Usurping Soft Power: Translating and Co-opting SEL for Local Aims in Palabek Refugee Settlement, Uganda

• In Event: Power & Defiance: Local Resistance to Global Social and Emotional Learning

Proposal

Social emotional learning (SEL) research, policy, and practice has spread rapidly from being a US-centric educational approach to being used in development and humanitarian contexts (Deitz and Lahmann, under review, 2023). In the transfer of SEL, it has been decoupled from its Western roots to become a perceived “universal” approach, not tied to one culture or context. Extant research has shown that when recipient communities rely on foreign aid, they are more likely to adopt foreign “global” norms (Risse and Ropp, 2013). Yet, much of this discourse strips the recipient nations and communities of their agency to adapt, transform, and utilize the imported approaches for their own priorities (Steiner-Khamsi, 2014; Acharya, 2004). This paper explores the disconnect between global, national, and local conceptions of SEL and how it is co-opted and leveraged by local actors in the Palabek Refugee Settlement to meet their own priorities and needs. Although subtle, this act of resistance indicates the agency of local actors to usurp soft power from global donors and international organizations to achieve their own aims.

What are the incentives within the humanitarian aid system for the dissemination of SEL? They differ across: (1) global “exporters”, including donors and international networks, (2) “middlemen”, such as national actors and transnational networks, and (3) local “importers” within the recipient community. I draw upon interviews with more than 100 individuals at all three levels, including: local teachers, parents, and students; national NGO staff; and global donors. Looking across three levels of actors allows us to best understand how and why SEL has been adopted and for what purpose. The incentives of global and national actors have been studied in the transfer of foreign aid, yet local actors’ incentives are often overlooked. Exporters, or donors, prioritize locations and programs based on their geopolitical priorities, including aligned voting on UN policies and democratic values (Alesina and Dollar, 2000; Drury, Olson, and Van Belle, 2005; Fielding, 2014; Nelson, 2012). Governments also want to promote and export their own educational trademarks (Steiner-Khamsi, 2014), such as SEL from the US. International NGOs often serve as the “middlemen'' between global priorities and local communities. They serve to reframe norms to better resonate with existing “local” norms (Zimmerman, 2016; Keck and Sikkink, 1998). For local actors, or “importers,” adopting global norms–at least in name–may be the only way to receive much needed foreign funds (Zimmerman, 2016).

I find that although the incentives for exporting and importing SEL differ, they align in a way that creates conditions ripe for the transfer of SEL from global donors, to national organizations, to local communities. Although local importers invoke the language of the global exporter, how they define and interpret those constructs differs from the global definitions. In essence, local communities are usurping the soft power of global actors by retrofitting the meaning and approaches commonly used in SEL to suit their needs.

Author

• Rena Deitz, New York University