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)

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

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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

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

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?

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).

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

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

But, despite all this, WE MUST INCREASE MEMBERSHIP immediately in order to ensure the SIG’s good standing with AERA.

So I’m wondering if you would please help support our new initiatives by taking a moment RIGHT AWAY to become a dues paying member?

It is only $6 for faculty and $4 for students. SIG membership provides a number of opportunities. For starters, you can have your bio and picture listed here on the SIG’s website, promote your recent work, and find like-minded community for projects. Further, SIG membership provides an opportunity to be an editorial board member of the new International Journal of Illich Studies that is being established.

PLEASE, in these dark times, we need more than ever to hear Illich’s critical perspectives on society and schooling and moral perspectives on friendship and love…

I reach out to you in common cause to help preserve a space within AERA where we can share serious ideas about the preservation of the commons.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. For your convenience I am enclosing instructions on how to sign up for the SIG on the AERA website below.

Join the Ivan Illich SIG (#161)

Our dues are a mere $6 per year, or $4 per year for students. Please take a moment to join our SIG and support the initiative.

In order to join any AERA SIG, please log on to the membership section of AERA by clicking on “Member Login” in the upper left corner of the this page. On the Members Welcome page, under “Purchases”, click on “Special Interest Groups”. Follow the directions to register for SIG membership. To learn about AERA Membership, please visit the AERA Membership page. Current members may also download a SIG Membership Form.

Much thanks,

Richard Kahn
Chair, Ivan Illich SIG

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Beyond Absurdistan: What Ivan Illich Knew (and the Rest of Us Overlooked)

Schedule Information:

Scheduled Time: Tue, Apr 14 – 8:15am – 10:15am
Building/Room: San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina / Irvine

Session Participants:

Discussant: David A. Greenwood (Washington State University)

Alternatives in Education or Alternatives to Education?
- Madhu Suri Prakash (The Pennsylvania State University)
- Dana L. Stuchul (The Pennsylvania State University)

Displaced Lives: Finding a Curriculum of Place in a Globalizing World
- Kristin D. Jones (University of Illinois – Chicago)

Ivan Illich: A Voice in the Dark and a Voice of Reason
- Lynda George (Central Connecticut State University)

Revisiting Ivan Illich on Gender: Food and Feminism
- Marguerite K Rivage-Seul (Berea College)
- Madhu Suri Prakash (The Pennsylvania State University)

The Educator’s Secret and Modern Stupidity
- Daniel G. Grego (TransCenter for Youth, Inc.)

Chair: Dana L. Stuchul (The Pennsylvania State University)
Chair: Madhu Suri Prakash (The Pennsylvania State University)

Abstract:

Exploring issues that expose the absurdities of contemporary existence, this paper session will provide insight (through 5 distinct paper contributions) into paths leading beyond globalized, highly technologized, abstract, and de-natured Absurdistan. Using the broad framework of Illich’s theoretical contributions, each paper will contribute to the larger conversation of how we live, learn, eat, suffer, and die more humanely.

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New Directions in Illichian Scholarship and Pedagogy

Schedule Information:

Scheduled Time: Tue, Apr 14 – 6:15pm – 7:45pm
Building/Room: San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina / Newport Beach

Note: This will be combined with the SIG’s business meeting. There will be food and refreshments.

Session Participants:

Chair: Douglas Kellner (University of California – Los Angeles)

Illich’s Live Presence Through Second Life: A Reflective Update on the Legacy of Conviviality
- Yolanda Gayol (Fielding Graduate University)

Under/Over-development as Institutional Intentionality: IIlich Against Educational Policy
- Dolores Calderon (University of Utah)
- Clayton Pierce (University of Utah)

From Freire to Illich: For an Epimethean Critical Pedagogy
- Richard Kahn (University of North Dakota)

The School and the Camp: Thinking Through Ivan Illich’s Radical Critique of Schooling with Giorgio Agamben
- Tyson E. Lewis (Montclair State University) ***Paper will be on hand only***

Abstract:

This symposium panel will contain four presentations that seek to provide new theoretical and pedagogical directions for Ivan Illich’s work. The first will argue that critical pedagogy has been overly defined by the spirit of Freirian Prometheanism and now requires the greater development of what Illich called an “Epimethean” attitude. A second presentation will relate Illich’s statements on urban education to the contemporary political theory of Giorgio Agamben. A third will examine Illich’s views on institutional technocracy in light of both the neo-Sputnik science policy in education and the colonialist nature of school textbooks. A final presentation will outline an online pedagogical experiment conducted in the virtual world Second Life that was modeled after the seminars Illich conducted in Cuernavaca, Mexico. As detailed in The Critical Pedagogy Reader (Darder, et. al., 2003, Illich has to be considered a foundational figure for the field of critical pedagogy. Thus, the idea of this symposium is to demonstrate the wide availability of Illich’s work to present work in critical pedagogy, postcolonial and critical race theory and critical theory. Further, by framing this panel as a symposium, we hope to generate dialogue between the panelists and the audience, to illicit other ongoing projects, and to deliberate on scholarly and pedagogical paths that may hold openings for the creative application of Illich’s ideas.