Robert Imre

The Problems with Using the Concept of 'Citizenship' in Early Years Policy

Early years policy increasingly uses the concept of ‘citizenship’ in relation to children in Australia and worldwide. This concept is used as a taken-for-granted idea; however, there is no singularly agreed-upon answer to the question of what ‘citizenship’ means when used in relation to children, and what practical considerations it carries both for policymaking and for implementation. This article introduces theoretical ideas of ‘citizenship’ from the field of political theory in order to begin a discussion on how we imagine and might imagine children as citizens in policy discourses. Some conceptualisations of children as citizens are also discussed and questioned as starting points to consider in regard to the use of the notion of children as citizens in policy and practice.

Little mermaids and pro-sumers The dilemma of authenticity and surveillance in hybrid public spaces

In this article the authors explore the ways in which social media and social network sites (SNSs) are mediating the new urban environment. Many analyses of these technologies highlight the ways in which they are predicated on surveillance techniques and how the self is increasingly entwined within them. The authors examine the processes of surveillance, and the surveillant assemblage, and how the self interacts with these technologies to produce an authentic self in mediated urban spaces. They argue that SNS technologies privilege a version of the contemporary self, limiting choice to ‘pro-sumer’ activity, and a mandatory self-surveillance. Instead of constructing an open public sphere, these technologies operate to build a ‘second city’ of commodified urban space in which the recording of banal activities in an everyday setting is the authentic lived experience of people using this technology.

Rethinking transition through ideas of 'community' in Hungarian kindergarten curriculum

This chapter provides a Foucauldian genealogical analysis of the concept of “community” in three curriculum documents signposting major changes in the conceptualization of kindergarten education in Hungary. Our approach is to closely examine the discourses of the core curriculum documents and their sociopolitical contexts in order to explore the shifts in the ideas of “community” and “communitarianism” contained within the texts, focusing particularly on the period of “transition” in Hungary. This chapter interrogates the shifting ideas of “community” and finds that the meaning of “transition” in the context of post-World War II (WWII) Hungary needs to be radically reassessed. Furthermore, the study suggests that the “transition” in Hungary has been in fact a drawn out process, one beginning well before the early 1990s and involving major reforms throughout the post-WWII period. By outlining the shifts in the conceptualizations of “community” embedded in kindergarten curriculum, the chapter explores what political problems were attempted to be solved through the changing conception of this early education. Furthermore, the study examines whether these reconceptualizations can be considered to be directly linked to the transition of particular political ideologies – from socialism to neoliberal capitalism – or rather, do they represent much smoother transitions to a new era after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Educating Critical Citizens for an Alternative World-System

Referring to the institutionalist branch of global studies, whose educational variant is discussed in preceding chapters, world-systems scholars Boswell and Chase-Dunn (2000, 25) presented the interstate system as promoting and developing over time a world polity, with “shared cultural definitions of what is legitimate among states and other global actors…institutionalizing the parameters of what is a goal worth pursuing.” The ensuing world polity is both defined by and defines the operation of the interstate system, and the logics of the world-system that underpin them. Boswell and Chase-Dunn’s (2000) interest was in associated strategies for transforming the capitalist world-system by changing the world polity, or in Wallerstein’s terms, the geoculture of the world-system.

Die Politik der Antipolitik: „Finnlandisierung“ von Occupy?

Zwischen den verschiedenen Formen von Occupy und dem Wandel in mittelosteuropäischen Staaten während des Kalten Krieges lassen sich Parallelen aufzeigen. Die Bevölkerungen von Ungarn, Polen und der Tschechoslowakei beispielsweise versuchten in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren mit Hilfe von „Antipolitik“, sich langsam von der sowjetischen Dominanz zu entfernen und ihre Regierungen dazu zu bringen, diesen Kurs zu unterstützen. Bei „Antipolitik“ (Konrád 1989) geht es weniger darum, den Staat zu etwas zwingen zu wollen, sondern vielmehr darum, einen Prozess der Entmystifizierung und Machtverteilung in Gang zu setzen. So verstanden sind die Occupy-Bewegungen rund um den Globus weniger an Macht interessiert, als es eine Massenrevolution wäre. Vielleicht geht es beim Verständnis der Occupy-Bewegung genau darum: eben nicht um die direkte Konfrontation mit dem Staat und seinen Vertretern, sondern um das Heraustreten aus dem herrschenden Paradigma der ideologischen Auseinandersetzung und der Ablehnung der Argumente der „politischen Klasse“ oder der „Herrscher“. György Konráds (1989) Essay „Antipolitik“ beschreibt einen solchen Prozess, ähnlich dem, was während des Kalten Krieges in Finnland geschah und dementsprechend „Finnlandisierung“ genannt wurde. In Finnland wurde Antipolitik Teil der Außenpolitik, und Finnland wurde zu einem der wohlhabendsten Nationalstaaten der Welt – indem es den ideologischen Konflikt mit den beiden Supermächten vermied und nicht an dem ideologischen Wettkampf teilnahm. Können wir also das Konzept von Antipolitik verwenden, um Occupy analytisch zu „finnlandisieren“?

Religious and Political Violence: Globalising Syncretism and the Governance State*

Abstract In this paper we argue that the conjunctions of religion and politics through eruptions of violence are codetermined and codependent through syncretic manifestations rather than a result of some kind of basic clash between different, self-contained systems of ideas and values. The vicissitudes of religious fervour are linked to issues of development and social change in which long-cherished traditions are confronted by seemingly inexorable forces beyond the control of those being affected by them. Religious violence is a political movement which should be understood as not being outside modernisation in the sense of being opposed to it; it is in fact part of the development of modernisation. Resistance arises from the experience of being excluded from the fruits of modernity while at the same time being enmeshed within the multiple social relations underpinning the production and distribution of those ‘fruits’. Whether from a postmodern or from a more conventional perspective a totalising analysis organised around master concepts like ‘globalisation’ or ‘civilisation’ is often developed to explain the intersections of religion and violence. We reject these approaches in favour of one predicated on the idea of the ‘governance state’. It is our argument that this better captures the core axis of analysis – namely the changing nature of the state and its management of populations and the concomitant forms of resistance by those subjected to it in an era in which such ‘modernities’ are played out.

Mass Education and Human Capital in the Capitalist World-System

This chapter explores the global phenomenon of mass education and its relationship to the associated policy dimension of mass education for human capital development/formation in the capitalist world-economy. This is done here, and in the following chapter, in the spirit of this “sense of blasphemy,” seeking to better understand and in turn to challenge the dominance of this accepted paradigm.

Wallerstein’s World-Systems Analysis

Almost four decades ago, the first edition of Volume I of Immanuel Wallerstein’s The Modern World-System was published (Wallerstein: 1974a). In 2011, new editions of volumes I, II, and III were published, along with the long-anticipated fourth volume, The Modern 1789–1914. A fifth and sixth volume are scheduled, if the author can “last it out” to cover the “long twentieth century,” which will include treatment of the underlying premise of Wallerstein’s extensive corpus of work—the structural crisis of the capitalist world-economy (Wallerstein: 2011b, xvii). World-systems analysis (WSA) has from the outset developed a macro- level account of social reality, offering an explanatory framework centered on the historical establishment and development of the capitalist world-economy, and its current and future trajectories. On the question of grand narratives, Wallerstein (2011a, xxiii) remains steadfast in presenting WSA as an “alternative master narrative…[to]…the orthodox Marxist and modernization master narratives,” asserting, “We refused to throw out the baby with the bathwater.”1

Introduction: Childhood and Nation

At the various intersections of academic disciplines, a rich body of work has been produced about the manifold ways that the notions of childhood and nation interweave. Nation and childhood provide frames of reference for societies, subject formation, actions, and particular morals and ethics. Representations, ideals, and futures associated with nation and childhood intensively shape the everyday realities of people. This fertile theme earned its first concerted exploration with Sharon Stephen’s book titled Children and the Politics of Culture, published in 1995, and the special issue she edited in the journal of Childhood (1997) that examined the relationship between conceptualizations of childhood and projects of nation. Stephen’s project was one of the first that theorized childhood as cultural and political constructions and focused on the dynamisms between these two modern inventions: childhood and nation. Her book published 20 years ago provided the initial inspiration for this project.

Twitter-ised Revolution: Extending the Governance Empire

In this chapter we challenge the idea that technology is intimately linked to political revolution. We argue that new forms of communication such as Twitter and social networking sites of various kinds act as reinforcements of sociopolitical stratifications, rather than challenging existing political realities. As such, we seek to compare the mass demonstrations that have occurred in Iran and the Ukraine, as well as the recent ‘Occupy’ movements, to critically analyse the political mobilisation supposedly driven by the use of new communication technologies. We will demonstrate Lhat Lhe reinforcement of power relationships, particularly the political mobilisation of subjects in Iran and Ukraine, can be explained as materialisation of the same thing — global governmentality. While technology provides new avenues of communication, it is so heavily biased towards a particular type of user, and so heavily surveilled, that this kind of communication actually acts as a form of governance. Before users of this technology can even begin to enact radical political change, the technology itself already ensures that individuals are part of an existing framework of power relationships. Thus challenging the state becomes an exercise in futility.