Policy and Citizenship Lecture 2: 3/10 Education and training in stateless societies
The point of this session (lecture + seminar) is to get you thinking about the state
(related to the academic/ Aristotelean sense of politics mentioned last week) by
looking at a society where there is no state. It might also get you thinking about other
things we take for granted, like schooling. What happens if there’s no school or
college or uni – how does anyone learn anything? See reading on Kyrgyz nomads.
This is how people have lived for the majority of history/ since human emergence as a
species over 1 million years ago. States, let alone schools, only in last c.10,000+ years
– re. ‘civilisation’ = city (eg. Greek city states). Elementary schools attended by mass
of population only in the last 200 years and in some countries only in last generation
and still a world development goal to have all children in primary, let alone secondary,
schooling. So where did the state (and state schools – since no country has so far
managed to provide universal schooling privately independent of the state) come from?
Iroquois/ Mohican example for the Constitution of the United States of America in
The League of the Iroquois described by Lewis Henry Morgan 1877 -> Engels The
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) a Just So story/ ‘grand
narrative’ bringing all these things together in a complete theory of everything –
modern as opposed to postmodern (as Victorians generally, eg. Morgan’s Ancient
Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through
Barbarism to Civilisation. Or, even better book – The Golden Bough by Frazer:
progress from magic to religion to science.)
Don’t want to spend much time on Marx and Engels because two lines on the state as
compared with another German, Max Weber, mentioned last week and this week
introducing Durkheim (among the Great White Sociologists) but Engels particularly
interesting on women and why men and not women emerge as rulers of the state and
the dominant gender in society generally = ‘patriarchy’ – problems with and solutions,
eg. Valerie Solonas’s 1968 SCUM Manifesto. Engels influenced by Bachoffen The
Mothers from European archaeology (for a modern version see Elaine Morgan
Descent of Woman from Darwin’s Descent of Man): matriarchal mother worship and
mythology, eg. Greek potters and the myth of Pandora; the fact of female longevity
(women are the stronger sex) and that slightly more males born than females (though
no one knows why); Greek legends of Amazons but no actual surviving example of a
society where women the dominant gender, although dominant individuals eg.
Boedecia, Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth, Catherine the Great, Mrs. Ghandhi, Thatcher,
Angela Merkel, the new President of Brazil etc, and many societies where women
play important roles; sometimes after they are no longer fertile when they become
‘honorary men’, eg. as traders in West Africa, and can marry more than one husband
(polyandry as opposed to more usual polygamy), also evidence that matriliny (descent
and inheritance from the mother, eg in Jewish religion) tends to come before patriliny
(as Roman law of inheritance from the father) – logical reason for that people were
ignorant about the male role in conception, eg. in Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in
Samoa and as Australian aborigines who name themselves after their totem, eg.
‘parrot people’ etc. Be that as it may, according to Engels what he called ‘the world
historical overthrow of the female sex’ occurred due to pressure of population and
development of technology, especially for war: what was at first a temporary
expedient i.e. to bring together the Six Nations (or tribes) of the Iroquois (French for
‘people of the long house’) under a ‘Commander in Chief’ who becomes permanent
with emergence of a ruling hereditary class of men /‘a body of armed men’ (essence
of a state for Marx, similar to Weber’s ‘monopoly of violence’ – mentioned last
week). The ruling class/ caste at first related to the Chief/King/God/Priest – united in
one person, eg. Egyptian Pharoah, before increasing division of labour, exacting
tribute and taking pick of young girls (ie. controlling women and reproduction, a way
of limiting population by marrying them off to old men for Australian Aborigenes).
Marx and Engels also saw same process in Ancient European history, eg Roman
Republic overthrown by Caesar/ Kaiser/ King/ Emperor who also tended to make
himself into God. This relates to the other way a state can emerge by conquest rather
than internally, as Roman Empire -> imperialism.
The state therefore has a dual nature as far as citizens concerned. It is both necessary
and oppressive. You need to show this in your first assignment.
Schools/ academies (like Plato’s ‘groves’) emerge as specialist education for the
minority ruling class of slave owners who run the state – Aristotle’s ‘knowledge
necessary to rule’. Association of democracy with the leisure provided by slavery as
in USA Washington and Jefferson were slave owners. (Unlike in UK due to 1772
judgement – see Staying Power.) Oscar Wilde’s solution in The Soul of Man Under
Socialism. But this continues, eg. John Locke as gentleman’s tutor in 1700s until mass
systems of schooling in the modern period (as above) ie. a division of knowledge –
vocational:academic/ training:education as well as The Division of Labour in Society
Emile Durkheim (1893), Professor of Sociology and Education, one of whose
followers, Pierre Bourdieu, the most famous sociologist of education of the last
century, saw the origins of education in tribal initiation ceremonies with quote from
Mary Douglas at beginning of his book on French Students The Inheritors (first pub
1964, trans 1979 Chicago Uni Press): ‘The son of the chief if invariably judged to
have had the best visions’. In other words, the education system creates the ‘socially
arbitrary’ (but actually ‘historically contingent’) differences it then claims to find in
individuals and on the basis of which it judges them as ‘failures’ or ‘successes’. Eg.
Fagin’s Pickpockets’ School in Oliver Twist. Or in prisons today as ‘schools of crime’.
Ie. learning is not always a good thing!
Before division by class, first division of knowledge and labour by age and gender: eg.
age-grading (eg Aboriginal ‘mysteries’), along with gender and before class/caste,
ethnicity/ nationality and other status and power divisions. Marked by Rites de
Passage (Van Gennep 1906) where everybody makes transition through the life cycle
(repeated every generation) together, including possibly group marriage. Relics of
such rites in traditional HE with phases of liminality ordeals/ examinations (eg.AngloSaxon riddles) before reintegration as new person/ status, eg Shetland islanders with
(married) and without (bachelors ie. available) beards and moustaches (engaged) –
like rings and in religious and other ceremonies. Typically there are 3 stages to any
rite of passage/ transition: separation – liminality – reintegration.
Like Marx and Weber, Durkheim was concerned with transition (in historical not
personal sense) from peasant/feudal/rural society in Europe to industrial/ urban
society (ie. C19th Industrial Revolution next week) which Durkheim described as
movement from mechanical to organic society. To simplify his ideas, he saw this
increasing The Division of Labour in Society as potentially dangerous creating the
anomie (individual aloneness) which he saw reflected in his study of Suicide (1897),
incidentally the first work of sociology to use large scale statistics (from coroners’
death certificates from all over France to show suicide was more common in
industrialised and more Protestant North compared with rural and more Catholic
South). To counter this atomised society and preserve the virtues of idealised rural
communities where everyone knew and supported everyone else, Durkheim thought it
important that everyone in modern society share the same ideas/‘collective
representations’ or they would all go off and do their own thing and society fall apart.
Since religion no longer performed this role in a secular (although nominally Catholic)
country like France, a state school system for all citizens of the Republic should do
this instead. This replaces religion with education and puts the teacher in place of the
priest. (Why religion not allowed in state schools in France and USA but in UK statefunded ‘Faith Schools’; we will come back to this re. citizenship/ multiculturalism etc.)
To compare a modern ‘organic’ industrial society with a pre-modern rural
‘mechanical’ one discuss reading in seminar groups.
Next week, the English state.
Seminar Questions: What are the divisions of labour and knowledge among the
Kyrgyz?
How much specialisation (of knowledge and labour) is there? What are the specialised
roles in the society? How do people learn the specialised tasks and how are they
chosen for them/ to what extent do they ‘chose’ them – with reference to what the
author translates as ‘talent’ as compared with other roles that are assigned, eg. due to
age and/or gender? What are the specialised roles for women as opposed to men?
What is the role of old people in Kyrgyz society?
What does Kyrgyz culture and history consist of? How do people preserve it without
writing it down? (Re. Great Chief Seattle: ‘If the People learn to read they will lose
their memory’ which is what Socrates said also but Plato wrote it down.)
How do the Kyrgyz learn practical skills? (Is there any sort of apprenticeship?)
What is their religion?
How did they govern themselves? (Who was their leader?)
What occasions were carpets traditionally made for? How is carpet making changed
by making carpets for sale, either to the state (under Soviet rule) and/or on the market
now?
What happened to the Kyrgyz under the Soviet state and how do you gather that
things have changed since? (Who owned the land, the animals, other possessions,
including money?)
Has what Durkheim would call anomie (anarchic disconnected individualism)
increased amongst the Kyrgyz and would you see this as fitting his idea of a historical
transition from mechanical to organic society?
What do you think the impact of formal education, ie. schools, has been in Kyrgyzia?
How much of the traditional way of life can the Kyrgyz maintain in the modern world?
Compare this with other so-called ‘primitive’ or tribal people, or just people who live
in towns as compared to in the country. What are advantages and disadvantages (its
limitations – what Marx called ‘the idiocy of rural life’) of the two kinds of life
(organic or mechanical)?
Can the virtues of mechanical solidarity be preserved by education in an increasing
anomic organic society?
What else competes with education to share ‘collective representations’ among people
in society? Ie. if schools took over from religion/ priests what could take over from
schools/ teachers?
What are today’s ‘collective representations’ (common ideas that are shared by
everybody – is there a common notion of citizenship for instance? – which was why
Durkheim thought an agreed centralised National Curriculum was important for all
schools in France)?
What does the state mean to you today (local, national, international)? Can you get
outside the state (civil society)? Think about your first assignment.
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