Education in the Knowledge Society

‘Knowledge society’ and ‘knowledge economy’ have become accepted terms that characterize our post-industrial world. The concept of knowledge society assumes that knowledge “should be dominant, just as agriculture and industry have dominated earlier societies” (Sörlin & Vessuri, 2007, p. 12). The rhetoric of knowledge economy suggests that knowledge is essentially the capital or a personal asset in the contemporary economy, just as land in agricultural societies and factories in industrial societies (Davies & Guppy, 2010c). Although these analogies seem descriptive and sensible, they are nevertheless not free of ambiguity: For one thing, we can say that agriculture and industry “dominated” earlier societies because farming and manual work were the fundamental modes of production in those societies; but how is it that knowledge has dominated today’s society? For another, land and factories were “capital” and “personal assets” in previous societies because they were the means of production that led to economic gain for people who possessed them; but can the same logic apply to knowledge and individuals who possess it? 

SOCI 3300 Reading Reflection 2: Ties That Bind & Ties That Blind

To examine the social relations of working-class adolescents from different ethnic backgrounds, Orlowski observed and interviewed students from four non-European racial groups: Vietnamese, First Nations, Indian, and Chinese. His data analysis reveals that the denigratory attitude of many Eastern Asian immigrants towards Aboriginal people is due to their lack of understanding of Aboriginal/Canadian history; the arrogant attitudes that some Chinese people hold towards Vietnamese is tied to their preconceived judgements on ‘wealth hierarchy’; and the overt racist attitudes expressed by the white working-class youths against Asian immigrants may be fueled by ‘fear’ of competing against and losing economic status to a non-white race.

What is unique and interesting about Orlowski’s analysis is that he draws on Marxist notion of class awareness and calls for “collective effort on the part of all minorities” (p. 264) to challenge white supremacist racial hierarchy. He suggests that working-class youths from different racial groups need to develop an awareness of social-class interests and realize that they have more in common with each other than with the European-Canadian capitalists. Just like other readings we have done in this course so far, Orlowski’s ethnography recognizes the role of education in nation-building––in particular, in imparting racist ideology and sustaining white hegemony; but on the flip side, it also embraces Paulo Freire’s notion of critical pedagogy and sees education’s transformative capacity to empower working-class minorities to counter racist national discourse and fight against different forms of oppression and inequality.

References:

Orlowski, P. (2001). Ties that bind and ties that blind: Race and class intersections in the classroom. In C. James & A. Shadd (Eds.), Talking about Identity: Encounters in race, ethnicity, and language (pp. 250-266). Toronto: Between the Lines.

SOCI 3300 Reading Reflection 1: Jobs for the Girls?

Harris illuminates how dominant discourse of can-do girls constructs young women’s success and failure in the new economy as though they were determined by individual ability, effort, and choices. She argues that it is social and economic structures––rather than personal attributes and choices––that shapes young women’s career opportunities and outcomes. Harris supports her arguments by examining where and how young women of different races and classes are located in the new economy. She shows that only a class elite are structurally well-positioned to acquire excellent qualifications and actualize their high career aspirations, although all young women are invited into the same discourse about professional success.

One of the key sociological concepts Harris draws upon is subjectification. She discusses how the discourses of flexibility, limitless choice, and career success have been internalized by young women. These narratives together construct a subjectivity required by the modern economy as they shape the ways young women think about themselves – about what they can do and what they can be. Tied to this idea of ‘can-do’ or ‘can-be’ is the dilemma of ‘structure’ versus ‘agency’. The idea that all young women can transform their lives by pursuing education allows them to see themselves, and be seen, as subjects with agency. However, as Harris demonstrates, individual agency is limited by structural constraints. The problem is, when ‘public issues’ (such as structural barriers and public policies) take disguise of ‘personal troubles’ (individual agency), social inequality and structural malfunction are obscured and remain uncontested.

References:

Harris, A. (2004). Chapter 2: Jobs for the girls? Education and employment in the new economy. In A. Harris (Eds.), Future girl: Young women in the twenty-first century (pp. 37-62). New York: Routledge

M.I.A.: Born Free video frightens YouTube – Things That Go Pop!

Beyond what words can describe. This is why we love M.I.A.!

M.I.A.: Born Free video frightens YouTube – Things That Go Pop!.

Conformity and Crime

Love, Hate, and Propaganda is an amazing 6-part documentary series that explores the psychology of war. Encoded in the mass persuasion is the war time ideology and hegemony. Accentuation on “national threat” and dehumanizing the enemies make violence legitimate and easier…

There is No Race but the Human Race!

The work of man is only just beginning and it remains to conquer all the violence entrenched in the recesses of our passion and no race possesses the monopoly of beauty, of intelligence, of force, and there’s a place for all at the rendezvous of victory.

Aimé Césaire, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal

In his lecture The Myth of “The Clash of Civilizations” at the University of Massachusetts, Edward Said vehemently speaks against Samuel Huntington’s notion of cultural divisions and “rips” his thesis to shreds.

Samuel Huntington’s essay The Clash of Civilizations was published in the summer 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs. His states:

[…] the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.

Huntington defines civilization as a “cultural entity” and divides the world into eight main civilizations: Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Western, Latin American and African. He argues that the principal clash of civilizations in the post-Cold War world politics will be between “the West and the rest” – and in order to win this clash, Western civilization must strengthen its unity and promote cooperation with nation-states that endorse Western values, and in the mean time, keep its opponents weak and divided by exploiting their differences. It is astonishing how explicit Huntington is while talking about forming alliances to sustain and expand Western power, and make all the civilizations more Western. The post-war imperialism attitudes and aggression are seeping out of every word!

Organic and Traditional Media?

The way in which political discourse works is that the ones who have the most power and money are most frequently seen and heard. The mainstream media tend to bind with the powerful elites and provide news coverage that represents the values of the elites and helps maintain the status quo.  In resent years, alternative forms of media that offer grassroots coverage on global issues have emerged and gained significant amount of attention and participation. Electronic communication and new technology such as digital cameras and camera recorders have enabled and encouraged people who are dissatisfied with the mainstream media to create their own media and express their own viewpoints through the internet.

The Independent Media Centre (IMC) is an activist website that aims to provide and circulate grassroots and non-corporate coverage that the mainstream media often fail to offer. The IMC was first established in Seattle, U.S.A. in 1999. Through an independent and decentralized network, media activists have set up IMCs in Canada, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Currently there are more than 150 IMCs around the world. Through a democratic open-publishing system, the IMC encourages people from anywhere in the world to become the media by publishing images, video and/or audio footages of current events on its website.

The IMC’s endeavour to challenge mainstream media reflects an ideological struggle in the sphere of civil society. While the mainstream media side by the powerful, the IMC is offering alternative media outlets for the powerless. The former shares some commonalities with what Gramsci (1971) refers to as organic intellectuals, who assist upholding the values of the ruling class; and the latter, is similar to traditional intellectuals who “regard themselves as autonomous and independent of the dominant social group” (Leroux, 2010, Slide 15).

References:

Gramsci, A. (1971). The intellectuals. In Selections from the prison notebooks (pp. 5-23). New York: International Publishers.

Leroux, D. (2010). Hegemony. [PowerPoint Slide]. Retrieved from: http://webct6.carleton.ca/webct/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct

“It’s Racist but Hey, It’s Disney!”

Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood and Corporate Power (2001) is a documentary examining Disney’s corporate power. It challenges the masses’ perceptions about Disney and Disney stories through unveiling the stereotypical representations of race and gender in Disney movies.

Linking to the concept of cultural circuit (Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay & Negus, 1997), the identity of Disney as a company has been created and recreated through the visual representations of childhood fantasies. As a result, Disney has become the ultimate story teller for children around the world. Because the image of Disney is intimately tied with fairytales, the taken-for-granted public knowledge is that anything Disney represents or produces is innocent and safe. It is almost impossible to think of a company that makes movies and toys for children as dangerous or political.

Cell Phones: Identification Through Consumption

Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay & Negus (1997) state in their book Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman that representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation are five cultural processes that constitute the “circuit of culture” (p. 3). The idea that these five elements of the cultural circuit are interrelated and overlapping (Gay et al., 1997) is especially useful when examining the cultural significance of a particular object. In this reflection, I use these five intertwined cultural processes as analytical tools to explore how cell phones have entered our culture and simultaneously produced certain cultures.

“The Dead Children Were Worth It!”

A friend of mine sent me the following Youtube video and a web link after our discussion about the Olympic Games held in Beijing in 2008 and Vancouver in 2010.

On the web link that my friend sent along, singer Geoff Berner depicts the day that he was asked to write the Olympic theme song by the Premier of British Columbia Gordon Campbell. He goes on about how Campbell wanted a song that is able to tell the world what was really happening in B.C., what the Olympic games had cost and at whose expense… As far as hilarity goes, I was told by a very “reliable source” that the story that Geoff Berner was telling here about Campbell was nothing but a joke.

“The Dead Children Were Worth It” was written with honesty and imbued with irony. As someone who work with young children, I found the “babies’ corpses rising up from the melting snow” part of the song quite drastic and disturbing. However, I appreciate that this is exactly the kind of emotion that the song is meant to provoke. It makes us think about the things that are considered expendable when it comes to the Olympics.

Geoff Berner lists what had been done in B.C. to pay for the Olympic expenses:

“They closed courthouses, kicked the mentally ill off welfare, got rid of ambulance service in small towns, let homelessness more than double in Vancouver, illegally tore up all the government workers’ contracts … my favourite has always been their decision to eliminate the office that investigates the deaths of children in BC. A 4 million dollar savings!” (Penticton Art Gallery, 2009).

In my reflection National Pride vs. Democracy, I illustrate how the Chinese people thought that spending $40 billion on the Beijing Olympics was “worth it”, and how home demolitions were considered a necessary sacrifice for the Chinese nation during preparation for the Olympics. It doesn’t matter where the Olympic games are held, different hosting countries employ similar strategies to suit the needs of this two-week mega project; and the people of the hosting nations go alone with it. As my friend (who I mentioned at the beginning of this post) suggested during my conversation with her, that nationalism makes the people of a nation radical and irrational.