Where The Blog Has No Name

Cultural Logic

2010
SPECIAL ISSUE:
CULTURE AND CRISIS

EDITED BY JOSEPH G. RAMSEY

 Introduction

Joseph G. Ramsey
“Culture and Crisis”

The Current Conjucture:
Capitalist Crises and the Crisis of the Left

Michael Joseph Roberto, Gregory Meyerson, Jamey Essex, and Jeff Noonan
“Moment of Transition:
Structural Crisis and the Case for a Democratic Socialist Party”

Jeffrey Perry
“The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from
Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen
on the Centrality of the Fight against White Supremacy”

Julie P. Torrant
“Class and the New Family in the Wake of the Housing Collapse”

Dan DiMaggio
“Road Maps, Dead Ends, and the Search for Fresh Ground:
How Can We Build the Socialist Movement in the 21st Century?”

Crisis, Imagination, and the Return to Marx’s Capital

Max Haiven
“The Financial Crisis as a Crisis of the Imagination”

Vesa Oittinen and Andre Maidansky
“A Marx for the Left Today:
Interview with Marcello Musto”

Amedeo Policante
“Vampires of Capital:
Gothic Reflections between Horror and Hope”

Robert T. Tally Jr.
“Meta-Capital:
Culture and Financial Derivatives”

Rethinking Crises in
Twntieth-Century Socialism and Communism

Joseph Ball
“The Need for Planning:
The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union
in the 1950s and the Decline of the Soviet Economy”

Grover Furr
“Stephen Cohen’s Biography of Bukharin:
A Study in the Falsehood of Khrushchev-Era ‘Revelations’”

Remembering the Depression Era:
Recovering Left Culture in a Time of Crisis

Benjamin Balthaser
“Re-Staging the Great Depression:
Genre as Social Memory in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler“

Barbara Foley
Forward to Wrestling with the Left:
The Making of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

Joseph G. Ramsey
“Invisible Tragedies, Invisible Possibilities:
Or, Re-Reading What’s Left of a Great American
(Anti-Communist) Novel”
(Review of Barbara Foley’s Wrestling with the Left)

Tristan Sipley
“Proletarian Pastoral Reconsidered:
Reading Mike Gold in an Age of Ecological Crisis”

Chris Vials
“Fight Against War and Fascism and
the Origins of Antifascism in US Culture”

Theoretical Practice in a Time of Crisis:
Adorno, Benjamin, and Brecht

Rich Daniels
“Non-Pious Discourse:
Adorno, Ethics, and the Politics of Suffering”

Kevin Floyd
“The Importance of Being Childish:
Queer Utopians and Historical Contradiction”

Carl Grey Martin
Review of
Walter Benjamin and Bertold Brecht –
The Story of a Friendship

Reading Crisis as Ruling-Class Strategy

Kanishka Chowdhury
“Deflecting Crisis:
Critiquing Capitalism’s Emancipation Narrative”

Kim Emery
“‘Crisis Management’ in Higher Education:
RCM and the Politics of Crisis at the University of Florida”

Heather Steffen
“Student Internships and the Privilege to Work”

Poetry

Mary Kennan Herbert
“Been There, Done That” and
“Nothing to Say”

George Snedeker
“Progress” and Other Poems

Joseph G. Ramsey
“Fault Lines: Haiti, Two Years On”

Critical Education has just published its latest issue. We invite you to review the Table of Contents below and then visit our web site to read articles and other items of interest.

Critical Education
Vol 2, No 7 (2011)
Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/28

Article
——–
Understanding Animals-Becoming-Meat: Embracing a Disturbing Education
Bradley D Rowe, The Ohio State University

Abstract

In dominant consumerist societies, eating animals has become one the most hegemonic and atrocious forms of human-nonhuman interaction. In this article, I show how meat eating is a forceful educational issue that warrants critical analysis. I argue that understanding, and especially watching, animals-becoming-meat—that is, the processes through which animals are subjugated, confined, and killed in order to become edible food—is necessary to become aware of the nonhuman suffering implicated in the exploitive practices of industrial animal agriculture and slaughtering. I locate the educative significance of animals-becoming-meat within a pedagogy of visual disturbance. Given the great extent that corporate agriculture goes to conceal the brutality behind its walls, I believe we must be unsettled with disturbing visuals of animals-becoming meat in order to begin to think critically. We ought to see, for ourselves, how whole animal bodies become edible “pieces of meat.”

Links to Recent Articles of Interest

“Japan, the Atomic Bomb, and the ‘Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Power’”
By Yuki Tanaka and Peter Kuznick, Asia-Pacific Journal, May 2 issue
Peter Kuznick teaches history at American University

“An Arab Spring for Women: The Missing Story from the Middle East”
By Juan Cole and Shahin Cole, TomDispatch.com, posted April 26
Juan Cole teaches history at the University of Michigan

“Did Obama’s Election Kill the Antiwar Movement?”
By University of Michigan News Service, CounterPunch.org, posted April 25

“Small Islets, Enduring conflict: Dokdo, Korea-Japan Colonial Legacy and the United States”
By Mark Selden, Asia-Pacific Journal, April 25 issue

“Washington on the Rocks: An Empire of Autocrats, Aristocrats, and Uniformed Thugs Begins to Totter”
By Alfred McCoy and Brett Reilly, TomDispatch.com, posted April 24
Alfred McCoy teaches history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Brett Reilly is a history graduate student there

“Is the World Too Big to Fail? The Contours of World Order”
By Noam Chomsky, TomDispatch.com, posted April 21

“Sleepwalking into the Imperial Dark: What It Feels Like When a Superpower Runs Off the Tracks”
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com, posted April 19

“Review of Tim Bird and Alex Marshall’s Afghanistan: How the West Lost Its Way”
By Jeremy Kuzmarov, History News Network, posted April 18
The author teaches history at the University of Tulsa

“Don’t Betray Us, Barack – End the Empire”
By Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, New Statesman, posted April 14
On lessons from Kennedy and Gorbachev; Peter Kuznick teaches history at American University

WikiLeaks on Guantánamo

“The Guantánamo Files” (the documents)

“What Are the Guantánamo Files? Understanding the Prisoner Dossiers”
By David Leigh, The Guardian, posted April 25

“WikiLeaks: The Uses of Guantánamo”
By Amy Davidson, The New Yorker blog, posted April 25

“WikiLeaks: Just Eight at Guantánamo Gave Evidence Against 255 Others”
By Tom Lasseter and Carol Rosenberg, Truthout.com, posted April 26

“The Hidden Horrors of WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files”
By Andy Worthington, CommonDreams.org, posted April 28

Part 2 of Larry Stedman’s analysis of the failure of the standards movement, just published by Critical Education.

Why the Standards Movement Failed: An Educational and Political Diagnosis of Its Failure and the Implications for School Reform
Lawrence C. Stedman

Abstract

In the first paper, “How Well Does the Standards Movement Measure Up?,” I documented the movement’s failure in diverse areas—academic achievement, equality of opportunity, quality of learning, and graduation rates—and described its harmful effects on students and school culture.

In this paper, I diagnose the reasons for the failure and propose an alternative agenda for school reform. I link the failure of the standards movement to its faulty premises, historical myopia, and embrace of test-driven accountability. As part of the audit culture and the conservative restoration, the movement ended up pushing a data-driven, authoritarian form of schooling. Its advocates blamed educational problems on a retreat from standards, for which there was little evidence, while ignoring the long-standing, deep structure of schooling that had caused persistent achievement problems throughout the 20th century. Drawing on reproduction theories and analyses of the neoliberal reform project, I make the case for repealing NCLB and Race to the Top and outline a progressive framework for reconstructing schools.

Critical Education has just published its latest issue—the first of a two part examination of No Child Left Behind policies and the standards movement by Lawrence C. Stedman.

We invite you visit our web site to review this and other articles and items of interest.

Critical Education
Vol 1, No 10 (2010)
Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/21

Articles
——–
How Well Does the Standards Movement Measure Up? An Analysis of
Achievement Trends, Academic Course-taking, Student Learning, NCLB, and
Changes in School Culture and Graduation Rates
Lawrence C. Stedman

Abstract

This is the first of two papers examining the standards movement. In it, I review data from NAEP, the SAT, the international assessments, transcript studies, and NCLB assessments, as well as surveys and case studies of changes in curriculum and pedagogy. The picture is a bleak one. Over the past quarter century, achievement has stagnated, dropouts and aliteracy have grown, and large minority achievement gaps have persisted. The quality of student learning remains poor. School changes, stratified by class and race, have constricted instruction and harmed students and teachers. NCLB has made things worse, not better. Even in the two areas where the movement has achieved some success—lower grade math achievement and high school academic enrollments—the gains were largely superficial, other forces such as teaching-to-the-test and social promotion contributed, and serious deficiencies remain.

In the second paper, “Why the Standards Movement Failed,” I examine the educational and political reasons for the failure—including its misconstruction of pedagogy and links to the neoliberal reform project—and propose a progressive alternative.

Critical Education has just published its latest issue:

“Youth-Led Organizations, the Arts, and the 411 Initiative for Change in Canada: Critical Pedagogy for the 21st Century”
Brad J. Porfilio, Michael Watz

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to document a group of Canadian youth activists’ and artists’ perceptions and experiences with developing and sustaining an arts-based educational initiative that “undertakes public education and the promotion of civic participation of young people on social issues that frame their development within their communities.” Through the youth activists’ and artists’ narratives, we highlight the youths’ motivation to establish this organization, the methods they use to engage their audience in social commentary and activism, how they confront and overcome barriers in schools when implementing their pedagogical initiatives, and the challenges they face in keeping their project intellectually vibrant and culturally relevant to youth. Moreover, we argue that critical pedagogues must take seriously the cultural work proffered by youth-led social justice initiatives if critical pedagogy is to remain relevant in promoting equity and social justice in schools and in society.

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor No 17 (2010):
Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions

Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/workplace/issue/view/8

Articles
——–
Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions: Special Issue Introduction
Howard Stevenson

Terminating the Teaching Profession: Neoliberal Reform, Resistance and the Assault on Teachers in Chile
Jill Pinkney Pastrana

Social Justice Teacher Unionism in a Canadian Context: Linking Local and Global efforts
Cindy Rottmann

Australian Education Unionism in the Age of Neoliberalism: Education as a Public Good, Not a Private Benefit
Jeff Garsed, John Williamson

“What’s Best for Kids” vs. Teacher Unions: How Teach For America Blames Teacher Unions for the Problems of Urban Schools
Heidi Katherine Pitzer

Gramsci, Embryonic Organic Intellectuals, and Scottish Teacher Learning Representatives: Alternatives to Neoliberal Approaches to Professional Development in the K-12 Sector
Alex Alexandrou

Pedagogy of Liminality? The Case of Turkish Teachers’ Union Egitim-Sen
Duygun Gokturk

Book Reviews
——–
Review of Industrial Relations in Education: Transforming the School Workforce
Merryn Hutchings

A Portrait of Authenticity: A Review of Carl Mirra’s (2010) The AdmirableRadical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970. Kent, OH: Kent University Press
Adam Renner

Review of Union Learning Representatives: Challenges and Opportunities
Becky Wright

Review of How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation
Marisa Huerta

Review of Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic-Industrial Complex
Leah Schweitzer

The Sociopathology of Everyday Business: A Review of The University Against Itself: The NYU Strike and the Future of the Academic Workplace
Jim Rovira

Review of The Rich World and the Impoverishment of Education: Diminishing Democracy, Equity and Workers’ Rights
Paul Orlowski

Technology and (Human) Rights: A Review of Human Rights in the Global Information Society
Stephen Petrina

Review of The Developing World and State Education: Neoliberal Depredation and Egalitarian Alternatives
Steven L. Strauss

Miscellany
——–
Connecting Teacher Unions and Teacher Union Research
AERA Teachers’ Work/Teacher Unions SIG

Critical Education has just published a new issue.

Visit http://www.criticaleducation.org to read:

A Dialogic Pedagogy: Looking to Mikhail Bakhtin for Alternatives to Standards Period Teaching Practices
Trevor Thomas Stewart

Abstract
Instructional practices in American schools have become increasingly standardized over the last quarter century. This increase in standardization has resulted in a decrease in opportunities for teachers to engage in student-centered instructional practices. This article discusses how the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin can serve as the foundation for educators who are seeking alternatives to standards period teaching practices. A Bakhtinian view of language can be the basis for the creation of a dialogic pedagogy, which can help teachers and students navigate the complexities of teaching and learning in the secondary English classroom. More importantly, perhaps, Bakhtin’s theories can serve as a framework on which educators might build their arguments supporting the implementation of alternatives to standards period skill and drill instructional activities.

Forthcoming articles from Critical Education include:

Erica Frankenberg & Genevieve Siegel-Hawley:
A Separate Education: The Segregation of American Students and Teachers

Nicole R. Harper:
Education Beyond Institutionalization: Learning Outside of the Formal Curriculum

Cory D Maley:
Meet Them At The Plate: Reflections On The Eating Of Animals And The Role Of Education Therein

Jacqueline Darvin:
Teaching Critical Literacy Using Cultural and Political Vignette

New issue of Critical Education just published:

“Anthropocentrism’s Antidote: Reclaiming Our Indigenous Orientation to Non-human Teachers” by Don “Four Arrows” Jacobs, Jessica London Jacobs, and Sage Ryan.

This is the second article in the Critical Education series “The Lure of the Animal: Addressing Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research”.

With the current issue (Volume 1, Number 2), Critical Education launches a new series of articles titled “The Lure of the Animal: Addressing Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research.”

The inaugural article is by series editor Abraham P. DeLeon of the University of Texas, San Antonio and titled “The Lure of the Animal: The Theoretical Question of the Nonhuman Animal.”