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At the same time, it is clear that authentic education has much to work with in Marcella’s own culturally-based theorizing. She has already hit upon, based on her own experiences, some of the ways in which families, race, class,
and schools function politically in society. On this basis, school could certainly build her overt understanding and theorizing of history, society, politics, and institutions. That school has failed to do this for Marcella and continues
to as she now enters high school is, of course, ironically part of the indictment inherent in the theory of the reproduction of cultural capital.
4.8 Cultural models as “recognition work”
Our last example of cultural models at work is meant to bring out the ways in which cultural models flow from our experiences and social positions in the world. Cultural models are not just based on our experiences in the world,
they “project” onto that world, from where we “stand’’ where we are socially positioned, certain viewpoints about what is right and wrong, and what can or cannot be done to solve problems in the world.
Consider the two texts printed below we will consider these texts again in Chapter 7. One is from an interview with a female university professor in a post-industrial East coast city in the United States, a city with typical urban
poverty, gang, and racial problems. The other text is from an interview with a female school teacher in the same city. It so happens that the university professor teaches in a college in the city where Marcella lives and the school
teacher teaches in the middle school which Marcella attended.
These two women are talking about whether there are racial problems in their city and how they think about them. I cite only a small bit of each interview. I will attempt below to contextualize these bits in terms of the larger
interviews from which they were taken street and neighborhood names below are pseudonyms.
University professor:
Stanza 1
Interviewer: . . . How, do you see racism happening, in society, let’s put it that way?
1Um, well, I could answer on, on a variety of different levels. [I: uh huh] 2Um, at the most macro level, um, I think that there’s um, um,
3I don’t want to say this in a way that sounds like a conspiracy, [I: mm hm] 4But I think um, that um, basically that the lives of people of color are are, are irrelevant to the society anymore. [I:
mm hm]
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Stanza 2
Stanza 3
Middle school teacher:
Stanza 1
Stanza 2
5Um, they’re not needed for the economy because we have the third world to run away into for cheap labor, [I: uh huh]
6Um, and I think that, that the leadership, this country really doesn’t care if they shoot each other off in in the ghettos, [I: uh huh]
7Um, and, and so they let drugs into the ghettos, and they, um, they, let people shoot themselves, shoot each other, and they don’t have, a police force that is really gonna, um, work, and they cut the programs that might alleviate
some of the problems, and, um.
8 So I think there’s, that it’s manifested at, at the most, structural level as, um, you know, a real hatred, of, of, of uh people of color. [I: uh huh]
9 And, and it’s shown, in, the cutbacks and so forth 10And, um, I think that um, that, it’s, it’s reflected in, in the fact that, they’re, they’re viewed as, expendable, [I:
mm hm] by our leadership, 11Um, and so I think, I see cutbacks in programs as just a, an example of, of a broader, [I: mm hm] you know,
sense, that, that, from the point of view of, of those in power, people of color are expendable, [I: uh huh] and, and irrelevant. Um, –
Interviewer: . . . or maybe you in like leading the class would you ever tie that [i.e. social issues, JPG] into like present power relations or just individual experiences of racism in their lives or something like that.
1 Uh so [what] you you need to do about job hunting, you need to look the part. [I:mm hm] 2 You don’t see anybody at any nice store dressed in jeans [I: uh huh],
3 They’re not gonna have a job if they do that. [I: uh huh] 4 And a lot of the kids question that.
5uh I talk about housing, 6We talk about the [????] we talk about a lot of the low income things,
7I said “Hey wait a minute,” 8I said, “Do you think the city’s gonna take care of an area that you don’t take care of yourself?” [I: uh huh]
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Stanza 3
Stanza 4
Stanza 5
Stanza 6
Stanza 7
Stanza 8
Stanza 9
9 I said, “How [many of] you [have] been up Danbury Street?”
10 They raise their hands, 11 I say “How about Washington Ave,”
12 That’s where those gigantic houses are,
13 I said, “How many pieces of furniture are sitting in the front yard?’’ [I:mm hm] “Well, none.” 14 I said “How much trash is lying around?” “None.”
15 I said, “How many houses are spray painted? 16 How many of them have kicked in, you know have broken down cars in front of them? [I: uh huh]”
17 I said, “They take care of their area,” 18 I said,“I’m not saying you kids do this,”
19 I said,“Look at Grand Avenue Valley, they burn the dumpsters. 20 That’s your housing area [I: uh huh]
21 Do you know how fast that can jump into someone’s apartment or whatever else?”
22I bring up the uh, they have in the paper, probably about two years ago, the uh police were being sued – uh the fire department were being sued by a family that had a girl with asthma,
23And the kids had lit the dumpster outside of their bedroom window 24And she had a severe asthma attack
25And the fire department would not come in
26So they couldn’t get the police escort. 27The fire department used to only go in with a police escortbecause the people living there would throw bottles
and cans at them. [I: uh huh]
28And you know, again, the whole class would [???]. 29I don’t understand this.
30Here is someone who’s coming in here – 31Maybe the police I could understand because you feel like you’re getting harassed by the police,
32What has the fire department done to you that you’re gonna throw bottles, rocks, cans at them [I: uh huh] and
stop them from putting out a fire [I: uh huh] that could burn down your whole house. [I: uh huh]
33 Why do you burn the grass? [I: mm hm] 34 There’s grass here that every single summer as soon as it turns green they burn
35 And as soon as it grows back up they burn again. 36 Why do you do that?
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Various cultural models are readily apparent in these remarks. The professor applies a widespread academic cultural model in terms of which actual behavior “the appearances” follow from larger, deeper, more general, underlying,
and hidden causes Bechtel and Richardson 1993. The teacher applies a widespread cultural model in terms of which people’s problems flow from their own behaviors as individuals, and it is through “correct” behavior and
“proper” appearances that one achieves “success.’’ It is also typical, at least of the city in which these women live, that the university academic codes questions about “racism” as about “people of color” and this often means, for
academics, a focus on African-Americans and the teacher codes them as about class many of the people she is referring to are white, though she never names class directly.
We can also look at these texts as attempts to get oneself and others to recognize and relate people and things like poverty, crime, fear, and segregated neighborhoods in a certain way. This amounts to taking people and things in
the world and organizing them into a specific pattern that we then, take to be “out there.” In reality, this pattern is a joint product of our experience in the world and the discursive work we do in communicating in specific settings.
Throughout her interview – and this is clearly a co-construction with the interviewer – the professor almost always wants and is sustained by the interviewer in this effort to recognize actors, events, activities, and practices in terms
of economic and nation-state level politics. She wants to recognize “racial problems” as transcending her city and as a global affair, despite the fact that she could well point to many specific instances in her city where racial
problems very much have their own “spin”.
Though the teacher is interviewed by the same interviewer, the interviewer and teacher co-construct a very different, much more local sort of recognition. In fact, in much other work in this city, and with teachers in other places, I
have found that researchers and teachers alike always assume that teachers have only a “local voice” on such issues. Rarely are teachers invited into – or do they have access to – a “national voice.” Even when invited to speak at
national conferences, teachers usually speak as representatives of their local areas and their own experiences, while researchers speak as transcending locality and their own experiences.
In addition to her local focus, which is a co-construction with the interviewer, the teacher wants more specifically to recognize individual actors who, in fact, do not really belong to a “class” or “race,” but whose individual behaviors
ensure that they are poor and looked down upon by others, others who have no real obligation to help them, since they need to help themselves. I have found that many teachers in the city in which this teacher lives fiercely resist
putting people, especially children, into
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“groups,” and want to see them as individual actors who, if they are children, need nurturing, and if they are adults, need to take responsibility for themselves. Such teachers, in fact, actively work to “undo” the attempts of university
academics to place people in social and cultural categories, especially children.
Thus, the university professor trades on cultural models that distance her from local circumstances, and, thus, too, from teachers like the one above, and students like Marcella, a student “of color,” who live in her city. On the other
hand, the teacher trades on cultural models that place her closer to local affairs, institutions, and students like Marcella. Note that neither one of these perspectives is inherently “right.” In fact, in respect to a student like
Marcella the professor’s perspective is liable to be paralyzing and the teacher’s will only encourage the tendency we have already seen that she has to ‘‘blame the victims,” including herself.
4.9 Cultural models as tools of inquiry
