Making visible the unseen: Interrogating Education in Latin America through Feminist and Intersectional Lenses

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Latin America is currently undergoing a series of crises within the context of global capitalism, starting with the de-industrialization and neoliberalisation of economy, a caring crisis, an ecological emergency, labor precarity, an unprecedented rise of economic inequality coupled with the rise of authoritarian and populist tendencies, alongside conflicts over race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. The inherent overlapping of these crises reflects on education in multiple ways. For example, the guarantee of universal access to schools has not accompanied the pedagogical and sociocultural adaptation to the diversity of the public that attends them, which has caused growing cases of prejudice and violence. Book banning, persecution of teachers, incitement of religious and cultural hatred have been increasingly common realities in many countries around the globe. Although these are phenomena we are witnessing at a global scale, in Latin America, these contemporary issues also drag historical compounded crises that render evident the multiple layers of inequalities in the region. Therefore, the critical lenses of global capitalism, which are widely used to look at this phenomena, are not enough.
While traditional critical lenses have recognized and analyzed these crises, we believe they require updates. Nancy Fraser's question from the 1980s, "What's critical about critical theory?" remains relevant and should continue to be debated and radicalized, as feminist studies suggest (hooks, 2019). In a context where many of the intersectional power dynamics that are implicated in education processes tend to be left aside or even domesticated in many of the critical educational research traditions, we situate the present panel as an attempt to expand this debate through feminist and intersectional lenses towards contributing to theoretical and empirical understandings of education in Latin America.
While critical educational research and feminist studies share a relational perspective in their analysis of the social world, feminist epistemology adds unique elements that are absent in many critical traditions. Feminisms recognize gender as a fundamental element in shaping social reality and have a history of developing complex intellectual tools to comprehend it, while actively fighting against inequalities (Biroli; Miguel, 2013). Under this logic, an issue that our panel aims to address is the invisibilization of social reproduction and Black feminist perspectives in education's intertwinings. While economic and ecological threats dominate discussions on the crises, the neglect of social reproduction is apparent (Fraser, 2016). Together with that, we also prioritize Black and intersectional feminist authors who stress the inseparability of race from feminist research (Collins, 2019; hooks, 2019) and the significance of centering diverse women's experiences in theory development, including in education (Ahmed, 2017; hooks, 2013).
Furthermore, feminist lenses not only seem fruitful in analyzing the ongoing crises but also in raising answers to these. Feminist epistemology views scientific work as political and rooted in social movements, protests, and strikes. It challenges the boundaries women were conditioned to obey and constantly seeks analytical lenses to capture the complexities of new forms of exclusion and oppression in production and reproduction. As Veronica Gago (2019, 10) states, feminist potency lies in asserting "a power of another kind, which is a common invention against expropriation, collective usufruct against privatization and expansion of what we wish to be possible here and now.". The papers in this panel employ these lenses to gain a deeper understanding of educational reality in Latin America.
In particular, this panel addresses crucial questions for contemporary struggles in Latin America from different but intertwined sectors of education. The authors cover topics such as the rise of the anti-gender agenda and the militarization of public schools in Brazil, the compounded forms of enclosure linked to education privatization in Peru, new understandings of the teaching profession in Chile, and questions of (un) belonging in higher education in Brazil and the UK. Thereby, the authors aim to shed light on power dynamics and oppression in Latin American education. The first paper looks into teacher accountability policies implemented in Chile between 1980-2021 and develops a framework that delves into the nature of teachers’ labor through the contributions of feminist lenses building on the the concepts of social reproduction (Fraser, 2022), value-generation (Mezzandri, 2022), and labor regimes (Baglioni, 2021) through which the author argues that teachers stand in a threefold position regarding labor. The second paper explores how the ideas of public and private education have evolved in Peru over the past century by analyzing who is included and excluded from and within them. The author then traces their changing borders in relation to moments of democratization in the country, and argues that privatization expands when there are possibilities of encountering the Other (Spivak 1985). The third paper examines the effects of public policies aimed at promoting diversity in higher education in the UK and Brazil through the experiences of first-generation university women who have entered elite educational spaces. In doing so, she explores the sense of (un)belonging within historically White and exclusionary institutions and the ways in which these women reclaim their identities and actively create spaces of solidarity and belonging within these elite institutions. Finally, the authors in the fourth paper use a feminist perspective to dismantle the discursive construction of the militarization of public schools in Brazil, and how this is built on underlying patriarchal, White supremacist, and queerphobic ideologies, as well as neoliberal arguments emphasizing quality improvement and standardized test outcomes.
Overall, amidst a context of multiple and intensified crises of capitalism, this panel aims to contribute to crafting educational alternatives by thinking on new analytical lenses that allow us to problematize what is being taken for granted (Horgan, 2020) and make visible the unseen. Noticeable, and following a critical feminist epistemology, we understand these lenses not as pure theoretical claims floating in the social world, but in intimate connection with an activist and situated practice that challenges Western and colonial dichotomies on knowledge production (Riviera Cusicanqui, 2019). In consequence, we envision this panel also as a space of critical engagement with possibilities for change and for interrogating the ways in which we conceptualize and carry out academic work.

Sub Unit

• 21st Century Educational Alternatives: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Patriarchy, Militarism, and the Climate Crisis

Organizer

• Rocio Fernandez Ugalde, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

Chair

• Bruna Dalmaso-Junqueira, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Individual Presentations

• Localising and historicising privatization: Understanding education privatization's links to enclosure, othering and urban spaces - María Fernanda Rodríguez, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

• Beyond productive labor and value production: feminist angles for examining teachers’ work and accountability policies - Rocio Fernandez Ugalde, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

• Civic-military schools in Brazil as patriarchal, white supremacist, and queerphobic project - Bruna Dalmaso-Junqueira, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; Iana Gomes de Lima, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

• Mothers and Daughters: (Un)Belonging of First-Generation Women at Elite Universities in Brazil and England in the Twenty-First Century - Anna Maria Del Fiorentino, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

Discussant

• Dalila Andrade Oliveira, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais