25.013 - Traveling Discourses of "Democracy": Unsettling Stable Promises and Making Difference Transnationally Through Inclusion

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

“Democracy” is commonly invoked in both popular and scholarly discourses as an unquestionable good, and therefore a naturally desired outcome of education. Notions of democracy travel across perceived boundaries of educational policy, international development projects, legal cultures, and activist politics. As interventions, they are assumed to empower those labeled as the most marginalized hoping to increase participation in a liberal democratic order. Bringing together divergent epistemological approaches, this panel interrogates how traveling discourses of democracy figure, reify, and assemble ideas of difference. We attend to the prevalence of colonial categories within education reforms and interrogate what kinds of humans are desired for democratic citizenry. In doing so, the panel unsettles the promises heralded through discourses of democracy and education.

Sub Unit

• Division B - Curriculum Studies / Division B - Section 2: Histories and Futurities (The Frames of Curriculum)

Chair

• Thomas S. Popkewitz, University of Wisconsin

Papers

• Schooling That "Saves": The Emergence of Literacy as Secular Salvation in Colonial Kenya - Christopher Mark Kirchgasler, The University of Kansas

• Skilling Girls in Neoliberal India: Fashioning Entrepreneurial Aspirations Through Empowerment Curriculum - Karishma Desai, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Exceptionalism, Immigration, and Democratic Citizenship: What the Law Reifies and Sustains - Brenda N. Sanya, Colgate University

• On the Limits of Democracy: Krishnalal Shridharani's War Without Violence and Its Significance to the Black Left of the 1940s - Malathi Michelle Iyengar, University of California - San Diego

• Adapting Science Education for Everyday Needs: The Production of Pathologized Populations - Kathryn Lewkowicz Kirchgasler, The University of Kansas

Discussant

• Daniel Friedrich, Teachers College, Columbia University