re: refusal and resistance

From: Martin Owen (mowen@rem.bangor.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Jun 26 2001 - 01:53:42 PDT


Reneee Writes:

>"My personal insider experience (which is, I know, kind of near-sighted)
>is that the system of preserving the language is a bit disorganized and
>half-hearted (maybe even conflicted).  Certain texts are required to be
>written in Galician, but the teachers seem to be able to choose to teach
>in whichever language they wish.  So It is possible (and this happens in
>my kids' school) that the teacher can speak in Castillano while the text
>book is written in Galician.  I'm confused just thinking about it...:) 
>Overall, it from what I see in the web site, the policy looks better than
>in turns out in real practice."

There is probably a bigger devide between linguistic nationalism and the
old right in Galicia than you find in Basque and Catalan regions. My
colleague who undertook a lot of the Galician research for that report
anecdotally tells me that there is still a strong right wing Catholic
influence in some parts of the north east which are strongly "statist" in
their outlook. In Catalunya there seems to me ( and I don't know a lot)
that there is a Catalan right ( in the regional government) and a Catalan
left (as in Barcelona city government).

There is therofer more abiguity in the Galego community. Recently
Asturian has been recognised as have distinctinve linguistic rights.
Meanwhile I will continue to enjoy Carlos Nunez.

For an outsider in a bilingual community it comes as quite a shock to see
the ammount of language switching that takes place in a typical high
school chemistry class, using a text book in one language and the teacher
speaking another is very common.

Resistors good and bad?
I think I go beyond that. I think that people are resistors even though
they themselves would not ascribe resistance to their own behaviour. That
is why I would describe criminality as resistance. It is an act that goes
outside the prevailing norms either by necessity or choice. I might
wonder if one is "culturalised" into a "criminal culture" and would tend
to learning zero in Batesonian terms that it is not "resistance".

Maybe its the physicist in me but the opposing force needs no activator in
itslef... but then Newton was no sociologist.

Martin

Martin



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