Simon Laumann Jørgensen

The History We Need: Strategies of Citizen Formation in the Danish History Curriculum.

Teaching history in schools can be a significant policy instrument for shaping the identities of future citizens. The Danish curriculum for teaching history of 2009 aims at strengthening a sense of “Danishness” which calls for theoretical analysis. Focusing on this particular case, the paper develops a political theoretical frame for evaluating such strategies. While David Miller sees promoting a national identity to be a legitimate strategy of citizen formation in a liberal democracy, this view has been challenged by, among others, Arash Abizadeh. Miller could answer Abizadehs challenges if the debate is viewed in a pedagogical context where children are in the process of citizen formation. Their debate offers central elements to the evaluative frame; the final developed frame includes cooperative practices.

Between Integration and Freedom: School Segregation in Critical Perspective

In the Danish case, school segregation is recognized as a crisis of society, but it is also a crisis in the deeper sense that central actors disagree about in what sense it is a crisis. This raises the general questions: In what sense is school segregation a problem? What exactly is the crisis? Though these are partly normative questions, in Scandinavian contexts we can interpret them in light of the internal value-commitments of society. Accepting this premise allows us to build on the empirically informed and philosophically rigorous work of Elizabeth Anderson according to which segregation should be viewed in light of the imperative of social integration. The demand for citizens’ equal participation in the main institutions of society is, according to her, already entailed immanently if a society is broadly commitment to democracy. Finding this immanent democratic approach to be insufficient considering widespread concerns with respecting parental freedom, this article discusses the more value-integrative approach found in the political philosophical work of Hegel. According to this approach, our value-commitments to both social integration and individual freedom can be integrated if central public institutions reflect a complex structure of recognition. On the basis of both of these two steps, the article suggests ways of understanding and tackling the crisis of school segregation in a Scandinavian setting.

Care and its constraints: Will care work pass through Pettit’s gate?

Welfare states are in a care crisis both in the sense of a practical care gap (abundant needs but not enough caregivers) and in the new movement to limit care to mere rehabilitation. Few political theorists pay attention to these developments, and those who do say little about the potential limits to care. This article discusses Philip Pettit’s theory of social justice in relation to questions of public care provisions. Pettit’s theory has been praised by feminists for its attention to social injustices and because it highlights fair limits to care. The article examines how Pettit builds up his argument involving the idea of a gateway good, heuristics and a set of constraints. Although the article points to the value of Pettit’s theory, Pettit’s arguments to limit the state’s care tasks depend on the false assumption that a theory of justice considers able-minded adults only. This article argues that Pettit’s assumption that we leave out children and not-so-able-minded elderly leads to a general neglect of the typical human life cycle, and in particular of those life stages that are most care-dependent. The constraints that he set up on the state’s care tasks build upon this problematic premise. If the premise is not accepted, the logic of Pettit’s heuristics and constraints, used to limit the state’s care tasks, loses its argumentative force. A realistic political theory that sets limits to the state’s care tasks should have something to say of all the stages of human life (including our care-dependent stages) and of the central structural relations that a normal life entails (such as having others depending on our care).