Transnational Acts of Social-Educational Activism

• In Event: The Use of Decolonization Within Ethnic Studies, Refugee Studies, and Gender and Empire/Counter-Terrorism Discourses

Abstract

Objective

The purpose of this paper is to offer multiple framings of acts of educational social justice. Fraser (2009) states that framing pertains to ‘interpretations of the circumstances of justice’, including ‘understanding of our social and historical circumstances … [and] forces that shape people’s lives in a globalizing world’ (p.38). The question of framing also evokes meta-questions of justice - who is included in determining what interpretations count and how competing accounts are presented and consumed.

Theoretical framework
The paper utilizes a decolonizing theoretical framework (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999, 2005), draw on international perspectives on social justice education (Rizvi, 2009), and neoliberal globalizing discourses to examine grassroots social justice activism and perspectives against biographies of location, race, religion, gender, and in/equities. Social justice as an ideal must continually be re-visioned in theory, policy, and practice, as context, history, and interconnected global relationships and global social movements change the landscape of justice and equity. While social justice theoretical frames may on the whole work against oppression and counter dominant narratives that deligitimate issues of equity, they also are a result of different local experiences. Thus, in the West and the South, social justice may play out differently given different politics, logics, peoples, histories and contexts. This paper will examine how transnational educational activism plays out in particular global contexts. By drawing on the assumptions of critical ethnography I analyze how the social, racial, religious, gendered and political identities and epistemologies of transnational educators (and mine) engage with structures of power and privilege within marginalized global educational contexts in working towards educational activism.

Mode of inquiry/ Data sources
Data is drawn from a US residential professional development that focused on gender equity (includes course activities/presentations, reflections, focus and individual group interviews), as well as my interactions and interviews with these educators in their home countries (particular focus on educators from Peru, Bolivia, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia).

Results/Conclusions
(1) that the transnational educators social justice non/activism was closely aligned to their political, cultural, religious and/or economic biographies/experiences
(2) need for paradigm shifts to understand diverse framings of social justice within global context, history, politics and policy in order to reread globalizing interpretations of justice against dominant narratives

Significance

This paper offers global case studies that interrupt and challenge us to reread our interpretations and dominant narratives of social educational justice. It offer perspectives and interventions models that address questions of gender, justice and critical democratic practices.

Author

• Sharon S. Subreenduth, Bowling Green State University