New Writing: Gender, Education, Social Science


Just published, three new papers.

My re-thinking of hegemony and masculinity in the light of colonial and postcolonial relations.  It’s part of an impressive issue of a French journal about hegemony in gender relations, you’ll find it at: http://gss.revues.org/3363
Reference: Connell, Raewyn. 2015. Hégémonie, masculinité, colonialité. Genre, sexualité & société [En ligne], 13 | printemps 2015, mis en ligne le 01 juin 2015. URL : http://gss.revues.org/3429 ; DOI : 10.4000/gss.3429.
Abstract. This paper raises questions about hegemony in gender relations, in the light of the global sociology of knowledge, postcolonial studies of masculinities, and politics of gender reform.  It argues for an approach that highlights global power relations, the colonial disruptions of gender orders, and the varying hegemonic projects for masculinity formation that attempt to stabilize gender relations in always-uncertain circumstances.
In the same vein, the paper on southern perspectives in feminist theory, which was behind the Feminist Theory annual lecture in London which you will find on video here
Reference: Connell, Raewyn. 2015. Meeting at the edge of fear: theory on a world scale. Feminist Theory, vol. 16 no. 1, 49-66.
Abstract: Rich and sophisticated analyses of gender have been produced around the postcolonial world. But the theory in this work gets little recognition in the current global economy of knowledge. Feminist theory needs an understanding of the coloniality of gender, seeing the gender dynamic in imperialism and the significance of global processes for the meaning of gender itself. The agendas of feminist theory are being re-shaped on issues that include constitutive violence, power and the state, identity, methodology, and the land. An alternative structure of knowledge is emerging that can re-shape the global terrain of feminist theory and its connections with practice.
The title comes from this poem by Saleha Obeid Ghabesh:
            The evening will be under my disposal
            and the meeting at the edge of fear is mine
            I am another Buthayna
            perfume springs from me
            as well as love and diaspora

Next, my rethinking of gender and social justice has just been released in Portuguese in a social science journal from Brasil.  You can access it online: http://cascavel.ufsm.br/revistas/ojs-2.2.2/index.php/seculoxxi/article/view/17033
Reference:  Connell, Raewyn. 2014. Questões de gênero e justiça social. Século XXI, Revista de Ciéncias Sociais, vol. 4 no. 2, 11-48.
Abstract: Questions of identity, and deconstructionist methods, have characterised gender theory in the global North in recent decades.  But the key issues about gender in the global South are social issues, which require a different approach to understanding gender.  Social theories of gender and justice now recognize the multiple dimensions of gender issues, such as organization, violence, recognition and problems of embodiment.  We move beyond dichotomies to questions of change, multiplicity (e.g. of masculinities) and the different gender orders across the world.  As the pioneering work of Heleieth Saffioti showed, gender analysis deals with large-scale structures.  The dominant economy of knowledge privileges theory from the global North.  But increasingly we recognize the coloniality of gender and the gender analysis that come from the post-colonial majority world.  This includes different approaches to identity, to power and the state, and new thematics such as the relation between gender and the land.  In developing the gender perspectives that are needed for the pursuit of gender on a world scale, South/South relations will be vital.

Good colleagues at the University of Sydney have produced a book of provocative essays on contemporary issues in education.  I have a piece in it on the market agenda in education and how it can be opposed:
Reference: Connell, Raewyn. 2015.  Markets all around: defending education in a neoliberal time.  Pp. 181-197 in Helen Proctor, Patrick Brownlee and Peter Freebody, ed., Controversies in Education: Orthodoxy and Heresy in Policy and Practice. Cham: Springer.
Opening:  In this chapter I will not be proposing a heresy about education.  My idea of education is so orthodox it is almost boring.  But I will be proposing a heresy about education policy – a heresy in defence of education.  Australian education has been reshaped, over the last generation, by a cascade of policy and organizational changes.  They have been introduced separately and by different governments, but have all, with hardly any exceptions, increased the grip of market logic on schools, universities, and technical education...



Finally, two pieces on the making of social science in Australia.  The first is based on my keynote address at the 50th anniversary conference of TASA, the Australian Sociological Association.
Reference: Connell, Raewyn. 2015. Setting sail: the making of sociology in Australia, 1955-75. Journal of Sociology, vol. 51 no. 2, 354-369.  Published online May 2014, DOI: 1177/1440783314532174, jos.sageput.com.
Abstract.  This paper examines the knowledge-creation project called Sociology that was launched in Australia between 1955 and 1975.  An energetic founding group created a network of departments, assembled a workforce, and were rewarded with rapid growth.  Their intellectual project emphasised data collection, scientificity and social reform, closely modelled on sociology in the global metropole.  Underneath was a mostly functionalist concept of ‘a society’ and a strong conviction that Australian Society was a case of modernity.  They succeeded in creating an empiricist science, which played a role in Australian reformism in the 1970s and 80s, and reached a high point in the work of Jean Martin. However many younger sociologists were dissatisfied with the founders’ science, and launched other knowledge projects in the following decades.  The founders’ strategy for making sociology in Australia led to a deep contradiction about Australian coloniality, unresolved in contemporary sociology.
And with perfect timing, this was published not long before the release of the biography of Professor Jean Martin, Australian pioneer of sociology, multiculturalism and women’s presence in higher education.  I was invited to write the Foreword to the book and was very pleased to do so.
Peter Beilharz, Trevor Hogan and Sheila Shaver, The Martin Presence: Jean Martin and the Making of the Social Sciences in Australia, Sydney, NewSouth Publishing, 2015.

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