Marlene de Beer

Marlene de Beer, 13 September 2003, BERA Main Conf. paper

Marlene de Beer¹, UNESCO PhD Research Student

[e-mail] / [e-mail] / 07732179323

UNESCO Centre, School of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ulster

County Londonderry, BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland

*** WORK IN PROGRESS ***

Opinions expressed are those of the author and cannot necessarily be attributed to the UNESCO Centre or the University of Ulster.

-- Comments or further dialogue would be appreciated --

KEY WORDS: SOCIAL COHESION, DISCOURSE EVOLUTION, ‘FAULTLINES & CRITIQUE’

TITLE: ‘TANGO ROMANTICA OR LIASONS DANGEREUSES?’² SOCIAL COHESION & EDUCATION - ‘SIMPLER THAN YOU THINK, MORE COMPLEX THAN YOU IMAGINE’³
INTRODUCTION

This paper flows from my current PhD research that focuses on social cohesion discourses, their relevance to education (policy and practice) and interventions by international organisations to develop social cohesion through education. An emergent and flexible qualitative methodology and multiple embedded case study design were followed. I entered the research space as a triple outsider with a sociological imagination and emerging reflexivity. Non-probability sampling, based on accessibility and availability of participants, was the primary sampling method. Secondary sampling methods used, included: snowball or chain; confirming and disconfirming cases; following new leads; triangulation and purposive. Multiple data collection methods included: interviews (semi-structured, open ended, one-on-one, face-to-face and by telephone); observations (indirect and informal; meetings and field research visits and conferences attended in Northern Ireland, Bosnia & Herzegovina, South Africa and UNESCO Paris); documentation; web /online and email discussion sources. Total interviews and people consulted (including during conferences) is more than a hundred. For analysis purposes, I made use of the five analysing strategies of Michael Patton, de-construction and re-construction and content analysis. Through the analysis and interpretations I came to be a bricoleur, producing a bricolage. I also selectively integrated various theoretical perspectives, for example: postmodern, poststructural and postcolonialist perspectives, with an interpretive and phenomenological paradigm and a Foucaultian spirit (power-knowledge-discourse).

I explore the following issues in my discussion:

1. 
   Why has social cohesion and related research become so important?
   
2. 
   Does social cohesion have a theoretical foundation?
   
3. 
   What does social cohesion mean from various perspectives?
   
4. 
   What is the status on working definitions and model development for social cohesion?
   
5. 
   Are social cohesion discourses ‘dictated’ by economics, politics and rhetoric?
   
6. 
   What is the link between social cohesion and education (and why is it so difficult to find common ground)?
   

This paper and my research raise more questions than proving actual answers on social cohesion and education. I will provide several ‘faultlines & critique’ emerging from the literature and my current research. So, are we ‘skating on thin ice’ or is social cohesion here to stay and serve (and evolve) policy (and practice) well into the future? As the saying goes: ‘It takes two to Tango’!
The first, and major part of this paper provides a kaleidoscope of perspectives on social cohesion exploring conceptual development, faultlines and a critique of the concept of social cohesion. The middle section focuses briefly on broad educational models and the final section presents the theme of spirituality, consciousness and human potential development / evolution.
METHODOLOGICAL AND THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

I integrate and draw from various perspectives that are in many ways still ‘new and emerging’ in my own research and practice. The challenge is therefore to do what comes (increasingly) naturally (Paul Connelly, 1996:185-197), even when faced with resistance from the mainstream. I enter my research space/s with a sociological imagination (C Wright Mills, 1959) and integrate it with a developing self-reflective standpoint of lived experience (e.g. Third space [bell hooks, 1990] and a Queer/ gender/ feminist). I also incorporate elements of critical theory, postructuralism, postmodernism, Discourse (e.g. Foucaultian power-knowledge-discourse) and spiritual perspective/s. This writing therefore evolved from an emergent and flexible qualitative design strategy, which means having an openness to adapt inquiry as understanding deepens and/or situations change. This avoids becoming locked into rigid designs that eliminate responsiveness, and allows for the pursuit of new paths of discovery as they emerge (Michael Patton, 2002:40).

I have also become an interpretive bricoleur⁴, producing a bricolage - a pieced-together set of representations fitted to the specifics of a complex situation, thus producing an emergent construction that changes and takes new forms as different (or new, invented, pieced together) tools, methods and techniques of representation and interpretation are added to the puzzle. The term indicates a pragmatic, strategic, self-reflexive and aesthetic practice (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000:4), and may be seen as a ‘third moment’ or blurred genre phase in qualitative research dating from 1970 onwards.

I have also used in various degrees the analysing strategies as provided by Michael Patton (inductive analysis and creative syntheses, voice, perspective and reflexivity; holistic perspective; context sensitivity; unique case orientation) (2002: 41). I also adopt a moral-methodological stance motivated and guided by moral-political objectives. Gary Powell (1999:480) highlights this as follows:

What we know is strongly influenced by how we discover it. If how we do research is affected by our views and values, so are the results of the work. We cannot separate the results of the data from the method of the data. There are no right answers, simply a set of choices that researchers make that meet their interest, abilities, and beliefs. … Research involves choices. Some are clearly conscious choices, some are clearly political, and some occur randomly. Some of these choices are aligned with different philosophical research ideologies.

In general, I attempt to revise and ‘replace’ the practices and knowledge of western, white, middle-class, heterosexual men regarding social cohesion and education, and hope to contribute to the construction of new knowledge in a more dynamic, personal, political and creative way. I also attempt to disorder modernist binaries and to promote a new and radical cultural politics and openness (e.g. Thirdspace of possibilities)(bell hooks, 1990). My purpose is to challenge the mainstream by deliberately introducing and reintroducing minorstream considerations and developments (thus linking to an ‘anti-normative’ positioning). My challenge is to uncover hidden meanings, disclose ideologies, question commonsensical thought and talk, make transparent verbal and contextual strategies, highlight contradictions, reveal suppressed discourse, offer new versions and ways of speaking, facilitate human communication and cultivate the willpower for a common discourse. I therefore seek a transformative research agenda (not to conform but to transform the ‘disciplined’ mainframe and malestream of thinking, doing and being) and to evolve my own and others’ critical thinking about matters of, for example, power, control, hegemony, legitimacy, ethics, spirituality … and pursue alternative ways of presenting research. I am becoming unembarrassed by the label political and unafraid to consummate a relationship with emancipatory consciousness, and announce partisanship in the struggle for a better world. I also know that I may not necessarily bring about change as such but allow movement by giving space and voice to controversial matters and views. This links to the idea of opening and reclaiming spaces and I attempt to give voice to other discourses often ‘silenced’ and sometimes excluded and displaced (monitored, controlled and regulated) by orthodox discourses in main- and malestream education and regimes of power (which produce their own truth [meaning and knowledge] in relation to the development of social cohesion through education as a normalizing and regulatory function). The consequence and my experience has been that voicing other discourses may leave one exposed and vulnerable for all sorts of labels and being isolated, marginalized and excluded. Though that’s the risk I take and anything less would be a compromise of my own sense of integrity, creativity, agency and resilience. Others may interpret this as real madness! But for me it is about asking and pushing what is possible!⁵ As Virginia Woolf in A Writer´s Diary (1965) notes, it also seems as if I may also do my best work transgressing, writing and teaching against the current, though difficult entirely to disregard the current. I agree with Xi-Shi (2001) that there is pressure to ‘write safe’, ‘to please the mainstream’ and to consolidate and perpetuate this position of power. I render my passion ineffectual if I “collude to legitimate, consolidate and perpetuate the existing hegemonic global order and aura” (Shi-Xu, 2001:248). Therefore, this article may be interpreted as signifying some reflexivity, a pop philosophy⁶ and sociological imagination about the possibility of education and social cohesion, and if measured using traditional research methods, may be seen as merely scientifically unfounded, preliminary, provisional and tentative ideas…