Systematic Educational Disadvantage: A Social Justice Lens

• In Event: Schools as Enabling Spaces to Improve Learning and Health Outcomes in Rural South Africa — Part 2

Abstract

"There are multiple frameworks for understanding social justice, including those of Rawls, Young, Fraser and Sen. Recent applications of these theories have sought to push beyond a limited focus distribution of income and resources to take into account the range of differences that exist between and within communities, and the hierarchies of esteem and cultural capital associated with these. Roberts and Green (2013) argue that many traditional frameworks exhibit ‘geographic blindness’: a failure to recognise the significant differences between urban and rural communities with respect to social justice.

We will examine this claim with particular reference to Fraser’s and Sen’s work. Fraser acknowledges the limits to compensatory approaches to achieving economic, cultural and political justice between communities; giving more resources to more disadvantaged communities may well not achieve substantive change as they do not tackle underlying cultural and political tensions and hierarchies. This, we argue, may be the case for other differences where cultural and political transformation is often required rather than financial compensation. Similarly, Fraser argues, seeking to tackle the effects of patriarchy, colonialism and ablism without addressing the effects of capitalism is unlikely to being about substantive change. Sen’s Capability Theory takes a different approach, with its focus on increasing individuals’ agency to pursue that which they have cause to value it has been widely adopted – sometimes for narrow instrumental purposes focused on personal income. Quoting Freire, Frediani argues that to build social justice people must be supported to ‘gain confidence and abilities to alter unjust conditions and structures’ (1997, ix) so as to enable a wider understanding and realisation of valued aims. But Sen’s theory does not address differences in the experience of individual and collective agency in rural contexts.
Consequently, we will explore four key tensions in disadvantaged rural contexts: individual vs collective achievement; linguistic and cultural hierarchies; urban migration vs staying and developing; and local vs global funds of knowledge.

We argue that these collectively require a new perspective on social justice and a new construction of Capability Theory which also consider the rural. We will point towards alternative theories such as Flocking (Ebersohn 2019), which seeks builds on indigenous rural cultures, and dialogic theory (Higham 2018), which locates value in the humane exploration of differences without seeking to close them. In the context of schools, these can help promote communal dialogue based on creating shared aims and objects of value that are rooted in the realities, knowledges and aspirations of those communities.
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Authors

• Martin Mills, QUT

• Rupert J. Higham, University College London