Category Archives: civic studies

Possible Research Questions

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One of my current tasks is to sharpen the theoretical questions I am interested in exploring through my doctoral work.

While I am thankfully still some time away from having to select a dissertation topic, the process of thinking through and refining my interests will help me identify possible research projects and help guide me as I select from a seeming infinite array of classes, readings, and activities.

So what are the theoretical questions I am interested in exploring? Well, since “ALL OF THEM” doesn’t seem to be a productive answer in this regard, I will attempt to articulate a somewhat more narrow scope.

Broadly, I am interested in civil society – and I am convinced that network approaches can bring value to our understanding. To be perfectly clear, I’m not referring solely to the understanding of academics, but of all of us individual, people who are living in communities.

That is, while network science can certainly be used to help political scientists better model the societies they study, I am more deeply interested in the civic studies question: what should we do?

There are many ways I can envision network science contributing to our collective attempts to answer this question.

First, on a broad scale, I think network analysis can help us more accurately conceive of the communities of which we are a part. I live in a very engaged community with a robust level of social capital, and yet I am also very close friends with some people who I barely see in person. Is one these settings more accurately a “community”? How should I make sense of my place in each of them?

I am particularly interested in trying to capture “layers” of community. If I were to do a power analysis in my local, geographic community I would find many individuals and institutions I could have direct interaction with. I could imagine multiple ways for my own voice and agency to have a real impact on policy or the culture of my community.

But if I were to do a similar analysis at a national or perhaps international scale, I would quickly find myself feeling powerless. Can I change international law? Perhaps some individuals are positioned to do so, but I most certainly am not.

In such a setting, then, I am left little but a foolish choice between inaction and the vain hope that my representatives will represent me, that my voice among thousands will carry some weight.

I’d previously seen this as an argument for more local engagement. Why shout in the wind of national politics when real work can be done at the local level?

But I wonder now if this is simply a false dichotomy. We envision local work and national work, and perhaps other scales of regional work or international work as well. We treat our communities as tiers – scaled up versus hyperlocal.

But what if there’s a better way to think of it? A better way to conceive of our multiple communities, overlapping, intersecting, complex and ever changing. What might that look like?

A second area of interest is around interactions within a given community. While the first set of questions struggles with how we might define the borders of a single community, the second explores what we do once we know what “we” means.

More explicitly, this area centers around questions of dialogue and deliberation. What does “good” dialogue look like? How are ideas exchanged and opinions altered? Using strategies of epistemic network analysis one might even ask questions such as, what does a “good” deliberator look like? What does a good moderator look like? Is there a way of thinking that can categorized as “good” deliberative thinking?

Finally, I’m very interested in applying network science to better understanding the network of ideas and morals held by an individual. This line of thinking can be closely tied to questions of deliberation – asking what idea structure a person ought to have in order to be a “good” deliberator.

But there are other ways to take this question as well – are there features of an individual’s moral network which are better or worse than others? If so, what ought a good person’s moral network look like? What network characteristic should we each seek to cultivate?

 

These are not entirely disparate questions, but they do each take the confluence of civics and networks in different ways. I’m not sure where the next five years will lead me, but I look forward to delving in!

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Modeling Networks of Individuals and Institutions

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One of the topics that I’m interested in as I delve into my Ph.D. program involves using networks to model a community’s interactions. A critical first question in this process is simply: what is a community network a network of?

Social network analysis and it’s face-to-face equivalent focus on networks of individuals. Each person is a node in the network, linked to the individuals they know or communicate with. This is a robust and helpful way of looking at communities.

It allows for mapping information flows and exploring community dynamics. Do most people know most other people? Are there segments of the community that are isolated from each other, like cliques in the high school cafeteria? How diverse is the average person’s network?

These are valuable ways of looking at a community, but this approach doesn’t tell the full story.

There is also great work being done looking at the network of institutions within a community. Can the characters of a community’s institutional network predict how well that community will fare during an economic crisis?

This approach is often not devoid of interest in the individual – asking, too, questions of how strong institutional networks can build social capital, benefiting the community as a whole as well as the individuals who comprise it.

Again, this is a valuable approach that can yield many interesting and helpful results.

But somehow, I find myself unsatisfied with either approach.

Communities are complex systems of individuals and institutions. An institution may be comprised of individuals, but it’s ultimate character is more than the sum of its parts: individuals can change institutions and institutions can change individuals.

And there may be yet more factors that influence how communities function: policies, norms, historical sensibilities, regional or even international networks.

So for now, the question I’m pondering is this: what would a detailed, robust, network model of a community look like? What are its nodes and connections, and is there some fundamental unit which could be used to model all these complex layers together?

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Are we teaching citizenship that matters?

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Our own Dr. Terri Fine has shared her first column for the UCF Forum. In it, she raises an interesting question: have we in Florida actually learned citizenship, and what it means to live together, and to pursue justice, as citizens? Using the horrific Groveland Four case as a starting point, the column makes an unfortunate, but important, point about Florida:

Despite its reputation for racial moderation, Florida’s white society brutally enforced segregation and discrimination into the 1960s as lawmakers enacted policies that curtailed minority rights. Florida’s reputation for racial moderation during those years has focused on Gov. LeRoy Collins’ measured response to the Brown case as compared to the massive resistance advocated by other southern politicians.

Governor Collins certainly deserves some level of praise for his refusal to follow the pattern established in places like Arkansas and Mississippi, but is that really enough to say that Florida handled integration well? Perhaps not. As Dr. Fine writes,

During that time, the Legislature passed a number of bills designed to fight integration. In addition, after Collins, Floridians elected governors who campaigned against integration, civil rights and busing, and made little effort to promote racial equality in the three elections that followed.

Of course, the violence in Florida concerning racial justice and civil rights tended toward the brutal as well. Besides Groveland, we need only think back to the crime that was Rosewood.

And yet, here in Florida, where we indeed have come far as compared to some of our Southern neighbors, have we learned the lessons of the past? Have we learned what it means to be a citizen? I never taught about the Groveland Four, though I spent a decade teaching in Levy County (the home of the Rosewood Massacre). If we don’t teach it, if kids don’t learn it, are we truly teaching what it means to be a citizen in Florida, a citizen in the United States, and the obligations that go with that citizenship? If we don’t teach kids about the struggles that our neighbors, that perhaps their parents and grandparents, had to endure to live as free citizens, are we really teaching them anything? ARE we teaching them citizenship that matters?


Florida CUFA October Conference Call for Proposals!

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Good morning, friends in Civics and Social Studies. Dr. Scott Waring, who leads the new College and University Faculty Assembly branch of the Florida Council for the Social Studies, has asked me to share a call for proposals for the upcoming October conference. Please take the time to review the call, and if you are interested, you can click at the end of this sentence to download the FL-CUFA_Proposal_15. All proposals should be sent directly to Dr. Waring at swaring@ucf.edu. I encourage you to consider joining us in October!

Presentation Formats

Paper Presentations (50 minutes)

An individual paper presentation gives authors an opportunity to present abbreviated versions of their empirical or theoretical/conceptual scholarship. After the papers are presented, a discussant will offer commentary on key revelations, vexations, and themes raised by the papers, and a chairperson will moderate questions and responses by audience members. For the sake of effective presentation and discussion, individual papers should be limited to 3,000 words, excluding references. The typical structure for a session with two papers includes a brief introduction by the chairperson, 15 minutes for each author’s presentation, 10 minutes for the discussant’s commentary, and 10 minutes of audience participation.

Symposium Sessions (50 minutes)

A symposium offers presenters, discussants, and audience members the opportunity to explore a particular problem or theme from various perspectives. Organizers of symposium sessions typically establish the topic, identify and solicit participation from appropriate scholars, and assemble and submit a single proposal representing the collective work of participants. Symposium proposals should include no more than four participants. The organizer must obtain permission and input from each individual represented in a symposium proposal. Symposium proposals must specify a discussant for the session. All presenters in a symposium should submit to the discussant a paper or commentary addressing the central theme or questions under consideration; symposium papers should be limited to 3,000 words. The chair, presenters, and discussant will determine how time is to be allocated during symposiums.

Contemporary Issues Dialogue (50 minutes)

The contemporary issues dialogue format offers conference attendees an opportunity to explore contemporary issues or dilemmas in social education via a unique forum not represented by paper sessions and symposiums. Contemporary issues dialogues can include informal discussions, town hall meetings, roundtables, papers-in-progress, structured poster sessions, research planning and methodological activities, video presentations and performances, and book talks. Sessions that promote active participation and open dialogue among audience members are strongly encouraged. Proposal authors will determine how time is to be allocated during contemporary issues dialogues.

Research-Into-Practice Sessions (50 minutes)

Research-into-practice sessions offer FL-CUFA members the opportunity to discuss and demonstrate the implications of research for educational practice. Given their association with the regular FCSS Conference program, audience members typically are classroom teachers, teacher educators, supervisors, and school administrators. With that audience in mind, presentations should feature scholarly, yet accessible, discussions and activities of interest to practicing educators. Proposal authors will determine how time is to be allocated during research into practice sessions.

Submission Guidelines

Presenters must provide, in an email to the Program Chair, Scott Waring (swaring@ucf.edu), the following:

  1. The names of all presenters and corresponding affiliations
  2. Lead presenter’s mailing address, email, and phone number
  3. A PDF or Microsoft Word compatible document, as described below, that includes a narrative of 3,000 words or fewer, excluding title, abstract, and references.

Because proposals will be reviewed in a blind peer review process, please do not include the names or affiliations of authors and presenters in the proposal document and ensure that no identifying information is embedded in the proposal document as metadata.

The Program Chair reserves the right to reject without review any proposal that exceeds the 3,000-word limit. The Program Chair reserves the right to disqualify submissions in which authors’ identifying information is revealed.

The submission deadline is Monday, August 31, 2015 11:59 p.m. No submissions will be accepted after that date and time.

Individual Paper and Symposium Proposal Contents

Each proposal should include the following elements: a) the title; b) an abstract of 35 words or less; c) the purposes and/or objectives of the study; d) the theoretical framework or perspective; e) research design and/or methods of inquiry; f) findings or arguments and their warrants; g) the importance of the work’s contribution to scholarship; and h) references. To preserve the integrity of the blind peer review process, please do not include the names or affiliations of authors and presenters in the proposal document. The Program Chair reserves the right to disqualify submissions in which authors’ identifying information is revealed. The review criteria will incorporate the clarity, organization, and perceived scholarly significance of elements c) through g) above.

Contemporary Issues Dialogue and Research Into Practice (RIP) Proposal Contents

Contemporary Issues Dialogue and RIP session proposals should include the following elements, as appropriate: a) the title of ten words or less; b) an abstract of 35 words or less; c) the purposes and objectives of the session; d) theory and research in which the session is grounded; e) methods of presentation or modes of activity for the session; f) findings or arguments and their warrants; and g) references.

To preserve the integrity of the blind peer review process, please do not include the names or affiliations of authors and presenters in the proposal document. The Program Chair reserves the right to disqualify submissions in which authors’ identifying information is revealed. The review criteria will incorporate the clarity, organization, and perceived significance of elements c) through f) above.

Participation Requirements

It is expected that all authors or presenters represented in a proposal will register for the FCSS Annual Meeting and attend and participate in conference sessions. If an emergency or other unforeseen circumstance precludes a participant from attending, she or he should immediately contact the Program Chair, Scott Waring, at swaring@ucf.edu. To promote diversity among perspectives and participants, no presenter shall appear as author or co-author on more than two proposals, or as chair or discussant on more than two proposals.


Farewell, Tisch College

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This will be my last post as an employee of Tisch College. I still have another week of work, but as I wind down, I am starting my blogging vacation early. I won’t post again until September 8 – at which point I will be a full time PhD student at Northeastern.

It’s hard saying goodbye to a place where you’ve worked for almost eight years. I’ve seen so many others come and go, yet it seems odd to now be the one leaving. And, all loving hyperbole aside, I know they will get on with out me.

The work continues.

I am thrilled to be starting this new journey, and thrilled to be learning new ways to contribute to the work. The work of civic renewal, of improving our communities, of working together and collaboratively building the infrastructure to have everyone’s voice equally at the table.

It is important work, and the work continues.

I was more cynical eight years ago. I was skeptical of the value most people – including myself – could bring to the hard work of confronting society’s most pressing challenges. I couldn’t equally value every person’s voice and agency when I couldn’t even value my own.

Since I started at Tisch College, I have bought a house, finished a master’s degree, gotten married, seen a niece be born and watched my father die.

I have learned so much.

I have had the privilege of working with some of the smartest people I have ever met, learning not only from their work, but from their thoughtfulness in approaching the work.

I have had lunch with Elinor Ostrom, and attended lectures by the likes of Elizabeth Warren, John Gaventa, Robert Sampson, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Chris Matthews, Christiane Amanpour, and even – if you’re into that kind of thing – Antonin Scalia.

I’ve helped make some those events happen.

I have met and learned from the amazing scholars and practioners in the civic studies community – some of the most dedicated, passionate, and intelligent people I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.

I bring that community with me, even now as I enter my next adventure. My role may change, but the work –

The work continues.

Here’s to the next chapter.

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High Modernism and Network Science

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It seems appropriate, somehow, that I’m reading James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State before beginning my Ph.D. studies.

Scott warns against the dangers of a state which undertakes “utopian social engineering.” He sees a recipe for disaster comprised of four elements. The first seems innocuous: “the administrative ordering of society…by themselves, they are the unremarkable tools of modern statecraft.”

But those unremarkable tools, combined with an authoritarian state and a prostrate civil society, can lead to disaster.

The final element Scott warns of, the one that seems most relevant as I begin my studies, is a high modernist ideology. As Scott explains, high modernism is:

…a faith that borrowed, as it were, the legitimacy if science and technology. It was accordingly, uncritical, unskeptical, and thus unscientifically optimistic about the possibilities for the comprehensive planning of human settlement and production.

High modernism is a faith that goes far beyond supporting the scientific process. It is the unwavering belief that humans have the capacity to design utopia.

 

Of course, not just any humans have this capacity, high modernists would have us believe. It is only those who are properly educated, trained, and credentialed. In this technocratic utopia, experts need no local knowledge. Everything can be standardized to translate from one community to the next.

“‘Fiasco’ is too lighthearted a word for the disasters” caused by high modernism, Scott argues. “The Great Leap Forward in China, collectivization in Russia, and compulsory villagization in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Ethiopia are among the great human tragedies of the twentieth century, in terms of both lives lost and lives irretrievably disrupted.”

The high modernism which rocked the last century may be behind us. The world is to complex, too interwoven to believe in simple, standard, solutions.

Yet even as we accept the complexity of the world, we find ways to unravel it. I’m thrilled to be studying networks, an approach which allows for examining and understanding the complex systems which surround us.

So it is with the warning of Scott ringing in my head that I recently read these words about how a network understanding of biology could influence and improve medical practice:

If you suffered from manic depression in recent years, your first visit to the doctor probably started with an hour-long discussion to carefully examine your thoughts and feelings…Twenty years from now things could look quite different. Facing the same doctor, you will have a five minute discussion, just as you do in cases of simple influenza. An assistant will take a few drops of blood and you will walk home empty-handed. In the evening you will pick up the medicine from the nearest pharmacy. The next day you will wake up fresh and happy, as you did before the symptoms appeared. Both the manic and the depressive you will have been washed away.

That doesn’t sound like utopia to me. In fact, it sounds vaguely horrifying.

While there are no doubt many people with serious mental illnesses who would benefit from such an effective treatment, I’d hope it would take more than a five minute conversation before any major personality traits are simply “washed away.”

Furthermore, with such technology at our disposal, we’d be faced with serious dilemmas about what traits to live with and which to wash away. How much depression should a person accept before they undergo such drastic treatment? How soon before authoritarian states started to remove traits of outspokenness and disobedience?

None of this is to say that we should not pursue the science. It is important, fascinating work that is helping to make a little more sense of this mysterious world.

But embracing the science doesn’t mean embracing high modernism – indeed, as Scott argues, that is something we should be very wary of.

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Guest Post: The Constitutional Scholars Institute

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Recently, our colleague Mandy Arias, who teaches at Lee Middle in Orange County, headed north to the Constitutional Scholars Institute in Philadelphia. She was kind enough to provide us with a post that summarizes her experience. I encourage you to think about this opportunity for the future! 

The Constitutional Scholars Institute was a wonderful experience made up of highly qualified staff and guest speakers who were very passionate and knowledgeable about Civics and the Constitution. This included lawyers, judges, authors, and even a former governor. All participates shed light on hot topics in our country today thorough multiple perspectives and techniques for teaching them in class.

The Rendell Center truly wanted to aid teachers with their knowledge of Civics along with pedagogical practices. This was done in an innovative manner since our discussions and interactions were with teachers from all across the United States. Something I had never experienced before.  We were able to share multiple resources and lesson plan ideas with one another on a daily basis and share resources with one another via blackboard.

Having the opportunity to closely focus on the Constitution allowed all teachers to learn something new, even if they had felt as though they were experts before.  I believe most of us truly enjoyed the experience of arguing the mock appellate court case in a federal court room.  Using the lickert scale to place people in certain roles was a useful technique and one I will certainly use in the classroom.  We also had the opportunity to be walked through the Constitution Center website and all its sources.  This was very helpful especially if you enjoy using technology in the classroom. We the Civics Kids is just one of the many resources that were given to us that I know will be helpful in a Middle School classrooms. In the end, I left with more resources, experiences, and information then I could have imagined

The Institute also included some field studies. We visited historic sites and experienced events first hand. These ranged in content and format; from the liberty bell, to reenactments taking place in Independence Hall, to partaking in the audience of the 16th annual Supreme Court Review, to viewing one of the original copies of the Bill of Rights in person. Having these pictures and stories to aid to our classroom lectures are immeasurable.

Partaking in this institute was not only a helpful review but an experience I left feeling more enthusiastic and passionate about Civics. I became more knowledgable by having so much time to dedicate to the topic and I was renewed with inspiration and drive to do a wonderful job teaching Civics in your next school year. I also left with multiple contacts that will be helpful throughout my career.

– Mandy Arias

Thank you, Mandy, for sharing this with us! 


Compromise in Civic Life and Civic Education

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Some have suggested that we are at a point in American civic life where citizens have never been more divided by partisanship, more offended (and eager to offend), and more angry. Our elections and our leadership seem to be increasingly partisan, combative and aggressive. Others point out that in fact we are not as divided as we think overall; while the two major parties themselves have clear differences, the electorate itself actually agrees on a larger number of issues than they think.  Indeed, can the politics of today be any worse than the Election of 1800?

One thing that the current climate HAS brought us, despite the fact that we actually have more in common than we think, is the idea that ‘compromise‘ is a dirty word. As Deborah Tannen points out, many of our early leaders, the ones we find in our textbooks and give nicknames to, the ones that we valorize and heroify, would not recognize this idea when it comes to issues concerning the survival and success of the United States. Henry Clay, I think, says it best (p. 382):

I go for compromise whenever it can be made. All legislation, all government, all society is formed on the principle of mutual politeness, comity, courtesy; upon these everything is based. I bow to you today because you bow to me. You are respectful to me because I am respectful to you. Compromises have their recommendation that if you concede anything you have something conceded to you in return. Let him who elevates himself humanity above its weaknesses, its infirmities, its wants, its necessities say if he pleases I will never compromise, but let no who is not above the frailties of our common nature disdain compromise.

We must recognize, of course, that these many early compromises were intended to overcome America’s shameful, bloody original sin, but it does not negate the fact that compromise with your political opponents, your ideological foes, and even your theoretical allies may sometimes be necessary to make progress, no matter how incremental. As Unger (1998, p. 263) writes, when we pursue social and political change that can significantly impact who we are, how we live, and how we govern ourselves,

It is a mistake, for example, to oppose short-term and context-oriented proposals to the tentative exploration of long-term alternative futures, or moderation to radicalism, in programmatic thought. Any trajectory of cumulative structural change can be considered at points close to present social reality or distant from it. The direction matters more than the distance.

Any civic education that seeks to ensure an active and engaged citizenry, one willing to engage in deliberation rather than accusation, should work toward ensuring future citizens understand the importance that compromise MUST play in civic life. Here in Florida, we have fashioned our middle school civics course in such a way that students may develop that understanding. A number of civics benchmarks provide opportunities for a consideration of compromise in civic and political life. 7.C.1.8, for example, has students look at the arguments between Federalists and Anti-Federalists concerning the writing of the Constitution and the development of the Bill of Rights as a sort of ‘compromise’ document. 7.C.2.5 has these future citizens look at the Bill of Rights as a balance between liberty and security, between my rights and your rights. This itself is a form of compromise. 7.C.2.12, my favorite benchmark, has students “Develop a plan to resolve a state or local problem by researching public policy alternatives, identifying appropriate government agencies to address the issue, and determining a course of action.” A very C3 approach, don’t you think, especially as it has them researching and taking action? And in the process of researching and developing solutions…compromise would play a role. 7.C.2.13 goes well with 2.12 in having students consider alternative perspectives, another area where they must think about how those with disparate views might reach an accommodation. Even 7.3.C.4, which connects to a discussion of federalism, could invoke compromise. The concept of compromise, then, is almost baked into the benchmarks that we teach in Florida, though of course we must be sure that how we approach it aligns with the state item specifications and benchmark clarifications. Ultimately, we must realize that without compromise, we face some stark consequences. To borrow from Auden, ‘we must all love each other…’


Reflections on Northern Racism

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The Black Lives Matter protests that shut down two democratic candidates’ speeches at Netroots Nation highlights an emerging topic of the conversation around race.

While white southerners are arguing against the idea that racism is all Dixie’s fault, white northerners are being confronted with the troubling idea that they, too, might be part of the problem.

To be clear about my own identity, I am a white person born and raised in California. I’m fairly sure that makes me neither a Yankee nor a southerner, though California officially supported the north in the civil war. I have lived my entire adult life in Massachusetts.

I have spent very little time in the south, though thanks to my father – who grew up in 1940s Florida – I ate a lot of grits growing up.

All of that is to say that I am in no position to judge the south. Certainly recent events – such as our nation’s president being greeted by Confederate flag wavers in Oklahoma – indicates that there is important work to be done around racism in the south. But that’s hardly enough to write off the entire south, and only the south, as our nation’s problem.

I am also struck by the reflections of John Gaventa, exploring white powerlessness and poverty in Appalachia: “Programmes which present people like those of [Appalachia] do so usually as stereotypes of passive, quaint or backwards characters…What a society sees of itself on television may provide its mainstream with a kind of collective self-image, by which individuals and sub-groups evaluate themselves and others…the lack of coverage of a subordinate group keeps the members of the group isolated from one another, unaware that others similarly situated share common concerns or are pursuing challenges upon common issues.”

All of that is to say: stereotypes of white, racist southerners help nobody.

The south should indeed confront its racist past and present, but it is wrong to scapegoat the south as the home of all our nation’s racism.

Northern racism – or liberal racism or progressive racism, if you prefer – is just as real. It is somehow more proper, a fine veneer of inclusion over a troubling racist interior.

This northern racism is arguably more insidious: a norther says the right things and goes through the right motions. But all the while, the system pushes to ensure segregation and white dominance.

Historically, this has put white northerners in an enviable position of avoiding fault: They wanted the meeting to be inclusive, its just that only white people showed up. The dutiful liberal heaves a sigh. What could be done?

The reaction to the interruptions of Gov. Martin O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders at Netroots reminds me of this type of liberalism.

As one reporter noted, “I, like many of the others there, was initially irritated by the protestors. I was there to hear the candidates and was frustrated that they weren’t being heard. Even a bit angry, in fact. “These are your allies,” I thought. “Why on earth are you attacking them? Why are you disrupting an event where the people there are sympathetic to your cause?””

That is the response of the white liberal. Sympathetic to the cause, but not to the method. Wanting there to be a chance, but not willing to work for it.

The author eventually reflected on his own experience of being silenced in that moment – emotions “felt acutely and painfully every single day by racial minority groups in our country.”

Yes, indeed, being silenced is frustrating.

But all is not lost for us well-meaning, white liberals who genuinely want to do more than sigh and blame the system. Paulo Freire proposes a path beyond liberalism – to radicalism:

Those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly. This conversion is so radical as not to allow of ambiguous behavior. To affirm this commitment but to consider oneself the proprietor of revolutionary wisdom – which must then be given to (or imposed on) the people – is to retain the old ways. The man or woman who proclaims devotion to the cause of liberation yet is unable to enter into communion with the people, whom he or she continues to regard as totally ignorant, is grievously self-deceived. The convert who approaches the people but alarm at each step they take, each doubt they express, and each suggestion they offer, and attempts to impose his “status,” remains nostalgic towards his origins.

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Power Creates Power

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I recently finished John Gaventa’s Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley.

The book is an in depth case study of one coal mining community. Gaventa documents how people had their land taken out from under them over 100 years ago by a huge, multinational company. He details the development of power structures separating the working poor, the local elite, and the absentee Company.

He illustrates how the very institutions intended to protect and support “the people” were turned against them: how Company power over workers’ jobs, home, and welfare led to power over their private ballots. How the union became so corrupted its leaders turned to murder rather than suffer a challenger who was slightly more populist. How those in power took both significant and subtle actions to maintain power, while those without power learned better than to even think of questioning authority.

Gaventa, who for years led the Highlander Center, sums up his study eloquently in his conclusion:

Continual defeat gives rise not only to the conscious deferral of action but also to a sense of defeat, or a sense of powerlessness, that may affect the consciousness of potential challengers about grievances, strategies or possibilities for change. Participation denied over time may lead to acceptance of the role of non-participation, as well as to a failure to develop the political resources – skills, organization, consciousness – of political action. Power relationships may develop routines of non-challenge which require no particular action on the part of powerholders to be maintained…

From this perspective, the total impact of a power relationship is more than the sum of its parts. Power serves to create power. Powerlessness serves to re-enforce powerlessness. Power relationships, once established, are self-sustaining. Quiescence [inaction] in the face of inequalities may be understood only in terms of the inertia of the situation. For this reason, power in a given community can never be understood simply by observation at a given point in time. Historical investigation must occur to discover whether routines of non-conflict have been shaped, and, if so, how they are maintained.

This last point is particularly critical – too often we forget that the “impact of a power relationship is more than the sum of its parts.” We forget that these relationships are self-sustaining, with power creating power and powerlessness creating powerlessness.

The result is that we all find ourselves caught in a power structure not of our own making. We may consciously or unconsciously act in ways which reinforce or resist that structure. We may or may not even recognize a power structure is there.

Paulo Freire recognized this, too, arguing in Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors’ power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression.

It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. The latter, as an oppressive class, can free neither others nor themselves.

That is to say, we are all caught in this power structure, but it is only the oppressed who can save us.

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