Empowered individualism in world culture: Agency and equality in Canadian textbooks, 1871–2006

ABSTRACT

The sacred status of individuals is a central pillar of world culture in research on education and beyond. The intended socialisation of students is increasingly to become empowered individuals who respect human equality and diversity in a globally interconnected world. At the same time we have little understanding of what exactly the concept of individual empowerment means or how to capture it empirically. This study builds on prior observations about the growing status of individuals by delineating the rise of two separate but related dimensions of empowerment – agency and equality – and outlining the rise of these dimensions in the Canadian educational context. To this end, it draws on a unique dataset consisting of a systematically designed coding of 80 history, civics, and social studies textbooks used in Canada from 1871 to 2006. Refining the concept of individual empowerment reveals that its manifestations are shaped by the local context, in addition to the influences that come from world culture. Overall, increasingly empowered individuals and the structures they create (often organisations and associations of various types) become key actors in national and international society. Looking to the future, if taken to an extreme, expansions in individual empowerment may lead to instances of ‘hyper-empowerment’, where depictions and enactments of individual choice, control, and equality far outpace reasonable expectations.

KEYWORDS:

• World culture
• individualism
• empowerment
• agency
• equality
• textbooks
• education

Acknowledgements

Thanks to John Meyer, Francisco Ramirez and members of the Comparative Sociology Workshop at Stanford University for feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Analyses not shown here (available on request) compared trends in agency and equality by splitting the periods at the creation of the Charter versus at the end of the Cold War showed no important difference for the agency measures, but the 1983 cut-off provided a better illustration of the trends for the equality data.

2. Specifically, the question asked, ‘Overall in the textbook how important are the actions of individuals (regular people, not political leaders) in shaping historical or contemporary events or solving social problems?’ A zero indicated ‘not emphasised’, a one indicated ‘somewhat important’ and a two indicated ‘very important.’

3. A parallel question asked, ‘Overall in the textbook how important are the actions of national leaders (e.g. political or military leaders) or the nation-state in shaping historical or contemporary events or solving social problems?’ Responses fall on the same zero-to-two scale, but the reverse trend occurs – there is a significant decline over time. The rise of regular individuals in history comes at the expense of official political and military leaders, who are given less prominent a role over time in civic education textbooks.

4. The two questions ask ‘Are international non-governmental organizations mentioned? (e.g. Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch. This includes any of the country’s non-governmental organisations that are described as working internationally.) 0 = no, 1 = yes’ and ‘Does the book discuss (at least a paragraph) the individual’s role as a global citizen or membership in an international (meaning global, not regional) community/society? 0 = no, 1 = yes’.

5. The coding document states, ‘Are there open questions (meaning questions without right–wrong answers that require students to form their own opinion)? 0 = no questions, 1 = there are questions, but none are open ended, 2 = some/a few questions are open ended, 3 = a lot/nearly all questions are open ended.’

6. The exact question is ‘Does the textbook encourage students to form their own opinions? 0 = no, 1 = a little, 2 = a lot.’

7. The question asks, ‘Does the textbook encourage students to respect the opinions of others? 0 = no, 1 = a little, 2 = a lot.’

8. Details available from author upon request.