EDM 6022 Education and Development

1. EDM 6022Education and Development Globalization & Education: The Virtual Community& Hybrid Identity & their Educational Consequences Wing-kwong Tsang Ho Tim Bldg. Room 416; Ext. 6922; www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~wktsang

2. Globalization and Its Social Consequences: Individualization of Reflexive Modernity • Distinction between classical modernization and reflexive modernization "Just as modernization dissolved the structure of feudal society in the nineteen century and produced the industrial society, modernization today is dissolving industrial society and another modernity is coming into being." (Beck, 1992, p. 11) "We are therefore concerned no longer exclusively with making nature useful, or with releasing mankind from traditional constraints, but also and essentially with problems resulting from techno-economic development itself. Modernization becomes reflexive; it is becoming its own theme." (1992, p. 19)

3. Globalization and Its Social Consequences: Individualization of Reflexive Modernity • Individualization • Individualization in classical modernization: Detraditionized the social institutions and network of feudal society and emancipate individuals from traditional constraints and myths • The process of detraditionization has in turn detraditionized the social parameters of the industrialization and thus has given rise to individualization of reflexive modernity • Permanent, professionalism, vocationalism and unionism replaced by flexible, self-programmed workers • Class positions, class identity and class culture replaced by individualized employees • Individualization of male and female identities in nuclear families replaced by flexible identities of fe/male in flexible families • Citizenship of nation-state in modern politics replaced by global-informational political actors in politics of risk positions

4. Globalization and Its Social Consequences: Individualization of Reflexive Modernity • Individualization • Decentering of the modern self • Autonomous bourgeois ego and their anxiety and alienation are replaced by self annihilation and euphoria • The waning of affect and the emergence of mobile psyche • Bauman’s cultural identity of postmodernity • The pilgrim as modern self: Pilgrimage of entrepreneurs, tenured workers, citizens, civil soldiers, husband and wife, etc. • Life strategy of postmodern self: Strollers, vagabond, tourist and players • The rise of networked individualism and cyber-balkanization “Networked individualism is a social pattern, not a collection of isolated individuals. Rather, individuals build their networks, on-line and off-line, on the basis of their interests, values, affinities, and projects.” (Castells, 2001, p. 131)

5. Globalization and Its Social Consequences: Constitution of Flexible Family • Dissolve of family of industrial society “The very concept of a job is changing. In the years after World War II, industrial societies constructed the ideal of a full-time, secure job working thirty years for one company with ever-rising real wages. Pay in this job would be high enough that within American family households, only the man had to work. His wife could stay at home, raising the children and managing the household. The ideal of secure work and increasing consumption was matched by government policies that constructed social security (old-age pension, unemployment insurance, and health insurance) largely around the ideal of a permanent job. This concept of secure, permanent work at rising wages for men and very little paid work for women is going by the boards, and the new information technology is only one cause of change. The simplest description of the nature of this transformation is increased flexibility.” (Carnoy, 2000, p.64-65)

6. Globalization and Its Social Consequences: Constitution of Flexible Family • From flexible work to flexible family "Two separate individual projects and two separate work schedules make the compatibility of the individual work projects and the family project more difficult in the long run." (Carnoy, 2000, p.116) As the result, family institution in developed countries has undergone three significant changes. • "Marriages were much more likely to dissolve in the 1990 than in 1960." (ibid, p.116) • Marriages were delayed and child rearing were also delayed or even more likely forgone. • "A smaller percentage of the population lived in a nuclear family household headed by a married couple than the 1960." (ibid, p.116)

7. Globalization and Its Social Consequences: Constitution of Flexible Family • Fundamental contradiction in functions of flexible family “what result is a serious social contradiction: the new workplace requires even more investment in knowledge than in the past, and family are crucial to such knowledge formation, especially for children but also for adults. The new workplace, however, contributes to greater instability in the child-centered nuclear family, degrading the very institution crucial to further economic development.” (ibid, p.110)

8. Globalization and Its Social Consequences: Constitution of Virtual Community • Transformation of pattern of communication: “Instantaneous social practices are separated from physical contiguity, the traditional face-to-face and time-consuming communications, which are the cornerstone of primary association, have given way to fast, cheap and forgetting communications” (Benedikt, 1995, quoted from Bauman, 1998, p.16).

9. Globalization and Its Social Consequences: Constitution of Virtual Community • Dissolve of community of yoke: “The so-called 'closely knit communities' of yore were … brought into being and kept alive by the gap between the nearly instantaneous communication inside the small-scale community (the size of which was determined by the innate qualities of 'wetware', and thus confined to the natural limits of human sight, hearing and memorizing capacity) and the enormity of time and expense needed to pass information between locality. On the other hand, the present-day and short life-span of communities appears primarily to be the result of the gap shrinking or altogether disappearing: inner-community communication has no advantage over inter-communal exchange, if both are instantaneous.” (Bauman, 1998, p.5)

10. Globalization and Its Social Consequences: Constitution of Virtual Community • Cultural-spatial based communities are replaced by virtual and specialized communities of self-chosen members, whose affiliation derived from specialized hobbies, interests, values, knowledge, etc, and whose sociability and commitment are relatively low.

11. Education as Process of Identity Formation and Community Building • Castells’ conception of identity formation in network society: • “Identities are sources of meaning for the actors themselves, and by themselves, constructed through a process of individuation. …Identities can also be originated from dominant institutions, they become identities only when and if social actors internalize them, and construct their meanings around this internalization.” (1997, p. 7)

12. Education as Process of Identity Formation and Community Building • Castells’ conception of identity formation in network society: • “Three forms and origins of identity building: • Legitimatizing identity: introduced by the dominant institutions of society to extend and rationalize their domination vis a vis social actors. • Resistance identity: generated by those actors that are in positions/conditions devalued and/or stigmatized by the logic of domination, thus building trenches of resistance and survival on the basis of principles different from, or opposed to, those permeating the institutions of society. • Project identity: when social actors, on the basis of whichever cultural materials are available to them, building a new identity that redefines their position in society and, by so doing, see transformation of all social structure.” (1997, p. 8)

13. Education as Process of Identity Formation and Community Building • Castells’ conception of identity formation in network society: • Identity formation in “late modernity” “one of the distinctive features of modernity is an increasing interconnection between the two extremes of extensionality and intentionality: globalizing influences on the one hand and personal dispositions on the other. … The more tradition loses its hold, and the more daily life is reconstituted in terms of the dialectical interplay of the local and global, the more individuals are forced to negotiate lifestyle choices among a diversity of options … Reflexively organized life-planning …becomes a central feature of the structuring of self-identity.” (Giddens, 1991, quoted in Castells, 1997, p. 11)

14. Education as Process of Identity Formation and Community Building • Education as project of acculturation of identities • Education as project of acculturation of legitimizing identities of modern institutions. • Nuclear families • Professional and vocational associations, unions, etc. • Physically contiguous communities, e.g. neighborhood, city, etc. • Nation-state • Education as project of acculturation of resistance or project identities in modern institutions • Class position, class consciousness and class culture • Political courses in risk politics, e.g. environmental movement, feminist movement, etc.

15. Education as Process of Identity Formation and Community Building • Education as project of acculturation of identities • Education as anti-projects of acculturation of “virtually project identities” in virtual communities, e.g. hackers, crackers, flash mobs, etc. “Individual and collective identity is constructed in a complex, planetary society where both individuals and groups are given increasing chances and resources for an autonomous definition of themselves, and are simultaneously exposed to stronger pressures to conform to systemic regulations, to incorporate into that anonymous apparatuses impose on them throu8gh the hidden encoding of the information flow.” (Melucci, 2000, p. 58)

16. Education as Process of Identity Formation and Community Building • Education as means of destruction of community • Wexler’s thesis of schooling as social destruction • Case study in a working class school: Apparatus of the “interaction-control”“interactional lack” in the schools has emptying effects on interaction constitution and identity formation. • Case study in a professional middle class school: Strive for success in competition has emptying effect on society building and identity formation. • Case study in an urban under-class school: Denial and destruction process of the students’ minority-ethnic attributes has emptying effect on the self.

17. Education as Process of Identity Formation and Community Building • Education as means of destruction of community • Dissolution of the “education public”: Whiity and Brown’s thesis of consumerism and parentocracy in education market place • Whiity’s thesis of the destructive effect of marketization and commercialization of education on “public” care for the dsiadvantaged:

18. Education as Process of Identity Formation and Community Building • Education as means of destruction of community • Dissolution of the “education public”: Whitty and Brown’s thesis of consumerism and parentocracy in education market place • “The growing tendency to base more and more aspects of social affairs on the notion of consumer rights rather than upon citizen rights involves more than a move away from public-provided systems of state education towards individual schools competing for clients in the marketplace. While seeming to respond to critiques of impersonal over-bureaucratic welfare state provision, this also shift major aspects of education decision-making out of the public into the private realm with potentially significant consequences for social justice. …The transfer of major aspects of educational decision-making from the public to the private realm undermines the scope for defending the interests of disadvantaged individuals and groups and thereby potentially intensifies those groups’ disadvantage.” (Whitty, 1998, p. 100)

19. Education as Process of Identity Formation and Community Building • Education as means of destruction of community • Dissolution of the “education public”: Whiity and Brown’s thesis of consumerism and parentocracy in education market place • Brown’s thesis of parentocracy • The third wave of education reform and the rise of the ideology of parentocracy • “To date, the ‘third wave’ has been characterized by the rise of the parentocracy, where a child’s education is increasingly dependent upon the wealth and wishes of parents, rather than the ability and efforts of pupils/” (Brown, 1997, p. 393) • “Recent educational reforms will lead to increasing racial segregation of our schools, and equal opportunities policies aimed at breaking down gender and racial inequalities will suffer, given the lack of time and resources for co-ordination planning, as schools try to live within their financial budgets.” (Brown, 1997, p. 404)