Excluded Identities and Structural Violence

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: December 24, 1999
Faculty on the Site.

Theoretical and empirical analysis of sources of exluded identities within mature institutions, with a focus on understanding the importance of the exclusion and the opportunities for institutional deterrence of such exclusion. The issue was highlighted by the eruption of violence at Columbine. But adults preceded the children in such explosions of anger and frustration. We document the phenomenon in a traditional institution of higher education. This study focuses on both the professional identities within the academy, and the student identities as affected by the overall climate of the institution.

• Habermas: an account of the dilemma and hope for a solution

  Dear Habermas is founded on the principles of legitimacy and hope that Habermas espouses. He suggests that we must return to rational discourse through our system of law in order to achieve some ultimate form of peaceful co-existence.

  • rivalry over resources amongst special interest groups
  • need to overcome local in favor of more cosmopolitan overview: globalization (can no longer ignore whole populations)
  • ethics derived from legitimacy: the system of law
  • resolution of tension (enlightenment) or tolerance of tension (multiple perspectives)
  • restoration of some form of public discourse on these issues

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• Foucault: a concern for power relationships as definitive of all interaction

• Freire: an education of the oppressed account

• Alfie Kohn: a concern for the structural violence to intrinsic motivation

• Hockenberry's codes: a personal account of structural violence

  • Using personal experience to extrapolate beyond what is statistically justified
  • Confirming the validity of personal experience within given statistical limits
  • Excluded groups' confirmation of exclusion by not divulging their codes of belonging
  • Understanding the refusal to divulge as a structurally violent response to the structurally violent exclusion by the privileged group

• Covaleskie: the subtleties of disciplinary as opposed to sovereign power

Cases in which faculty from "teaching" institutions are excluded and in which professional associations could make a difference.

• We Come to Talk, But You Talk to Each Other, Section Rooms Are Empty

  Professional associations vary markedly in their receptivity to newcomers. Cliques form. Everyone is intently engaged in catch up conversations. So those who are new, or shy, or not part of the right school crowd, simply are left with no entree to opening a dialog.

  • Fact pattern:

    Story of Toronto meetings in 1999: Every morning there were sessions. We needed to be there. But then we missed the business meetings. Why must all these simultaneous events be conducted with no access to the Internet, where we might be able to arrange a chance to meet and talk to at least some of the people whose works we use, and to whom we have something to say. So often the personal meetings are cocktail conversation. That left us no place to hold genuine academic discussions. Our professional meeting time is precious. We need to recognize the new potentials for making communication across disciplines and departments more effective.

    It was an important field trip. My students feasted from my learning there for the rest of the Fall semester. But I wanted to cry over the missed opportunities. We are still relying on individuals to cover the meetins with an intensity that exhausts, to know the "right contacts" and how to get to them, to be welcomed when the "right contacts" are made. Many, if not most of us, lack the resources of those unstated assumptions. We have limited energy, limited contacts. That is why we need a professional organization. To facilitate, and to include. ASC has done a good job for our students and for some of us. But there needs to be greater facilitation with an understanding of the faculty of non-elite institutions.

  • Preliminary analysis:

    Many variables were involved. Timing, networks, both local and extralocal (Turks' theory on centrality of ties to local and extralocal sources), constraints at home base, students' needs, research needs.

    There have been many and profound changes in the academy. Both long tenured full professors, we have had to adapt to many profound changes in the academy. Teaching loads are heavier, research grants are more ritualistically controlled both locally and extralocally, student needs have changed, with a wider range of abilities than ever before, institutional missions have changed, both formally and informally, constraints of budget and an aging tenured faculty are real and upon us, and our own needs to develop a late-life script for the research that inspired many of us are crying for a discourse table at which our younger administrators will willingly sit.

  • Tentative conclusions:

    We need new patterns of communication. That means we will have to look closely at the role of communication in our professional lives.

    • ASC's e-mail a professional was a wonderful idea.

      But even my best students, given the level of technical equipment on my campus, mean that only the lucky few are given adequate education under the tutelage of the institution to make this new form of distance learning practical, both techcnologically, and through their training in critical thinking.

    • Familiarity hard to come by. Margo's experience.

    • Need for a virtual community to attract retention contacts. Those who just turned in exercises pro forma did not become part of the community. New patterns needed.

    • Contact in real time important.

    • Play important.

    All these are new approaches to inclusion

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