Jo-Anne Dillabough

Women ‘learning to labour’ in the ‘male emporium’: exploring gendered work in teacher education

This article reflects an interest in exposing links between womens academic work and the gender codes which organize and shape working life in the university context, both now and in the recent past, as a contribution to the sociology of womens work. Our specific focus is the gendered division of labour in teacher education in universities in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on a theoretical framework based on Bourdieu and McNay, and through an analysis of semi‐structured interviews with 19 women who worked in faculties of education between the 1960s and 1990s, we examine how the gendered division of labour has influenced the careers and working lives of women university teacher educators during those decades. Our data are organized under three themes: public and private lives; womens work/place; and talking back. We identify continuities and changes as well as qualifiers, ironies and paradoxes.

Class, culture and the ‘predicaments of masculine domination’: encountering Pierre Bourdieu

This paper seeks to outline and evaluate Pierre Bourdieus work as it has appeared most recently in feminist studies and the field of gender and education. In particular, it suggests ways in which Bourdieus theoretical insights could be seen to more effectively contribute to cutting edge debates in both social theory and feminist thought regarding concepts such as agency, identity and domination. It also argues that a more creative and empirical engagement with the recent work of Bourdieu, alongside an interdisciplinary reading of more recent cultural and social theories of power, would be a fruitful way forward in advancing a feminist sociology of education. In the present historical moment and against the tide of postmodern and post-structuralist feminist accounts, Bourdieu is often read as a determinist who has little to offer contemporary feminist debates or who argues that masculine domination is too tightly woven to social practices of a given field. In short, this paper argues that such a view is not only a misreading of Bourdieus work on fundamental theoretical grounds, but fails to acknowledge the ways in which his more recent work on masculinity addresses both the cultural and social conditions underlying contemporary forms of symbolic domination. In short, the paper argues that Bourdieus theory offers an analytical breadth and range beyond the scope of anything that a normative, liberal account of masculine domination could provide. Yet, in drawing from such diversity, Bourdieus oeuvre is able to resist incomprehensibility. It stands as a highly focused, realistic and generative attempt (McNay, 1999; McLeod, 2004) to chart the problems of subordination, differentiation and hierarchy, and to expose the possibilities, as well as the limits, of gendered self-hood.This paper seeks to outline and evaluate Pierre Bourdieus work as it has appeared most recently in feminist studies and the field of gender and education. In particular, it suggests ways in which Bourdieus theoretical insights could be seen to more effectively contribute to cutting edge debates in both social theory and feminist thought regarding concepts such as agency, identity and domination. It also argues that a more creative and empirical engagement with the recent work of Bourdieu, alongside an interdisciplinary reading of more recent cultural and social theories of power, would be a fruitful way forward in advancing a feminist sociology of education. In the present historical moment and against the tide of postmodern and post‐structuralist feminist accounts, Bourdieu is often read as a determinist who has little to offer contemporary feminist debates or who argues that masculine domination is too tightly woven to social practices of a given field. In short, this paper argues that such a view is not only a misreading of Bourdieus work on fundamental theoretical grounds, but fails to acknowledge the ways in which his more recent work on masculinity addresses both the cultural and social conditions underlying contemporary forms of symbolic domination. In short, the paper argues that Bourdieus theory offers an analytical breadth and range beyond the scope of anything that a normative, liberal account of masculine domination could provide. Yet, in drawing from such diversity, Bourdieus oeuvre is able to resist incomprehensibility. It stands as a highly focused, realistic and generative attempt (McNay, 1999; McLeod, 2004) to chart the problems of subordination, differentiation and hierarchy, and to expose the possibilities, as well as the limits, of gendered self‐hood.

Young people mobilizing the language of citizenship: struggles for classification and new meaning in an uncertain world

This paper presents research findings from an ethnographic study carried out with 24 low‐income youths (ages 14–16) living on the economic fringes of urban inner‐city Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Our primary aims are: to expose the stratified subcultural articulations of citizenship as they are expressed, through language and symbol, by the young people within our study; and to demonstrate how critiques of (neo‐)liberalism in political thought, when combined with a cultural sociology of youth, might alter our subcultural reading of young peoples conceptions of citizenship under the dynamics of radical social change. Our ultimate goal is to develop a more nuanced sociological examination of the ways in which young people deploy and utilize the language of citizenship as part of their own cultural struggles, exacerbated in times of state retrenchment, to classify themselves and others as one method of achieving visibility and legitimacy in urban concentrations of poverty.

Feminist Politics and Democratic Values in Education

AbstractThis exploratory article is threefold in purpose. In the first instance, it seeks to re-assess the contributions of feminist thought to our understanding of democratic values in education. We draw extensively upon the insights of feminist political theorists to conduct this re-assessment and suggest some new directions for the study of “Education Feminism” (see Stone, 1994). The second aim is to identify and describe the key feminist debates which have emerged about the gendering of liberal democracy. We revisit major but contrasting traditions of thought—that of liberal feminism and feminist theorizing from maternal, socialist, and post-structural positions—to illustrate shifts in thinking about democracy and democratic education. Our goal in conducting this re-evaluation is to highlight the necessity of developing a more explicit and systematic consideration of the relationship between feminism and democratic education. Our third aim is to describe the key levels of political analysis that have ...

The “Hidden Injuries” of Critical Pedagogy

Abstract This article serves as both a response to, and a critique of, Susan Gabel’s discussion on the theoretical limits of critical pedagogy. It begins by exploring the works of Hannah Arendt—in particular her concern with the ethical significance of “acts of recognition”—and their potential for reconstituting the theoretical premises of pedagogy. The paper also explores Arendt’s conceptual idea about the need for, and significance of, recognizing and responding both to oneself and others in the search for an ethical praxis. It thus opens up a potential theoretical space for responding to the ethical limits and theoretical impasses that are currently manifest in contemporary visions of pedagogy. At the level of critique, a central argument is that perhaps we need to work more diligently at a theoretical level to resolve the epistemological, ontological, and existential tensions residing at the center of critical pedagogy, rather than restrict our analysis to cultural critique alone. Such analyses are indeed important, but they may overemphasize the regulative elements of pedagogical language at the expense of taking up a novel ethical stance within pedagogy itself, of which “diverse ability” is only one representative. At the same time, the article attempts to identify the dangers and liberal traps one may encounter when working through the difficult problems of critical pedagogy and discusses the need to query our own concerns and desires as they are reconceptualized inside the frame of a pedagogical position.

In search of allies and others: 'Troubling' gender and education

‘Gender and education’ is a relatively recent category in the history and sociology of education; it has many referents theory, empirical research, policy and practice yet it seems to cohere as a recognisable field of enquiry. Over the last two decades, the range of work that falls within this field has expanded enormously. There are dedicated journals (Gender and Education), Readers and Handbooks (Arnot & Mac an Ghaill, 2006; Skelton, Francis, & Smulyan 2006), and a vast number of edited collections, monographs and articles, all of which, implicitly or explicitly, mark out the territory, the problems and the concepts which are thought to define the field of ‘gender and education’. This explosion of interest can be traced and explained in many ways, and will vary or be contested according to the disciplinary and national contexts of researchers, as well as their historical relationship to the field. To a very large extent, however, the trajectory of post1970s educational research on gender has developed in dynamic engagement with feminism and wider social theories and practice. In this respect, it has been strongly influenced by the insights of such debates, as well in sharing many of their impasses. Feminist educational reforms and research in the 1970s, for example, focused on questions related to equality of opportunities and the politics of representation and recognition. It then shifted to concerns about difference and inter-sectionality during the 1980s and 1990s (Dillabough, 2006), and has since turned toward the plethora of new writing about subjectivity or identity. Much of this latter influence emerged in relation to wider debates and critiques about coherent notions of ‘identity’ associated with European and French Continental Theories. The historical relationship between feminist theories and ‘gender and education’ which will always denote more than ‘theory’ for theory’s sake is therefore far more complicated than such a brief summary would suggest. The central point here is that educational research on gender has been substantially influenced by, and has contributed to, the various forms of feminist theorising that have enjoyed wide acclaim or paradigmatic dominance in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.

Gender, “Symbolic Domination”, and Female Work: The case of teacher education

In this article I explore the part played by liberal democratic ideology in the regulation of female work, in particular, the work of women teacher educators and contract researchers in British and Canadian teacher education departments. My goal is to examine the relationship between symbolic notions of female domesticity and service as they have been expressed in liberal understandings of the nation state across time, together with accounts of contemporary working life as described by differently positioned women workers in teacher education. Central to the argument I make is the assertion that womens work and its symbolic representation in teacher education constitute powerful symbolic elements in the ongoing regulation of women as non-citizens. In following the work of feminist political theorists and cultural sociologists, I also examine the cultural, material, and social power of historicized visions of the female as “domestic servant”, as daughter of the nation state, and as “deviant non-citizen” as they are reflected in the contemporary working lives of women teacher educators.

History and the making of young people and the late modern youth researcher: time, narrative, and change

This article takes for its general point of departure some major problems relating to the study of youth across time; its more particular concern focuses upon the state of contemporary youth studies research across the last two decades, including the key topic of youth subjectivity. A consideration of these issues affords an appropriate background against which to review an impressive recent publication by Julie McLeod and Lyn Yates, Making Modern Lives: Subjectivity, Schooling, and Social Change. This is a work which makes some very noteworthy contributions to what is now an extensive and ever-widening field of research. I have long felt that as the field of youth studies continues to grow as it has done in recent years, there is a parallel and pressing need for a reflexive awareness of the extent and complexity of the challenges of the field that remain to be addressed. McLeod and Yates’ book endeavours as a major empirical investment to address that need, and achieves considerable success in so doing. In my judgement, Making Modern Lives offers us much more than a substantial critical engagement with the full range of contested meanings circulating about youth research and school cultures at the start of the twenty-first century. It also sets an agenda and a direction for a new interdisciplinary research focus that promises to widen our current practices of youth research in important and exciting ways. Making Modern Lives presents us with a longitudinal study investigating young people (12 18 years of age) and youth subjectivity across a period of eight years (1993 2000) in four different Australian school contexts during a radical program of political reform. By explicitly addressing gaps in current theoretical and methodological approaches, the work tellingly illuminates the ways in which we might best apprehend fundamental categories such as youth research, the youth researcher, and indeed, young people themselves. A particularly important feature of the work in this respect is its foregrounding of the concepts of temporality and change through the engagement of longitudinal and generational research strategies. This review essay is organized into three parts. The first concentrates upon the significance of ‘time’ and temporality as key concepts though much under-

A Magnified Image of Female Citizenship in Education: Illusions of Democracy or Liberal Challenges to Symbolic Domination?

Liberal democracies, in contrast to autocratic and authoritarian regimes, underscore, at the level of abstract theory, the importance of female autonomy and a notion of full political suffrage. Yet, at the same time, any notion of rational citizenship within liberal democracies has often served — symbolically and practically — to restrict women’s sense of their own political agency, providing ‘freedoms’ to some whilst undermining the political rights of women who have never been properly enfranchised (Alexander, 1997). This fundamental paradox raises a number of pressing questions, practical as well as theoretical, to which urgent attention needs to be directed.

Feminist Sociology of Education: Dynamics, Debates and Directions

Feminist sociology of education is one of the richest veins within the discipline today. Although its specific contribution is the analysis of gender relations in education, it has added substantially to an understanding of the broader relationship between education and society. Within the feminist project, history, structure and biography join hands in imaginative theoretical and empirical ways. Bearing many of the hallmarks of the postwar social democratic period in which the women’s movement gathered pace, feminist sociology of education has engaged vigorously and with some success in the analysis of, for example: educational inequality and social stratification; the hierarchies of knowledge and the arbitrary values underlying the curriculum; and the role of the state, economy and the family in modern education systems. At the same time it manifests many of the illusions and disillusionments of the era — recognizing, for example, the forms of economic and social determination which are pitted against the goals of personal or collective liberation. What characterizes the development of feminism as a major political force in the postwar period in the United Kingdom and therefore what accounts for its impact on the educational system and academic research (especially in relation to women’s education) has been its flexibility.