Today, Gretchen (my boss, PhD anthro) gave me a ton of great advice...
-Connect with Domenic Vitiello
-RE: AUNI Evaluation
- Quantity (number of schools AUNI operates in) vs Quality (making firm connections in a limited number of schools); how well are you serving your students?
- Systemic Inequality (of opportunities)
- Michael Appel
- AUNI is limited by organizational capacity: permission from school, staffing, resources (
-Neoliberalism:
- critiques of neoliberalism?
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-Privatizing Education
- look at outsourcing of nutrition education in Philadelphia
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- ethnography of power, poverty, politics
-Empowerment
- is it 1) meaningful?
- is it 2) couched in neoliberalism:
-does it put change in hands of individual?
-does it make meaning and change part of the discussion?
- does it just give info and say, bea agents of change
- or does it do something to help change the system to be agents of change; help people use their knowledge
- there is this disconnect between theory and process!
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Disussion with Corey (in context of organizational capacity)
-Distributive Leadership (impossible without principal as a leader)
-Learning to Learn
-A good survey, Garret Morgan, Images of Organization
Hey Hayley! This is Chris. I try to keep up with this blog as you requested. I hope you are well in Philly :)
ReplyDeleteBut I think that it is interesting that you are thinking about neoliberalism in the context of health issues around the world and in terms of "empowerment," "power," etc. and I just wanted to add a tiny portion of my perspective. I have trouble making myself clear so I hope you have the patience to sift through a potentially convoluted, circular, probably very impressionistic reasoning, sorry!
Neoliberalism is far too problematic for my tastes (for reasons not really necessary to expound upon in this venue) so I think it is interesting that you are asking whether neoliberalism and "empowerment" in some sort of form (political? sociocultural? the questions become crucially split/resistant to delineation here since I am not trying to make a highly specific point) are compatible projects. In my thinking, required in that inquiry is some demarcation of a goal and a locating of an epistemic space so speaking about that "empowerment" and its associated "power," "poverty," "politics"---such as narrowing the inquiry to "poverty in the United States" or "the United States' role in health and poverty worldwide"--becomes possible, since I am a firm believer in situating (to use an unwieldy term) "big issues" like "neoliberalism in health" in strategically defined local critiques.
But anyway, from what I understand, if I do understand your post correctly that is, you are asking whether neoliberalism encourages "agents of change" in terms of "poverty," "power," "politics?" If so, my answer is a big NO. In my opinion, supporters of neoliberalism have too quickly situated it in binary opposition to its demonic cousin neoconservatism, with the problematic taglines of "progressive," "inclusive," and what not and so on. However, neoliberalism really inculcates people into a political conformism to white (in American contexts, especially) and neo-imperial Western hegemony while pretending to "progressively" represent everyone through state welfare, providing a cover for what is really a refusal by those who have power within neoliberalism (mostly rich, Western, white men) to explicitly deal with, let alone acknowledge, issues like the connections between uneven socioeconomic class both within the US and worldwide and race, nation, and so on: the "West and the Rest~First/Third World" distinction is oversimplified but useful as an example here, or of the equally oversimplified but still somewhat useful example of "white/black" race issues in the US. These historical connections are effaced in neoliberalism by a facile, "oh, we are all partners and multi-cultural (whatever the hell that means) friends who are 'progressive' and nice" rhetoric that is not resistant to the social problems for which neoliberalism claims to have the answers---quite the opposite. Neoliberalism gives little impetus for, say, black and poor people to be agents of change, at least within its discursive boundaries, precisely because it refuses to address the (far, far too complex to discuss here) politics of space and voice. Is it really giving someone "voice" when you are really speaking for them?
I highly recommend reading "Can the Subaltern Speak?" by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (one of my all time favorite intellectuals); I drew from her a lot for this overextended comment....
Again, I hope you are well in Philadelphia and stay safe and healthy in Guatemala!