiction as "a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition" with "the narrative dominance or hegemony of a fictional 'novum' ... validated by cognitive logic" has been very influential [214]. This definition is, as contributor Andrew Milner observes,
also a nicely elitist definition, insofar as it is confined to literature (excluding film and television), but nicely contrarian insofar as it seeks to expand the canon to include something as inherently disreputable as SF. It is simultaneously theoretically rich and respectably radical, delivering from Russian Formalism by way of Brecht and from Bloch out of Gramsci. It is, in short, just want the Doctor of Philosophy ordered. [ibid]
Embodied in this and other definitions, and encoded in much of science fiction studies, seems to be a kind of snotty attitude towards other sorts of genre fiction -- the power of imaginative, speculative play is displaced with the grim intellectuality of "cognitive estrangement" as a basis for articulating why it matters. This volume both recognizes the importance of Suvin's work and much that is derived from it, but also, at least in places, refuses to be limited by it.
After reading this book, I feel like I have a bit better understanding of what has the potential to interest me about theoretical writings on not just science fiction but popular culture more generally. That is, I'm interested in what we can learn about the social world and changing it through doing, reading, and discussing imaginative, synthetic projections rather than strictly analytical ones. And I'm interested about what can be learned about storytelling from theories about the social world. All of this includes an interest in what we can learn via stories about ideologies which organize and obscure the social world, about political choices in social change, and about how the social world could work differently.
In this book, there are a few essays that don't feel like they really do that. I'm thinking particularly of the essays that seem to come out of film studies, which were generally (although not completely) less interesting to me. I did enjoy the glimpse of the cultural environment of the German Weimar Republic between the World Wars, which was provided as context for one of these essays, though its actual analysis of a couple of sci-fi films produced in that environment was less interesting to me. I also felt that the first essay of the book, which was about understanding -- or, really, classifying -- mechanisms of estrangement in science fiction with reference to art history was kind of neat but it did not evoke a particularly engaged flavour of interest in me.
The rest of the essays feel like they touch what interests me when it comes to theory and pop culture, in one way or another, though obviously your mileage will vary depending on your own knowledge and predelictions.
I liked, for instance, William J. Burling's exploration of how art and music are envisioned in post-capitalist societies in the work of Ursula LeGuin and Kim Stanley Robinson. There were moments where his analysis of how LeGuin missed the mark in The Dispossessed felt more like the kind of cheap gotcha politics I associate with the academy and sectarian grouplets than useful criticism, but I'm not convinced he's wrong -- I have a feeling there is more to it than what he outlines in his theorization of the relationship between the arts and the mode of production, but I haven't been able to articulate quite what, and he makes some important arguments.
I also appreciated Steven Shaviro's examination of the sub-genre of post-Singularity science fiction, a la the work of Ray Kurzweil (which is science fiction even if it gets sold as grounded prediction). This kind of sci-fi story is based on the idea of a moment at which humanity's technological progress results in the crossing of a definitive threshhold after wihch we become postthuman. He argues that this sub-genre is both an example of the ways in which the neoliberal capitalist environment so insidiously turns our every utopian impulse into a product or marketing scheme, while also showing that the better instances of the sub-genre contain within them useful lessons about the dynamics of capital.
Sherryl Vint's use of the work of an author named Cordwainer Smith, of whom I had never heard, to argue for an extension of marxist theory related to alienation, commodification, and species-being to animals was really great. Philip Wegner's discussion of Ken Macleod's Fall Revolution Quarter -- I hadn't heard of him either -- was similarly exciting, though I think I'm less enamoured than Wegner with George Lukacs' idea of Augenblick when it comes to radical interventions in the social world. Similarly, I didn't really get some fairly significant chunks of Darren Jorgensen's contribution, which seeks to reorient science fiction studies around the work of Louis Althusser rather than its current more historical orientation -- I have a feeling like I wouldn't like either side of the '70s debate among marxist theorists his essay revolves around. But I found his assertion that we should read sci-fi not to decode contemporary ideology but as literal suggestions about what change we should try to create to be intriguing, if strange and a little ridiculous. And I would like to read more that follows up on Rob Latham's examination of urban sf in light of the radical geography of David Harvey and others.
I was disappointed that very few of the marxisms on offer seemed to be approaches that explicitly treated relations of gender, racial, sexual, and other oppressions as integral to capital. There was some useful discussion of the colonial origins and outlook of a lot of sci-fi, but that was about it. I know that there has been work on science fiction and these areas, which makes the narrow understanding of marxism embodied in most essays in this book even more discouraging.
The book ends on a good note, though, with a delightful piece by China Mieville. His academic prose has flair and humour, and you can tell it is written by a writer and not a mere technician-of-words. And he -- himself a writer of fantasy that is steeped in ideas of interest to the left -- pushes the Suvinian notion of science fiction to the breaking point and makes an ingenious preliminary case based on a materialist examination of what the "cognition" in "cognitive estrangement" can actually mean for breaking down the sharp and snobby distinction between science fiction and fantasy. I certainly recognize the criticism that lots of fantasy, particularly high fantasy, is politically very reactionary, but I've always felt it doesn't need to be so. As well, I've always loved all three legs of the science fiction/fantasy/horror tripod, but probably have read more fantasy than the other two. And my own sense of why such writing matters, which I need to think a lot more about, is that it has to do not with cognition but with imagination. So I'm enthusiastic that thinkers of the caliber of Mieville are beginning to give more serious consideration to fantasy as well.
[For a list of all book reviews on this site, click here.]
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