The Ivan Illich Learning Web

Dear Ivan Illich SIG Members and Potential Members:

Our most esteemed SIG co-madre, Madhu Suri Prakash, has wisely suggested that this year’s call for papers be supplemented with further information about the submission process for those less familiar with it. What follows then is a kind of FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for those submitting this year, For everyone’s convenience and annoyance both, the call for papers is attached yet again so that it can be housed with the FAQ as a single document for better forwarding…

FAQ for Submitting to Ivan Illich SIG #161 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 2012

When is the conference?

The conference is scheduled to be from Friday, April 13 through Tuesday, April 17, 2012. There is also normally a pre-conference workshop held by Div. B, Section 4 (the ecological wing of curriculum studies) on the Thursday prior to the conference that the Illich SIG unofficially partners with to support. The dates of your accepted presentation to the conference will be decided by AERA many months from now. For those without the money to attend the conference in its entirety, some negotiation over scheduling is usually possible (which is arranged through conversation with SIG Chair or Program Chair). Ultimately, we are at the mercy of the AERA program creators, however, which will give you an opportunity to notify them of possible scheduling conflicts in your submission (see below).

How can I find more information about the conference, its theme, and general call?

Goto: http://aera.net/.

When is the deadline for proposal submissions?

The submission deadline is: July 22, 2011. If you would like to volunteer to chair a session or serve as a discussant, the deadline for doing so is: August 31, 2011. Previous years have found the submission deadline officially extended. While this may be the case again this year, you should plan accordingly and not assume you will have until August.

How do I submit a proposal?

Goto: http://aera.net/AALogin2012.aspx?ReturnURL=/WS/UpdateAA2012.aspx. Instructions are listed there on how to login to the online submission system. Note: you do NOT have to be a registered AERA member to submit a proposal. If you are not, however, you will need to register to get a login username and password for the system. A link for doing so is toward the bottom of the previously listed URL.

Ok, I’m in, so what next?

Click on “Submit or Edit a Paper or Session” in the Submitter Menu. This will take you to a new menu where you click, “Submit a New Paper or Session.” You next have to pick which Division, Committee, or SIG in AERA you are submitting to: scroll down to SIG-Ivan Illich and click it. Next you must choose what type of submission you will make. You have options of a Paper Submission for and individual paper, poster, or roundtable, or a Session Submission of a demonstration/performance, an off-site visit, a structured poster session, a symposium, a working group roundtable, and a workshop.

The choice is your’s but we strongly suggest submitting a Paper presentation proposal and not a Session. The reason for this is because AERA provides more slots for these types of proposals on the program overall and, for us, it provides maximum flexibility in getting everyone on the bill. Further, to the degree that AERA provides more opportunities for acceptance to SIGs depending on the quantity of proposals they get, it is better for us to get 5 individual proposals than 1 structured poster session or symposium with five papers included within it. So, please generally click from your options the first link: Paper.

Ok, I did, so what next: Phase 1?

Fill in: Your paper title and an abstract of 120 words or less. If you are not a member of AERA, please put “Richard Kahn” as your sponsoring member for your proposal. Next: audio taping — do you want it, yes or no? Pick three descriptors from the tabbed list that apply to your paper (don’t sweat this). Next, your research method: whichever one you like. Then, you must choose your Preferred Session Format: Please pick all three (Paper, Poster, Roundtable) in whatever order of importance to you. After this, do you have any special requests: for scheduling (tell them). Do you have any special accessibility needs or have a disability which can be inclusively addressed (tell them). Finally, what is your paper’s IRB status — choose; feel free to say Not Applicable. And do you want to join AERA’s paper repository? Your choice. SUBMIT. You then will add in any relevant authors and click SUBMIT. This brings you to Audio/Visual requests. Choose; note that advanced technological requests beyond the usual LCD projector for Powerpoint and such will incur costs to the presenter her/himself.

Ok, I’m still with you, what next: Phase 2?

Now you will submit your proposal. First, how many words is it? It should be less than 2000. What if it is 2300? We don’t think it is a problem. What if it is 230? If they’re good words, we don’t think it is a problem.

As to the proposal’s content. AERA instructs:

The paper should not contain any references to the author(s) or other identifying information. You will be asked to provide a word count. Word counts should be entered in numerical format without commas. The paper should be 2000 words or fewer in length (excluding references, tables, charts, graphs and figures). References should be included (if applicable) at the end of the paper and are not included in overall word count. You will be asked to affirm that your submission meets the policy regarding originality of submissions. To be considered for review, all six elements described below must be addressed in the paper even if the results, conclusions, or findings are not complete or final at the time of the submission. The paper needs to address and provide reviewers with an understanding of the results and findings to date. The paper should deal explicitly with the following elements, preferably in this order:

Objectives or purposes
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
Data sources, evidence, objects or materials
Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view, and
Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work

It is understood that theoretical or methodological papers will include information that is the equivalent of element (4) for those genres of scholarly work.

If you do not have a legacy of submitting proposals to AERA, please note that here is where the Illich SIG will distinguish itself for you. We simply are not anal analytics enough to judge your proposal in this way. Please use this as a guide, but not a whip for self-flagellation. Too many people are dissuaded from proposing or given altogether too much stress about this format. We are more concerned with trying to understand your ideas and proposal interests. Whatever format this takes, of whatever length, in order to help us get to know your work and how we might organize it for the program is what we ask for as a SIG.

Then take your file in which you have done this and upload it. You will get a confirmation message. By going back to the main submission menu you can always EDIT or DELETE any submission that is in the process of review.

TO RECAP; The last date for submissions is?

At this point, July 22nd, 2011. Email David Greenwood (greenwood@lakehead.ca) or Richard Kahn (rkahn@antioch.edu) with any questions about extensions, etc.

The average size of a submitted proposal is?

It’s not the size of your proposal that we’re concerned with, but what you do with it. Average proposals that try to go a good way to providing what AERA asks for and/or otherwise explain themselves to a peer review audience probably are about 1000 words. If you submit a page with some interesting ideas and demonstrate an engagement with topics relevant to the SIG this can work and please don’t not submit because you can’t manage more than this at this time. As we say in the Call For Papers: Submit, submit, submit!

I’m still not sure about the goals or objectives for assessing the proposals?

See the call for papers below. Our goal is to continue to build a thoughtful and convivial community broadly related to all things Illichian. If you are thoughtful and convivial and interested in social and educational alternatives per your proposal, whether or not you identify as Illichian, we will likely assess your proposal affirmatively and seek to include it. We treat our peer review in this community as a constructive chorus of voices to help our papers/presentations become stronger for the actual conference. The Program Chair and Chair do not make peer review the only arbiter of a paper’s worth and reserve the right to make executive decisions for the good of the commonwealth.

So what’s stopping me from submitting a proposal to the Ivan Illich SIG?

Nothing.

Can I see the Call for Papers one more time?

Dear Members and Potential Members of AERA’s Ivan Illich SIG:

We would very much like to see you in our SIG sessions during this next conference opportunity. Please come and be greeted, chat with our group, and teach us something altogether interesting. Let us break bread, light the candle of hope one more time, and eat, drink, and be merry together in Vancouver, 2012! As SIG officers, we pride ourselves that we have never knowingly rejected a submission to the Illich SIG yet. Let us then be your ticket to small-scale convivial alternatives within the American Educational Research Association this upcoming year. Submit, submit, submit! We seriously welcome and invite you.

This year’s all-conference theme, Hampshire College’s motto, is: “Non Satis Scire: To Know is Not Enough.” The title suggests (amongst other things) that a critical distinction be made between knowledge and wisdom, or between a Cartesian-styled fireside contemplation of the intellect and the type of holistic knowledge that can only emerge from a full body of ideas lived out humanely in community. The conference theme also implies by its Latin form an ironic conceit that while the highly “civilized” knowledge of patrician Rome (and its humanistic forebears) may no longer be enough for us themselves, that they remain relevant linguistic and cultural standards for our work all the same…even though today the professoriate is now represented by groups of people who, in either their insurgent diversity politics or relative unknowing of historical tongues, require a further translation into English at a minimum as a price to the dance.

Our Ivan Illich knew his Latin and then some. But he also knew and engaged with the wide array of lay literacies that were the themes of everyday people’s everyday lives all around the everyday world. In defense of the latter, he likely would have disdained AERA’s theme as a coded message meant mainly to encourage global academic experts to seek all manner of public and private partnerships on behalf of the unabashed sustainable development of “the people’s benefit.” Aha! The conference theme contributes to the exploration and production of an unprecedented nightmare: the totally administered society! But, again, it is not so easily a choice of either/or. Illich—a polymath’s polymath—can thus also be pictured as a kind of culture hero for “To Know is Not Enough,” at least when the latter is read as an expression of common sense.

As we call for papers and posters for our next meeting in Vancouver, 2012, then, the SIG particularly wonders about how Illich’s ideas were inspired or illuminated by past practices of common sense living and learning conceived broadly. Or, by turn, how what Illich demonstrably knew itself inspires and illuminates contemporary forms of critical autonomous inquiry and experience into the world. We also desire to challenge the professional class of intellectuals: Before you abandon knowledge as an end to transform it into a mere means for well intentioned social improvement projects (and the endless grant applications that accompany the same), what is it that you really know? Perhaps, rather than serve the emerging global ethos that academics make their knowledge useful, we should usefully inquire into the potential ethical aporias (translation from the Ancient Greek: confusions) that are created as our certified scholarly know-how functions to fashion a worldwide knowledge-industrial-complex?

Whatever your possible proposal’s interest in Illichian topics, at whatever self-professed depth of exploration, and whether it seemingly relates to this call or not, let us be the judge of its merits. We would like to serve you and your ideas with a conference seat at our ever-burgeoning symposium table! But we cannot do so unless WE HEAR FROM YOU! You know this already, but now we tell you that it is not enough to just know it but you must act on it. So, again: Submit, submit, submit!

What a funny thing for students of Illich to say…

Sincerely, your humble SIG Chair and Program Chair,

Richard & David

—

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at:

Richard Kahn (rkahn@antioch.edu) or
David Greenwood (greenwood@lakeheadu.ca)

Dear Members and Potential Members of AERA’s Ivan Illich SIG:

We would very much like to see you in our SIG sessions during this next conference opportunity. Please come and be greeted, chat with our group, and teach us something altogether interesting. Let us break bread, light the candle of hope one more time, and eat, drink, and be merry together in Vancouver, 2012! As SIG officers, we pride ourselves that we have never knowingly rejected a submission to the Illich SIG yet. Let us then be your ticket to small-scale convivial alternatives within the American Educational Research Association this upcoming year. Submit, submit, submit! We seriously welcome and invite you.

This year’s all-conference theme, Hampshire College’s motto, is: “Non Satis Scire: To Know is Not Enough.” The title suggests (amongst other things) that a critical distinction be made between knowledge and wisdom, or between a Cartesian-styled fireside contemplation of the intellect and the type of holistic knowledge that can only emerge from a full body of ideas lived out humanely in community. The conference theme also implies by its Latin form an ironic conceit that while the highly “civilized” knowledge of patrician Rome (and its humanistic forbears) may no longer be enough for us themselves, that they remain relevant linguistic and cultural standards for our work all the same…even though today the professoriate is now represented by groups of people who, in either their insurgent diversity politics or relative unknowing of historical tongues, require a further translation into English at a minimum as a price to the dance.

Our Ivan Illich knew his Latin and then some. But he also knew and engaged with the wide array of lay literacies that were the themes of everyday people’s everyday lives all around the everyday world. In defense of the latter, he likely would have disdained AERA’s theme as a coded message meant mainly to encourage global academic experts to seek all manner of public and private partnerships on behalf of the unabashed sustainable development of “the people’s benefit.” Aha! The conference theme contributes to the exploration and production of an unprecedented nightmare: the totally administered society! But, again, it is not so easily a choice of either/or. Illich—a polymath’s polymath—can thus also be pictured as a kind of culture hero for “To Know is Not Enough,” at least when the latter is read as an expression of common sense.

As we call for papers and posters for our next meeting in Vancouver, 2012, then, the SIG particularly wonders about how Illich’s ideas were inspired or illuminated by past practices of common sense living and learning conceived broadly. Or, by turn, how what Illich demonstrably knew itself inspires and illuminates contemporary forms of critical autonomous inquiry and experience into the world. We also desire to challenge the professional class of intellectuals: Before you abandon knowledge as an end to transform it into a mere means for well intentioned social improvement projects (and the endless grant applications that accompany the same), what is it that you really know? Perhaps, rather than serve the emerging global ethos that academics make their knowledge useful, we should usefully inquire into the potential ethical aporias (translation from the Ancient Greek: confusions) that are created as our certified scholarly know-how functions to fashion a worldwide knowledge-industrial-complex?

Whatever your possible proposal’s interest in Illichian topics, at whatever self-professed depth of exploration, and whether it seemingly relates to this call or not, let us be the judge of its merits. We would like to serve you and your ideas with a conference seat at our ever-burgeoning symposium table! But we cannot do so unless WE HEAR FROM YOU! You know this already, but now we tell you that it is not enough to just know it but you must act on it. So, again: Submit, submit, submit!

What a funny thing for students of Illich to say…

Sincerely, your humble SIG Chair and Program Chair,

Richard & David

—

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at:

Richard Kahn (rkahn@antioch.edu) or

David Greenwood (greenwood@lakeheadu.ca)

Please see the journal’s website for the latest issue’s articles as well as archived materials and calls for future work.

IVAN ILLICH SIG — Call for Papers / Sessions for AERA 2011, New Orleans

Inciting the Social Imagination: Education Research for the Public Good. We wonder: what would Ivan Illich think of this? Can education research ever mean the public any good? For that matter, what is the nature of educational research really, and what role does the social imagination (hello to C. Wright Mills) have in producing it or limiting its possible harm? Alternatively, who is the public–in New Orleans or elsewhere–and is this the same thing as the lay populace or other vernacular commons? In other words, maybe the “public” good is a misplaced goal, even in an age of rampant privatization? Finally, as students of Illich, we are intrigued by the entreaty to incite. An AERA conference that is provocative and stirs things up…now, that is a good one indeed! Of course, there may never have been a scholar of education more provocative and inciting than Ivan Illich. But, in this respect, his call was not necessarily “an urge to action,” but more often to thoughtful inaction. “To hell with good intentions!” he told liberal “do gooders” one and all. Thus, we wonder what AERA intends in New Orleans post-Katrina, post-BP, post-Ruby Bridges, post-Plessy, and so on.

In short, the Ivan Illich SIG particularly welcomes papers/sessions on any and all topics relating Illichian interventions to this year’s AERA theme, as well as those whose topic is otherwise particularly idiosyncratic, uniquely inspired, or otherwise previously uncategorized and which relates to either the life, times, or ideas of Ivan Illich and his many mentors and friends. Our recent meetings in Denver were a huge success, and so we especially seek submissions from previously unheard members or those whom we have yet to meet in good convivial company. Let the table settings increase as our cups runneth over. Membership in the SIG is not required for submission, though we heartily encourage membership if at all possible (a mere $5 for the honor).

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me, or the present SIG Chair, Richard Kahn (rvkahn@gmail.com).

Cheers,
David Greenwood (greenwood@wsu.edu)

Greetings colleagues!

It is with great pleasure that I announce the inaugural publication of The International Journal of Illich Studies (ISSN 1948-4666 / DOI 10.4198), which is freely available online at: http://ivan-illich.org/journal. The first issue’s Table of Contents is enclosed below for your convenience.

The International Journal of Illich Studies is a non-profit, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed publication dedicated to engaging and extending the thought and writing of Ivan Illich and his circle. We will publish twice yearly, and are currently accepting submissions for April, 2010.

Articles are invited on any subject that intersects with the wide range of IIlich’s ideas, or that represent a version of the social critique for which he became famous on matters such as modern developmentalism, industrialized “progress,” institutional bureaucratization, the heuristic role played by historical consciousness, the privatization / publicization of the lay commons, and the necessity of making moral responses in the face of our worldly crisis.

We are also interested in critical essay reviews of potentially relevant literature and media, as well as personal reflections and stories that document the living tradition associated with Illich and his circle.

Each issue will additionally bring forth rare or previously unavailable archival materials of scholarly and intellectual interest.

Please take a moment to investigate our new journal. I welcome your feedback and look forward to your possible submissions.

Clayton Pierce, Ph.D. (clayton.pierce@utah.edu)
Editor

——————————————————————————-

International Journal of Illich Studies Vol 1, No 1 (2009)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Introduction to Volume 1, Number 1

Articles

Illich’s Table

Three Invitations

Myth Maker, Story Weaver Ivan Illich: On the Rebirth of Epimetheus

Understanding the Logic of Educational Encampment: From Illich to Agamben

Critical Pedagogy Taking the Illich Turn

Book Reviews

Review of Everywhere All the Time: A New Deschooling Reader, Edited by Matt Hern

Review of The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge, Edited by Bill Vitek and Wes Jackson

Review of Place-Based Education in the Global Age: Local Diversity, Edited by David Gruenewald and Gregory Smith

Review of Escaping Education: Living as Learning in Grassroots Cultures (2nd Edition), By Madhu Suri Prakash and Gustavo Esteva

Documents, Letters, and Other Materials

FOIA Request: Declassified FBI Files of Ivan Illich – End Matter

Dear Colleagues,

This is to let our members know about some important changes established by AERA that will impact the ways all Divisions and SIGs select sessions for AERA 2010.

First, this year, sessions will be chosen by a Review Panel from amongst our SIG members.

If you are interested in volunteering to review, please go to this link to apply:

https://www.aera.net/AALogin.aspx?ReturnURL=/WS/UpdateAA.aspx

The applicants will be reviewed and panel finalized by SIG Executives by July 31. At this time, formal invitations to be a member of the Review Panel will be sent.

Please also note the following changes:

- The final date for proposals for AERA 2010 will be July15 and NOT August 1 2009
- Each proposal must have 3 reviewers who are NOT graduate students (though grad students can be an additional reviewer for each and any proposal
- Reviewing will occur in August into early September
- The number of paper sessions will be reduced from 1400 to 1000 to reduce overlap. There will be more emphasis on roundtables and poster sessions.

We strongly encourage you to volunteer for the review panel.

Thanks for you participation…

Richard Kahn

Chair, Ivan Illich SIG

In his essay, Brave New Biocracy: Health Care from Womb to Tomb, Ivan Illich wrote “To demand that our children feel well in the world which we leave them is an insult to their dignity. Then to impose on them responsibility for their own health is to add baseness to the insult.”

To what degree today might we analogously say that to demand that our children eat well in the world which we feed them is an insult to their dignity and that to then impose upon them the responsibility for doing so is an insulting crime? The word “food” itself derives etymologically from ideas of good stewardship and benign shepherding of a well-cared for herd or flock at pasture. Yet today the global idea of food creates symbolic and material scarcities, as it comes ever-more to represent a commodity driven factory-farmed form of inhumane profit and a technocratic/bureaucratic form of nutritional requirements or dietary best practices to be constantly managed and evaluated.

What are we to make then of Hospitalis — a new hospital themed restaurant in Latvia? Is this the ultimate medicalization of food? Or is it a wry comment on such medicalization?

If more postmodern pastiche than brave new world, however, how would Illich respond to this? Isn’t this little more than a different form of the image that he conjures in the final chapter of Deschooling Society of a toy in the form of a coffin that, when opened, reveals a mechanical hand that reaches up to reshut the coffin from inside?

AERA Conference 2010, Call For Papers / Panels: Ivan Illich SIG (#161)

We invite papers related to how Illich might respond to this year’s AERA theme, Understanding Complex Ecologies in a Changing World. From Illich’s perspective, the ideas of “ecosystem” and an “ecological worldview” were particularly seductive. While they appeared to represent part of a movement to protect life from industrial destructiveness, he ultimately suspected that “ecology” was part of a systematic movement to manage both nature and people’s lives in accordance with the abstractions of an administrative class of professional experts. For Illich, then, complex ecologies were undoubtedly changing the world but not necessarily for the better! Papers relevant to our SIG might then involve, though not be limited to, analyses and/or critiques of:

• The Manner in Which Curricula or School Systems Represent a Global Ecology of Education
• Education for Sustainable Development Policies and Practices as Representing or Intending Complex Ecological Outcomes
• Ecology, conceived as a Scientific Standard and New Knowledge Paradigm
• Media/Information Ecologies
• The Differences Between Political and Cultural Ecologies That Organize Nature as a Commons versus Nature as a Productive Resource
• Place-Based Forms of Education or Cultural Experience
• The Ways in Which Industrial Cultures Entail Different Life Expectations and Possibilities than Pre or Post-Industrial Cultures
• The Different Knowledge Ecologies Made Possible by Alternative Educational Institutions
• How Health, Medical, and Other Social Institutions Currently Produce an Ecology of Well-Being (or Unwell-Being)
• And, How Global Social Systems Frame, Integrate, or Otherwise Constrain Lived Experiences of the Local in Either a Contemporary or Historical Context

Please note: we are also happy to accept paper and panel proposals that extend beyond the scope of the specific call for papers issued here.

Important Announcements

* Call for Submissions will be posted on May 15, 2009
* Online Submission System will Open June 1, 2009
* Paper & Session Submissions: Deadline July 15, 2009

If you have any questions about a possible proposal for the Ivan Illich SIG, please feel free to contact our SIG Chair, Richard Kahn (rvkahn@gmail.com).

Ivan Illich SIG members are encouraged to support and work with Division B, Section 4 as we attempt to build community between the SIG and Section. Our SIG call for papers will be posted shortly, in the meantime, please take notice of the following call below and forward widely to any potentially interested parties…

Division B: Curriculum Studies

Division B invites proposals on curriculum studies broadly defined. Curriculum scholarship includes a wide range of inquiries from all kinds of methodological and philosophical perspectives conducted by people examining theory and practice, policy and development, enactment and evaluation. While submissions have traditionally focused on formal educational institutions at all levels and in a variety of settings, we strongly encourage submissions that transgress those boundaries and are focused on curriculum found in other parts of our lives and all over the world and submissions that center work for justice.  We particularly welcome proposals relevant to this conference’s theme: Understanding Complex Ecologies in a Changing World. Both individual paper and session proposals will be reviewed anonymously, and, therefore, abstracts and summaries must not identify any participants by name.  For more information, please contact the appropriate section chair, or for general questions contact the program chairs: Therese Quinn, School of the Art institute of Chicago, tquinn@saic.edu and Erica Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University, E-Meiners@neiu.edu.

Division B, Section 4:  Ecological and Community Justice

“How do we know our place in the world?” Increasingly we live in a global age where notions of personal and collective identity are being mass produced through a hidden curriculum constituted internally and externally through forces of transnational capitalism, militarism and industrialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, speciesism, as well as other modes of oppression. We also participate in a variety of oppositional, alternative, and transformative movements such as traditional ecological knowledge, place-based education, and other means of enabling alternative social imaginaries and worldwide collectivities for planetarity. We thus invite papers that examine how groups inside and outside of educational institutions work against a complex array of threats to nature and culture and how they are producing diverse varieties of pedagogical struggle to reclaim, reinhabit, and revitalize the commons. We are interested in interdisciplinary perspectives that inform the possibility of achieving epistemological shifts in how we think about identity, community, and culture in relation to our places in the world and our ethical and political orientations to sustainability and social justice.

Section Co-Chairs:

Dolores Calderon (dolores.calderon@utah.edu),
Richard Kahn (richard.kahn@und.edu),
Marcia McKenzie (marcia.mckenzie@usask.ca)

Important Announcements

* Call for Submissions will be posted on May 15, 2009
* Online Submission System will Open June 1, 2009
* Paper & Session Submissions: Deadline July 15, 2009

In case anyone is interested, Ivan’s book ‘The Church, Change, and Development,’ from the 1960s, has been scanned and made available as a PDF, gratis. Here:

http://douloschristou.com/illich

And here, in a related blog, one can download a talk recently given recently by John McKnight, all about Ivan’s life and work:

http://erb.kingdomnow.org/?p=272

John W. Verity