Reading :: Envisioning Education in a Post-Work Leisure-Based Society

 Envisioning Education in a Post-Work Leisure-Based Society: A Dialogical Approach 

By Eugene Matusov

I am not really that interested in a post-work leisure-based society — which seems theoretically possible but unlikely — but I am very interested in the book’s subtitle: “A dialogical approach.” Matusov has spent a lot of time across many publications thinking about dialogism and what a dialogical approach to pedagogy looks like. And I’ve been interested in his thoughts as they pertain to learning, especially in a situation I’ve been studying for a while: Startups. So it was with this focus that I picked up this 2020 book.

I quite liked it. Even though pedagogy is not my central interest (I don’t do pedagogy research), I have taught graduate instructors about pedagogy and have of course gone through pedagogy classes myself. So when Matusov starts out with examples from his own pedagogy classes, they sound familiar. Specifically, in Chapter 1, he discusses how he asked his students to remember “good” and “bad” teachers and identify their characteristics. Then he gave them problematic scenarios with students and asked them how they would react. To his surprise, they consistently imitated the “bad” teachers, being rigid with rules and assignments even when students found them less than meaningful. After puzzling over this apparent discontinuity, Matusov realized that it concealed actual continuity: as students and again as teachers, these undergraduates were seeking to survive, to stay employed, to do what they needed to do in order to maintain their positions (p.3). On both sides, as student and as teacher, school was work and those who toil in it had to survive.

But, he argues, genuine education can be a form of leisure, i.e., “education that is not driven by survival and necessities,” and education-as-leisure is indeed “a fundamental existential need of humanity” (p.8). “Leisure allows people to transcend their nature, their given culture, their given society, their given psychology, their given social roles and positions, and their d-needs” (p.8). He sees an Age of Leisure coming in which “genuine leisure will dominate over survival, labor, and work” and in which “education will be primarily intrinsic: education for education’s sake, where its process will take priority over its outcome” (p.9). Matusov argues that education is currently in an alienation crisis, with alienation not being driven by capitalism but by the nature of work itself (he sees capitalism as flawed, but still the best system on offer) (p.11). He critiques “the Marxist notions of equality and equal participation in leisure and economy in favor of diversity and uniqueness” (p.9). Based on a Bakhtinian framework of ethical dialogism, he argues that “leisurely self-transcendence is not only a personal, but a societal, ethical, and deeply dialogical process,” one that “involves not only recognition and evaluation of the person’s authorship but also questioning of this authorship by others and the self in a special process of the person’s taking responsibility for the authorship” (p.12). 

Matusov envisions a future Universal Basic Income (UBI) that will address physiological, safety, relational, and esteem needs (p.13). The future he envisions is different from the Marxist vision in which everyone works some limited number of hours, a solution he finds to be “undesirable and leading to totalitarianism” (p.13). Rather, he thinks the future is capitalist (p.14). He bases these conjectures on the following assumptions:

• The economy and production will keep growing
• The need for human labor will continue to lessen
• More income will lead people to be less likely to abandon or compromise their leisure (p.14)

In such a society, “the major problem of governance … is a tension between leisure and civic duties of engaging in collective decision-making and democratic politics” (p.14). He proposes that in a post-work leisure-based society, governance should shift from a representative democracy to “dialogically deliberative democracy” (p.14). 

With this striking vision in place, Matusov transitions to the other chapters. 

Chapter 2, “Necessities-Based Society and Technological Education,” argues that since the emergence of Homo Sapiens, we have been in a necessities-based society, and thus instrumentality and technology have been pushed forward (p.21). This leads us to instrumentalist pedagogy, specifically pedagogy in which teachers lead students to preset curricular endpoints (p.38). But, Matusov argues, such preset endpoints are problematic. Drawing on Bakhtin, he argues that

• “Meaning exists in a relationship between a person asking an interesting question, who is genuinely searching for an answer, and another person replying, who is taking that question seriously” (p.38). This doesn’t obtain when one of those people is a teacher who is intending to lead the student to an answer (p.38).
• ”Meaning-making by students cannot be exhausted either in their depth or their diversity of connections” — a teacher cannot anticipate all possible questions (p.39).
• ”Meaning lives in a dialogue of the one asking and the one replying and not in some self-contained statements” (p.39). Truths are not self-contained, even the truth that 2+2=4. For instance, “If we add two drops of water to two drops of water, we will get only one drop of water and not 4” (p.39).
• “Solving any problem or question is working with/transforming this problem until the puzzlement it creates dissolves”; “Working with the question or problem is the core of the meaning-making process” (p.40). 

Thus, he says, “any attempt by the teacher to make the students arrive at preset curricular endpoint leads to meaninglessness and shallow understanding by the students” (p.40). 

In Chapter 3, “Inherent Alienation of Labor and Work,” Matusov declares, “I will evaluate the value of labor: Whether it fits human nature or not” (p.47). Contra Engels, who claimed that “labour created man himself,” Matusov has “concluded that labor/work — both creative and routinized — is antithetical to human nature” and that “any labor inherently creates alienation” (pp.47-48). He adds: “The core of human alienation is labor itself and not capitalism or exploitation, although they contribute to it as well” (p.48, his emphasis). 

Matusov draws on Arendt to define labor as meeting the biological necessities for self-preservation, while work is “an activity of durable tool making” with a clear beginning and end (p.55). “In contrast to labor, work is based on the violation of nature, in which the worker interrupts nature in order to obtain and shape raw materials for people’s needs and wants” (p.55). Thinking of ourselves as workers is a form of instrumentalism (p.56). Arendt, he points out, “concluded that labor/work is not the true human nature (and, thus, the definition of humans) but rather its oppression” (p.59). Matusov adds, “Capitalism is just a particular way of organizing labor and work. Capitalism may contribute additional forms of alienation, but alienation itself is not rooted in capitalism per se. Arguably, based on the historical preference of human migration, this particular way of organization set by capitalism is the most preferable one, compared to socialism, feudalism, and traditional societies” (p.60). 

He further argues that “agentic behavior is more common in work-based societies than in labor-based communities,” loosely equating work-based with literate societies and labor-based with traditional communities (p.65). Quoting Bakhtin, he argues that “On the positive side of the human dialogue under capitalism, people are often thrown into contact by the forces of the marketplace breaking up the previously existing isolation of the labor-based worlds” (p.66). “In contrast to labor-based societies, capitalism also promotes the social testing of ideas, although limited to the outcome of the market forces” (p.66, citing Groys). 

In Chapter 4, “Changes in the Economy: Technological Unemployment and Creative Authorial Labor,” Matusov considers the effects of automatization on the economy. He points out that Marx expected that “technological unemployment” would be addressed “through a reduction of working hours in Communism” (p.76). But Matusov asks, “Why would everyone work when the necessity of work shrinks?” (p.97). Marxists envisioned a New Human whose social consciousness would be sensitive to societal needs; Marx’s follower Gorz doubts this and suggests forced labor (p.97). Matusov instead argues that full employment will disappear. And this means more leisure.

In Chapter 5, “Genuine Leisure: ‘Eat to Live, Don’t Live to Eat’,” Matusov considers: “What would happen if people did not need to labor and work for their survival and well-being?” (p.109). He provides a set of speculations that I won’t rehash here.

In Chapter 6, “Necessities in a Leisure-Based Society: Economy, Politics, and Social Obligations,” Matusov says that “genuine leisure cannot escape necessity” (p.155), considering areas of necessity: “economy, politics, and social obligations” (p.156). He proposes this principle for the economy: “Maximizing economic means (i.e., basic income) for self-realization for each and every one that the society can afford” (p.166). 

He also discusses deliberation in such a society, arguing that “every agreement is an artifact of ignoring differences and mis-/non-understanding”; “Authentic dialogue cannot fully guide decision-making because authentic dialogue does not have a beginning or end, is unfinalizable, involves temporary suspension of responsibility (i.e., freedom of speech, freedom of ideas), and resists urgencies” (p.174). That contrasts with “decision-making about action,” which “is urgent, limited in time, saturated with ethic responsibility … and finalized” (p.174). He adds, “Dialogue and action have dramatically different realms or, as Bakhtin might say, they have qualitatively different chromosomes” (p.175). 

In Chapter 7, “The Cultural Value of Leisure: Contra and Pro,” Matusov considers critiques of leisure. I’ll skip this chapter.

Chapter 8, “Education in a Leisure-Based Society,” argues that in a leisure-based society, “non-instrumental, ontological, intrinsic education will take priority over instrumental education” (p.225). I’ll skip to this interesting quote: “Of course, the main difference between a New Leisure Person and the New Soviet Man (as it was in the Soviet evtopia) is that becoming a New Leisure Person will be a choice of every person in a leisure-based society in contrast to the societal obligation as it was in the Soviet Union” (p.243). 

In Chapter 9, “Students and Teachers as Authors in a Bakhtinian Critical Dialogue,” Matusov returns to the question: does 2+2 always equal 4? Discussing a case in which he threw a “good” student into a panic by suggesting that it doesn’t, Matusov considers the question of genuine understanding. “Genuine understanding is bottomless (Bakhtin, 1986). It belongs to all of its participants” (p.263). “Meaning is situated in the ephemeral and unique dialogic relationship between an asked question of a person’s genuine interest and a serious response to it” (p.276). 

Finally, we get to Chapter 10: “Conclusion: Organization of Education in a Post-work Leisure-Based Society.” Here, Matusov attempts to imagine organization of education in such a society. 

Overall, I found the book to be immensely interesting. This is despite the fact that I don’t see a post-work society emerging anytime soon, if at all. Yes, we’re being told that automation can take over more and more jobs, and that UBI is a real possibility. But counterbalance those changes against the enormous changes we are seeing in the global economy — and the global ecology. Still, as a meditation on work and labor, and our relationship to it, and its relationship to education, this book was very useful to me. If you’re similarly interested in education and dialogism, definitely pick it up. 

Reading :: Handbook of Narrative Inquiry

 Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Methodology

Edited by D. Jean Clandinin

As mentioned in a previous review, I have been looking for good sources for better understanding narrative inquiry. This behemoth of a book (24 chapters, 693pp) delivers, although as is often true with such handbooks, it covers such a broad swathe that it’s hard to get one’s arms around it. 

Partly because it is so broad, and partly because I have discovered that I’m not that interested in narrative inquiry, I’ll just provide a broad overview.

In Part I: Situating Narrative Inquiry, the contributors offer a historical overview and a map of the “landscape.”

Part II: Starting with Telling Stories offers six chapters, covering archival work, narrative interviewing, autobiography, conversation, and life stories.

Part III: Starting with Living Stories includes four chapters, one of which was written by Boje, with whom I have already become familiar. 

Part IV: Narrative Inquiry in the Professions offers four chapters, focusing on teaching, organizations, anthropology, and psychotherapy.

Part V: Complexities in Narrative Inquiry examines narratives of young children, cross-cultural narratives, and indigenous narratives.

Part VI: Narrating Persisting Issues in Narrative Inquiry covers ethics in NI and writing up narrative research.

Part VII: Future Possibilities ends with two chapters: One on NI’s future influence on policy/practice and one conversation with prominent NI researchers.

A few chapters in, it struck me that NI researchers primarily work in the mode of storytelling, so everyone was going to reach into the same bag of tricks. This turned out to be largely true. This volume is 693pp of story after story, not always told that engagingly, with each story taking the foreground and methodological details fading into the background. What I learned from this was that although I always thought I liked a good story as much as anyone, that wasn’t strictly true; I found myself skimming stories and looking for methodological details that weren’t always present. 

So should you read this book? If you are planning to use NI, definitely — it provides a good comprehensive view of NI, although this edition (2006) is probably a bit dated. If you are a qualitative researcher thinking about using NI, this book is still a good resource, but you might not read it cover to cover. 

Reading :: Engaging in Narrative Inquiry, 2ed

Engaging in Narrative Inquiry, 2ed

by D. Jean Clandinin

I’ve been interested in narrative inquiry since reading Boje’s book on narrative methods for organizational and communication research, and I dipped my toe into it when analyzing some of our data on small town Texas. But when I taught a recent survey on research methods, I decided that I needed to learn more about it. So I picked up this book by well-known narrative inquiry researcher D. Jean Clandinin. It’s a methods book, suitable for advanced undergraduates, and it covers the basics of narrative research well.

Clandinin introduces this approach well, grounding it in Dewey, Bateson, and Bruner (p.4), defining it, and outlining its epistemological and ontological commitments. She sees narrative inquiry as both a methodology and a phenomenon (p.6), both designed and lived out (p.19), and reviews its practice through several examples from doctoral research. 

To be honest, though, I came away from this book less excited about narrative inquiry than I had been before reading it. It’s understandable that a heavily qualitative and interpretive research approach would question concepts such as rigor. But, as presented, narrative inquiry is framed more as a way for the researcher to experience something for themselves and to convey their own experience to others. Consequently, later chapters focus more on the creative styles that narrative researchers can use. In contrast, I was looking more for a structured approach that could make narrative inquiry, if not more rigorous, at least more regularized and followable. But this is an issue related to what I want to do with my research, not with the book itself, which is clear and well described. If you’re interested in narrative inquiry, definitely pick it up. 

Reading :: Remembering as a Cultural Process

 Remembering as a Cultural Process

by Brady Wagoner, Ignacio Brescó, and Sarah H. Awad 

This book, like some of the others I have reviewed lately, is a little far afield from my usual interests. And like some of those other books, I read it on the plane, so I didn’t take notes. Overall, I found it interesting, but not closely connected to my research. 

Wagoner et al. approach memory from the standpoint of psychology. Here’s how the authors open the book:

The guiding question of this book is how to think about and study remembering in terms of process, flow, interaction, emergence, as well as culture. This approach requires turning away from psychology’s standard procedures for investigating memory through the analysis of static outcomes of some task, where memories are quantified and compared as finished products. There is certainly value in these procedures and the knowledge they have given us, but at the same time they have missed the fundamental energies, movements, emotions, and transformations that construct these memories. These are forces that cannot be tied down as discrete variables or studied simply as frozen snapshots. In fact, we argue that memory can only ever artificially be considered a finished product in that we are continuously revising, adapting, and developing memories in light of new experiences, changing environments, life challenges, and future goals. Thus, in the place of the language“how variable x influences memory,” this book will focus on how memories emerge within changing patterns of relationships between past, present, and future, as well as people, objects, history, and culture. (p. xv)

I read a lot of cultural psychology, and such complaints about quantification are common, common enough that I sometimes wonder why these authors don’t just talk to each other rather than worrying about those who quantify. I’m sure that the answer has a lot to do with tenure and promotion committees. In any case, the authors examine remembering as a cultural process through their case studies (in Egypt, Germany, Spain, the UK, and the USA), which I believe were conducted separately before being combined into this single book. Their work is collectively based on Lev Vygotsky and Frederic Bartlett.

As someone who was peripherally interested in cultural memory, I thought these case studies were interesting and did a good job of developing insights, but not riveting. The book is actually quite short, with references ending on p.89, followed by appendices and index. 

Should you read this? If you’re interested in a psychological take on cultural memory, I definitely think it’s worth a look. It’s a fast and clear read with compelling cases. Personally, I don’t yet see a strong connection to my research, but I’m glad I can turn to it if I ever do. 

Reading :: Dialogical Approaches and Tensions in Learning and Development

 Dialogical Approaches and Tensions in Learning and Development: At the Frontiers of the Mind 

Edited by Nathalie Muller Mirza and Marcelo Dos Santos Mamed 

I picked up this book because I’ve been very interested in dialogical approaches lately. This book was helpful for overviewing dialogic thought in education, psychology, and affiliated disciplines. At the same time, I read it on the plane and didn’t take notes — so this review will be brief, more of a pointer toward what I should reread. 

So what should I reread? Especially useful to me was the editors’ introduction, in which they overview different traditions of dialogue, grounding the collection in the tradition of Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and Mead. I really appreciated the level of detail here as well as the forecasting for the rest of the book.

The rest of the book covers topics such as dialogism in psychology; in the making of social theories; in makerspaces; and in literacy. The only contributor I recognized was Roger Saljo, whose work on units of analysis has been useful to me. In his contribution, “Sign-Making, Inscriptions and Access to Epistemic Practices: Development in a Designed World,” he considers sign-making as a sociocultural activity that we involve across all of our practices. He takes a Vygotskian perspective here, thinking through Vygotsky’s contributions before moving on to more contemporary perspectives.

Overall, I found the book interesting, although a little far from my field in places. Still, I plan to revisit it. If you’re interested in dialogical approaches, certainly pick it up!

Reading :: Data Rules

 Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy

By Cristina Alaimo, Jannis Kallinikos

This book is open access, so you can just click through and download the PDF. I recommend that you do so! Although I’ll write just a short review today, I found the book well worth reading and I intend to revisit it as I think through data.

Specifically, the authors are interested in how data have become central to contemporary life, economy, and society. Drawing on social cognition and communication, they “examine the social and economic transformations associated with the unprecedented diffusion and increasing socioeconomic relevance of data” (p.1). They argue that through the digital revolution, life has undergone “datafication” (p.1) — something that spoke loudly to me as I thought about how I obsess over the sleep scores and training readiness scores that my Garmin watch serves up to me. Such data are not just technical, they perform “semiotic, epistemic, and communication functions” in economy and society (p.5). And thus “data making and data use constitute essential areas of social inquiry, distinct from contemporary data science and the framing of data in predominantly technical terms” (p.9). In particular, studying transformations from this perspective can give us new insights into organizations:

These transformations signal a change of paradigmatic import associated with the decentering of organizations. The notion of firms (and formal organizations more broadly) as centered systems makes sense when these systems can keep an external world at arm’s length and obtain a relative operational independence from it. This partition into an internal set of contingencies that could be paid heed to and managed on a continuous basis and an external world that is attended to only periodically is increasingly undone by the machinery of digital data, their dispersion, heterogeneity, uncertain origin, and steady reproduction and renewal/ (p.12)

The authors tackle this argument in two parts. In “Foundations,” they explore the epistemic foundations of data (revisiting Schmant-Besserat’s work with the origins of writing) and examining the digital data revolution, the data life cycle, and surveillance. In “Social and economic transformations,” they examine how digital data work to decenter organizations, pushing us instead toward platforms and ecosystems. Along the way, they consider how digital platforms impact the market economy. They conclude by persuasively calling for a social science of data.

If you’re interested in data, markets, organizations, or social science more broadly, definitely pick it up. I intend to revisit it as I continue thinking about all of these.