En Nuestras Manos: Crisis, Contention, and the Rise of the Cooperative Schooling Movement in Argentina

• In Event: Another Way: Global Perspectives on Community-Based and Alternative Schooling Initiatives

Abstract

In recent years an interconnected series of economic crises have shaken the social and political foundations of diverse nations around the world. In this paper, I consider how such large-scale crises have generated opportunities for social movement actors to realize alternative community-centered educational practices and schooling programs. More specifically, I explore how the onset of a massive structural crisis in Argentina influenced the emergence and expansion of a grassroots network of cooperative schooling initiatives in the city of Buenos Aires during the early 2000s. Although there is no single model of cooperative schooling in Argentina, such schools are generally defined by their commitment to ‘autonomous’ and ‘horizontal’ structures of democratic organization whereby teachers, parents and students are positioned as the primary stakeholders and decision-makers. In many areas, cooperative schools also place a strong emphasis on social justice and overcoming problems of inequality and exclusion (Gluz 2013). While cooperative schooling existed in Argentina for decades, these schools experienced significant growth and politicization during the years surrounding the dramatic large-scale collapse of the Argentine economy and state in 2001-02. Merging neo-institutional theory from comparative educational policy studies (Arnove, Frank, and Torres 2013; Rhoten 2000) with post-structural strands of social movement theory (Goodwin and Jasper 2004; Melucci 1996), my discussion focuses on the interplay of micro- and macro-level processes that fueled the rise of cooperative schooling. First, I show how the upsurge of cooperative schooling was a product of the ‘strategic solidarities’ (Heidemann 2014) mobilized by a small but influential network of grassroots actors who channeled a broader climate of popular protest and political contention into the educational sector so as to develop an alternative model of community-based schooling. Within this micro-level context, I focus on the repertoire of discursive and organizational practices deployed by a diverse but cohesive community of actors dedicated to the democratization and bottom-up reform of public schooling. Second, I show how the strategic solidarities mobilized by grassroots proponents of the cooperative schooling movement were facilitated from above by the unfolding of a ‘political opportunity structure’ linked to global and state-based processes of governance and educational policy-making. In this macro-level context, I illustrate how the cooperative schooling movement was enabled in both symbolic and material terms by a series of educational reforms initiated by the populist Kirchner government (2003-06) in response to a legacy of neoliberalism. My discussion of these micro- and macro-level dynamics is empirically grounded in a triangulation of qualitative case study data: [1] in-depth interviews with key informants affiliated with cooperative schooling, [2] policy documents and reports released by the Argentine Ministry of National Education, and [3] press coverage of cooperative schooling. By way of conclusion I contemplate the broader-level significance of the cooperative schooling movement in Argentina, and suggest how social movement theory can be used to conduct further comparative research on community-based schooling initiatives in other parts of the world.

Author

• Kai Heidemann, Maastricht University