Is there a right time for gender-just peace? Feminist anti-war organising revisited

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the question of totalising gender-power relations that have led to and shaped the wars of the 1990s in Yugoslavia and the emerging ethno-national states on the ‘periphery’ of Europe. I argue that the same type of gender-power relations continue to dominate the region, notably Serbia, and to perpetuate gender inequalities and gender-based violence (GBV) in its many everyday and structural forms, causing profound levels of human insecurity. This analysis aims to set in motion a debate around how to tackle these continuing gender inequalities and GBV in post-war societies. In so doing, I propose a shift from focusing on the hierarchy of victimisation that has characterised much of the feminist analyses, activism, and scholarly work in relation to these (and other) conflicts, to a relational understanding of the gendered processes of victimisation in war and peace, that is – of both women and men. Such an approach holds a potential to undermine the power systems that engender these varied types of victimisation by ultimately reshaping the notions of masculinity and femininity, which are central to the gender-power systems that generate gender-unjust peace.     

Constructing a national narrative in civil war: history teaching and national unity in South Sudan

ABSTRACT

This article analyses history teaching in South Sudanese secondary schools and focuses on the interplay of local context, curricular intentions, and teachers’ agency. Drawing on ethnographic data, the article focuses on how the main objectives of national unity and critical thinking are enacted by teachers in the classroom. Through theories of history teaching and learning in divided societies, I explore how teachers teach the recent violent past and how they navigate and mediate ‘invisible’ tensions among opposing truths in the classroom. Foregrounding the context of civil war, the article illustrates how narratives of current and previous civil wars in the country limit teachers’ ability to fulfil the goals of the syllabus. Despite the role of teachers as key mediators for a peaceful classroom, the context of war limits the ideological space for them to promote a culture of peace among students in the classroom.     

UNESCO,the Faure Report,the Delors Report,and the Political Utopia of Lifelong Learning

Two education reports commissioned by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Learning to be, otherwise known as the Faure report (1972) and Learning: The treasure within, otherwise known as the Delors report (1996), have been associated with the establishment of lifelong learning as a global educational paradigm. In this article, which draws on archival research and interviews, I will explore how these two reports have contributed to debates on the purpose of education and learning. In the first half, I will shed light on their origins, the context in which they came about, how they have been received by the education community and by UNESCO member states and how they have been discussed in the scholarly literature. In the second half, I will discuss the key themes of the reports, in particular lifelong learning as the global educational ‘master concept’. In the last section, I will reflect on how the Faure report and the Delors report are still relevant for our debates about learning today. I will argue that the concept of lifelong learning, as put forward by these reports, was a political utopia which is at odds with today's utilitarian view of education.     

Education as cultural mobilisation: The Great War and its effects on moral education in the Netherlands

Education during World War I has been a relatively unexplored field of research, especially in the case of countries with a neutral stance in that war. The Netherlands is one such country. This article argues that even though the Netherlands was politically neutral, it was and considered itself a part of western civilisation and shared in the experience of a cultural or existential crisis that came over Europe as a consequence of the war. This crisis also caused Dutch pedagogues to reflect on the war. Leading Dutch pedagogues wrote in their journals how education had to be changed in order to prevent a future war or to preserve moral values in their country, which was not (yet) part of the warfare. To characterise this effort, we introduce the concept of cultural mobilisation, following recent developments in the historiography of the cultural dimensions of the Great War. Based on an in-depth analysis of Dutch pedagogical journals, ranging from Protestant, Catholic and socialist to humanist and anarchistic world views, we focus on three pedagogical debates that were influenced by the Great War. The first debate focuses on peace education and shows how pedagogues rejected the war pedagogy of their German colleagues in particular and advised teachers to pass on a peace-loving message to their pupils. The second debate focuses on the reception of Montessori education and the third on Foerster’s and Kerschensteiner’s social pedagogy, both in light of the desire of pedagogues to improve moral education in the school.     

Collective memory,political nostalgia,and the rhetorical presidency: Bill Clinton's commemoration of the March on Washington,August 28, 1998

This essay offers a reading of President Bill Clinton's address on August 28, 1998 in which he commemorates the 35th anniversary of the March on Washington. Specifically, Clinton's August 28th address reveals how the presidency has become a hermeneutic site for the formation of collective memory and political nostalgia. This analysis discusses the uses of political nostalgia for the purposes of political image (re)construction as evidenced by Clinton's exploitation of the civil rights movement to explain and excuse his personal failings and his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. We also present a divergent version of Clinton's rhetoric, giving specific attention to how his particular use of nostalgia in this address works to articulate and confront many of the powerful dichotomies (masculine/feminine; war/peace; black/white; private/public) that define his presidency, his public persona, and the larger political culture in postmodern America.     

Memes and symbolic violence: #proudboys and the use of memes for propaganda and the construction of collective identity

ABSTRACT

As a social media platform, Instagram has a strong influence on youth culture, identity, and perceptions of the world, with the application serving not only for youth to follow accounts that are aspirational but also for entertainment and identity building through memes. Meme accounts that are explicitly conservative and that espouse white supremacist, hateful ideology and subsequently, identity, are incredibly prevalent. Media serve as powerful institutions for the socialization of youth, and content on the platform reveals that memes are serving as building blocks of ideological meaning. This study conducted a discourse analysis of the memes and content circulated by the alt-right affiliate movement the ‘Proud Boys,’ which is being sold to young men as a fraternity-like organization to celebrate ‘Western ideals’. Proud Boys operate on an ideology that consists of both symbolic and physical violence, and the popularity of these groups is growing. Using Bourdieu’s work on language as a framework, this article is an exploration to their recruitment and world-building practices on Instagram using memes and will be necessary to understand the movement, and to gain further insight into how memes are being used as propaganda.     

Education and countering violent extremism: Western logics from south to north?

Abstract

This paper explores the way education and conflict have become entangled during the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ response to ‘radical Islam’ at home and abroad. The paper charts the complex ways that education has been deployed to serve Western military and security objectives in multiple locations in the global south and how these strategies have now returned to the ‘ West’ in the form of ‘countering violent extremism’ interventions. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of the ‘boomerang effect’ I will explore whether and how education techniques and strategies deployed abroad in pursuit of imperial interests return to the West and are deployed to monitor, control and suppress marginalised communities in a form of ‘internal colonialism’. Finally, the paper brings the two sections together in the Findings to explore commonalities and divergences.     

孙子兵法心理战探析

被推崇为“兵学圣典”的《孙子兵法》,在历史的发展中产生了深远的影响,为推动人类社会的发展起到了巨大作用。尤其是其中阐述的“不战而屈人之兵”的全胜攻心战略,影响更大,声誉更高,许多国家已把这一战略思想提到了空前的高度,并在处理国际问题时运用得炉火纯青。这一现象的出现,是因为实行“不战而屈人之兵”全胜攻心战略的大前提和大环境已经到来。这个“大前提”,即科学技术的发展已使尖端武器特别是核武器强大到不能轻易使用的程度;这个“大环境”,即世界各种力量对人类生存与和平的认识深刻到成为制止战争的洪流。“不战而屈人之兵”全胜攻心战略是高明而科学的理论构想,是高于军事战略的完美战略,是抑战、遏战的妙策良方,是制胜对手的理想武器。在和平与发展已成为世界主流的今天,孙子“不战而屈人之兵”的全胜攻心战略这颗人类智慧的璀璨明珠,对于世界乃至世界未来的指导意义尤为重要和直接,给世界发展与人类和平带来的利益更为巨大而明显。孙子的“不战而屈人之兵”全胜攻心战略,是遏止战争、维护和平、造福人类的最佳方略。     

Jewish Education and American Jewish Education,Part II

In this series of articles, I explore the history of Jewish Education magazine with particular emphasis on its intersection with the history of American Jewish education and American Jewish life more generally. I isolate major themes and issues that preoccupied the magazine's editors and writers, and analyze how their discourse sheds light on their individual aims, values, and philosophical outlooks, as well their collective efforts at educational reform. I am particularly interested in elucidating how Benderly's disciples sought to reinterpret their mentor's vision in a changing American Jewish environment and why this vision was at best only partially realized.     

Against all odds: Peace education in times of crisis

Contexts of violent, intractable conflict such as those present in Israel, Nigeria, or Iraq represent times of severe crisis. Reducing the high indices of violence is very urgent, but the attempts of establishing peaceful arrangements in the short- or medium-term usually fail. Peace education, by contrast, is a long-term endeavor to resolve violent, intractable conflicts that aims at affecting moral stances that the conflicting parties take vis-à-vis each other. Unfortunately, however, peace education in times of severe crisis also faces many impediments. These impediments concern the agential, cultural, financial, and legal aspects of educative institutions within context of violent and intractable conflicts. Although these impediments strongly put into question the practice of peace education, this article shows that four reasons nevertheless strongly support this practice. These reasons refer to (1) humanity’s natural goodness, (2) the symbolic importance of peace education, (3) the peace-promoting experiences facilitated through peace education, and (4) peace education’s contribution to overcoming prejudices.     

Civic education and visions of war and peace in the Spanish transition to democracy

Abstract

This article explores visions of war and peace in the education system during the Spanish transition to democracy. During those years, the Spanish state was faced with the challenge of leaving its authoritarian political past behind and forging a democratic civic culture. As the concepts of war and peace are inextricably linked to those of state and citizenship, they are a useful tool with which to examine changes in civic education. A wide variety of educational sources has been explored, with particular attention to the emotional nature of the depiction of both war and peace. This study reveals two opposing styles. The official discourse demonstrated a factual treatment of war and a tendency to concentrate on international bodies and their actions, when it came to fomenting peace. The treatment of peace in the circles of teachers’ local initiatives was different. First, peace was defined not only as the absence of war but also in terms of social equality and solidarity. Second, there was a conscious effort to get the students involved in opposing war, reinforced by emotionally charged messages regarding its horrors.     

‘I can’t believe I didn’t learn this in school’: ‘refusing secondly’ as an anti-racist English education framework

ABSTRACT

This study examines the responses of pre-service teachers (PSTs) to the young adult novel All American Boys in light of their viewing the 2016 documentary 13^th. In this paper, I use anti-racist English education scholarship to discuss how these two texts helped PSTs ‘refuse to start with secondly.’ I examine how Adichie’s concept of ‘refusing secondly’ within readings of literature both affords and constrains the anti-racist possibilities of literature teacher preparation courses. Using qualitative methodologies, I analysed student reflections, recorded class discussions, and co-constructed class documents. Students connected the historical and the contemporary in considerations of race and racism. They also implicated societal institutions before situating themselves within the continuing legacies of race and racism. These findings demonstrate the ways that ‘refusing secondly’ may offer space for PSTs and teacher educators to use literature to navigate the continuous and indeterminate process of becoming more anti-racist.     

Looking for their voice: the formation of identity in the new Israeli principals’ organisation

ABSTRACT

Based on an in-depth analysis of newspaper articles and internal documents, in this article I examine the formation of a new collective and glocal identity for the Israeli principals’ organisation, Manhigim, which was established in October 2018. I show how, in the process of establishing the organisation, the leaders formed a collective glocal identity comprised of three distinct identities, namely a labour union identity, a professional identity, and a political identity. These identities respond to the question, ‘Who are we?’ As such, they have relationships to the past, present, and expected future. Each one of the identities is glocally constructed; that is, it is influenced by global norms and values, but also by local problems and concerns. My findings suggest that, by stressing the global values of autonomy, trust, and partnership, the organisation’s leaders facilitated an interesting reformulation of the principals’ professional identities. Moreover, they positioned the organisation as the most knowledgeable and important actor in the Israeli educational field. As such, the glocal identity legitimises the primacy and acceptance of the new principals’ organisation as an integral part of the system of Israeli education policymakers.     

De Coubertin's Olympism and the Laugh of Michel Foucault: Crisis Discourse and the Olympic Games

De Coubertin developed the sport philosophy of Olympism and the Olympic Games as a response to social and political crisis to promote peace, fair play, and the development of Christian masculinity. The purpose of this paper is to examine how crisis discourse functions as an important shaper of contemporary understandings of Olympism and how conflicting discourses have mobilized crisis discourse to produce competing ‘truths’ in which to rationalize and understand the Olympic Games. In drawing from Foucault's work and de Certeau's text, Heterologies: Discourse on the other, I argue that ‘crisis’ as the rationalization for Olympism and the Olympic Games has proven an unsuccessful venture for de Coubertin; as the Olympic Games have produced conservative outcomes based on a neoliberal agenda focused on elitism, professionalism, nationalism, and commercialism. This historical case raises important questions about the role of Olympism and its power to act as a catalyst for change.     

Well-founded social fictions: a defence of the concepts of institutional and familial habitus

This article engages with Atkinson’s recent criticisms of concepts of collective habitus, such as ‘institutional’ and ‘familial’ habitus, in order to defend their conceptual utility and theoretical coherence. In so doing we promote a flexible understanding of habitus as both an individual and a collective concept. By retaining this flexibility (which we argue is in keeping with the spirit of Bourdieuian philosophy) we allow for a consideration of the ways in which the individual habitus relates to the collective. We argue that, through recognition of the complexity of the interrelated habitus of individuals, collective notions go beyond individualist accounts that perceive only the relational aspects of the individual with the social field. Our approach allows us to consider social actors in relation to each other and as constitutive of fields rather than as mere individuals plotted in social space. These arguments will be woven through our responses to what Atkinson calls the three fatal flaws of institutional and familial habitus: namely, homogenisation, anthropomorphism, and substantialism.     

隐喻表征的模因特性新探

通过对模因论的研究发现,模因在隐喻的表征过程中起着重要作用,模因论是隐喻的重要表征机制。隐喻的表征过程中既有基因型模因,又有表现型模因。隐喻目标域概念是通过其心理属性对始源域概念引起的心理属性的模因复制形成的,这一形成过程中,被模仿和复制的物理事件的心理属性就是基因型模因。在心理属性得到模仿复制的同时,作为心理属性的宿主---物理属性也得到模仿和复制,被模仿和复制的物理事件的物理属性就是表现型模因。     

A thousand tiny pluralities: children becoming-other than the requirements of postsecular neoliberal policy recognition

ABSTRACT

This paper critiques the idea that secular education policy can neutrally recognise children’s non/religious identities at school. It also empirically analyses how one child becomes restricted by, and eludes, classed, gendered and adult-centred moral codes enacted through local school recognition. The concept of policy assemblage is first used to problematise postsecular, market-led enactments of non/religious school community recognition transnationally. I argue postsecular policy enactments in Ireland and elsewhere produce viable and non-viable forms of non/religious school community, thus containing, rather than facilitating school plurality and (re)creating social hierarchies. However, drawing on Deleuzian ideas of becoming and partial objects, I argue children are not determined by the sense-making moral codes of the policy assemblage. To demonstrate this argument, I map instances of how one girl alters and eludes the meanings of austerity, choice and authenticity moral codes. I do not privilege this girl as an example of child resistance, as I argue against using children as barometers of policy authority and secularist authenticity. Instead, I contend that alongside naming and opposing policy’s unjust effects, we need to cultivate attention to our capacity to affect and be affected by the partial objects (e.g. moral codes) and becomings of postsecular neoliberal policy assemblages.     

《孙子兵法》战略追求的当代价值——《孙子兵法》与《战争论》的比较研究

《孙子兵法》与《战争论》被誉为东西方军事史上的两颗明珠。《战争论》以其"绝对战争"理论曾长期引领西方乃至世界的军事学,但在第二次世界大战后,特别是当"绝对战争"遇到"绝对武器"(核武器),敌我双方都拥有相互确保摧毁能力的情况下,人类将面临同归于尽的选择之时,孙子的"全胜"战略追求便成为战争问题上的济世良方。克劳塞维茨的理想战略是"百战百胜",属于军事层面的制胜观;而孙子追求的则是"不战而屈人之兵"的全胜战略,是大战略层面的价值观。两者最根本的区别是哲学上的区别,道胜是《孙子兵法》的哲学,器胜是《战争论》的哲学。