Critical Service-Learning and Disparate Citizenship

• In Event: Disrupting Colonial Narratives of Development Work and Service-Learning: Possibilities in Pedagogical and Research Methods

Abstract

Purpose
Scholars connect service-learning’s roots to universities’ founding missions of educating for citizenship (Harkavy & Hartley, 2010). Overlooked within this connection are racial and economic hierarchies of citizenship that universities foster. Critical service-learning attempts to correct this oversight by encouraging students to become “agents of social change” who work toward a more just world by interrogating structural factors of racial and economic disparities (Mitchell, 2008, p. 51). However, continuities between foundational civic missions and critical service learning have yet to be adequately addressed. I argue that the conception of "agency" in "agents of social change" still harbors a deeply problematic root conception of citizenship. This permits even "critical" service-learning projects to reproduce injustices in practice (unpaid labor) and in theory (valuing citizenships).

Theoretical Framework
I use Foucault's (1991) framework of governmentality to explain how conceptions of ideal citizenship are historically articulated with hierarchical valuations of human life. Dennis' (2009) neoliberal governance is particularly useful for understanding contemporary articulations.

Method and Data
Employing historical discourse analysis to review national policies and reports, I draw parallels between the initial civilizing mission of higher education and contemporary service-learning’s call to restore the “civic” dimension of higher education. I analyze federal legislation (Morrill Act of 1862, 1990; National and Community Service Trust Act of 1990; and Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996) and two key reports advocating for service-learning in higher education (Wingspread Report, 1989 and Campus Compact’s Presidential Declaration on the Civic Responsibility of Higher Education, 1999). I pair these documents with articulations of critical service-learning (Mitchell, 2008) to trace the evolving strand of ideal citizenship.

Results
Each document contain concepts of informed, responsible citizens who actively participate in democracy. In this paper, I illustrate how this conception of citizenship is rearticulated in contemporary neoliberalism through an emphasis on personal responsibility and a value hierarchy of particular bodies, knowledge, and material realities.

Significance
If, as I argue, the disparate conditions of citizenship are built into the foundation of critical service-learning, then we need to rethink the practice, starting with what we imagine to be its purpose.

Author

• Colleen Rost-Banik, Windward Community College