Darren Webb

Modes of hoping

It is widely acknowledged that hoping is an integral part of what it is to be human. The present article strives to make sense of the myriad competing conceptions of hope that have emerged over the past half-century. Two problems with the literature are highlighted. First, discussions of hope tend to take place within rather than between disciplines. Second, hope is often taken to be an undifferentiated experience. In order to address the first problem, the article takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on research from the fields of philosophy, anthropology, psychology, theology and politics. In order to address the second problem, the article proposes that hope be regarded as a human universal that can be experienced in different modes. A variety of theories and models of hope are discussed, including those offered by Marcel, Dauenhauer, Bloch, Moltmann, Bovens, Pettit, Snyder, Rorty and Gutiérrez. While many of these claim to have identified the characteristics of hope, it is argued that each captures something about a particular mode of hoping. The theories and models are integrated into a framework comprising five modes of hoping: patient, critical, estimative, resolute and utopian. Examining hope in this way, as a human universal that can be experienced in different modes, may help us see the varying conceptions that presently exist within the human sciences not as conflicting, nor even as competing, but rather as complementary.

Paulo Freire and ‘the need for a kind of education in hope’

This paper explores Paulo Freire’s philosophy of hope. This is significant because, for Freire, it was human hope that rendered education possible, necessary and necessarily political. Like other areas of his thought, however, his reading of hope contained ambiguities and contradictions, and the paper explores these by locating Freire’s thought in the wider context of the philosophy of hope. It focuses in particular on the divergent interpretations Freire provides regarding the objective and the experience of hope. It argues that many of the conflicting demands placed on the radical educator stem from the tensions and vagaries one finds within his philosophy. The paper concludes by discussing the wider significance of Freire in light of the discourse of ‘complex hope’ that is developing within educational studies.

Bakhtin at the Seaside Utopia, Modernity and the Carnivalesque

This article critically examines Bakhtinian interpretations of the English seaside resort. These suggest that resorts developed in England as sites of cultural resistance to the pressures of modernity; marginal spaces in which the utopian dynamics of traditional recreational practices were kept alive. The rise of the seaside ‘leisure industry’ is then interpreted as a hegemonic force, tearing the social practices of the people away from their traditional associations and rendering them complicit with the discourse of modernity. Taking the popular resort of Blackpool as a case study, the article offers a somewhat different argument. First, it suggests that the social relations of the 19th-century English seaside resort were anything but ‘carnivalesque’. Second, it claims that the leisure industry is open to interpretations other than those which focus on bourgeois hegemony and social control. These latter interpretations preclude the possibility that modern leisure practices possessed a utopian dimension of their own. In the case of Blackpool, however, it is argued that they did. The article concludes by highlighting the need for a more considered use of the concept of ‘the carnivalesque’, as the analytical frame it provides can serve to mask rather than illuminate the utopian dimensions of popular culture.

Where’s the vision? The concept of utopia in contemporary educational theory

This paper explores the way in which the concept of utopia is employed within contemporary educational theory. Confronted with the relentless marketisation and managerialisation of education, there is a growing willingness to embrace utopianism as a means of bolstering hope, opening up new possibilities and catalysing change. At the same time, there is a concern to avoid utopianism’s more fanciful and coercive associations. The paper focuses on two approaches to education that seek to harness the spirit of utopia while emphasising the need for realism and the need to avoid proffering ‘closed’ and ‘totalistic’ blueprints. These are the ‘utopian realist’ approach to policy issues and the ‘concrete utopian’ approach to pedagogy. The paper explores the different understandings of ‘utopia’ underpinning these approaches. It also argues that they suffer the same fundamental weakness. For in striving to avoid the ‘bad’ aspects of utopianism, much of the vitality and direction that a utopian approach can offer is lost. Utopianism is on the agenda in education because of widespread frustration and anger at current policy initiatives. If utopia is to operate as a means of opening up possibilities and catalysing change, then a prescriptive totalising vision, with all its associated dangers, may be necessary.

Exploring the Relationship between Hope and Utopia: Towards a Conceptual Framework

This article outlines a framework for exploring the relationship between hope and utopia. Hope is conceptualised as a socially mediated human capacity that can be experienced in different modes. A taxonomy of modes of hoping is presented. This differentiates between non-utopian (‘estimative’ and ‘resolute’), anti-utopian (‘patient’) and utopian (‘critical’ and ‘transformative’) modes of hoping. When critical or transformative hope predominates within the collective emotional orientation of a society, it is suggested that utopian ideas are likely to thrive both as a product and a source of hope. A contemporary utopian politics thus requires the institutions of social life to be reconstituted so that they once again foster critical and transformative hope.

Trust schools and the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interest

This paper sets out the theoretical and methodological approach of a study of the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interest in relation to the Trust schools initiative in England. Drawing on the discourse theoretical approach of Laclau and Mouffe the paper argues that the politics of consensus associated with New Labour reconfigures the field of politics, closing down legitimate democratic space. Building on this approach and that of policy sociology the paper outlines how the researchers seeks to address the following questions – if the space for legitimate democratic debate is so severely constrained then how does a social democratic government deal with the kind of opposition that Labour faced in relation to Trust schools? How do governments persuade dissident citizens to support unpopular policies? How are citizens mobilised to support such policies? This also raises questions about how, in such a restricted political space, do those questioning or resisting such policies, engage in the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interests? The reconfiguration of the field of politics and what this means for the constitution of legitimate democratic debate is the object of study of the research.

Educational Studies and the Domestication of Utopia.

ABSTRACT This paper offers a critique of educational real utopias. Real Utopias are experimental forms of thought and practice intended to harness the transgressive force of traditional utopianism while avoiding its associated dangers. The concept has been embraced by the field of educational studies and applied to the study of various educational settings, institutions and processes. This paper does four things. Firstly, it outlines the concept of utopian realism and highlights those aspects that are said to differentiate it from the utopia that supposedly played a role in the human catastrophes of the twentieth century. It then evaluates a selection of educational real utopias to assess whether they can, in fact, be said to have succeeded in the task of harnessing the intellectual force while overcoming the dangers of traditional utopianism. Thirdly, the paper offers a critique of utopian realism, arguing that the concept of utopia has become thoroughly domesticated. Finally, the paper defends the expansive and holistic concept of utopia that utopian realism rejects. The argument here is that only when utopia is understood as a holistic system is it able to produce its most potent pedagogical effects.

Educational archaeology and the practice of utopian pedagogy

Abstract This paper explores the idea, and some elements of the (potential) practice, of utopian pedagogy. It begins by outlining the general aims of ‘utopian pedagogy’ and notes the shift within contemporary writings away from the metaphor of the architect (armed with a utopian ‘blueprint’) towards that of the archaeologist. The ontological underpinnings of educational archaeology are discussed before attention turns to a critical examination of the pedagogical process of excavation. The key questions here are (to labour the metaphor) where to dig and how to identify a utopian find. The paper argues that, without a substantive normative vision to serve as a guide, utopian archaeology is conceptually flawed and practically ineffectual, romanticising an endlessly open process of exploration. The final section suggests that the fears associated with utopian architecture (authoritarian imposition, totalising closure) are misplaced and that drawing up a ‘blueprint’ should be the aim and responsibility of utopian pedagogy.

Bolt-holes and breathing spaces in the system: On forms of academic resistance (or, can the university be a site of utopian possibility?)

We live in the era of the corporate-imperial university. The notion of “the corporate university” points to the academy as a marketized sphere in which the costs of education are shifted from the state onto students; students are positioned as consumers of an individual investment good even as they experience higher education as an extended period of underpaid labor preparing them for an even longer period of crippling debt; teaching is dominated by performance indicators linked to customer satisfaction and human capital formation; the workforce becomes increasingly casualized, insecure and exploited, a precariat operating within a censorious culture of audit, surveillance, and performance management; research is transformed into a high-stakes competition, framed by a regime of indicator fetishism, discouraging long-term research while encouraging research fraud; self-governance disappears as the administrator displaces the academic as the central figure of the university; a culture of organized mistrust permeates the institution, leading administrators to create an ever-more-elaborate bureaucratic cage within which the academic can safely be contained; an increasingly standardized and technically oriented curriculum undermines academic freedom and critical inquiry; universities enter into partnerships with business, subsidizing training costs while operating more like for-profit corporations themselves, developing and marketing their own commercial products; an obsession with corporate branding is accompanied by a dance in which universities track and mimic each other’s moves, becoming almost indistinguishable from each other; the sector becomes awash with vision and mission statements, each identical and identically vacuous; capital investment projects escalate at the same time as academic staffing levels fall; cities are colonized, communities are dispossessed and displaced, to create new architectural monuments to grace the covers of overseas marketing brochures that could not be more at odds with the dismal realities of the under-resourced departments students actually encounter. The notion of “the imperial university” locates the academy within the network of state apparatuses of control, discipline, surveillance, carcerality, none defined