The Cultural Production of Educational Utility in Pere Village, Papua New Guinea

Demerath, Peter

doi:10.1086/447553

Cited by 51 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Questions about the value of education become particularly salient where the link between education and employment is not dependable (Demerath, 1999). Teachers and parents thus commonly describe children and educated youth as a 'problem' based on their inability to gain desirable employment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjects of Development: Teachers, Parents and Youth Negotiating Education in Rural North India

Morarji¹

2014

Eur J Dev Res

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This article examines negotiations of school education in a mountainous rural region of North India. I show how such negotiations are a part of broader cultural politics of development differentiated by class, generation and gender. In doing so, I address the utility and limitations of governmentality as a framework to understand how education and development shape young people's relationships to changing terms of social reproduction. My analysis draws on ethnographic studies of the micro-politics of development and education to highlight how they work through both disciplinary and governmental forms of power to re-entrench existing inequalities and boundaries, yet also involve negotiations and contradictory experiences by teachers, parents and youth. I argue that such experiences and articulations on the part of 'subjects' of development signal the limits of governmental power, and counter notions of inevitable outcomes and choices for the futures of rural youth and their communities.Cet article s'intéresse aux négociations relatives à l'enseignement scolaire dans une région rurale et montagneuse du nord de l'Inde. Je montre que ces négociations s'inscrivent dans une politique culturelle plus générale de développement variant en fonction de la catégorie sociale, de la génération et du sexe. Ce faisant, je traite de la question de l'utilité et des limites de la gouvernementalité en tant que cadre pour comprendre en quoi l'éducation et le développement influencent le rapport des jeunes aux changements dans la reproduction sociale. Mon analyse s'appuie sur des études ethnographiques sur la micro-politique du développement et de l'éducation pour montrer comment, à travers des formes de pouvoir à la fois disciplinaires et gouvernementales, ils renforcent les inégalités et les cloisonnements existants, mais mettent pourtant en jeu des négociations et des expériences contradictoires d'enseignants, de parents et de jeunes. Je soutiens que les expériences et voix des «sujets» du développement servent à signaler les limites du pouvoir gouvernemental et à contrecarrer l'idée d'issue inévitable et la notion de choix incontournables pour l'avenir de la jeunesse et des communautés rurales.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjects of Development: Teachers, Parents and Youth Negotiating Education in Rural North India

Morarji¹

2014

Eur J Dev Res

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“…Second, our study suggests that the educational strategies of formerly disadvantaged social groups in South Asia may not follow a simple line of increasing investment over time, but be subject instead to reassessment and reversal as the expected gains from formal education fail to materialize. Evidence from other areas of the global South (see, for example, Demerath, 1999;Oni, 1988) suggests that rural people may rapidly withdraw from investing in formal schooling when educated young men fail to obtain secure jobs. By contrast, in his observations on educational strategies in France in the 1960s, Bourdieu argued that the working classes, formerly excluded from school education, continue to imbue educational qualifications with 'false value' even after these credentials cease to provide leverage in employment markets: 'Relegated agents collaborate in their own relegation by overestimating the studies on which they embark, overvaluing their qualifications, and banking on possible futures which do not really exist for them' (Bourdieu, 1984: 155).…”

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confidence: 99%

Degrees without Freedom: The Impact of Formal Education on Dalit Young Men in North India

Jeffrey

Jeffery

2004

Development and Change

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This article considers the capacity of formal education to undermine established processes of caste and class reproduction in an area of north India, with particular reference to the views and strategies of educated Dalit young men. It draws on quantitative and qualitative research conducted by the authors in a village in Bijnor district, western Uttar Pradesh (UP). We discuss how educated Dalit young men perceive education, how they seek to use educational credentials to obtain ‘respectable’ jobs, and how they react when this strategy fails. Increased formal education has given Dalit young men a sense of dignity and confidence at the village level. However, these men are increasingly unable to convert this ‘cultural capital’ into secure employment. This has created a reproductive crisis which is manifest in an emerging culture of masculine Dalit resentment. In response to this culture, Dalit parents are beginning to withdraw from investing money in young mens’ higher secondary and tertiary‐level education. Without a substantial redistribution in material assets within society, development initiatives focused on formal education are likely to be only partially successful in raising the social standing and economic position of subordinate groups.

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“…Adding to the wider literature on young people marginalized by processes of regional and global economic restructuring (Demerath, 1999(Demerath, , 2000Jeffrey et al, 2004;Levinson, 1999;Oni, 1988), this paper has aimed to show how certain students' aspirations to study and acquire PR status in Australia are a reaction to their felt exclusion from the trajectories promising success and respect in Indian's rapidly growing economy through embracing migration.…”

Section: As Prof Joseph Explained 'Nobody Knows What He's Doing Thermentioning

confidence: 99%

Escaping India’s culture of education: Migration desires among aspiring middle-class young men

Sancho

2017

Ethnography

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Escaping India's culture of education: Migration desires among aspiring middle-class young menThis paper discusses the relationship between student migration and processes of class formation in the southern Indian state of Kerala, with a particular focus on a group of young men from middle-class backgrounds who desire to migrate to Australia as students. It brings back to life data gathered between 2009 and 2010, the heyday of student migration from India to Australia. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a recruitment agency that specializes in sending students to Australia, the article is primarily aimed at deepening our understanding of the motives of young men for seeking to migrate as overseas students within the context of their middle-class lives in India.Current research on Indian overseas student migration to Australia has rightly shown that there is an intricate relation between class formation and migration processes (see, e.g., Baas, 2010b). Yet most of this work has tended to focus on the experiences of students already abroad. Research on the link between the formulation of migration-decisions and class dynamics from the perspective of the sending side that sheds light on how young people's decisions to migrate are produced in complex ways, in relation to individual/familial strategies of mobility and ideas of self-realisation, exploration and development, has been slow to emerge. Osella and Gardner (2003: vi) describe as a 'northern bias' still shaping much research on migration. This refers to the preferential focus on the 'receiving places', the English-speaking north in particular, where diasporic communities and This gap arguably reflects what

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The Cultural Production of Educational Utility in Pere Village, Papua New Guinea

Cited by 51 publications

References 2 publications

Subjects of Development: Teachers, Parents and Youth Negotiating Education in Rural North India

Subjects of Development: Teachers, Parents and Youth Negotiating Education in Rural North India

Degrees without Freedom: The Impact of Formal Education on Dalit Young Men in North India

Escaping India’s culture of education: Migration desires among aspiring middle-class young men

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