Transforming the Game: Democratizing the Publicness of Higher Education and Commonwealth in Neoliberal Times

Abstract

This article argues that neoliberalism should be understood as a game-transformative set of practices in which the objective of each move is not only to gain the upper hand in the established game, but rather to repeatedly change the basic configuration of the game itself to further enhance its power. In the face of this assault on democratic commonwealth in higher education and elsewhere, many progressives are stuck in a primarily defensive frame according to which the objective is to resist losses and re-establish conditions that facilitate a less asymmetrical political game. This political stance harbors little democratic promise because it is insufficiently attentive to neoliberal game-transformative practices. To rejuvenate vital and mutually supportive relationships between public higher education and democracy, we must co-create a radically democratic game-transformative pedagogical and political practice in which we intensify and expand the meaning of publicness and publics. The article explores Northern Arizona University's Action Research Teams initiative as one prefiguration of this possibility.

Notes

¹ See, for example, Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); William E. Connolly, Capitalism and Christianity, American Style (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

² I elaborate the concept of “game-transformative practices” in Visionary Pragmatism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, forthcoming).

³ For a discussion of “public work” see Harry C. Boyte, Everyday Politics: Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). The genealogies of community-based, civically engaged, and participatory action research pedagogy are complex and contested, yet for the purposes of this article I will use these terms interchangeably. Many strands of engaged pedagogy have been significantly influenced by Paulo Freire's, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Myra Ramos, trans. (New York: Continuum Press, 1986); and Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, trans. Patrick Clark (Washington, DC: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000); and critical pedagogy theorists such as bell hooks, in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (London: Routledge Press, 1994). For overviews of participatory action research, see Alice McIntyre, Participatory Action Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2007); and Ernest T. Stringer, Action Research, Fourth Edition (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2013). Robert Hildreth's, Building Worlds, Transforming Lives, Making History: A Guide to Public Achievement (Minneapolis, MN: Center for Democracy and Citizenship, 1998) articulates a practice of civic engagement pedagogy called “Public Achievement” that has influenced the movement at Northern Arizona University.

⁴ Romand Coles and Blase Scarnati, “The Craftsperson Ethos and Transformational Ecotones in Higher Education,” in Harry C. Boyte (ed.), Democracy's Education: A Symposium on Public Work, Citizenship, and the Future of Higher Education (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, forthcoming 2014). See my contributions to Romand Coles and Stanley Hauerwas, Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary: Conversations between a Radical Democrat and a Christian (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Press, 2007); and Sheldon Wolin, The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990) for more on the formation of democratic publics. See also, David W. Brown and Derek W.M. Barker (eds), A Different Kind of Politics: Readings on the Role of Higher Education in Democracy (Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation Press, 2009).

⁵ Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Henry Holt, 2007).

⁶ See, for example, Marc Bousquet, How the University Works: Higher Education in a Low Wage Nation (New York: New York University Press, 2008), on contingent labor and corporate investments; Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), for a critique of “universities of excellence”; and Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why it Matters (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011).

⁷ Noam Chomsky, “On Academic Labor,” Counterpunch, February 28–March 2, 2014, < http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/28/on-academic-labor/>.

⁸ See adjunctaction.org for information on the SEIU initiative, and < http://aa.drupalgardens.com> for the Adjunct Faculty Association of United Steelworkers. The Committee on Contingency and the Profession of the American Association of University Professors also does research and organizing on contingent faculty issues. See < http://www.aaup.org/about/committees/standing-committees>.

⁹ See, for example, my essays in Coles and Hauerwas, Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary, especially Chapters 3 and 13.

¹⁰ This and all other references to the AASCU report are from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, “Connecting Higher Education, Public Opinion, and Public Policy,” Policy Matters 2:9 (2005), pp. 1–4, < http://www.aascu.org/uploadedFiles/AASCU/Content/Root/PolicyAndAdvocacy/PolicyPublications/Connecting%20Higher%20Education%20Public%20Opinion.pdf>.

¹¹ Valerie J. Calderon and Preety Sidhu, “American Want Cost Cuts, Employer Help to Fund Education,” Gallup Economy, May 2, 2013, < http://www.gallup.com/poll/162158/americans-cost-cuts-employer-help-fund-education.aspx>.

¹²  < http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/higher-education/college-score-card>.

¹³ Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 2.

¹⁴ See essays in Harry C. Boyte, Democracy's Education and Romand Coles, “It's the ‘We’, Stupid,” or “Reflections toward an Ecology of Radical Democratic Theory and Practice,” Theory and Event 16:1 (2013). See also, Romand Coles, “Environmental Political Thought and Action Research Teams,” in Teena Gabrielson, Cherly Hall, John Meyer, and David Schlosberg (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2015); and Romand Coles, “The Promise of Democratic Populism in the Face of Contemporary Power,” The Good Society 21:2 (2012), pp. 177–193.

¹⁵ Here I employ “service learning” heuristically as the self-descriptive term used by many programs on campuses across the US that frequently create opportunities for service that are short-term, “one-off,” construed in ways that accent “volunteers” “helping” communities, non- or minimally-dialogical, focused on symptoms rather than systems, and avoid questions of power and politics. Such programs are widespread and proponents of “civic engagement” and democracy education often distinguish their work from such service by emphasizing the need for public work and action research that builds long-term relationships, co-creates practices that are explicitly reciprocal and developed through ongoing dialogue, seeks to address the systemic conditions that generate problems, frequently aims to cultivate grass-roots democratic power, and understands democracy not simply as a volunteer activity but rather as a practice that ought to shape the public character and purposes of our working lives—including curricular and co-curricular activity and scholarship. See, for example, Harry C. Boyte and James Farr, “The Work of Citizenship and the Problem of Service Learning,” in Experiencing Citizenship: Concepts and Models for Service Learning in Political Science (Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 1997), pp. 35–48. Nevertheless, much of the scholarship on service learning is more sophisticated than what one often finds in many campus service learning initiatives. Indeed, some of the best work on service learning is very close to the theory and practice of civic engagement. There is, as Barbara Jacoby describes, a “spectrum of service learning experiences” and conceptual frameworks that range from the service learning paradigm sketched above to those that have substantial kinship with what I am calling civic engagement. See Barbara Jacoby and Associates, Service Learning in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices (Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass, 1996); and Dan W. Butin, Service Learning in Theory and Practice: The Future of Community Engagement in Higher Education (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

¹⁶ Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 3.

¹⁷ For example, many of these ideas are part of the exploratory conversations I have witnessed and participated in, in national civic engagement networks such as the American Democracy Project, the American Commonwealth Partnership, Kettering Foundation, and others.

¹⁸ Sheldon Wolin, “Norm and Form: The Constitutionalizing of Democracy,” in Peter Euben, John Wallach, and Josiah Ober (eds), Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 50.

¹⁹ Plato, Republic, trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1975), 8.557d.

²⁰ Ani Difranco, “My I.Q.,” Puddle Dive, Righteous Babe Records, 1993.

²¹ Michelle Miller, “Assessment Report for AY 2012–2013 First Year Seminar/FYSeminar-ARTs,” The First Year Seminar Program, Northern Arizona University, May 2013. The study carefully controlled its comparison sample in order to avoid “propensity biases,” according to which those who self-selected into the FYS-ARTs might be expected to have higher rates of retention on this basis alone. To avoid such bias, FYS and non-FYS student samples were matched and equivalent on the following characteristics: ethnicity, gender, AZ residency, FAFSA/PELL eligibility, attended previews, high school deficiencies (Math, English, Lab Science), declared college, ACT/SAT scores, high school CORE GPA, and student success inventory (six scales).

²² See, for example, Wendy Brown, “Governmentality in the Age of Neoliberalism,” Lecture at Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, March 18, 2014, < http://pactac.net/2014/03/wendy-brown—governmentality-in-the-age-of-neoliberalism/?utm_content = buffer42fee&utm_medium = social&utm_source = facebook.com&utm_campaign = buffer>.

²³ In “What is Public Narrative?,” Working Paper, 2011, p. 5, < http://marshallganz.com/publications/>.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Romand Coles

Romand Coles is the Frances B. McAllister Endowed Chair and Director of the Program for Community, Culture, and Environment at Northern Arizona University, where he is a leader in the Action Research Team movement. He has written many books, including Beyond Gated Politics: Reflections for the Possibility of Democracy (University of Minnesota Press, 2005), Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary: Conversations Between a Christian and a Radical Democrat (Wipf and Stock, 2007) with Stanley Hauerwas, and Visionary Pragmatism: Radical and Ecological Democracy (Duke University Press, forthcoming 2015).