Book chapter

I've just agreed to write a book chapter for a new book that is being edited by Michael Grenfell.

The title of the chapter is 'Subjectivity and Objectivity'.

The book is titled, "Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts", published by Acumen, and it is part of a series. Other books previously published are on Deleuze, and Foucault. It is due August 2007, and I imagine that it will be published in 2008.

This is a brief summary of the chapter: This chapter will explain the background to Bourdieu’s epistemology. It will trace the main tenets of his approach through the founding fathers of sociology – Comte, Durkheim, Marx and Weber. It will also show how much of his early work was developed in response to the duality of subjectivism and objectivism. Most noticeably, it will show how Bourdieu reacted against the fashionable philosophical and anthropological thinking of the day; for example, as personified by Lévi-Strauss and Sartre. It will also show how he was influenced by philosophers of the history of science: Bachelard, Canguilhem.

Part of the rationale of the book is explained as follows: The main thrust of each chapter will be to set out each concept in a clear and precise manner, as well as explaining its philosophical provenance. Each chapter will be written so as to be of immediate use to the student with little or no previous knowledge of Bourdieu. At the same time, each chapter will also develop dimension of each concept to make the coverage of interest to the more experienced reader on Bourdieu. There will be exemplification from Bourdieu’s own work as well as other applications. Essentially, a ‘non critical’ approach will be adopted in order to present a full account of each concept. There will also be cross referencing across chapters to show how the various concepts build on and complement each other. Finally, however, each chapter will consider a select number of issues, questions and problems in using the concepts. There will also be discussion of the way the concept might be developed beyond Bourdieu’s own use of them.

Bright idea

I had a bright idea the other day.

I thought, "Why not structure the curriculum so that you have one syllabus for each level which includes all the key learning areas (Australia) or essential learning areas (New Zealand)?"

As I am looking at lecturing jobs in Australia, I am becoming familiar with the curricula of Queensland and Victoria.

Well, there must be a whole lot of other bright people in Victoria as guess what they have? Yes, they also have formatted the syllabi in key learning areas too.

So, I better look for another bright idea.

As Chris Bigum once said to me, it's about who publishes it first, not about who has the idea first. He speaks from personal experience!

What about suggesting topics that could integrate some or many of the key learning areas together that cover one level? Must do some more research . . . .

Solutions to schooling?

“One is to give up on public schools, accept their neoliberal function of delivering ‘the basics’ accountably, and work to provide portfolio-forming activities and experiences, as well as political-critical capacities, for disadvantaged children outside of school and at school at the margins of the neoliberal curriculum. The other is to fight the neoliberal agenda and make schools sites for creativity, deep thinking, and the formation of whole people: sites in which all children can gain portfolios suitable for success, but success defined in multiple ways, and gain the ability to critique and transform social formations in the service of creating better worlds for all” (James Paul Gee, 2004, p. 110).