Sociology as a Tool for the Emancipatory Youth Worker - Essay Example

Running Head: Sociology can be a potent tool Sociology can be a Potent Tool for the Emancipatory Youth Worker of the of the institution] Sociology can be a potent tool for the emancipatory youth worker The struggle for power involves us in a daily battle f influencing, persuading, commanding or, when all else fails, forcing people to do what we want while, at the same time, preventing them from exerting their will over us. But power extends beyond this mosaic f interpersonal struggles. It pre-exists us. It is invested in rules, regulations, discourse, and practice. It flows through us like an electric field. Foucault argues that power must be seen not as something which is static and possessed, but which circulates within and between us. "It is never localized here or there, never in anybody's hands, never appropriated as a commodity or piece f wealth" (1980a, p. 98). Although discourse and practice pre-exist us, we learn to harness them to our own end. The notion f power being located within rules and regulations which are continually adopted and transformed by individual agents is central to Giddens' structuration theory f power (1984,p. 14). Foucault is known for his work analyzing changes in the discourse and practice f discipline and punishment, particularly in relation to education (1977a) but, with the exception f Dwyer's (1995) study f post-compulsory education in Australia, his theories have not had any major impact in adult education (Westwood, 1992). To understand the notion f empowerment and emancipation, we must begin with an analysis f power. This leads immediately to a fundamental problem: If power dictates or produces truth, how do we recognize true statements about power More fundamentally, is truth possible beyond power We may believe, with Habermas, that there is a realm f truth which exists beyond power and which is central to authentic human being, communication, and voluntary social order. Habermas (1984) argues that the "orientation to reaching understanding" is a universal feature f human communication which is central to overcoming self-interest and the domination f economic and political power in our lives (p. 286). This is also the fundamental assumption underlying Mezirow's (1994; 1995) theory f adult learning. Foucault, however, insists that there is no truth without power (1980a, p. 131). It is in and through power that what is known, what is said, what is taken for granted, and what is regarded as the truth are constituted. The tensions between these two positions are central to the following discussion. It is argued that for people to become emancipated it is important first to be able to distinguish social action deriving from power as opposed to, for example, love and affection. It is also important to distinguish different types f power. This is something which is missing in Mezirow's work. Within a Habermasian framework, understanding how power works is crucial if people are to prevent the colonization and technization f the lifeworld by power and money and develop a society based on free, undistorted communication (Habermas, 1987, p. 183). It is argued here, that for emancipatory learning to reach its full potential, there is a need to go beyond an analytical realist typology f power to a Foucauldian structuralist analysis which helps people understand how they are limited and controlled by discourses and practices (Honneth, 1993; Kelly, 1994). The central tenet f this paper is that empowerment involves people developing capacities to act successfully within the existing system and structures f power, while emancipation concerns critically analyzing, resisting and challenging structures f power. The first section begins with an analysis f empowerment. Empowerment used to be associated with a wide variety f radical social movements (Bookman, 1988; Davis, 1988; Hanks, 1987; Inglis, 1994; Kieffer, 1984; O'Sullivan, 1993; Solomon, 1976; Villerreal, 1988). In more recent years, however, it has been appropriated by organizational management and industrial training. An analysis f how empowerment has come to be understood in business not only helps distinguish empowerment (working within the system) from emancipation (trying to change the system), but how a process which supposedly leads to increased or devolved power leads, in effect, to a more subtle form f incorporation. The emphasis on people becoming self-regulating, disciplined, and controlled, in the absence f critical analysis, can be seen as part f a process f empowerment which corresponds with Foucault's theory f a gradual movement in Western society towards softer, more subtle and pervasive forms f control (1977a). An analysis f Mezirow's theory, particularly in terms f the psychologization f the process f emancipation, is the second task f this paper. Transformative learning focuses on the individual and the reconstruction f the notion f self. This is the locus for social as well as personal change. Power becomes reduced to blockages preventing a true realization f the self, with adult learning becoming the process f revealing and dissolving these blockages. While not abandoning this emphasis on self-critical individuals engaging in a process f self-realization, there is a need to take an understanding f human emancipation away from notions f liberating a pre-existing, essential self toward a more realist or structuralist understanding f power. Instead f individuals, the focus shifts to fields f discourse and practice within which individuals are constituted. Thus, without an analysis f power there is a danger that transformative learning, instead f being emancipatory, could operate as a subtle form f self-control. Empowerment in Management and Industrial Training Each decade would seem to demand a new concept to inspire management to get workers to be more efficient (Burdett, 1991, p. 23). Empowering workers has come to mean encouraging them to share information and participate in management, to critically reflect about their attitudes, values, and behaviour in the workplace, and to get them to be more self-directive and better communicators (Kizilos, 1990, p. 49; Putman, 1991, p. 5). Empowerment is linked to the concept f total quality management (TQM) and the notion f the learning organization, both f which "have a strong emphasis on feedback, creativity, teamwork and problem solving" (Clutterbuck & Kernaghan, 1994, p. 28). An essential ingredient in this process is to encourage workers to view the organization not as something outside f them but as a family or community to which they belong. Empowerment involves getting workers to share the same values and practices as managers and to work with them to improve competitiveness, quality, innovation, loyalty and, most f all, productivity and profit (Clutterbuck & Kernaghan, 1994, pp. 23-26). This conception f empowerment can be located within a structural-functional or systems theory f organizations and society. Empowerment is a process by which the role f workers becomes redefined in order to enable the organization to achieve new goals and adapt to a changing environment. One f the central criticisms f structural-functional analysis is that it "projects an over-harmonious integration f motivational forces (at the level f individuals) into the systematic values f the organization" (Power, 1990, p. 112). It assumes that workers are committed to the norms and values f the organization and to contributing to the generalized capacity to achieve shared objectives (Parsons, 1951, pp. 121-2; Alexander, 1983, p. 89). Parsons' definition f power--as the "capacity to secure the performance f binding obligations by units in a system f collective organization" (1967,p. 308--closely resembles organizational management's conception f empowerment. Worker empowerment, it is emphasized, is about creating a different culture (Kizilos, 1990, p. 51). Yet, it is a culture in which structures and values are not questioned or hierarchies challenged. Empowerment implies a decentralized structure. Yet decentralization never really occurs (Dandaker, 1990, p. 211). The process f interaction and communication between management and workers is constituted within existing hierarchical divisions. Interpreted from a Habermasian perspective, the culture f the organization is not something which emerges through communication, interaction, and dialogue between equal participants at the negotiating table. Rather it is something that is created, supervised and, when necessary, vetoed by management. Empowerment thus becomes a strategic discourse employed by management to legitimize changes to increase production and profit which are often "above and beyond the interests f employees" (McCabe, 1996, p. 36). The old issues f exploitation, control and deskilling f workers have not gone away; rather, they have been wrapped up in different management clothing (Gilbert, 1996, p. 13). What is deemed to be empowering becomes part f what Freire terms banking education (1972,pp. 45-50). Workers do not learn to "read" the world f work. There is no democratic decision-making process, no collaborative or self-directed learning. There are basic epistemic and sociocultural assumptions which are not open to question (Mezirow, 1990, p. 15). Empowerment, then, is not really about radical economic, political or social change in the workplace. It is not about people learning to take control f their own lives and the environment in which they live. Empowerment is not about those with less power (e.g., workers learning to read through the rhetoric f management and to see the false consciousness concerning the real conditions f their existence and then collaborating to create change). Rather, it is about encouraging workers to rationally choose to commit themselves to the values, goals, policies, and objectives f the organization as a rational means f improving their life chances. In the move toward more subtle forms f discipline and control, instead f having to be supervised, workers internalize their own surveillance (Foucault, 1977a; Tuckman, 1995, p. 75). Emphasis on the Individual Since the appearance f Pedagogy f the Oppressed (Freire, 1970), learning to challenge and change existing systems has been a dominant issue in adult education. Freire is adamant that freedom from oppression can only take place through theory and praxis. He emphasizes the need for a social critique f power, that is, f understanding the structural, particularly the ideological, forces f oppression and the need to link this theoretical understanding to a radical political practice. In some respects, when it comes to people becoming empowered, Mezirow seems to closely follow Freire. He too is adamant that praxis is a "requisite condition" f transformative learning, arguing that all too frequently transformative learning remains at the level f individual development and does not move into the task f "learning to successfully overcome oppressing power in one's external world through social action" (1990,p. 357). This appears to refute repeated criticisms that Mezirow not only lacks a critical theory f power, but that he balks at collective social action (Clark & Wilson, 1991; Collard & Law, 1989; Hart, 1990b; Tennant, 1993). Despite his call for social action, however, Mezirow's theory leads to an over-reliance on the individual rather than social movements as the agency f social change and, consequently, to an inadequate and false sense f emancipation. Mezirow believes that money, power, and ideology are simply distortions preventing open, honest communication between people (1995,pp. 5455). He rejects a structuralist position: both the strong version which would argue that individuals are constituted within and function only as elements within structures f power, and the weak version which argues that individuals, although constituted within structures, through their agency not only reproduce but change these structures. Transformation theory "seeks to explain the way adult learning is structured and to determine by what processes the frames f reference through which we view and interpret our experience (meaning perspectives) are changed or transformed" (Mezirow, 1991, p. xiii). Individuals develop a self-concept through socialization and interaction with significant others (pp. 2-3). Although the meaning perspectives and knowledge acquired during socialization lead to preferred ways f thinking and behaving, they do not have a necessary determining influence. Mezirow argues that in order to be free we must be able to name our reality and to speak with our own voice (p. 3). In this regard, Mezirow seems to be arguing for some pre-social, authentic, essential self. Once this authentic self can be discovered and revealed, it can become a force for liberation. It is through the process f discovering one's authentic self, through renaming one's world, that new patterns f thought and behaviour, new social practices, and processes and new forms f authority can be created. Through a dialogue with others, adult learners can become critically self-reflective f the ways they have come to read and understand the world. This enables them to become "communicatively competent," that is, to negotiate meanings and purposes rather than passively accept other people's definition f reality. This, in turn, enables them to engage either in personal transformation (Roth 1990; Kitchener & King, 1990) or social transformation (Hart 1990a; Heaney & Horton, 1990). The fundamental theoretical assumption which Mezirow makes is that social life is made up and shared by individuals who, through continuously negotiated communication, sustain and recreate it. From this Meadian, symbolic-interactionist perspective, social change takes place through a form f voluntary critical self-reflection. From Foucault's perspective, we can analyze the shift toward self-control in adult education discourse as part f a more general shift in the discourse f discipline and punishment. Instead f producing docile, amenable, regulated bodies through external forms f control (from torture and physical punishment to prisons to education), there has been a shift to more subtle forms f control. Through an ongoing process f externalizing, problematizing, and critically evaluating one's being, actions, and thoughts, a critically reflective self is constituted. This self becomes the center f control. If properly constituted we no longer need the regulatory discourse f psychiatry. Through emancipatory learning, we become our own psychiatrists. There is no end to power The only freedom or emancipation comes from resistance and fuming power back in on itself. As much as oppressed people have to reveal to themselves the power f the oppressor and the way in which it operates, so too educators and students have to be able to read and announce to themselves the power f the education system, the college, and even the teacher (Cunningham, 1992; Hart, 1990b; Tisdell, 1993). But since power is constituted in discourses, narratives, and games f truth, as well as in economic and political structures, this means that it can be critically analyzed as a part f the process f resistance, challenge, and subversion which does not, as Zacharakis-Jutz has argued, necessitate revolutionary, antagonistic, and violent change (1988,p. 45). Missing from adult education is this critical analysis f discourse and power structures and the way they operate in the lives f people. In other words, the world for Mezirow is primarily shaped through individual agency. This is turning a materialist perspective on its head. It is not that social being determines consciousness, but rather human consciousness, albeit emancipated, which determines social being. Although Mezirow would appear to have abandoned a philosophy f consciousness and moved toward a Habermasian theory f communicative action, there is nevertheless a conception f an autonomous, rational subject set against an objective, material world. Both Foucault and the Frankfurt school are adamant that such conceptions have to be abandoned: The atomistic and disengaged Cartesian subject teas to be dislodged from its position at the centre f the epistemic and moral universes, and not only for theoretical reasons: it undergirds the egocentric, domineering and possessive individualism that has so disfigured modern Western rationalism and driven it to exclude, dominate, or assimilate whatever is different. (McCarthy, 1994, p. 244) Towards a Pedagogy f Power By laying bare its features and by announcing the various strategies and tactics through which it is exercised, adult educators can help people, particularly the less powerful, to know and understand power and to see how it operates in their lives. But to do this educators have to change from engaging in a discourse about power among themselves. Journal articles such as this have the consequence, albeit unintended, f reproducing adult education as a discourse f power rather than an emancipatory discourse about power. We must not abandon theory, but we need to develop a way f talking and writing theoretically which is not elitist or abstract and which reveals the nature f power in a clear and accessible manner (Freire, 1970, p. 206; McLaren & Tadeu da Silva, 1993, p. 54). The process f emancipation involves a continual struggle to reveal the ever-changing nature f power. Emancipation is the process f pulling power out from agreement, love, and affection. Emancipatory learning could begin, for example, with questioning the epistemic assumption that social life is founded on shared meaning arrived at through communicative action. It is not that looking at our lives through a discourse about power is always necessary or desirable. But showing people how to read their lives and the family, groups, organizations and society in which they are involved in terms f a struggle for power can be emancipating. It is important to remember that it is not the only way f looking at social life; it is an epistemological or learning framework. References Alexander. J. (1982). Positivism, presuppositions and current controversies. Theoretical logic in sociology. Vol. 1. Berkeley: University f California Press. Alexander, J. (1983). The modern reconstruction f classical thought: Talcott Parsons. Theoretical logic in sociology. Vol. 4. 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