An Education of Shared Fates: Recasting Citizenship Education

In this paper I explore how citizenship education might position students as always/everywhere political to diminish the pervasive belief that one either is or is not a “political person.” By focusing on how liberal and radical democracy are both necessary frameworks for engaging with issues of power, I address how we might reframe citizenship education to highlight the ubiquity of politics, offering a deepened sense of democracy. This reframing of citizenship education entails highlighting how liberalism and radical democracy are mutually reinforcing when it comes to illustrating political life as entangled in power relations. My argument centers on Sigal Ben-Porath’s (Edu Theory, 62(4):381–395, 2012) concept of shared fate as a frame for citizenship education. In this model, students are habituated into thinking of democracy as an “enduring pluralism” in which their fates are connected to that of their fellow citizens. In this paper I recast shared fate education in the singular to an education of shared fates in the plural. By doing so I theorize how citizenship education might construct citizenship as relational, emotional, embedded in power, and uncomfortable.     

What is the body without organs? Machine and organism in Deleuze and Guattari

In the two volumes which make up Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari propose new concepts of “machine” and “organism.” The problem of the relationship between machines and organisms has a long philosophical history, and this essay treats their work as a contribution to this debate. It is argued that their solution to this problem is found in their difficult concept of the “body without organs,” a concept that is given some much-needed clarification in the essay. The first section details Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the machine, examining the ways in which it differs from the traditional concept as described by Canguilhem: (1) their machines do not have predictable movements, but instead produce events; (2) they do not have a purpose; (3) they are able to reproduce themselves. The second section details their conception of the organism through their account of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire: (1) organisms are bodies which normalize and which create hierarchies; (2) they also do not have a purpose; (3) they have a “unity of composition.” The final section argues that their concept of the “body without organs” shows us how to understand the relation between the two transformed concepts, and defines the body without organs as the becoming-machine of the organism.     

Eros as the Educational Principle of Democracy

This paper explores the value of the eros motif for critical pedagogy and citizenship education. The conceptual affinities between eros and democracy are identified and integrated into a theory of democratic political education. Long recognized as vital to the process of self knowledge, the ancient Greek concept of eros has nevertheless been largely erased from contemporary educational debate. By retrieving eros from the fringe of academic discourse and integrating it with critical pedagogy, the aims of radical democracy can be more fully achieved. The essay emphasizes the civil society or cultural dimensions of democracy as against its legal or procedural aspects. Renewed emphasis on the associational qualities of democracy underscore the importance of eros as an educational principle. The ancient pedagogical motif of educating the desires is posited as an alternative to the liberal/modernist paradigm of education which de-values affective domains of knowledge.     

Humanizing education: Dewey's concepts of a democratic society and purpose in education revisited

Humanizing education in a democratic society requires an adequate conception of democratic life. Dewey's ideal of a society with free interaction among groups and extensive sharing of interests provides such a vision. His idea of purposing, as a key ingredient in meaningful learning, thought and action, also gives depth to the concept of education in democracy.     

The Ignorant Citizen: Mouffe,Rancière,and the Subject of Democratic Education

Much work in the field of education for democratic citizenship is based on the idea that it is possible to know what a good citizen is, so that the task of citizenship education becomes that of the production of the good citizen. In this paper I ask whether and to what extent we can and should understand democratic citizenship as a positive identity. I approach this question by means of an exploration of four dimensions of democratic politics—the political community, the borders of the political order, the dynamics of democratic processes and practices, and the status of the democratic subject—in order to explore whether and to what extent the ‘essence’ of democratic politics can and should be understood as a particular order. For this I engage with ideas from Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière who both have raised fundamental questions about the extent to which the ‘essence’ of democratic politics can be captured as a particular order. In the paper I introduce the figure of the ignorant citizen in order to hint at a conception of citizenship that is not based on particular knowledge about what the good citizen is. I introduce a distinction between a socialisation conception of citizenship education and civic learning and a subjectification conception of citizenship education and civic learning in order to articulate what the educational implications of such an ‘anarchic’ understanding of democratic politics are. While the socialisation conception focuses on the question how ‘newcomers’ can be inserted into an existing political order, the subjectification conception focuses on the question how democratic subjectivity is engendered through engagement in always undetermined political processes. This is no longer a process driven by knowledge about what the citizen is or should become but one that depends on a desire for a particular mode of human togetherness or, in short, a desire for democracy.     

What's the point of knowing how?

Why is it useful to talk and think about knowledge‐how? Using Edward Craig's discussion of the function of the concepts of knowledge as a jumping off point, this paper argues that considering this question can offer us new angles on the debate about knowledge‐how. We consider two candidate functions for the concept of knowledge‐how: pooling capacities and mutual reliance. Craig makes the case for pooling capacities, which connects knowledge‐how to our need to pool practical capacities. I argue that the evidence is much more equivocal and in fact supports both functions. I propose that the concept of knowledge‐how plays both functions, meaning that it is inconsistent and that the debate about knowledge‐how is at least partly a metalinguistic negotiation. In closing, I suggest a way to revise the philosophical concept of knowledge how.     

Comprehending Complex Concepts

Recent theories of concepts have raised the issue of how people combine simple concepts (like engine and repair) to form complex concepts (like engine repair). This article approaches this issue by asking how people comprehend modified noun phrases of this sort. One explanation of how complex concepts are understood (the feature weighting model) provides a simple mechanism in which the primary feature of the modifying concept is made more salient in the modified concept. Another explanation focuses on how world knowledge directs the combination process. The two explanations are compared in their ability to account for the interpretation of various kinds of noun phrases. Two experiments are reported which evaluate the feature weighting model's predictions for adjective-noun phrases. These contrasts suggest that the combination process does require reference to world knowledge. The consequences of accepting such an account are discussed.     

Conflict,consensus, and liberty in J. S. Mill’s representative democracy

The relationship between representative democracy and conflict in John Stuart Mill’s political philosophy has been interpreted in very different ways. While some scholars claim that Millian democracy is incompatible with political conflict, others identify in Mill a radical political agonism that would offer a non-consensual model of deliberative democracy. This paper argues that neither of these views is exactly accurate: although he highlights the centrality of conflict in political life, Mill believes that democratic deliberation presupposes a minimal level of consensus regarding the formal value of democracy’s basic principles, viz. the principles of individual freedom and equality. Initially, I shall reconstruct the relationship between conflict and consensus in Mill’s conception of representative democracy. I shall then investigate his association of representation and advocacy and show that Mill’s encomium on political conflict was influenced by Guizot’s work. Finally, I shall explain how a democratic debate riven with conflict is conducive to individual freedom.     

Educating Beyond Cultural Diversity: Redrawing the Boundaries of a Democratic Plurality

In this paper I draw some distinctions between the terms “cultural diversity” and “plurality” and argue that a radical conception of plurality is needed in order both to re-imagine the boundaries of democratic education and to address more fully the political aspects of conflict that plurality gives rise to. This paper begins with a brief exploration of the usages of the term diversity in European documents that promote intercultural education as a democratic vehicle for overcoming social conflict between different cultural groups. In contradistinction to these usages, this paper calls for a more robust conception of plurality, one that does not simply denote membership in different cultural groupings but is rooted in the human condition and based on a conception of uniqueness. Following the work of Hannah Arendt and feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero, I explore how the appearance of unique beings in specific contexts can be understood as an eminently political act and I contend that such a view leads to a better educational understanding of conflict and contestation. The paper sketches the contours of democratic plurality along this line of thought and discusses how these new boundaries have implications for education’s relation to democracy.     

The Political Psychology of Liberation: From Politics to Ethics and Back

The origins and development of the psychology of liberation are described, detailing the intellectual and political context in which the concept of liberation emerged in Latin American social sciences. Its constitution as a mode of doing psychology, and the founding ideas of Ignacio Martin Baró, its pioneer, are analyzed. Primary concepts such as problematization, de-ideologization, and de-alienation are discussed, and I explain how they are integrated into a central process characterized as conscientization. The role of relatedness as an epistemological base for knowledge construction and liberation is highlighted. The dynamics in which these processes interact in order to facilitate and catalyze the transformation of negative living conditions through participatory action and reflection, to empower people so they become conscious citizens, and to strengthening civil society and democracy is also discussed. I argue that the ethical, critical, and political character of the liberating actions respond for the participatory, reflexive, and transformative conception of this form of psychology.     

Cooperation, competition, and democracy

Rawlsian framework is based on a cooperation model, which takes a democratic society as a cooperation system. Such a conception of democracy not only obscures the distinction between democracy and despotism, but also makes it hard to argue for the superiority of democracy over despotism. This article develops a different model, the competition model, to explain the historical development towards democracy and to justify democracy as a social order superior to despotism. The article argues that once we adopt the competition model to understand democracy, its distinctive characters as well as its merits will fully bear out.     

Transnational Islamic education in Indonesia: an ideological perspective

This article analyzes how the emergence of transnational Islam with its global network has changed the face of Indonesian Islam. As part of transnational Islam, the Salafi movement has embellished its ideology through the educational sphere, so it is called transnational Islamic education. The Integrated Islamic School and the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences show the ideological nuances in the education process of these two educational institutions. In this context, there is an ideological struggle between both the Egyptian and the Saudian model of Salafi education with the national education based on Pancasila. With the main agenda of the establishment of an Islamic state and putting the Shariah into practice, the Salafi education can pose a threat to global democratic order. Many cases indicate that perpetrators of global radicalism and terrorism are graduates of Salafi model schools. This proves that global democracy is currently in an ideological struggle with transnational Islamic education.     

Political Participation of Islamists in Syria: Examining the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood's Mid-century Democratic Experiment

Accompanying increased participation by Islamists in parliaments across the Middle East in the past two decades, there continues to be a debate as to the sincerity of their commitment to democratic values and systems. Scholars have traditionally pursued the issue through the inclusion/moderation model, or through concepts such as ‘post-Islamism’. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, however, represents a rare case for the study of Islam and democracy because its democratic engagement preceded its later period of violent and ideological radicalism by decades. The group contested elections within the first two years of its formation, meaning that its positions on democracy were ‘moderated’ neither by pluralist political pressures nor by the failure of a previous non-democratic ideology. This article therefore examines the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood's performance in Syria's political processes between 1947 and 1963 as a case study of Islamism and democracy, evaluating substantive indicators of democratic engagement, such as electoral practices, pact formation, policy adaptation and approaches to executive government. Using recent interviews with Brotherhood members, memoirs, archival material and newspapers, the article argues that, during this time, while the Brotherhood was not the most effective political actor, it did demonstrate a reasonably diligent commitment to democracy.     

Differentiation Levels of Cultural Mediation Within a Socio-Cultural Sphere: A Re-evaluation of the Concept of Culture

Matusov and Smith (Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 46: 3, 2012) use a genealogical analysis of the US middle class to show how classic concepts of identity do not only represent historically, politically, and culturally local phenomena, but also contribute to them. Their analysis nicely exemplifies how culture, as semiotic mediation, guides and constrains both societal as well as intra- and inter-personal structures. As not only the traditional notion of identity, but also the mainstream concept of culture, represents a limiting understanding of the person-culture relation, the first part of this article re-evaluates two main understandings of culture within psychology and then argue for a semiotic mediational conception that simultaneously guides and constrain not only intra- and inter-individual mechanisms, but also structures the socio-cultural sphere. What remains to be examined is: how exactly can personal agency and positioning be promoted and strengthened within the tensions of personal cultures and the socio-cultural sphere.     

The jouissance of the other and the prohibition of incest: a Lacanian perspective

The authors describe how Lacan diverged from classical Freudian concepts to arrive at an alternative model of psychoanalysis. In a discussion that also addresses the concept of the mirror stage and Lacan's use of language, the authors show how the Lacanian concepts of jouissance and the prohibition of incest contribute to this model, which can be successfully applied to the psychoanalytic treatment of more seriously disturbed patients. A clinical vignette is presented to illustrate the latter point.     

Adding Deleuze to the mix

In this article I will suggest ways in which adding the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze to the mix can complement and extend the 4EA approach to cognitive science. In the first part of the paper, I will show how the Deleuzean tripartite ontological difference (virtual/intensive/actual) can provide an explicit ontology for dynamical systems theory. The second part will take these ontological notions and apply them to three areas of concern to the 4EA approaches: (a) the Deleuzean concept of the virtual will clarify the ontological status of perceptual capacity as sensorimotor skill; (b) the Deleuzean concept of “intensive individuation” will clarify the ontological status of the genesis of perceptually guided behavior; (c) the Deleuzean critique of confusing the actual and the virtual will enable us to intervene in the realism/idealism debate. These aspects will not be addressed sequentially but will be interwoven into an unfolding argument.     

Some Esoteric Aspects of SEM That Its Practitioners Should Want to Know

The topic of this article is the interpretation of structural equation modeling (SEM) solutions. Its purpose is to augment structural modeling's metatheoretic resources while enhancing awareness of how problematic is the causal significance of SEM-parameter solutions. Part I focuses on the nonuniqueness and consequent dubious interpretability of loop pathweights in nonrecursive SEMs: Solutions for a nonrecursive SEM's open parameters are strongly indeterminate absent constraints that in most applications would be arbitrary. The generic indeterminacy is well known, but how severely this thwarts identification of a linear dynamic system's structural coefficients from synchronic (one-panel) data still seems inadequately appreciated. Part II introduces an efficient formalism for recognizing an important facet of lawful regularity—locus displacements—that is generally suppressed by the equations in which mathematical models are standardly written. (Preoccupation with SEM's matrix algebra and fit appraisal has masked the cognitive poverty with which SEM applications are prevailingly conceived.) Introduced here are some unfamiliar concepts that enable us to think about system structure more deeply than matrix equations can express. The Appendix attempts to incite some debate on how we can best conceptualize and exploit different levels (molar vs. molecular) of subject conception while appreciating that not all becauses are productive causes. It provides an overview of explanatory determinations comprising more than just production causality.     

Enhancing Family Therapy with Analytical Psychology

In a postmodern era of changing values and competing world views this article suggests that analytical psychology can enter the epistemological debate and speak to contemporary family therapy. Key concepts and contributions are examined and highlighted with an emphasis on their relevance for enhancing the field of family therapy. Individuation is discussed in light of Jung's analytical treatment stages, which include confession, explanation, education, and transformation. The relevance for family therapy is illustrated throughout the article as each treatment stage is explicated. Jung's emphasis on the spiritual is also discussed with implications for the importance of recognizing and attending to issues of spirituality in family therapy.     

Women,Men, and Persons: A Response to "Feminist Perspectives on Erikson's Theory: Their Relevance for Contemporary Identity Development Research"

The search for the structure of identity formation is a necessary undertaking for the comprehension of identity, identity changes, and identity development. This article attempts to show that the identification of structure and structural stages of identity implies a movement away from the identity status model.We support and clarify our claim by discussing how Kroger's (this issue) definition of the concepts of structure and structural stages in relation to the identity status model leads to serious restrictions in these concepts. The concept of structural integration is introduced as an alternative interpretation and definition of the structure of identity formation. The definition and theoretical implications of the concept of structural integration are clarified and related to other recent conceptual and empirical analyses of identity theory and research.We then go on to show how the concept of structural integration can be studied in empirical research.     

Echoes of the Danish Cartoon Crisis 10 Years Later: Identity,Injury and Intelligibility from Copenhagen to Paris and Texas

ABSTRACT

The tenth anniversary of the Danish cartoon crisis of 2005–06 invites reflection on its historical significance and contemporary relevance. In the Danish context 10 years ago, the events generated substantial debate about issues such as terrorism, immigration, blasphemy and the place of Islam in Denmark and in the Danish folk. Furthermore, they raised complex questions about Danish identity in a society that had become significantly more religiously and culturally diverse in the preceding decades. Most of these questions, however, were eclipsed by the polarized public debate about free speech and religious respect. The year 2015 brought many of these questions back to the fore after the murders that January of 12 journalists at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and attacks at a kosher market in Paris, followed in February by shootings at a free speech event in Copenhagen and at a synagogue, and later attacks in May at a Muhammad cartoon contest exhibit in Garland, Texas. Despite their disparate contexts, these violent events have echoes of the original Danish cartoon crisis. This article suggests that the three concepts of identity, injury and intelligibility can together help to add complexity to popular interpretations of the original Danish cartoon crisis and recent related events, and prompt us to think beyond the dualistic categories of free speech and blasphemy.