Hi folks
I received this over our local memolist today, and asked the originator if
I could forward it. FYI, LUK is the new proposal for teacher educations in
Sweden (or whatever the right name is).
I have not read Castells.
Should I?
confessionally yours
Eva
>X-Sender: ipdbeach@ped.gu.se
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 12:19:27 +0100
>To: Learning
>From: Dennis Beach <Dennis.Beach@ped.gu.se>
>Subject: management, control and the polyarchy
>X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by ped.gu.se id MAA07854
>
>"Although there is no obvious, inherent contradiction between modern
>management, technological development and grassroots mobilisation, there
>are forms of systemic/protective adpations in and of modern management
>against grassroot forms political involvement and decision making."
>
>This is the way in which I have rounded off part of a recent paper
>addressing the problem of bureaucracy in teacher education management and
>teacher education change. The paper looks at some aspects of the ruins of
>progressive developments and democratic principles in practice, in the
>late-modern university, in one of its largest education programmes. In it
>some considerations are made of new managerialism and new partnerships in
>education development projects.
>
>When talking of these new partnerships - such as those with local industry
>(see f.i. the new IT-university plan of action and recent LUK
>recommendations) and those involving the incorporation of industrial
>strategy (such as the referenced quality assurance scheme yesterday) and
>industrial strategists into education planning and management (as per our
>own university board), I chose to quote William Robinson (1996, also in
>Castells et al, 1999: 17 -18). In this context I believe Robinson "is worth
>quoting at length" - to use the words of Peter McLaren (Castells et al, op
>cit.).
>
>According to Robinson we are living in a hegemonically dominated global
>economy in which "global capitalism is both predatory and parasitic":
>
>"In today's global economy, capitalism is less benign, less responsive to
>the interests of the broad majorities around the world, and less
>accountable to society than ever before. Some 400 transnational
>corporations own two thirds of the planet's fixed assets and control 70
>percent of world trade. With the world's resources controlled by a few
>hundred global corporations, the life blood and the very fate of humanity
>is in the hands of transnational capital, which holds the power to make
>life and death decisions for millions of human beings. Such tremendous
>concentrations of economic power lead to tremendous concentrations of
>political power globally. Any discussion of democracy under such conditions
>becomes meaningless.
>
>The paradox of the demise of dictatorships, democratic transitions and the
>spread of democracy around the world is explained by new forms of social
>control, and the concept of democracy, the original meaning of which, the
>power (cratos) of the people (demos), has been disconfiguered beyond
>recognition. What the transnational elite calls democracy is more
>accurately termed polyarchy, to borrow a concept from academia. Polyarchy
>is neither dictatorship nor democracy. It refers to a system in which a
>small group actually rules, on behalf of capital, and participation in
>decision making by the majority is confined to choosing amongst competing
>elites in tightly controlled electoral processes. This "low-intensity
>democracy" is a form of consensual domination (and) is hegemonic, in the
>sense meant by Antonio Gramsci, rather than coercive. It is based less on
>outright repression than on diverse forms of ideological co-optation and
>political disempowerment made possible by (forms of) structural
>domination..." (Robinson, 1996: 20 - 21)
>
>There are several comments here by Robinson which remind me of two things
>in particular. Firstly some of the discussions about the function of the
>compulsory school (as an instrument of mass-education and) as an
>ideological state apparatus and secondly some of the discussions in
>yesterdays section meeting concerning issues which were termed for us as
>issues of quality assurance and directives and strategies which were
>described for us as technologies for the positive development of the new
>"mass- university". Perhaps then the university is becoming more integrated
>in its function as an ISA and perhaps this can account for some of the
>transistions in forms of decision making and control within it. These
>things concern the development of a local information economy and the
>domination of this economy by certain groups and individuals. This is also
>what I tried to draw attention to (in my own rather clumsy way) at
>yesterday's meeting.
>
>In addition to Robinson (see above), Manuel Castells has also written
>extensively on the issues of domination and the economy. He is very
>concerned about what he describes as the separation between the dynamic of
>the global economy and the structure of information society - something
>which he feels will effect (and is effecting) the social fabric of both
>advanced and developing countries. The concern he expresses (with the
>concentration of information power) were also very present in the
>discussion yesterday I felt.
>
>Concerning the effects of the concentration of information power, Castells
>made the following points in a recent chapter from a book entitled Critical
>Education in the New Information Age. With them he addresses directly the
>consequences for a global politics, of the bipassing of countries and
>regions in the expansion of the global information economy. Although on a
>small scale - let's say as in reference to an
>institutional/micro-meso-level - it was distinctly and specifically the
>bipassing (and sub-ordination) of group and individual interests in the
>growth of informational capital in the disguise of the development of
>transparency (and in the language of quality assurance) which I tried (not
>very articulately) to draw attention to yesterday. In the global arena,
>Castells description of the effects of the concentration of informational
>capital are as follows (Castells: pp 56-7):
>
>1. An increased dualisation of dependent societies, with a few segments
>incorporated into the global economy and culture, and with marginality
>spreading into a variable but substantial portion of the population.
>2. A desparate attempt by excluded societies to reject the rules of the
>game by affirming their cultural identity in fundamentalist terms, opening
>the way for a variety of "jihads" against the "infidels" of the dominant
>order.
>3. Efforts by marginalised countries to establish what I call "the perverse
>connection" to the global economy, specialising in criminal trade: drugs,
>weapons, money laundering, traffic of human beings (women to prostitute,
>babies to adopt, human organs to be transplanted etc.).
>4. Reconstructing the unity of the world by mass migrations to the core
>countries in flows of people that could only be stopped by massive police
>measures that would fundamentally affect the character of democracy in
>advanced countries.
>
>In my own analysis wrt the paper mentioned in the first lines of this
>letter, micro-meso equivalents to at least the first two of the above four
>points of Castells, were clearly identifiable within our insitution at
>present. I suspect that in some modified form even perverse connections to
>the informational economy and the reconstruction of unity (that si points 3
>and 4) could be added to the list. Perhaps these things, added to the
>resonance with Robinsons descriptions of the workings of hegemony and the
>development of polyarchy, give some indication of the quality of the
>institution at present? Maybe that's why some people are (in their way - be
>this through illness, depression or in feelings of being under-valued)
>suffering within it at the present time, whilst others find themselves
>positively affirmed by their participation in it.
>
>Best: D
>
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