Educational planning in a time of coronavirus
Educational planning in a time of coronavirus
Educational planning in a time of coronavirus
Educational planning in a time of coronavirus
Occupying Schools in Brazil
Blaise Pascal, the 17th Century French mathematician and physicist, once wrote “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” As people and governments around the world are wondering whether or not to self-isolate to stop the spread of covid-19, Pascal’s adage has become more pertinent than ever.
As we grapple with our new world, I wanted to bring you a special episode of FreshEd. With me is Yaneer Bar-Yam, a physicist, systems scientist, and founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute. Yaneer has spearheaded endcoronavirus.org, which aims to minimize the impact of Covid-19 by providing useful data and guidelines for action.
In our conversation, Yaneer discusses what different countries are doing in response to the virus and talks specifically about children and whether or not they should be in school.
Citation: Bar-Yam, Yaneer, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 192, podcast audio, March 17, 2020. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/bar-yam/
Transcript, Translation and Resources:
Sitting quietly in a room alone: The fight against Covid-19
Digital Education and the Future of Learning
Digital Education and the Future of Learning
Financing Education through Domestic Taxation
Financing Education through Domestic Taxation
Navigating Education and Conflict in Burma and Beyond
Navigating Education and Conflict in Burma and Beyond
OverviewTranscriptTranslationResources
Today we talk about powerful knowledge, a concept that has sparked a major debate about what should be taught in schools. My guest is Michael Young, a professor of Sociology of Curriculum at UCL’s Institute of Education.
Michael’s work in the sociology of education has been criticized by both the Right and the Left. That’s why I wanted to sit down with him to unpack what he even means by powerful knowledge and how it applies to schools. Where did the idea come from? How has his own thinking evolved over his career?
Michael Young has worked at the Institute of Education for over 50 years. A student of Basil Bernstein, he has had a major impact on the field of sociology of education since the publication of his first book, Knowledge and Control, in 1971. Much of our conversation today focuses on his 2008 book, Bringing Knowledge Back in.
Citation: Young, Michael, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 188, podcast audio, February 24, 2020. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/michaelyoung/
Will Brehm 2:14
Michael Young, welcome to FreshEd.
Michael Young 2:16
Thank you. I am very delighted to be involved.
Will Brehm 2:19
So, you have this idea of powerful knowledge and it, sort of, has taken on a life of its own, in many ways. Could you just define the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’? How would you tell a student, for instance, what this idea is?
Michael Young 2:34
I think that there would be many definitions, and what I can do is say something about the starting ideas that, in fact, led to it. And then, I suppose what I wanted to do when I came up with the idea, and I do not know if it is uniquely me … but there was … I was focusing more on educational research in sociology, and I thought that it was important that, in fact, we refocused how we approach questions about the curriculum in sociology. And so … I came up … I gave a talk at the Institute in about 2007, 2008, about the future direction of research. And … it … and I made this distinction, which I think is a very important one, between knowledge of the powerful, and powerful knowledge. And, on the whole, the sociological tradition has been to focus on knowledge … the curriculum, as knowledge of the powerful, and that comes from, basically, a left Marxist tradition, which basically sees the knowledge that people get access to as ideology, masking the nature of the societies that, in fact, they’re in.
Will Brehm 3:48
So, for instance, it would be the people in power who are writing the curriculum, writing the syllabi, writing the textbooks, their knowledge, their interests are being reproduced inside the curriculum. And that is the knowledge of the powerful.
Michael Young 4:02
And, in a sense, what the sociologists did was to expose this. And I felt that there was time … we had to stop. Because, actually, it was an oversimplification this… was… Although that knowledge of powerful ideas got some truth in it, it is also true that, in fact, people can get quite other kinds of things from being educated in a school system … university system … in a Western capitalist society. And, what they can get is access to if I call ‘powerful knowledge’. So, in a sense, there is a tension within education systems in capitalist society, on the one hand, wanting to perpetuate a particular social order, but also having an alternative … but … to give access to criticism of that social order. And this is an argument that, in fact, Basil Bernstein makes quite powerfully in his work.
Will Brehm 4:57
Right. So, what would be an example, in today’s world, of powerful knowledge, as you see it?
Michael Young 5:03
Johan Muller, who’s a colleague I work with from Cape Town, he and I decided … we had to try and write a paper, actually trying to answer that question. And, I think the important thing to say is that, in fact, and this is where Bernstein comes in, is that, in fact, the meaning of powerful knowledge depends on the … area … the field of knowledge you’re talking about. And, in a sense, there is a tendency for the model from the natural sciences, to be seen as a definitive one, across the whole of the field of knowledge. Because, unequivocally, if we think back to industrialization, the knowledge that is transformed the society is the scientific knowledge, and the increasing emphasis of the sciences, in industry, manufacturing, and so forth. But I am not wanting to negate that, but what is extremely important is to recognize that, in a sense, the knowledge fields are differentiated. And that, in fact, you have the social sciences, you have the humanities, you have the unity. And, I think the key thing … this is the point that Bernstein makes, which I think is quite useful, that, in fact, depending on which which field you’re in, knowledge progresses in different ways, new knowledge is developed in different ways … according to where …now in the natural sciences it’s developed through the process of greater generalization and abstraction. So that, in fact, Einstein incorporates Newton and all the nineteenth century, in his field … it does not mean that they were wrong, but they were partial. And Einstein provided a broader theory, quantum theory and so forth, is an attempt to combine those, and there is the endless attempt in physics, which is to bring, in a sense, relativity and quantum theory together.
Will Brehm 6:59
Right. So … so basically powerful knowledge, in a way, you’re saying, is that once you differentiate between fields or disciplines, there are different sort of traditions with in those disciplines that, sort of, legitimate …
Michael Young 7:12
Yes.
Will Brehm 7:12
… powerful knowledge. And, I think one of the words you use is ‘specialized …
Michael Young 7:16
Yes.
Will Brehm 7:17
… knowledge’. So, what is the difference between ‘specialized knowledge’ and say ‘non-specialized knowledge’?
Michael Young 7:22
Well, non-specialized knowledge is the knowledge that is developed without reflection in communities, and is valuable to make sense of the world that people grow up in. So there’s, in a sense, non-specialized knowledge, it’s about the streets you live in, whether there’s a shop here or there, what bus is going where they go, that’s everyday knowledge, as discussed, for instance, particularly by the psychologist Vygotsky, and indeed … it’s … Durkheim uses the term ‘profane knowledge’ for that … that … it’s … it’s knowledge of experience. I think the big difference between specialized … starting something … between specialized and non-specialized, is that it is knowledge from experience, or it is knowledge that goes beyond experience. And that, in fact, I quite often give the example that, in fact … a city … a young person in the city … knows quite a lot … has a lot of knowledge of the city that he or she has grown up in. And, at the age … depending … seven or eight or nine, he certainly meets a geography teacher. And, the geography teacher has specialized knowledge of cities, what happens to them, how they have changed, different parts of the city affect, in different kinds of ways. And, in a sense, you get what … the … some of the researchers say is a disruption, disruption between the specialized knowledge of a field like geography, which relies upon research, inquiry, debates, within its community, and the everyday knowledge, which is also about the city, urban geography or urban sociology, is about the city. So is the young boy growing up in the city …
Will Brehm 9:09
Or the black taxi driver’s knowledge …
Michael Young 9:11
That is right … taxi drivers … is knowledge indeed, yeah…yup, yup.
Will Brehm 9:15
But that would be everyday knowledge.
Michael Young 9:16
That would be everyday knowledge, yes indeed.
Will Brehm 9:17
That would be the profane to use Durkheim’s word.
Michael Young 9:20
Yeah, yeah …that … But, in a sense, the interesting thing is that there is also a difference between codified and uncodified knowledge…
Will Brehm 9:30
Meaning?
Michael Young 9:31
… and, in a sense, specialized knowledge means that, in fact, it is more than just organizing knowledge … I mean … the taxi driver’s knowledge is codified, so you can test them, do they know it? – and so forth. But it is not specialized. In the sense that it never progresses, you just have to keep up with what’s going on when the new roads are built, and so forth. And, in a sense, it is different from … the … the person who lives in an area who has uncodified knowledge about the names of the streets, and the pubs, and the shops, and things like that …
Will Brehm 10:07
Right, exactly, exactly. Okay. Now … I mean … you know, the specialized/non-specialized knowledge, it seems like it is a dichotomy that might be too absolute, in a way. Would you … you know … is there some gray area where there could be types of powerful knowledge that is both specialized and non-specialized?
Michael Young 10:25
I think that in a modern industrial society, these categories … I mean … to use the term that the great German sociologist Max Weber uses, ‘ideal types’, they are not descriptions, and therefore, somebody’s knowledge will always have bits of specialized and bits of unspecialized, but when you move, say, from everyday knowledge of a city to a geography teacher, then you get a focus and a specialization that is focused. It does not mean that you throw out the unspecialized knowledge, but it is a different way of thinking. And, in that sense …it is a … students find it difficult to make that step.
Will Brehm 11:07
So … so … okay. So, we have knowledge that is specialized, we have knowledge that is unspecialized as ideal types, and then we still have this knowledge of the powerful. And would that … be … that sort of fits into specialized and non-specialized as well.
Michael Young 11:22
The knowledge of the powerful is a way of thinking about specialized knowledge. Whereas powerful knowledge is another way of thinking about specialized knowledge. Because, in a sense, if you’re approaching it from the point of view of knowledge of the powerful, you focus on ideological assumptions, you focus on who has the knowledge, what interests does it protect? – and so for those kind of things, so it’s not so much … so it’s a question of how you think about it, rather than that.
Will Brehm 11:53
Right, right. Okay. And so, I mean, we have spent a lot of time talking about knowledge. What about the word ‘powerful’, like, how are you conceptualizing the very idea of power?
Michael Young 12:02
I think it is … quite … it is an important point. Johan Muller and I, we wrote a paper in ‘The Curriculum Journal’ last year, which, in fact, revisits the question of power. Because we realized that, in a sense, and particularly important for education, that, in fact, for instance, you come across new literature or new sciences then, in a sense, on the one hand, that is powerful knowledge, but it also has powers through knowing it, and therefore, what we realized was that, in a sense, power can either mean … can mean power over, it also means power to do certain things, to think certain things. So, in a sense, power has always got those dimensions. And the problem was, to some extent … is what sociology’s emphasized, it is always the power of domination. Because it is a very powerful, it’s a very significant factor, in societies, the domination of knowledge. But it tends to neglect the fact that, in fact, students, from whatever social class, can actually acquire knowledge that empowers them. So that, in a sense, somebody like Paulo Freire is talking about the emancipatory potential of knowledge. Whereas, in fact, somebody like Althusser and Bourdieu is talking about dominating power of knowledge.
Will Brehm 13:29
Right. Okay.
Michael Young 13:29
So, there are two very, very different notions of knowledge.
Will Brehm 13:32
Yeah, very different notions …
Michael Young 13:34
That makes it a complex issue for students actually studying and thinking about it. They want to see it as simple, that either it is power over or it is power to …
Will Brehm 13:44
Right…
Michael Young 13:45
…never.
Will Brehm 13:46
And it is both …
Michael Young 13:47
And it is both…
Will Brehm 13:47
… at the same time.
Michael Young 13:48
Yeah, at the same time, yes …
Will Brehm 13:49
…and that is difficult to then unpack …
Michael Young 13:51
… and this is somethings that is always true …
Will Brehm 13:53
Right …
Michael Young 13:53
… about social …
Will Brehm 13:54
Right …
Michael Young 13:54
… organization.
Will Brehm 13:56
And so, would all specialized knowledge be powerful?
Michael Young 14:00
Would all specialized knowledge be powerful? Again, it depends. The reason why people specialize is to further knowledge and, in a sense, to make it, generate new ideas, extend their imagination about the world, or make predictions more powerful. So that the purpose of specialization is always to increase the power. I think that … but on the other hand, for instance, if you take the Gnostic knowledge of physicists, about the nature of the atom, then that, actually, can lead to Hiroshima. As much as it can lead to a way of producing energy.
Will Brehm 14:44
Right, right … so …
Michael Young 14:45
And so, it is not so much whether it is always powerful, but it’s powerful with different consequences.
Will Brehm 14:52
And in different times. So …
Michael Young 14:53
Yah, yah …
Will Brehm 14:53
… so, at one time, it …
Michael Young 14:54
Yah, yah …
Will Brehm 14:54
…it can be a domination over …
Michael Young 14:56
…that’s right …
Will Brehm 14:56
… certain people, and other times it can be …
Michael Young 14:58
… and you cannot really, you cannot really escape that … we have the dramatic case of it now about artificial intelligence, it’s actually incredibly productive, the things it can enable us to do, but also it has very, very negative consequences as well, as we know from, you know, the Cambridge Analytica project, and all those kind of things.
Will Brehm 15:19
Exactly. And I guess this is where some issues of politics come in, because then there has to be choices that are made … by how these, sort of, new knowledge in different fields gets applied to society or applied in society, right? So …
Michael Young 15:33
But it is a most tricky issue for politics …
Will Brehm 15:36
Oh, of course …
Michael Young 15:36
… because, in a sense, it is not unambiguous right …ly … right … or left.
Will Brehm 15:42
Exactly. Right. And there is, yeah, exactly …
Michael Young 15:44
People want to find things …of, you know, that the Labour Party can go in for or the Conservative Party, but it is not like that …
Will Brehm 15:50
Right…
Michael Young 15:51
…knowledge is not like that.
Will Brehm 15:52
Right. So, I mean, this, sort of, brings up this idea of, you know, what is truth? And we, sort of, live in this moment of ‘fake news’. And where journalism is, sort of, you know, they feel the need to present both side ism. So, in every article there is, you know, here is what one person says, but we also have the opposite take by this other group with that has other interests. Do you think that powerful knowledge, this idea that we’ve been talking about, can actually help, you know, societies today, sort of, get over or get through this idea of ‘fake news’ and where truth is relative and anyone can have as many different truths as we can count?
Michael Young 16:32
I think the notion of … there are two things need to be clarified there, I think. One is that, in fact, there is a difference between, if you are like, I cannot think of quite the right term, the difference between absolute truth, and with something more like procedural truth. I mean, there is … and, in a sense, I would use the term for procedural truth, better knowledge rather than, in fact, another version of truth. There’s always better knowledge knowledge. And that takes you back to the fact that there’s better knowledge in different disciplines, there is better plays, better films. And then the reason … what ‘better’ means is that you can get the background, the argument, the evidence, and, so forth, for why you claim to be better. And it is very, very important that, in fact, school education, in particular, actually focuses on better knowledge.
Will Brehm 17:25
So, isn’t one person’s idea of ‘better’ different from another’s?
Michael Young 17:29
Well, it’s potentially better, but, in a sense …one of the things that schools try to do is to give students access to the specialized communities who spend their life on trying to clarify the better knowledge, and that gives the historians … they don’t have an answer, you know, anybody can have a view about the origins of the American War of Independence or whatever, but what historians do can document you, what happened and why, and the arguments that they can make. And, in a sense … and therefore we turn to them, but we do not turn to them for an absolute truth, we turned to them because, in fact, what … the way that the …the issue … I would say the way … it is important for everybody to be thinking about knowledge, not necessarily about powerful knowledge, that is not always that helpful.
Will Brehm 18:25
Right.
Michael Young 18:26
But, in a sense, if they think about powerful knowledge, they will realize that they are involved in some judgment, but there are limits to their judgment, because of specialization. I cannot make a judgement about some technical thing involved in artificial intelligence. But I can make some broader judgments about what assumptions about intelligence the AI people are making, because I am, you know, that is what philosophers and sociologists do. So, there is a question of where your own specialization applies.
Will Brehm 19:00
So, you know, it is interesting this idea of trying to, you know, view specialized knowledge, or view powerful knowledge within specialized fields, within specialized disciplines. Because, at the same time, in higher education, we hear a lot about trying to be cross-disciplinary, transdisciplinary, trying to not simply work within single disciplines, but work across disciplines, to get at certain issues that don’t fall neatly in one area, right? So, for instance, one example that I can think of is climate change, right? Because that obviously has issues that not only impact, you know, environmental studies and physics and, you know, but also sociology, also technology. So how, you know, how do you understand or how can cross-disciplinary thinking fit within ideas of powerful knowledge?
Michael Young 19:50
Climate change, I mean, I’m not a geographer, but climate change is a very interesting example, because there was a debate about whether, in fact, climate change should be introduced or not … and it’s … in the primary school. And some people thought it should because it is relevant, and practical, and happening every day. I would make the argument that, in fact, that is fine but, if you do not really know what climate is, then to think about the consequences of climate change is absurd. So, I would take the view that, in a sense, the starting assumption of schooling is to focus on, if you like, disciplines, which provide you with the intellectual basis for being transdisciplinary. And, I would not introduce, I mean, certainly I used to teach chemistry, as a schoolteacher, and I used to feel much happier … I often had to teach physics and biology, but I did not know much, but I did not feel that I was such a good teacher then. Whereas, I knew my subject, and that’s why people could basically get excited about it, if I taught them, and also, they could learn. So, I think that, in fact, it is very important to see the interrelationships between the discipline, or the subject, and the interdisciplinary inquiry. Because, of course, you look at the, for instance, UCL’s range of research, a lot of it is interdisciplinary. But the people who work in interdisciplinary fields have a strong background in some discipline or other.
Will Brehm 21:28
Right, so they are, you know, you need to specialize in a particular knowledge tradition. But then you also have to have the skills to be able to talk to people and work with people in other disciplines.
Michael Young 21:38
But I think that what’s really important there is, particularly at the school level, it’s slightly different, but has similarities to the university level, is that, in fact, what a subject… cause we … in England anyhow we tend to talk about subjects in schools, disciplines in universities, very crude distinction, but nevertheless. And that … what’s … what’s very important, I think, is that, in fact, if you come to school, from your everyday knowledge, a subject gives you a sense of your identity as a learner, of whether you’re progressing, what’s better knowledge and what less good, and in a sense, it provides an important resource for you. Because, and also, at some point or rather, you may come across the boundaries of the subjects, and then you know … what … what you can speak about, and what, in fact, you need to inquire or talk to colleagues in other subjects, and so forth. So … I think … I think the boundaries between subjects have a very important role for the progress of learners.
Will Brehm 22:39
Right.
Michael Young 22:40
And we have gone against that. I mean, I now find… I don’t teach Masters courses, as I used to, but what I used to find was that, in fact, the disciplines had got broken up, and there were these interdisciplinary modules, and I would have 20 or 30 students, and some of them have never done any sociology before, some of them had done lots. And that is not the best context …
Will Brehm 23:05
Right …
Michael Young 23:05
…for taking them on …
Will Brehm 23:06
… because how do you teach …
Michael Young 23:08
Yah…
Will Brehm 23:08
… such a diverse group of students?
Michael Young 23:09
And I am not sure you do. You see, I think that … they … they would be better to have done some courses in sociology or economics and psychology …
Will Brehm 23:17
… before moving up to
Michael Young 23:19
… then move up …
Will Brehm 23:19
Right, right. I mean … so … and going back to this issue of climate change, so before you can learn about … the … what’s happening in climate change in a cross-disciplinary way, you need to have the … real … good foundation of what climate is.
Michael Young 23:32
And it is quite an abstract concept ‘climate’…
Will Brehm 23:33
It sure is, yeah, yeah…
Michael Young 23:34
Yeah, I mean, like weather, and all these things, yeah…and… yeah …
Will Brehm 23:39
… and climate is not weather, it is … not …
Michael Young 23:40
… no, no, it is not … exactly. And, that is important, you know…
Will Brehm 23:43
So, what then do you think of someone like Greta Thunberg? You know … this … she’s the 16-17 year old that is making all of these speeches and, sort of, leading a massive social movement across the world to get politicians to address the issue of climate change or what … what … she calls the climate crisis. Like, is she working in powerful knowledge? Or, is this more of the everyday knowledge? Like … how would you … How would you understand the phenomenon of Greta Thunberg?
Michael Young 24:12
Well, it is good question, actually. I mean, she is obviously a very bright and thoughtful girl, no question about it. And, she is thought a lot about the issues, and so forth. But … I think … I do not think she is so much a leader; I think she is being used. And, I do not use that negatively. But then people think if we can show that there’s somebody of her age, we’ve got these things, she represents something, they may convince some people that, in fact, another academic, who really knows about it, who has the specialized knowledge, which she doesn’t have, she’s got a concern, and, I think, we can respect that. But I think she is being used as a …sort of … rather like that extraordinary Pakistani girl, Malala.
Will Brehm 24:59
Yeah, yeah …
Michael Young 25:00
I mean, she got used, you know, got the Nobel Prize, not because, in one sense, she deserved it, but to symbolize something that she stood for, was the, kind of, courage and bravery … and it … kind of … concerned about … and I think they’re very much the same. And I am sure that Greta will get some kind of Nobel prize, at some point, just because, in fact, for a 16-year-old to do that everybody thinks it’s wonderful. They cannot really criticize because she’s only 16…
Will Brehm 25:26
Right…
Michael Young 25:27
But I do not think … it is not the knowledge …that’s the important thing, it’s a symbol of the young girl.
Will Brehm 25:33
I think one of the things that’s so powerful about Greta is her ability to take specialized knowledge in the research literature, in diverse fields that focus on climate and climate change, and say them in ways that are so easily understood by people, from politicians to, you know, other schoolchildren, but also to adults, right? Who aren’t in that specialized knowledge? So, she is almost … I see her almost as translating this specialized knowledge into, sort of, everyday knowledge, and it’s become popularized, in a way, where now there’s, sort of, this common language, you know, even the idea of calling it the climate crisis, rather than climate change, you know, in many ways that discursive change … is … or linguistic change … is to her credit.
Michael Young 26:18
Yeah, no … but it might have been an adult, it could have been somebody else…
Will Brehm 26:22
Right…
Michael Young 26:22
But, in fact, it is symbolic that it is not an adult …
Will Brehm 26:25
…Right …
Michael Young 26:25
…and therefore, people, in a way, have to listen to it … I do not think she is done a massive amount of reading …
Will Brehm 26:32
… I, see, I actually think she has …
Michael Young 26:33
…well, she is obviously done… more than most 16-year olds, but I, in a sense, I think it is less… I mean, I agree with you that her ability to articulate, and to express, in accessible lang … is admirable. It is almost as if she is a specialist in communication, rather than in climate knowledge …
Will Brehm 26:53
…Yeah …Yeah, right … I mean, that’s … yeah … that is a good point, because she really is capable of talking about some of these complex issues …
Michael Young 27:00
But I think it is her as the symbol, rather than just what she says.
Will Brehm 27:06
Yeah, it is complex, you are, sort of, becoming multiple things, right? As she is gaining more and more famous … and … you know, her face is known all over the world. So, you know … in … I read a little bit about your history before coming into this interview. And it is quite striking that … I learned that … in … when you were a young lecturer, I think about probably the same age I am now, in the same Institute, you wrote a book called ‘Knowledge and Control’ …
Michael Young 27:33
That is right …
Will Brehm 27:34
… which was very much about how knowledge or school knowledge is socially constructed to … basic … to privilege the ruling classes, those with power, and disadvantage the workers. Fast forward 50 years, we are beginning to, sort of … a … you know … in this conversation today, we’re not really talking about the social construction of knowledge anymore. You are talking about powerful knowledge. These disciplinary knowledges …
Michael Young 27:59
I mean … I realized that, in a sense, the development of … First of all, I think that, in a sense, unless you … … unless you’re a very religious person, social construction is a rather banal notion that is true. That all knowledge is humanly constructed by groups of people in particular contexts. And what is important to say about that is that, I think, is that one of the things that is continued to … is that therefore, it is also always potentially accessible to anyone. Because it’s a human thing, it’s not, you know, it’s not God, you know, it’s not the universe or something like that, and, or some divine being or creator, or anything like that. And I think that was … but if you follow through the social construction, you end up by saying … focusing only on the social … and … and therefore, on the whole, on par, and true knowledge is a knowledge that the powerful have, you get to knowledge of the powerful. And, you do not actually get to any understanding of knowledge, the knowledge itself disappears. Because it is all social. It is kind of a … it is a, kind of, sociological imperialism…
Will Brehm 29:10
Yeah. Right.
Michael Young 29:11
… because … and it’s interesting that, in fact, you know, Marx, who was the first social constructivist, if you like, I mean, he had this notion of post the revolution, something more like primitive communism, where everybody was able to do everything. Now, I think that is a mistake … he was an anti-specialization person. And so, I think, I realized, and I suppose I got a lot of flak, for the first time, not the only time in my life, a lot of flak from the academics, and people, about social constructivism … and rightly, but I want to hold on to the fact that it’s still got an element of truth, just, we tend to convert it into the whole truth. And, that was … I think … that … that was what was misleading. So, and I think I particularly … what was important for me was … in … in the early 90s, I went … I spent a lot of time in South Africa, as a kind of consultant with the Democratic Movement on developing a new education system, because obviously, they were just about to abolish apartheid, which was, in a sense, determined their education … so now what were they were going to do? And, the only theory I had at the time was a socially constructed theory, which basically said, basically, you should let everyone be free to construct their own knowledge. And, in fact, because that is what people used to …flag … wave a flag saying, knowledge is a social construct. But, of course, the poor teachers have not a clue. They were there in the schools and what on earth did they do? And, in a sense, there was chaos in the schools. And, in a sense … and what I have been doing ever since is trying to recover from that idea, to realize that there is actually something real about the world. This is why social realism comes, there’s something real about the world. We do not just social construct, as we will, we social construct an external world, whether it is social or material, or whatever … and we try and improve our understanding of that … material … of that world. And I … then … and then I went back, and I came across Durkheim, and I reread Durkheim, who I read and misunderstood when I was an undergraduate. And, and he was the starting point for me, and the influence of Bernstein as well. And indeed, Vygotsky. So, I looked for an alternative. And, in a sense, ‘Bringing Knowledge Back In’ … the book is a, kind of, conclusion. But it is not a conclusion, it does not solve the problem, it just says ‘here is a way of thinking that is much better than the way we’ve had before’. And then … that social realism, but, in fact, that requires you to accept the importance of specialization, to accept the importance of an external world, to accept the importance … you never have the absolute truth. You are always trying to improve it. I mean, the people in quantum physics are trying to improve quantum physics…. to make it a more adequate account of, you know, of the atom …
Will Brehm 32:06
So, from social constructivism to social realism, and now you are bringing knowledge back in in your working … where to next?
Michael Young 32:16
Well, I mean, I think that the … when we came to powerful knowledge, and the idea that there is better knowledge, and that that should be the basis for the curriculum, for all pupils, because in England, as you probably know, and probably is the same in the States, we had a kind of diversified model of knowledge that, in fact, for the kids who appeared to be in quotes, not ‘academic’, you would give them something more like everyday knowledge. And, of course, that actually kept perpetuating the inequalities for them. So, in a sense, so the … the … thing that I am focusing on now, primarily, is that, in fact, the curriculum is about stipulating the best knowledge, right? And that is fine. I think you can do that, but if you are thinking about education … that, in fact, the educational problem is the stipulation and the de-transmission problem. And that, in a sense, because you cannot transmit the knowledge that is produced by researchers, there has to be … Bernstein called ‘recontextualization’ of that, and which involves the relationship between the teacher and the pupil. And that, in fact, if you don’t do that, and you think it’s only the curriculum and stipulation, then … you … you get a curriculum, which involves expecting people to mug up to memorize, to reproduce, you don’t actually give them an access to knowledge, which is about changing their thinking. You do not.
Will Brehm 33:47
Well, Michael Young, thank you so much for joining FreshEd, really a pleasure to talk today. Thank you very much.
Michael Young 33:53
Not at all. I have enjoyed the discussion.
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Powerful Knowledge
Today we explore affect theory in comparative education.
With me is Irv Epstein, the Ben and Susan Rhodes Professor of Peace and Social Justice at Illinois Wesleyan University, where he chairs the Department of Educational Studies and directs the Center for Human Rights and Social Justice. Irv’s new book is called Affect Theory and Comparative Education Discourse which was published in Bloomsbury’s New Directions in Comparative Education book series, which he co-edits.
Citation: Epstein, Irving, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 187, podcast audio, February 17, 2020. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/irvingepstein/
Transcript, Translation, and Resources:
Affect Theory in Comparative Education
OverviewTranscriptTranslationResources
The global architecture for aid is mostly contained within the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted by the United Nation’s member states in 2015. We’ve discussed goal 4 – the one on education – at length in previous episodes. Today we take a look at goal 17, which aims to “strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.” What is a global partnership for sustainable development? And how does it manifest in education?
With me to discuss goal 17 is Francine Menashy, an Associate Professor in the Department of Leadership in Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research explores global education policy, international financing of education, and private sector engagement in education.
Francine’s latest book, International Aid to Education: Power Dynamics in an Era of Partnership, provides a critical take on partnerships, arguing that power asymmetries continue to exist.
Citation: Menashy, Francine, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 186, podcast audio, February 10, 2020.https://freshedpodcast.com/francinemenashy2/
Will Brehm 2:47
Francine Menashy, welcome back to FreshEd.
Francine Menashy 2:50
Thank you.
Will Brehm 2:51
So, I want to start with maybe just a context question here. Can you tell me what the Sustainable Development Goal #17 is?
Francine Menashy 3:00
Sure. I am sure most of your listeners are quite aware of the SDGs, which is this huge agenda to address all sorts of economic, social, environmental challenges that are facing humanity. And in particular, most people working in the field of international education know about SDG 4, which is on quality education. But the SDG goal that I think we should be paying a bit more attention to is the last of all the goals, and that’s #17, and it’s on partnership, or as its termed “partnership for the goals.” So, this goal, and the way that it’s framed in the UN SDG declaration, actually acts as the foundation for all the rest of the goals by advocating for increased partnership in order to achieve the whole SDG agenda. So, the other 16 goals.
Will Brehm 4:04
So, basically, SDG 17 is saying that we need partnerships to achieve goal 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8…all the way to goal 16. Is that?
Francine Menashy 4:12
Exactly!
Will Brehm 4:13
Partnerships are somehow the most important thing, or a valuable tool, to achieve these goals.
Francine Menashy 4:20
Yes. So, it is framed as this need for global solidarity between all different actors -the state, the non-state sector, the global North, the global South- nobody can achieve the SDGs on their own. We need to work together in partnership with one another. So, in many ways, the SDG agenda is considered dependent on partnership on achieving SDG 17.
Will Brehm 4:45
So, how do we even begin to understand what the idea of partnership is? I mean, I am just thinking here, there’s so many different definitions of what a partnership could be, you know. My wife and I are in a partnership, I am a partner in the structures of FreshEd, you know, I have a partnership with my university in the IoE in London. So, you know, how do we even begin to understand what a partnership even means?
Francine Menashy 5:11
Yeah, I mean, when I say the word partnership, a lot of different definitions pop into my head, too. And I am sure everyone listening has an idea of what a partner is. And it probably brings about pretty positive associations, right. But in trying to define it, it is actually a pretty ambiguous term. And this has meant that in international development and in international aid, people and organizations have taken it up and used it in all sorts of ways. So, for instance, a partnership might be defined as something really practical, like just working together to reach common aims. And in international aid, it often means coordination between actors, or collaboration, or building coalitions, but in this sense, partnerships are for practical reasons. It is very instrumentalist to achieve particular aims and more effective practices.
Will Brehm 6:15
So, that is how they are implied in the SDGs, but you know, are there other ways to think about partnerships that you know, maybe people in development aspire to?
Francine Menashy 6:24
Sure. And even in the SDGs, it goes beyond that. So, partnerships are also defined in the development arena through a more ethical or a more normative lens. So, most often, this is in reference to those on the receiving end of aid. So, local communities, beneficiaries, people in the global South, and how they need to be viewed as partners as well. Because not only would this lead to more effective development practices, but also because inclusion and participation is the right thing to do -that recipients of aid shouldn’t be excluded from the processes that directly affect them. And then finally, this term partnership is often also conflated with this notion of public-private partnership. So, many organizations and people in the development arena argue that the private sector -and you know, I will admit the private sector is huge. It is really anything non-state, but I’m speaking mainly about businesses and foundations- that they must be partners in all of this as well. And so, and even within the SDGs and SDG 17, there is a lot of discussion around public-private partnership. And so, some organizations use this term partnership interchangeably with PPPs with public-private. So, partnership is a huge, vague term that actually has multiple definitions. And over the past decade, especially, it’s become a real buzzword in international aid.
Will Brehm 7:57
Yeah. So, it seems like there is a conflation of different meanings of partnership sort of into one, which maybe is a good thing somehow, maybe it is a bad thing. What do we know about the history of this sort of partnership-based mandate in the aid and development structures that you know, such as the SDGs that we started with?
Francine Menashy 8:21
So, I would trace the real start of this partnership-based mandate to around the late 1990s. So, the 1990s were a pretty interesting time -well, I think they were an interesting time- when the international aid community was going through sort of an identity crisis. So, first of all, you have the end of the Cold War. And during the Cold War period, motivations for development aid were pretty clear cut. Rich country, capitalist governments largely saw international aid, as a way to get the support of post-colonial countries while also promoting democracy and capitalism. So, this was essentially buying allies in the Cold War. But then, with the end of the Cold War, capitalist countries no longer needed to build these strategic alliances or any kind of strategic advantage through aid. Secondly, the development practices and the policies of these capitalist economies, and also multilateral agencies, were very market-based. I mean, some would argue that they’re still very market-based, but then they were largely promoting structural adjustment, which, and especially in education, came under intense scrutiny by the mid-90s when critics really came down hard on structural adjustment programs, they’re widely considered ineffective, they hadn’t spurred substantial economic growth, and they had severe impact on social services, exacerbating all sorts of inequities. And so, by the mid-90s, public perception of aid was that it simply didn’t work. It actually sometimes did harm. And this led to really tempered public support and reduced aid budgets overall, it was a really pessimistic mood. So, this combination of this vacuum in purpose left by the end of the Cold War, and then all this rising criticism of the ethical impacts of all these market-based development policies, it left the aid world in kind of a crisis state, and they were in search of a remedy. And so, a new framing of international aid was needed, that would provide a clear purpose and lend a new legitimacy to aid. And this new framing, or this new narrative, became this notion of partnership. And it was actually an explicit decision that was made by members of the OECD DAC to change the narrative. They wrote a report on this new agenda and development cooperation, and it was also codified in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, which was adopted in 2005. So, partnership became the new aid narrative.
Will Brehm 11:10
So, there’s these very clear actors who wanted to, as you said, rewrite the narrative on aid in this sort of post-Cold War moment, or not even post-Cold War, I should say, sort of post-Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War, we have to think about how does aid fit into development around the world. And so, you know, what did -these particular actors that were trying to rewrite the narrative- what did they see the purposes of partnerships as being?
Francine Menashy 11:42
Well, they thought it would be a narrative that could be sold really well to all of those who’ve been critiquing the aid environment over the course of the 80s and the 90s. So, I mean, although this partnership narrative was taken up as a mandate, because new actors agreed that collaboration and coordination, and that sort of thing was needed, the real value of partnership as a development mandate, I think, really rested on this idea of North-South partnership. So, the critiques of development aid that I was just talking about, at that point, were really focused on structural adjustment and on this unethical, top-down nature of aid, and how donors and multilateral organizations from the global North just drove development policies and practices. It was a near completely non-participatory environment. And this was seen as wrong and unethical. But partnership meant that power asymmetries between actors and organizations in the global North and the global South could be reversed, in a sense with recipient countries now considered partners, who not only participated in the design of development programs, but owned them. So, this concept of “country ownership” became core to so many aid policies. So, through North-South partnership, with more country ownership, with more local participation, there would be a change in power relations.
Will Brehm 13:15
It just makes me think, so this is the 1990s, it is like 30 years on from then, how did it go? You know, did the power imbalances change?
Francine Menashy 13:24
So, the partnerships that I have studied and also, I mean, I make this assessment based on all of the, you know, research that I’ve read from other fields, from development studies, from those who have studied partnerships in health and in the environment and in other areas, as they’re currently designed, it appears that partnerships don’t really shift power asymmetries. In fact, sometimes partnerships exacerbate inequities. And this is because although the narrative changed the structure of international aid, the systems, or the architecture of aid, and by that I mean, the system, and the relationships, and the mechanics through which decisions are made on aid and how it’s delivered, and the people and the organizations who really drive the policies and the processes have remained the same. Those in power are still those from the global North. And those who I mean, to put it really bluntly, those who have money, those who have resources.
Will Brehm 14:30
Right. So, the discourse perhaps has changed, but the underlying power structures have not.
Francine Menashy 14:36
Yeah. And even the organizations have changed, and the activities they engage in have changed. But the structure of international aid has really fundamentally remained the same.
Will Brehm 14:50
So, let’s look at a couple examples to sort of explore what that actually means, where things have stayed the same even if some superficial changes have taken place. So, one of the big actors in development today is the Global Partnership for Education. It literally has partnership in its name. Can you tell us a little bit about, we call it, the GPE? What is the GPE? And how does it sort of operationalize the idea of partnerships?
Francine Menashy 15:21
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I wouldn’t call these changes so much “superficial” because I mean, the partnership mandate actually spurred the design of a new form of organization. And that’s pretty big. And they are called multi-stakeholder partnerships, or MSPs. And I should first explain that these multi-stakeholder partnerships are everywhere. They are not just in education, they’re in development more generally in all different sectors, and they’re these organizational manifestations of this partnership narrative. So, multi-stakeholder partnerships, they tackle single-issue areas like health or the environment or, as in the case of GPE, education. And they bring together stakeholders from the state and the non-state sectors from the global North and the global South into single decision-making forums where they can collaborate and coordinate policies on development funding, they pool aid. And GPE is a multi-stakeholder partnership dedicated to increasing quality education worldwide, and they support low-income countries. And GPE was initially launched in 2002 by the World Bank, and it was called the Education for All Fast Track Initiative. But it’s since been rebranded into GPE. It’s been GPE for quite some time, and it operationalizes this idea of partnerships through both its country operations and its governance. So, its governing body is rhetorically defined as an equal partnership. It is a constituency-based board. It consists of voting members that represent donor countries or bilateral aid agencies, recipient countries, multilateral agencies, civil society, from the North and the South, private sector foundations, and includes over 70 developing country partners -that’s what GPE terms them DCPs- that receive resources via this GPE Fund, which is this pooled fund, and it’s financed predominantly by high-income, Northern donor country partners or bilateral donors. And its first guiding principle in its charter is country ownership. So, it is an organization, it really attempting to embody this idea of recipient countries on equal footing with those in the global North.
Will Brehm 17:57
And has it lived up to such a value?
Francine Menashy 17:59
In my research -and this includes many interviews with stakeholders and analysis of many different kinds of documents- I studied GPE’s history of reforms, its governance dynamics, its country-level processes and I found that despite real efforts, like real explicit efforts, GPE tends to retain a power dynamic that’s akin to that of this traditional aid architecture in which actors who are situated in the global North wield the most influence and have the most dominant voices in decision making. So, just as an example, the World Bank, which initiated GPE back when it was the Fast Track Initiative, it acts as its host, the GPE offices are within World Bank headquarters, and it is GPE’s most common grant agent, which means it distributes funds at the country level. And according to many of my interview respondents, the World Bank is viewed as having just an outsized level of influence on the partnership. As well, representatives of high-income donor governments were widely viewed as having the most dominant voice and influence within GPE governance based on my interviews, and it’s no coincidence that they’re the ones that are financing GPE. So, in this case, resources, or money, equals influence in many ways. I also found that those who speak dominant languages, mainly English and French, also had more influence, which naturally exclude so many representatives from many countries in the global South. And I also saw that country-level operations, despite engaging local education groups and local actors, were, in fact, very donor and multilateral dominated as well. But I do want to add that GPE as an organization, its members, its Secretariat; they’ve made huge strides and numerous explicit efforts to ensure that its developing country partners have more voice and have more influence. They’ve started having these pre-board meetings for Southern constituencies; the Secretariat gives them a lot of support to engage. So, these are more recent efforts that I’m hopeful will make some difference, but at the time of my research, these North-South power asymmetries were pretty stark.
Will Brehm 20:38
It’s quite interesting, I mean, because you can, you know, design a whole organization to sort of embrace that 1990s idea of partnership and, you know, have constituencies on the board and have DCPs trying to be represented and try and have a bit more equality between the North and the South, so to speak and yet, you’re saying, we still see sort of power imbalances reemerging along very familiar lines -language, money, particular institutions that are powerful globally and have been for quite some time. And it just makes me wonder, you know, even if we had the best design structure, are we always going to be running into some of these larger problems? Like in other words, is it actually a function of the nation-state being sort of problematic and therefore having power imbalances among and between nations, and so creating structures that are multi-stakeholder partnerships where the nation-state is, you know, one of the main actors, that these problems that you’ve identified are sort of always going to emerge out of it?
Francine Menashy 22:01
That’s a great question. It is entirely possible, but my only hesitation with thinking that that’s at the root of the problem is because these multi-stakeholder partnerships are also highly inclusive of private sector actors and non-state-based actors, civil society actors. And what I also observed is that those power dynamics, the issue is not with the nation-states so much, the issue is with the global North and having money and being from high-income countries. That is where I see this issue hinging. Less so about the issue of the nation-state.
Will Brehm 22:48
Right. So, it could be more about, in a sense, global capitalism, and you know, big multinational organizations or companies finding new ways to extract profit. And for whatever reason, they’re deciding to get into these multi-stakeholder partnerships; they still have their bottom line as being the driving force.
Francine Menashy 23:09
Absolutely. Yeah. And that would be most notable when we are discussing the private sector. But I think this has much more to do with the capitalist and unequal -as a result of being capitalist- unequal economic structure of the world economy. It’s less about the nation-states and more about economic structures, in my view.
Will Brehm 23:37
Yeah. Right. It’s interesting because then it just makes me think, you know, how can you then create any organization and structure in, you know, these sort of idealistic, ethical, sort of you know, want to change power imbalances but if you don’t actually address some of these deeply unequal economic structures, we’re going to basically replicate the same power imbalances that we originally were trying to solve. I mean, it’s a bit, I don’t know, depressing.
Francine Menashy 24:07
It is! I mean, the economic system and our structures are so fundamentally flawed and so destined to rely on these power imbalances in some ways. It is depressing, but I’m hopeful for change.
Will Brehm 24:25
I mean, that is interesting as well. That the power imbalances are actually a needed feature in the system. And, you know, therefore, it’s almost impossible to overcome them. But I want to turn to maybe not as big of an organization as GPE, but a slightly different type of organization that also is thinking about partnerships in new ways. And I want to talk through that. And this is the organization called Education Cannot Wait or it is a fund, I think, and you sort of detail this in your book as well. Can you just give us an idea of, you know, what is Education Cannot Wait, and how does it sort of understand and operationalize the idea of partnerships?
Francine Menashy 25:09
Sure. So, Education Cannot Wait is a partnership with a mandate to fund education in emergency contexts, which are contexts that have been historically underfunded. And it’s fairly widely agreed now that the traditional aid mechanisms have not been adequate to address education in sudden emergencies and in contexts of fragility. So, Education Cannot Wait was envisioned as a faster, a more agile, a less bureaucratic organization that can respond rapidly to support education in contexts of crisis. So, it was largely spearheaded by Gordon Brown, who’s the UN Special Envoy for global education. ECW is governed by what’s called a high-level steering group, but it’s actually very much like the GPE board. It’s also constituency-based, and it operationalizes this idea of partnership, and in a similar way to GPE, through its decision-making process. It has governments of conflict-affected countries represented in this high-level steering group; it has representatives from the state and the non-state sector. And it also promotes in its policy discourse, and its organizational rhetoric, this idea of national ownership. And it promotes what it calls a localization agenda. And this means the participation of local communities, affected communities in its governance and in its country-level processes. And it’s only been around since 2016.
Will Brehm 26:57
Do you think it is, you know, living up to this idea of partnership by creating, you know, less Northern driven aid, more local participation, changing power imbalances, you know, how do you read what ECW has been doing for the last three or four years?
Francine Menashy 27:16
So, based on my research, including interviews that I’ve conducted, quite interestingly, because I conducted the ECW research after the GPE research, but many of the critiques of GPE were really paralleled in my findings. So, just as the World Bank hosts GPE, UNICEF hosts Education Cannot Wait. And respondents in interviews repeatedly identified UNICEF as holding an outside influence and being a real central player. As well, in its governing body, high-level actors and organizations from the global North hold the most vocal positions, while beneficiaries, including local governments, and communities that are affected by crisis -refugee communities, for instance- have participated in only a fairly limited way. And in its country level work, I was told that organizations and actors from the global North -including not only donors and multilateral agencies, but also international nongovernmental organizations, so the big global NGOs- really control the Education Cannot Wait fund implementation process, with very little input from local actors. So, I should add, though, as I mentioned, ECW is a very young partnership. It’s only been around for a few years, and all the people who I spoke, I was going to say most of the people, but all the people that I spoke with, recognize this as a problem, and they want to make changes. But as it stands, there are still these clear North-South power asymmetries with ECW.
Will Brehm 28:56
It’s interesting. So, I mean, this is sort of like organizational studies in a way, right? How do you have an organization where everyone potentially inside sees that this is a problem, and they want to make change, but then still cannot make change? Right? How is the organization somehow larger, and has a life of its own, that’s preventing all of these individuals who share the same idea from enacting the change they want to see?
Francine Menashy 29:21
You know, that’s such an interesting point, because I’ve actually been in search for a name for this phenomenon of an individual recognizing the problem and individuals within an organization, all of them recognizing that this is an issue, and not so much even the inability or the incapacity to change it but it’s almost as though the institution itself won’t permit the change. And so I’d be really curious if any of your listeners have a name for it in organizational theory perhaps, for this phenomenon, because I find it so fascinating, because I can safely say that I interviewed so many people from within these organizations that partner with them and believe in them and recognize this as a fundamental problem and yet, these power asymmetries continue.
Will Brehm 30:24
And, are private actors involved in ECW, like they are in the GPE?
Francine Menashy 30:29
They are. They’re involved in both of these multi-stakeholder partnerships. And by this, again, I am speaking mainly about companies and foundations, and in Education Cannot Wait rhetoric, they’re really strongly embraced. So, the Global Business Coalition for Education, for instance, has been involved, since the start. Actually, a core impetus behind the establishment of Education Cannot Wait was to engage the private sector and leverage private actors as what’s termed non-traditional funders to education in emergencies. So, they’ve been invited into the Education Cannot Wait fund and partnership largely because of their resources. In my analysis of the discourse around Education Cannot Wait, private actors are framed in a very aspirational and positive way. A lot of language around efficiency, technical expertise, having huge resources, advocacy power, they’re a new form of financing. So, it’s all very exciting, creativity, innovation. And I should add that a very similar discourse comes out of GPE, too. And this discourse, I think, drives perceptions of private actors as legitimate partners. And it leads to their authority in decision making spaces. So, private actors, including both foundations and companies, sit on the governing bodies and the decision-making spaces of both Education Cannot Wait and the Global Partnership, but what I actually found is that the private sector hasn’t made much of a financial commitment to either of these partnerships. But they have this key powerful role in governance. So, they have what’s termed, and this is a term I do know, “private authority,” which refers to the growing role of non-state based actors, most notably those affiliated with businesses in public policymaking spaces such as education. And I’d say that this role of private actors also perpetuates; it comes back to this North-South power hierarchy because the vast majority of private partners are situated in the global North, or headquartered in the global North, be it in California or New York, or London, or in other high-income countries and they’re primarily involved from my understanding because they have resources.
Will Brehm 33:09
But yet they’re not giving the resources is what you’re saying.
Francine Menashy 33:12
Yes.
Will Brehm 33:13
Right. So, GPE is inviting them in, or ECW is inviting them in, giving them a spot on the board because they have resources and then the private actors in return don’t actually -they’re not contributing to the common pool of funds.
Francine Menashy 33:25
That’s right. Or to a very small degree. And the reason that I was giving and asking directly to these private actors, to foundations, to company representatives, was they don’t feel comfortable putting their funds into a pool of money where they can’t track it. They can’t follow the money; they can’t track their investments, which I mean, I guess it’s a fair statement to make. They want to know where their money is going and whether or not it’s having an impact, and that’s not something that’s possible when it’s pooled with other funds.
Will Brehm 34:02
So, I wonder why do they then even accept the board seat?
Francine Menashy 34:06
Well, I think they want to have a voice and have some type of power in decision making. They want to have an ear to the ground on what’s happening. It’s a question that I don’t really have a firm answer to. And I should say my answer was kind of skeptical because they also say because they care. Because they care about humanitarianism, they care about education in emergency context, they care about education in development, and they want to be there because they believe they have the expertise, they believe they have the technical know-how, that they can really give something to these partnerships above and beyond resources.
Will Brehm 34:52
It’s a very fascinating ethnographic insight into some of these boards that are made up of such different stakeholders and trying to understand why they might participate in such an endeavor. So, you know, in the end here, we have a situation where we have, you know, new aid architecture forming since the 1990s around the idea of partnerships and yet, you know, in the end, we’re still seeing a lot of these power imbalances continue, even though we have some new aid architecture. In your research, did you find any sort of examples or things that you can point to, to say, that’s a particular strategy that seems like it would be valuable to explore, to create a bit more power equality?
Francine Menashy 35:40
Yeah. I mean, despite all of these critiques of partnerships, I believe, and this is based on not just my own thinking but also the views of many of these interview respondents that I spoke with that multi-stakeholder partnerships are a move in the right direction, and they do have potential to shift power imbalances. But it’s a real challenge -what they’re up against. One way, I think, to make this shift happen is to be very intentional about eliciting active participation of stakeholders from the global South. And what I found is that partnerships have a tendency to elicit what I describe as symbolic participation, which is when actors are included physically in a space, and they’re touted by an organization as partners based on their seats at the table, but they wield very little influence, and they’re positioned as the least dominant voices in decision-making. So, one of the respondents in the study told me, and I always remember this quote, “the whole starting point needs to be different.” The starting point needs to be with the recipients of aid. The starting point can’t be with a bilateral donor, a multilateral organization; it can’t be with UNICEF or the World Bank. It can’t be with a company in Silicon Valley. It has to be with those who are receiving the aid. They’re the ones that need to get the ball rolling, make the decisions. And also, this idea of active participation, especially at the country levels, requires trust in local partners. Yet this trust appears to be quite rare. It requires that Northern actors relinquish control over development processes. And I found that bilateral donors, in particular, seemed very resistant to relinquishing control. But if I had that opportunity, I would be more explicit about the fact that power relates so strongly to privilege. And there is a lot of conversation around this notion of privilege, especially in the United States, where I work around, you know, white privilege and male privilege and the need to recognize it. So, I’d say that actors from the global North, who engage in these partnerships, they need to recognize their own economic, social, and more often than not racial privilege. It’s not discussed nearly enough, I think, in comparative education. But these hierarchies we’re talking about, they’re near always racialized. But more important than just recognizing privilege, it’s being willing to give that privilege up. To either use less of your own voice, to keep quiet, to defer to others, or to possibly step down and off of these policy bodies to make space for representatives from local communities or recipient countries. So, I think that would make real structural change and begin the process of shifting these power dynamics in international aid.
Will Brehm 39:01
Well, Francine Menashy, thank you so much for joining FreshEd again. It really was a pleasure of talking.
Francine Menashy 39:06
Thank you.
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