Again, I got carried away in my academic mind, while not doing the things I was supposed to. And yes, again there are pictures of pretty things below to reward you for reading my random thought process (or again, skip to the pretty pictures).

Here goes:

Is social cohesion really what we want?

Over and over, in my education class in a masters program at a ‘top 50 university in the world’, I heard the term ‘social cohesion’, and we repeatedly explored varying strategies in education systems or programs being used to engage that idea. But every time I heard that term, something didn’t click for me. I wasn’t quite sure what the feeling was… it felt like I was being a little too ‘culturally relativist’ or something to have that thought, so I rarely, if at all, spoke up about it. I think a major problem that contributed to my uncomfortability was that we never got a clear definition of what we were talking about. What is ‘social cohesion’?

The way I understood the concept was a little bit too close to assimilation to make me comfortable. Then again, if social cohesion means people aren’t killing each other, that is generally something I can stand by. At the same time, however, it seemed that everyone (including myself) used the term as a synonym for social ‘integration’. Again, integration doesn’t quite fit in my vision of society. (And again, I’m not talking about physical violence on the one hand and psychological violence on the other—I feel it’s irresponsible to engage in a debate between those, as neither is acceptable in my view… But this is where I get uncomfortable, with the definitions of these concepts, especially how we define psychological violence (as it seemed that we had consensus on what physical violence is)).

But integration is an interesting issue, and it even feels uncomfortable to say that I am against an integrated society, but yet again, it is about how we understand integration.

In my understanding, ‘multi-culturalism’ has often focused its importance on a recognition of the cultural diversity present, but at the same time has tried to fuse those cultures to get a serious kind of integration, or assimilation, in which the multiple cultures present are there for the ‘fun’ stuff—foods, dances, music, etc. but the cultures do not have much of a deeper meaning. Through my entire undergraduate career, that was how I understood cultures: as having these different fun things that were easy to share and express to each other. At Evergreen (where I did my undergrad studies) I repeatedly heard intelligent critiques of this interpretation, but somehow they just didn’t click. I think this mistake was incredibly easy for me, as I feel that dominant US culture and the school system is fundamentally built with this understanding—a very directly assimilationist point of view. One example that quickly comes to mind is the vast opposition to immigration from non-(very)-Western countries. In California, where I’m from (and probably everywhere in the States, but I don’t know) this is characterized by a gross xenophobia against people from our own “backyard”—Latin America, and especially Mexico. At the same time, we can feel psychologically at peace while eating food picked by badly paid immigrant farm workers, going to our favorite Mexican restaurant, or buying pin(i)atas for our kids’ birthday parties.

I feel like this is what multi-culturalism is all about: taking the aspects that the dominant culture accepts and rejecting all other parts. What this translates into, for someone from a non-dominant background, is that to gain acceptance they can keep those ‘fun’ things that are easy for others to understand, and need to reject other parts of their cultural identity (most obviously this can translate into language). At the same time, I and others with dominant cultural identities (white, English-as-mother-tongue, male-centered, heterosexual, able-bodied, etc.) get to benefit from the shared aspects which are easy to understand and not bat an eye at other aspects, while these other aspects are a constant struggle for the Others (of non-dominant identities). To me, this interpretation of multi-culturalism is clearly supportive of social cohesion. It makes things run very smoothly—for those of us who benefit from the power structures we live with. (This is another conversation, about whether it is actually a benefit to have dominant identities, because in some ways we embody the non-unique culture of assimilation). This is how I interpret multi-culturalism. In this way, it is deeply disappointingly assimilationist, and I also see this process as psychologically violent, including the dominant discourses surrounding multi-culturalism. This is how I’ve experienced the idea of ‘social cohesion’ in my life—the way the systems in my society treat non-dominant cultures; and this is the reason this idea of ‘social cohesion’ is so uncomfortable to me.

Alternatively, there is a newer proposal for ‘inter-culturalism’ which has emerged in a number of countries. First, here’s a link to Handel Wright discussing his research comparing multi- and inter-cultural education processes around the world (although mostly focused in Western countries)-http://www.freireproject.org/content/handel-kashope-wright-talks-project. The way I understand it is a recognition of the actual interactions between multiple cultures in the same place. If this is an interpretation of ‘social cohesion’, I can get behind it more than of multi-culturalism. The way I understand the concept of ‘culture’ is that they are forever changing and adapting, because people exercise their cultural identities in a very personal way. In this sense, culture itself is a process, and the idea of ‘inter-culturalism’ recognizes and respects that each culture is individual and at the same time interacting, and maybe even that those interactions further shift expressions of culture.

Here in Bolivia, where I’m researching perceptions of a soon-to-be education reform, these ideas are in intense discussion. In 1994 the previous education reform was enacted. A central goal in it was ‘inter-culturalism’, as I’ve just discussed above. However, even with that recognition of cultural interaction, the makers of the new reform (along with many others I’ve spoken with) have rejected this idea of inter-culturalism, saying that it was a tool of the neo-liberal government to have a ‘softer’ assimilationist program (as before ’94 for example, ONLY Spanish was officially taught in schools, in order to achieve integration/social cohesion/assimilation to the urban areas). The idea that inter-culturalism in schools was a softer assimilationist policy has played out, for example, with the teaching of both Spanish and local/native languages, but the idea is that a much higher value was placed on Spanish and intense pressure was put on students and their families to integrate into the national culture—so that by recognizing the cultural interactions through inter-culturalism, the system recognized the country’s diversity but persisted with aim of integration. In this sense, in the way that I have understood it, inter-culturalism has  played out somewhat similarly to multi-culturalism in my experience in the US (although a major difference is the US’s diversity is fundamentally made up of immigrants, whether recent or 500 years old, whereas Bolivia’s diversity is between the dominant culture which is ‘mestizo’ and primarily Spanish speaking and the indigenous population which makes up a majority).

The new education reform, however, brings in a new idea. In terms of this discussion, it proposes a system of ‘inter- and intra-culturalism’, maintaining that the two ideas cannot be separated. The inter-culturalism will stay the same, as discussed above, but the addition of intra-culturalism is central. If inter-culturalism is about a kind-of training people to respect each other while maintaining the idea of social cohesion/integration, intra-culturalism emphasizes the training of people to learn and respect their own culture. This much is clear. Just as I never got a solid definition of ‘social cohesion’, I haven’t yet gotten one of intra-culturalism. While the concept is strong in the new law, many people interpret it differently. But what is clear to me is that the idea of ‘inter- and intra-culturalism’ is not about social cohesion. Rather, it is about understanding oneself and respecting the identities of those around you, while recognizing culture as a process.

Two major difficulties arise here: first, that theoretically it seems very hard to engage in this type of relationship, especially through a school system, in the context of globalized capitalism—as students and their families will still live within this system, and will (do) want to participate in it by gaining economically. The second difficulty that I see is that it is easy to see this ‘inter- and intra-culturalism’ in a liberating light, as is described by the Ministry of Education. However, that rhetoric is similar to the rhetoric of inter-culturalism, or even multi-culturalism. Trying to evaluate now what the education reform will bring in terms of these concepts in the coming years almost seems irresponsible. Rather than evaluate them, I would like to recognize and support what they mean in theory, while keeping a watchful eye to see what the practice actually looks like.

I still don’t know exactly what ‘social cohesion’ is, but I definitely know that it doesn’t sit well with me.

Lastly, during that education course I had the opportunity to see an academic present her new book on ‘Educating Against Extremism’. For all the same reasons as above, this also didn’t sit well with me. Again, extremism to the point of either physical or psychological (or cultural) violence doesn’t sit well with me either; but at the same time, I have grown up in the US, under the farce of a ‘democratic’ government, which is in my opinion the essence of anti-extremism. While we may be the heart of supporting a vote, our options are limited to two parties which have few differences. Neither party takes extreme positions, and it is considered political suicide for a politician to do so. Due to this specific interpretation of democracy, the system of government in the US has seen very little change since its creation. Extreme opinions are what changes the world. Again in the context of the US, strong opinions and out-of-the-box thinking have been the only catalysts of what systemic changes we have seen—from the revolutionary war to the civil war to the mass mobilizations against racial discrimination which led to the more ‘equal’ legal reform of the Civil Rights Act. While I’m sure there are many more recent examples, none come to mind at the moment, and I see this due to the obsessive moderation of US politics. In other words, the political landscape in the US is all about integration, social cohesion and assimilation. Any rejection of that—perhaps taking the form of ‘extremism’—is political or social suicide.

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And here’s the fun part:

My supervisor took me to Lake Titicaca on Sunday with her family, just because I hadn’t been there. Its about 2 hours away on a beautiful drive, but the most beautiful thing was the lake itself. Seriously incredible, and enormous as well. I tried to capture the beauty in some of the pictures, but we didn’t have too much time there, besides a wonderful lunch and a short walk… (click on the photos to enlarge them)

…notice the sketchy poles holding this restaurant up…

This gigantic and semi-ugly statue of Che Guevara is in El Alto. Interestingly, it’s about a block away from a statue of Tupac Katari,which is about 3 feet tall–Katari was an indigenous revolutionary leader in the late 1700s… why they chose a giant statue of Che? who knows…

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