The Ideology of Civic Engagement , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - Sara Carpenter

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

154 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Over the last thirty years, calls for the civic engagement of the American citizenry, especially young people, have gotten increasingly louder. A clear message has emerged that today's pressing social problems are best addressed through the innovative and entrepreneurial work of citizens. But what are we learning about democracy through our community service and civic engagement? The Ideology of Civic Engagement is a unique study of the American volunteerism program AmeriCorps. Drawing from deep ethnographic data, Sara Carpenter provides careful analysis of the ways in which public policy and federal regulations influence the inner workings of AmeriCorps programs, from grant writing to volunteer training, with special focus on how teaching and learning for "civic engagement" takes place within the program. Rather than following predetermined metrics for what constitutes democratic participation for young people, she examines how young people's political participation is shaped in a nexus of volunteer labor, neoliberal transformation of human services, deepening forms of inequality, and political discourse about democracy.

Sujets

National

États-Unis

Central

Tertiary education

Social theory

Central government

United States of America

USA

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	01 janvier 2021
Nombre de lectures	2
EAN13	9781438481340
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1648€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Ideology of Civic Engagement
The Ideology of Civic Engagement
AmeriCorps, Politics, and Pedagogy
SARA CARPENTER
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Carpenter, Sara, 1979– author.
Title: The ideology of civic engagement : Americorps, politics, and pedagogy / Sara Carpenter.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020023303 (print) | LCCN 2020023304 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438481333 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438481340 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Service learning—United States. | AmeriCorps (U.S.) | Critical pedagogy—United States. | Democracy and education—United States.
Classification: LCC LC220.5 .C356 2021 (print) | LCC LC220.5 (ebook) | DDC 361.3/70973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023303
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023304
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
C HAPTER O NE A Shoulder to the Wheel: Dialectics and Democracy in Critical Education Research
C HAPTER T WO Community Service and “Learning” Democracy
C HAPTER T HREE The Social Organization of Community Service and Civic Engagement in AmeriCorps
C HAPTER F OUR The Actualities and Vacuities of Civic Engagement in AmeriCorps
C HAPTER F IVE Civic Engagement and Community Service as Ideological Frame and Practice
C HAPTER S IX New Citizens for an Age of Uncertainty
C HAPTER S EVEN Beyond a Better Democracy: Rehistoricizing and Rematerializing Critical Education
N OTES
B IBLIOGRAPHY
I NDEX
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments are the final, and most difficult, part of a book project to write. This is inevitably because the community of people required to bring this text into being is so expansive it feels impossible to do justice to naming their contributions. Any piece of scholarship that takes time, and all decent scholarship takes a long time, means that I have crossed paths, had coffee with, chatted, listened, debated, and read from an endless networks of scholars, activists, educators, students, and community members. Each of these interactions has been meaningful and impactful to me and I thank these people for sharing their ideas, experiences, and insights with me. They have formed my thinking in obvious and subtle ways.
Nevertheless, there are many whom I can name and do so with deep gratitude.
To my research participants, who welcomed me into their experience in the AmeriCorps program and who provided me with much optimism during the research and who affirm in their actions every day that people sincerely want to be good to one another.
To the communities of scholars who have supported this work over the long path it took to final publication, especially the students and faculty in the Adult Education and Community Development program at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto and my colleagues in the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, the Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults, the Adult Education Research Conference, and the Toronto Historical Materialism group. Special thanks to Daniel Schugurnesky, Roxana Ng, Alan Sears, and John Holst.
To the community of friends who assembled to support me so that I could complete this work, providing shelter, food, transportation, emotional support, and encouragement: Jeri Lu Mattson, Don Esperson, Nan and John Kari, David Holliday, Meg Erke, Martha Malinski, Scott Shoemaker, Sarah Humpage, Lindsay Schwab, Rob Zelada, Shana Mengelkoch, Bill Reichard, Oded Burger, Michael Eaton, Paul Van Cura, Phil Sandro, Joel and Faith Krogstad, Lynn Englund, John Wallace, Jane Plihal, Anthony Cushing, Antony Chum, Eddie Farrell, and Michael Colley.
To my friends and colleagues who created spaces for me to do this work, making sure that I had gainful employment and encouraging me to pursue my interests and passions: Megan Burnett, Carol Rolheiser, and June Larkin.
To the editors who have kept after me and taken care with my work: Stephan Dobson and Danielle Stewart are talented, brilliant, patient, and kind people. Michael Rinella has shepherded this text in its final march and I am grateful for that work and encouragement.
To the women I have walked with in research and struggle, Bethany Osborne, Soheila Pashang, Bahar Biazar, Sheila Wilmot, Sheila Gruner, Bonnie Slade, Hongxia Shan, Srabani Maitra, Soma Chatterjee, Kiran Mirchandani, Nadya Weber, Shama Dossa, Tara Silver, Shirin Haghgou, Genevieve Ritchie, Chandni Desai, Shahrzad Arshadi, Himani Bannerji, Helen Colley, Roxana Ng, and Paula Allman.
To Amir Hassanpour, who taught me not to be afraid of a fight. To Shahrzad Mojab, who did everything above and more.
And finally, Sue, Graham, Matt, Jody, Duncan, and Ethan, who get behind and let me do my thing and take care of me along the way.
Chapter One
A Shoulder to the Wheel
Dialectics and Democracy in Critical Education Research
In the fall of 2008, I began research into the question of civic engagement movements and practices in the United States. It was an auspicious time to ask questions about the promotion of forms of political participation, as the economy of the United States was beginning its most rapid decline in recent memory. The resulting public debates surrounding financial regulation, debt, and economic crisis pushed the relationship between democracy and economy into sharp relief. The nightly news became filled with images not only of protests and occupation movements, but also their violent repression by the state. Tear gas, batons, and municipal police with military-style armaments were common images. The fiscal crisis of 2008 was, and remains, a devastating crisis in capital accumulation and, as with all crises in capitalism, it is those least able to weather such violence that must endure it. This “global slump,” combined with decades of cuts to public services, was in actuality a “human recession.” 1
In the United States, the crisis resulted in a massive growth in unemployment, home foreclosures, bank failings, public service reduction, and increased poverty. Given, as Stuart Hall argued, that race is “the modality through which class is lived,” 2 these sharp declines disproportionately impacted the material and social well-being of communities of color. 3 Already, by the time I began fieldwork and the country celebrated the inauguration of Barack Obama in January of 2009, the fallout of the crisis was felt in the communities I entered for my research. Home foreclosures abounded, joblessness was pervasive; people were awash in material and social insecurity and young adults felt this crisis acutely. In response to the crisis, the Obama administration pushed through several major pieces of legislation within their first six months. One of these, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, colloquially known as “the stimulus plan,” provided a staggering amount of public funds to imploding financial corporations as well as an injection of resources into public infrastructure development. A second piece of legislation, the 2009 Edward Kennedy Serve America Act, made substantial resources available for the promotion of community service and volunteerism programs, specifically through the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), an independent federal agency. These pieces of legislation, and the relationship between them, aptly characterize the response to the crisis by the American government: fiscal bailouts for private financial institutions and increased public service rhetoric for private citizens. As Obama argued in his promotion of the 2009 summer volunteerism campaign “United We Serve,” it was time for American citizens to muster up their ethic of civic duty and get to work fixing the problems in American communities. 4 If everyone was to put their “shoulder to the wheel” and volunteer their labor in local communities, we could work our way out of the crisis and its fallouts. The “wheel” of recovery and progress would turn only with the collective might of the American citizenry behind it. It was time, Obama argued, for us to be good citizens.
This particular moment in history signaled an opportune time to raise critical questions about the realities of democracy and citizenship in the United States. For more than two decades, voices from higher education, civil society, and various facets of American government had been wondering what to do about the so-called democratic deficit in the United States. Following September 11th and the subsequent occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, even more voices joined a chorus of concern about the status and vitality of American democracy, if not liberal democracy itself. Jean Bricmont asked how it was that, since the end of the Cold War, democracy and human rights had become the perfect justifications to wage war and violate, even desecrate, human rights themselves. 5 Similarly, Ellen Meiksins Wood asked how the United States government had been able to convince its citizenry that femi