Session Information
00 SES 09.3 Keynote, Moralities and Mobilities: Sociological Perspectives on Contemporary Challenges to European Egalitarian Values in Education
Keynote Speaker
The Keynote will be streamed to room B026
Contribution
In What Use is Sociology? Bauman (2014) argues that the discipline is fundamentally moral, political and ethical. As ethical practice, it articulates, preaches, and promotes ‘rules of moral conduct’, ‘preparing the soil in which moral awareness may grow’. It does so by providing an ‘account of the epoch’ that allows individuals to connect and interpret their lives to the era in which they live. As such, sociological studies need to engage with biographies and individual everyday lives, with structural processes and with political power relations in what are multi-vocal, multi-centred societies. Fundamental to the promotion of such a moral research agenda is the provision of a separate alternative legitimation to that of ‘institutionalised politics and the creation of a morality where the key issue is that of ‘responsibility towards the Other’.
The ‘age of migration’ in which we now live, calls for research that addresses, critiques, retrieves and promotes moralities appropriate for mobile social relations in global society. It is vital to explore the ethical dimensions of educational institutions and policies when they relate to the migration of people, ideas and resources. I use two examples of contemporary globally-viral moral issues to which I believe sociological research in education can make a real contribution.
European egalitarian values today and increasingly in the future are challenged internally by immigration and externally by critics concerned about the hegemonic imposition of European values (whether neo-liberal or human rights) to ‘Other’ cultures. I argue that sociological research needs to engage more forcefully and explicitly with the immoralities associated with internal European immigration policies and the effects on our educational systems - the contradictory role they have in relation to exclusionary and inclusionary policies. At the same time, critical sociological studies of education are needed to reconsider the complex often subordinating role that Eurocentric egalitarian educational values play in relation to other non-European cultures (such as indigenous gender orders), whether within our societies or whether exported through global development goals. These movements of people and of ideas are inevitably linked.
As this highly mobile epoch unfolds, sociological research into the ‘morality of social justice’ (for example, concepts such as compassion and respect) can help shape the educational values which the next generation needs in order to avoid ever greater internal national and global conflict. The greater the individualization of society associated with neo-liberalism, the more essential are forms of social solidarity and a global conscience collective, helping young people finding common cause with Others. In the future, sociological research on education (despite its policy marginalization) is not only relevant but essential so long as it has the courage ‘to put loyality to human values’ (Bauman 2014) above all else.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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