Len Barton, critical education and the problem of ‘decentered unities’

Abstract

In the process of discussing the significant contributions that Len Barton has made to the sociology of education and to disability studies, I argue that a good deal of critical analyses of power and inequality in education are impoverished by some of their essentialist and reductive tendencies. I use an example taken from disability rights to show how parts of these tendencies can be overcome. I suggest that disability rights movements provide powerful possibilities for the interruption of capitalist ideological forms and their attendant ways of organising and controlling labour. They do this by challenging some of the most fundamental assumptions that underpin capitalist economies and ways of life. By strongly resisting the ways in which paid work and paid workers are treated, new relations are made possible. I connect this example to some of the insightful analyses of the place of affective equality in the struggle for social justice in both a politics of redistribution and a politics of recognition. Building on these arguments, I then argue for a broadened conception of critical research and critical action. I describe nine tasks in which the critical scholar/activists should engage if they are to be true to an enlarged conception of the ‘public intellectual’ and ‘public sociologist’.

Keywords:

• critical education
• disability studies
• politics of education
• public intellectual
• public sociology

Notes

1. The Journal Disability and Society with which Len Barton has been affiliated as founding editor for so long has played a major role in clarifying these issues. The British Journal of Sociology of Education, another crucial journal that Len Barton was so instrumental in both founding and keeping on track, has been a site of significant work on the politics, construction and meanings associated with the contentious term ‘disability’.

2. I have long maintained that no complete critical understanding of society can go on without seriously engaging with and in class analysis (see also Wright 1985, 1997, 1998, 2006). But while such analyses are necessary, they are not sufficient.

3. The issue of ‘decentred unities’ has considerable bearing on any serious tactical discussion of ‘intersectionality’. It requires a detailed analysis of the inter‐relationships, contradictions and tensions within and among different structural locations, dynamics of differential power and identities. See the discussion of intersectionality in Gillborn (2008).

4. There are, of course, divisions within the category of ‘universal worker’. For an analysis of the emerging transformations of and in the paid labour force and in the emotions, dispositions, values, skills and expectations associated with these transformations, see Collin and Apple (2010).

5. The complexities involved in various critical approaches and the ways in which each takes account of power dynamics can be seen in Apple, Au, and Gandin (2009) and Apple, Ball and Gandin (2010).

6. As I noted, some of the most thoughtful work on this has its basis in critical psychoanalytic traditions. I would like to thank Miriam David for her critical comments on this point.

7. Burawoy’s inclusion of ‘faith communities’ is an important addition here. It connects to my argument about decentred unities and the importance of alliances. As I argue in the revised 2nd edition of Educating the right way (Apple 2006), alliances with religious activists on issues of mutual concern – even at times when there may be serious differences on other issues – can play a part in creating counter‐hegemonic movements and in interrupting significant parts of, say, neoliberal agendas. Having personally worked with progressive religious movements both nationally and internationally, recognition of the liberatory potential of a number these movements has become clear to me. See as well the discussion of the liberatory tradition within the African American religious movements in West (2002).

8. I am aware that the idea of ‘bearing witness’ has religious connotations, ones that are powerful in the West, but may be seen as a form of religious imperialism in other religious traditions. I still prefer to use it because of its powerful resonances with ethical discourses. But I welcome suggestions from, say, Muslim critical educators and researchers for alternative concepts that can call forth similar responses. I want to thank Amy Stambach for this point.

9. Here, exploitation and domination are technical not rhetorical terms. The first refers to economic relations, the structures of inequality, the control of labour and the distribution of resources in a society. The latter refers to the processes of representation and respect and to the ways in which people have identities imposed on them. These are analytic categories, of course, and are ideal types. Most oppressive conditions are partly a combination of the two. These of course can largely map on to what Fraser (1997) calls the politics of redistribution and the politics of recognition.

10. I want to thank Luis Armando Gandin for suggesting this additional point.