Long, Sarah E. "The New Student Politics: The Wingspread Statement on Civic Engagement." Second Edition. Providence, Rhode Island: Campus Compact, 2002.
The official statement-cum-manifesto of the 2001 Wingspread Summit on Student Civic Engagement, which gathered 33 undergraduate activists and volunteers to discuss civic engagement.
I: Democracy and Education
Long et al argue that statisticians have got it wrong when they only use markers like voting to measure engagement, which they feel has "multiple manifestations" including the arts (alt papers, poetry slams) and involvement with the local or the global instead of the national level. They find "conventional politics...inaccessible" and state that "service is a viable and preferable (if not superior) alternative" (1). Countering binary thinking of much of the literature, they argue that service is an "alternative politics" where they: build relationships, learn organizing skills, increase awareness, and strategize for problem solving and social change. In other words, it's a step toward more traditional politics (2). They get involved for a variety of reasons (many overlooked or not well understood) including faith-inspired reasons and special interests rooted in identity markers. Service has more potential than traditional politics of bringing voiceless into the process of decision-making. "Democracy is defined less in terms of civic obligation than of the social responsibility of the individual" (5)...Long et al want to reclaim the rhetoric of the individual and frame engagement as personal and rooted in individual and/or sub-cultural identity. But they want context too: "The realization that individual choices have larger public repercussions is an integral piece of one's moral, social, intellectual, and civic development" (6). They see service as an incremental, developmental step toward traditional politics.
They suggest that ASL programs 1) avoid making agencies or community partners feel like they're being studied or objectified, 2) orient students into the community and the work they'll be doing, 3) emphasize quality of experience over minimum numbers of hours, 4) transcend the administrative imperative to use service as good p.r. for the university, 5) "teach us the community-building/organizing skills that we need" (8), foreground reciprocity, 6) devote material resources, 7) involve students in program development and leadership, giving them a real voice in the process, 8) avoid the too-common model of higher ed where "we are encouraged to be primarily consumers of knowledge and democracy--not active producers" (12).
II: Service and Politics
Long et al develop a model of the modes of civic engagement: conventional politics, community service, and "service politics." They reject the notion that service and volunteerism is necessarily apolitical, instead seeing the service-to-politics process as a developmental one.
They define conventional politics as electoral politics and/or working with institutions like political parties and special interest groups. Community service on the other hand is no less engaged with social issues or critical understandings of social context. The latter is more desirable for many young people who "dislike the institutional focus" and have an "anti-institutional bias." They use the analogy of formal religion and say the service is imperative is like having an individual spirituality that one follows. The third mode, "service politics," "becomes the means through which students can move from community service to political engagement. Those who develop connections to larger systemic issues building on their roots in community service adopt a framework through which service politics leads to greater social change" (18). They "find contemporary political life distasteful and unresponsive to their efforts" (19). Service politics can look at root causes of social problems: "Service politics is a form of civic engagement that looks at systems, while service is typicallty geared toward symptoms" (19). Activism can be a natural outgrowth of service politics.
Some thoughts: my work with SPHB can follow this service politics model. They do the work, study context, do project-based learning, and then their research papers can be the moment of political praxis. I don't impose an agenda, but give them resources and opportunities for political awareness and consciousness and contextual understanding of social problems. Then, allow them, through their own term papers, to involve themselves in material change.
Students may be drawn to service work for affective reasons. The feel-good nature of volunteerism which avoids the agonism of activism. But perhaps faculty are drawn to activism for affective reasons--a bodily and passionate attraction-cum-romance for activism (with a twinge of nostalgia)?
Friday, September 7, 2007
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Murphy
Murphy, Troy A. "Romantic Democracy and the Rhetoric of Heroic Citizenship." Communication Quarterly 51 (2003): 192-208.
In the U.S.American context, "citizens who 'roll up their sleeves' and 'make a difference' in their communities ostensibly exemplify an ideal form of citizenship to which all Americans might aspire. Such citizens are as 'ordinary' as the larger American public for whom they serve as models, but are 'extraordinary' because of their individual effort, quiet humility, and selfless acts of citizenship" (193). We're taken as a culture with this iconic image of the everyday hero. This icon, who does "apolitical acts of volunteerism" (193), becomes normative, excluding political and rhetorical dimension of citizenship. The icon is quiet (esp. in the political arena), is not part of the political process and is not engaged in collective action or organizing or advocacy. "The heroic citizen as constructed sets a standard for ideal citizenship that depoliticizes the very idea of citizenship and works to further marginalize the legitimacy of more rhetorical, public, and potentially contentious aspects of democratic citizenship. Whether it is the broader image of all citizens as heroes who essentially disregard politics and quietly go about their daily lives without complaint, or the specific actions of highlighted representative characters who define the most admirable qualities of participation through romantic images of community service, the 'good citizen' as public image is marked by a quiescent and harmonious disposition which is antithetical to the types of rhetorical contestation and political action that is sometimes necessary in a democratic society" (203).
The narrative of the heroic individual fails to challenge the cynical attitude we have toward government and politicians. Reagan popularized the "heroes in the gallery" at his states of the union..."good citizens" who "care rather than complain" (199). Bush 2 similarly valorized everyday heroes of 9/11. Rosa Parks: valorized for her everyday-ness, but her organizing with NAACP is often overlooked. Paul Rogat Loeb's work problematizes this model for actually obscuring root causes of injustice.
Some thoughts: Murphy calls the heroic icon normative...but, going a step further, isn't the icon serving a social control role, a la Foucauldian disciplining. We're disciplined by the narrative or Rosa Parks and the other mythologies Murphy outlines. Further, there seems to be an affective dimension that makes us happy. We're pleased and reassured by the narrative. In reality, citizenship doesn't always feel good.
In the U.S.American context, "citizens who 'roll up their sleeves' and 'make a difference' in their communities ostensibly exemplify an ideal form of citizenship to which all Americans might aspire. Such citizens are as 'ordinary' as the larger American public for whom they serve as models, but are 'extraordinary' because of their individual effort, quiet humility, and selfless acts of citizenship" (193). We're taken as a culture with this iconic image of the everyday hero. This icon, who does "apolitical acts of volunteerism" (193), becomes normative, excluding political and rhetorical dimension of citizenship. The icon is quiet (esp. in the political arena), is not part of the political process and is not engaged in collective action or organizing or advocacy. "The heroic citizen as constructed sets a standard for ideal citizenship that depoliticizes the very idea of citizenship and works to further marginalize the legitimacy of more rhetorical, public, and potentially contentious aspects of democratic citizenship. Whether it is the broader image of all citizens as heroes who essentially disregard politics and quietly go about their daily lives without complaint, or the specific actions of highlighted representative characters who define the most admirable qualities of participation through romantic images of community service, the 'good citizen' as public image is marked by a quiescent and harmonious disposition which is antithetical to the types of rhetorical contestation and political action that is sometimes necessary in a democratic society" (203).
The narrative of the heroic individual fails to challenge the cynical attitude we have toward government and politicians. Reagan popularized the "heroes in the gallery" at his states of the union..."good citizens" who "care rather than complain" (199). Bush 2 similarly valorized everyday heroes of 9/11. Rosa Parks: valorized for her everyday-ness, but her organizing with NAACP is often overlooked. Paul Rogat Loeb's work problematizes this model for actually obscuring root causes of injustice.
Some thoughts: Murphy calls the heroic icon normative...but, going a step further, isn't the icon serving a social control role, a la Foucauldian disciplining. We're disciplined by the narrative or Rosa Parks and the other mythologies Murphy outlines. Further, there seems to be an affective dimension that makes us happy. We're pleased and reassured by the narrative. In reality, citizenship doesn't always feel good.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Deans, b
Deans, Tom. "Shifting Locations, Genres, and Motives: An Activity Theory Analysis of Service-Learning Writing Pedagogies." The Locations of Composition. Ed. Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser. Albany: State U of New York P, 2007. 289-306.
Deans argues that looking at the location of writing (classroom to community agency) is less useful than looking at the activity system of writing because we then begin "thinking about the interactions and contradictions between two activity systems (the university and the community partner organization)" (290). An activity system is like a discourse community, but one that is perpetually dynamic, in flux (291). The activity system provides a vocabulary for analysis of relationships: tools/genres, subjects, rules, objects/motives, community, and division of labor. This type of analysis is more multi-faceted than place-based analysis: e.g., genre analysis, looking at explicit and implicit motives of multiple agents, the contradictions from student perspectives (working for a grade vs. working for agency's betterment) and faculty perspectives (the agency/power of professor vs. that of the site supervisor).
Deans argues that looking at the location of writing (classroom to community agency) is less useful than looking at the activity system of writing because we then begin "thinking about the interactions and contradictions between two activity systems (the university and the community partner organization)" (290). An activity system is like a discourse community, but one that is perpetually dynamic, in flux (291). The activity system provides a vocabulary for analysis of relationships: tools/genres, subjects, rules, objects/motives, community, and division of labor. This type of analysis is more multi-faceted than place-based analysis: e.g., genre analysis, looking at explicit and implicit motives of multiple agents, the contradictions from student perspectives (working for a grade vs. working for agency's betterment) and faculty perspectives (the agency/power of professor vs. that of the site supervisor).
Brooke and McIntosh
Brooke, Robert, and Jason McIntosh. "Deep Maps: Teaching Rhetorical Engagement through Place-Based Education." The Locations of Composition. Ed. Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser. Albany: State U of New York P, 2007. 131-149.
Brooke and McIntosh suggest that having students draw deep maps is useful as a pre-writing/brainstorming activity, especially in terms of getting students to engage in place-based writing and address civic matters in real writing projects. They write, "Initially, writers need to become accustomed to seeing themselves in a place, that is, they need to become aware of the various ways location (literal and mental) creates their understanding of landscape, culture, class, race, and gender, and surrounds them with local issues and local possibilities" (132). Writing about place is a starting point, they say, toward project-based civic writing. The student becomes personally invested in place. Similar to what I've been calling a pedagogy of person-in-place. Mapping is "an exploratory moment that supported a personal context for place-conscious writing" (140). Place is part of rhetoric: "where to locate one's argument" (147). "Once that link is made, then a whole new energy for writing becomes possible--and a whole new energy for shaping the state of the places we will live, and the kinds of places we can help those locations become" (147).
Brooke and McIntosh suggest that having students draw deep maps is useful as a pre-writing/brainstorming activity, especially in terms of getting students to engage in place-based writing and address civic matters in real writing projects. They write, "Initially, writers need to become accustomed to seeing themselves in a place, that is, they need to become aware of the various ways location (literal and mental) creates their understanding of landscape, culture, class, race, and gender, and surrounds them with local issues and local possibilities" (132). Writing about place is a starting point, they say, toward project-based civic writing. The student becomes personally invested in place. Similar to what I've been calling a pedagogy of person-in-place. Mapping is "an exploratory moment that supported a personal context for place-conscious writing" (140). Place is part of rhetoric: "where to locate one's argument" (147). "Once that link is made, then a whole new energy for writing becomes possible--and a whole new energy for shaping the state of the places we will live, and the kinds of places we can help those locations become" (147).
Hesford
Hesford, Wendy S. "Global/Local Labor Politics and the Promise of Service Learning." Radical Relevance: Toward a Scholarship of the Whole Left. Ed. Laura Gray-Rosendale and Steven Rosendale. Albany: State U of New York P, 2005. 183-202.
Hesford reviews the implications of the globalized and corporatized university, including consumerist models of curriculum and pedagogy, calling upon her audience to interrogate how ASL accepts/rejects exploitative labor practices. ASL provides labor as well as value for both higher ed and community agencies and we should be aware, Hesford writes, of how specific programs impact labor and material realities. E.g., she explains how her students provided volunteer labor to a shelter that had formerly relied upon public moneys. Do ASL programs facilitate decreased state funding for social services? Further, one year the shelter failed to garner a grant for funding labor during the summer (when it felt the lack of student labor). Hesford wonders if her students would be better off protesting at the state capital or continuing to provide the services/labor. Unpaid interships at private corporations effect local economies, providing free labor for the company and taking paid work from an employee. ASL, likewise, enters into labor-based relationship with worksites. Further, the service work remains feminized--a dynamic we often fail to question. Being reflexive isn't enough, for reflexivity doesn't necessarily address these material relationships.
Hesford reviews the implications of the globalized and corporatized university, including consumerist models of curriculum and pedagogy, calling upon her audience to interrogate how ASL accepts/rejects exploitative labor practices. ASL provides labor as well as value for both higher ed and community agencies and we should be aware, Hesford writes, of how specific programs impact labor and material realities. E.g., she explains how her students provided volunteer labor to a shelter that had formerly relied upon public moneys. Do ASL programs facilitate decreased state funding for social services? Further, one year the shelter failed to garner a grant for funding labor during the summer (when it felt the lack of student labor). Hesford wonders if her students would be better off protesting at the state capital or continuing to provide the services/labor. Unpaid interships at private corporations effect local economies, providing free labor for the company and taking paid work from an employee. ASL, likewise, enters into labor-based relationship with worksites. Further, the service work remains feminized--a dynamic we often fail to question. Being reflexive isn't enough, for reflexivity doesn't necessarily address these material relationships.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Weisser
Weisser, Christian R. Moving Beyond Academic Discourse: Composition Studies and the Public Sphere. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois U.P., 2002.
Weisser narrates a brilliant, accessible, clearly articulated history of the field in his early chapters, suggesting that student-centered expressive models of process begat social constructivist views of language and knowledge, which in turn begat the social turn, which is now evolving into emphases on public writing. He sees service learning and community-based courses (forays in the public sphere) as the next step in this evolution.
Mature evolution as a field, he says, means looking toward theories from other disciplines and Weisser relies on social theory. He theorizes the notion of the "public sphere," leaning heavily on Habermas. Habermas, Weisser says, defined public sphere as a "discursive domain where private individuals debate social and political issues" in a setting apart from the state (47). Habermas bought into the myths of freedom and free and equal participation (everybody debates rationally regardless of identity) as well as the notion that the public sphere could take up issues of "common concern" (universal). Inns, coffeehouses, and pubs flourished in mid-18th century but began to decline after the liberal revolutions late in that century--many critics suggest the public sphere's been in decline ever since, a decline fostered by industrialism and the growth of capitalism. Nancy Fraser and others critiqued Habermas' notions for being idealized. Fraser argued that what is "public" and what is "common concern" are rhetorical notions (e.g., wife battering) (85).
Drawing on (critiques of) Habermas, Weisser develops his own model of public writing. Public writing happens in a particular cultural setting and is by extension shaped by context and ideology (96-97). Yes, there's a context for a given debate, but it's more than that. We also need to teach things like who has been and still is excluded from the debate: the "need to consider how ideology, racism, classism, and sexism have played significant roles" (99). Acknowledge "imbalances of power" in the debate (103). Small, local, specialized venues count--it's not just letters to the editor of a major newspaper--a local venue counts as well (104-105). The public isn't a monolithic concept; public writing need not be directed to a "diverse audience" or a "general audience." Social change happens at the local level with special interest groups who organize and mobilize one another and create "subaltern counterpublics" (106) before and during the process of reaching out. Weisser further complicates Habermas' notion of "common concern" and "public" issue as well, reiterating that a public issue need not be on the entire public's radar. In fact, it might not be (sexual orientation, e.g.) (107-109).
Finally, he critiques the over-emphasis on public writing as something that's geared toward changing minds. He returns to Habermas's notion that public sphere is apart from the state. Not so, he says, noting that public writing ought to engage the government and other apparatuses. It's not just about pontificating in a park or on an editorial page. Affect change in public policy. Contrary to Habermas's conception, affecting actual material change is part of the public sphere. "Students' public writing can have significant, tangible, immediate results if it is directed toward publics where both debate and decision making are central goals. As facilitators of public writing, it is important that we help students locate strong publics where their voices can lead to action" (111).
Weisser narrates a brilliant, accessible, clearly articulated history of the field in his early chapters, suggesting that student-centered expressive models of process begat social constructivist views of language and knowledge, which in turn begat the social turn, which is now evolving into emphases on public writing. He sees service learning and community-based courses (forays in the public sphere) as the next step in this evolution.
Mature evolution as a field, he says, means looking toward theories from other disciplines and Weisser relies on social theory. He theorizes the notion of the "public sphere," leaning heavily on Habermas. Habermas, Weisser says, defined public sphere as a "discursive domain where private individuals debate social and political issues" in a setting apart from the state (47). Habermas bought into the myths of freedom and free and equal participation (everybody debates rationally regardless of identity) as well as the notion that the public sphere could take up issues of "common concern" (universal). Inns, coffeehouses, and pubs flourished in mid-18th century but began to decline after the liberal revolutions late in that century--many critics suggest the public sphere's been in decline ever since, a decline fostered by industrialism and the growth of capitalism. Nancy Fraser and others critiqued Habermas' notions for being idealized. Fraser argued that what is "public" and what is "common concern" are rhetorical notions (e.g., wife battering) (85).
Drawing on (critiques of) Habermas, Weisser develops his own model of public writing. Public writing happens in a particular cultural setting and is by extension shaped by context and ideology (96-97). Yes, there's a context for a given debate, but it's more than that. We also need to teach things like who has been and still is excluded from the debate: the "need to consider how ideology, racism, classism, and sexism have played significant roles" (99). Acknowledge "imbalances of power" in the debate (103). Small, local, specialized venues count--it's not just letters to the editor of a major newspaper--a local venue counts as well (104-105). The public isn't a monolithic concept; public writing need not be directed to a "diverse audience" or a "general audience." Social change happens at the local level with special interest groups who organize and mobilize one another and create "subaltern counterpublics" (106) before and during the process of reaching out. Weisser further complicates Habermas' notion of "common concern" and "public" issue as well, reiterating that a public issue need not be on the entire public's radar. In fact, it might not be (sexual orientation, e.g.) (107-109).
Finally, he critiques the over-emphasis on public writing as something that's geared toward changing minds. He returns to Habermas's notion that public sphere is apart from the state. Not so, he says, noting that public writing ought to engage the government and other apparatuses. It's not just about pontificating in a park or on an editorial page. Affect change in public policy. Contrary to Habermas's conception, affecting actual material change is part of the public sphere. "Students' public writing can have significant, tangible, immediate results if it is directed toward publics where both debate and decision making are central goals. As facilitators of public writing, it is important that we help students locate strong publics where their voices can lead to action" (111).
Bickford and Reynolds
Bickford, Donna M., and Nedra Reynolds. "Activism and Service Learning: Reframing Volunteerism as Acts of Dissent." Pedagogy 2 (2002): 229-252.
Bickford and Reynolds notice that their service learning students often express enthusiasm for volunteering but a negative, resistant attitude toward activism. They wonder what the causes and implications of this trend might be. They critique the ASL literature as well as practices for not emphasizing two specific kinds of context: history and geography: "too often infused with the volunteer ethos...that ignores the structural reasons to help others" (230).
They mean to theorize activism as a complementary pedagogy/practice to ASL. In ASL "relationships are clearly based on difference" (237)--us and them, university and agency, but move toward a difference-erasing community-unity. "Activism argues for relationships based on connection" (237): grassroots organizing where various agents agitate for an issue, "a shared goal of creating social change" (237), but acknowledges that difference matters.
Change student anti-activism perception by teaching the history of consciousness-raising (eg, feminism) and organizing (Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, everyday struggles). Get students engaged critically with the politics of space and place via critical methodologies like mapping neighborhoods and even just the campus. They want to "...keep the emphasis of their work on the structural formations of communities rather on their individual members" (243). Give students choice in determining projects--even if they choose acts of dissent in support of causes we despise.
Some thoughts: At what point does place-based pedagogy become de-humanized? I wonder this about Reynolds other work too--while I'm drawn to the materiality of place, I want to revise this into a person-in-place pedagogy. Kind of like a text-in-context pedagogy. That person-in-place model (Loeb is useful here) seems to be the most material rhetoric of all. Does volunteering have an affective component ("happy talk") that activism lacks? After all, activism has an agonistic component (working class) that's at odds with middle-class decorum of higher ed.
Bickford and Reynolds notice that their service learning students often express enthusiasm for volunteering but a negative, resistant attitude toward activism. They wonder what the causes and implications of this trend might be. They critique the ASL literature as well as practices for not emphasizing two specific kinds of context: history and geography: "too often infused with the volunteer ethos...that ignores the structural reasons to help others" (230).
They mean to theorize activism as a complementary pedagogy/practice to ASL. In ASL "relationships are clearly based on difference" (237)--us and them, university and agency, but move toward a difference-erasing community-unity. "Activism argues for relationships based on connection" (237): grassroots organizing where various agents agitate for an issue, "a shared goal of creating social change" (237), but acknowledges that difference matters.
Change student anti-activism perception by teaching the history of consciousness-raising (eg, feminism) and organizing (Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, everyday struggles). Get students engaged critically with the politics of space and place via critical methodologies like mapping neighborhoods and even just the campus. They want to "...keep the emphasis of their work on the structural formations of communities rather on their individual members" (243). Give students choice in determining projects--even if they choose acts of dissent in support of causes we despise.
Some thoughts: At what point does place-based pedagogy become de-humanized? I wonder this about Reynolds other work too--while I'm drawn to the materiality of place, I want to revise this into a person-in-place pedagogy. Kind of like a text-in-context pedagogy. That person-in-place model (Loeb is useful here) seems to be the most material rhetoric of all. Does volunteering have an affective component ("happy talk") that activism lacks? After all, activism has an agonistic component (working class) that's at odds with middle-class decorum of higher ed.
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