K LUCKETT AFRICANUS 40 1 2010

Journal of Development StudiesVol 40 No 1 2010ISSN 0304-615XCONTENTS

Editorial

Development Studies: A Cinderella of academic disciplines in South Africa?Frik de Beer 3

ARTICLES

Knowledge claims and codes of legitimation: Implications for curriculum recontextualisation in South African higher education

Kathy Luckett 6

Some reflections on the Africanisation of higher education curricula: A South African case study

Paul Prinsloo 21

Inequality: Why is it back on the development agenda?Duncan Green 34

‘Feeling it on the skin ...’: Reflections on issues-based teaching and learning in development and human rights education

Bertrand Borg, Toni Pyke and Colm Regan 45

Women and HIV and AIDS: A development education perspective Valerie Duffy 55

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Notes for contributors

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© Unisa Press Africanus 40 (1) 2010ISSN: 0304-615X pp 3-5

EDITORIAL

Is Development Studies the Cinderella of academic disciplines at South African universities? Writing in 1990, Cross, De Beer, Stewart and Cornwell (1990: 50) asserted that the study of development is by its nature, a multi-disciplinary field and added, almost despairingly that ‘Regrettably, this kind of field is not seen as fitting into the accepted structure of university departments in South Africa’. Almost a decade later, in an overview of Development Studies in the UK, Grindle and Hilderbrand (1999: 7) note an accumulation of knowledge in disciplinary cells ‘… A tendency for knowledge to be balkanized within disciplinary languages appears to be increasing’. Yet, in spite of the balkanisation they found strong evidence that in the UK the development studies sector ‘… has successfully established cross-disciplinary institutions, conducted multidisciplinary research, and encouraged dialogue among scholars of different disciplines’ (Grindle and Hilderbrand 1999: 11).

The past two decades saw a change in the position of Development Studies in South Africa – the subject has since been introduces mostly at postgraduate level at universities where it was formerly not taught. Academics in this field appear to come from a variety of disciplines: politics, sociology, anthropology and economics, to name but a few. Its popularity in the not-so-new South Africa is on the increase. The Masters degree by coursework have been introduced at various institutions (this has since been discontinued at University of South Africa [UNISA], owing to subsidy limitations). A few departments that offer Development Studies at undergraduate level experienced a large increase in registrations. During the past five years enrolment figures at UNISA have increased dramatically-- for example, from 4500 in 2005 to 8000 in 2007, and to 10 000 in 2009. Currently 50 students have enrolled for Masters degrees while 20 is registered for Doctoral degrees in the Department o Development Studies.

With growing interest and registration for Development Studies one needs to review the methods of teaching in the field of Development Studies. In 1990 Cross et al argued that the teaching of development ‘… is crucial to the chances for future development in this country’ and that it is also an important component of future political equilibrium (1990: 47). They proposed a focus on development teaching on inter alia, political and economic rights, the debate between

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‘experts’ and democratic forums, the role of markets, state facilitation of the planning of the economy, the role of popular initiatives in development and the place of ecology in development. Remnants of these ideas can be found in the current teaching on globalisation, governance, gender, globalisation and other theoretical debates and human security issues taught at UNISA and other tertiary institutions.

Yet, ‘ … if the South African state and people are to obtain a grounding in development, then the mobilisation of ideas through development teaching is in need of urgent review”, Cross et al asserted (1990: 52).

Today we may not need to review development teaching in South Africa-- but as academics, we need to take stock and engage in a debate on what we do, how we do it and whether we can improve. In this debate we can at least engage in what Michael Edwards (2004: 741) poses in somewhat prosaic language as ‘the loving but forceful encounters between equals who journey together towards the land of the true and the beautiful’. And further: ‘Make development studies a roadmap for those journeys, take risks but travel safely’. In this issue of Africanus we tentatively embark on this journey with contributions to the debate on development and education.

The transformation of higher education institutions has been on the agenda of the post-1994 government. One of the issues that regularly feature on this agenda is the question of Africanisation. In her article on Knowledge claims and codes of legitimation: Implications for curriculum recontextualisation in South African higher education, Kathy Luckett sets the scene for debating Africanisation. She argues in favour of a nuanced approach towards Africanisation in which verticality may be realised. She argues for an inclusive approach that takes the debate ‘beyond the crude dichotomies established by essentialist versus relativist views on culture and identity’. Instead, she suggests that South African students be offered ‘subject positions that transcend and subsume the old Western or African identities’.

Critical graduates suited to find solutions to the unique challenges on the African continent – this is what Paul Prinsloo requires in his article in which he investigates: ‘Some reflections on the Africanisation of higher education curricula: a South African case study’. Using the context of UNISA Prinsloo interrogates ‘Africanisation as legitimate counter-narrative and the quest for an African identity and culture’. He also proposes a rationale for a critical African scholarship and provides some pointers for the development of African curricula.

Duncan Green, author of From poverty to power: How active citizens and effective states can change the world (Oxford: Oxfam 2008) asks why inequality is back on the development agenda. He asserts that the concept has been out of fashion with rich countries for many years and that it barely receives mention in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In his summary of current events he looks at the impact and causes of rising inequality within and between states; identifies issues of power and rights; explores stories in reducing inequality in Latin America and concludes ‘by setting out an agenda for addressing inequality at national and international levels’.

The final two contributions to this edition explore creative ways of teaching development. In the first article Bertrand Borg, Toni Pyke and Colm Regan reflects on issues-based teaching and learning in development and human rights education. Their reflection departs from the premise that all people are somehow interconnected and that we live in a rapidly evolving world-- in an ‘internationalised neighbourhood’. Yet we still find it difficult to engage in issues ‘over there’. Against this background,

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how do we deal with addressing and educating around issues of human rights and development and how do these link in locally? They explore literature and finally outline art and identity as two creative methodologies. however, the article ends with a warning: ‘the methodology is not for the faint hearted, and that the learning and teaching is a two-way, constantly evolving process’.

Finally, in a case study from Zambia that deals with Aids and development education Valerie Duffy highlights the extend of women’s vulnerability in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic-- the biological, educational, economic, socio-cultural and legal contexts, which reinforce the marginalisation and exclusion of women. She also explores, in three case studies on interactive methodologies gender issues, in partnership with local non-governmental organisations..

We trust that the next issue will create a platform for those involved in teaching Development Studies at South African universities to contribute and share ideas. Hopefully, this will also inspire the Development Studies academic fraternity to get organised-- to establish a forum or subject association where we can regularly meet to exchange ideas, improve collegiality – and form a platform from where the journey in the interest of the subject can be promoted.

Frik de BeerEditor

REFERENCESCross, C., De Beer, F.C., Stewart, P. and Cornwell, L. 1990. The fall of centralism? Popular mobilisation for post-

Apartheid development. Indicator South Africa, 7(3). P47 --52.Edwards, M. 2002. Is there a ‘future positive’ for Development Studies. Journal of International Studies, 14, p

737--741.Grindle, M.S. and Hilderbrand, M.E. 1999. The Development Studies sector in the United Kingdom – Challenges

for the new millennium. A report prepared for the Department of International Development. Cambridge: Harvard Institute for International Development.

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Knowledge claims and codes of legitimation: Implications for

curriculum recontextualisation in South African higher education

Kathy Luckett1

ABSTRACTThis article responds to calls for the recontextualisation and Africanisation of the South African higher education curriculum by drawing on the social realist tradition of the sociology of knowledge -- particularly on Maton’s (2000, 2006, 2007, 2009) ‘legitimation code theory’ – in order to assess some of the implications for curriculum change. The paper first briefly analyses the current South African context in terms of the contending demands of post-colonial and globalising imperatives. A theoretical framework for a sociology of curriculum knowledge is then set out. Examples from current South African curriculum debates are used to illustrate the different positions described by the theory. Maton’s legitimation code theory enables a more nuanced approach in which different knowledge types are seen to be more or less amenable to recontextualisation. Furthermore, the theory enables one to distinguish between different approaches to Africanisation -- showing how an exclusive Afro-centric approach is likely to limit knowledge progression (verticality), whilst an inclusive approach is more likely to realise verticality. In conclusion, the paper argues for an inclusive approach that takes the debate forward beyond the crude dichotomies established by essentialist versus relativist views on culture and identity. Instead, it is suggested that the South African higher education curriculum should offer students subject positions that transcend and subsume the old Western or African identities.

keywords: Africanisation, code theory, curriculum studies, higher education, legitima-tion, sociology of education, sociology of knowledge

1 INTRODUCTIONThis article does not address directly the questions of what, how, to whom and by whom curriculum knowledge should be taught and learnt in higher education institutions in South Africa. Instead, it introduces sociological theory that enables one to think critically about the possibilities for and constraints on recontextualising or Africanising the higher education

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(HE) curriculum. In order to do this I draw on recent work in the sociology of knowledge and education in the social realist tradition. Curriculum is understood as a social practice: ‘What are the structural and social conditions that underpin the construction of curriculum knowledge?’; as epistemic practice: ‘What are the epistemological and methodological constraints imposed on curriculum knowledge by the nature of the knowledge form, its object of study and the procedures used to study it?’; and finally as ontological practice: ‘What identities and forms of agency do these curriculum practices construct for students?’.

The article first briefly analyses the current South African context in which HE curricula are being recontextualised. It then introduces a theoretical framework for looking at curriculum sociologically, drawing particularly on the work of Bernstein (2000), Muller (2008), Maton (2000, 2006, 2007, and 2009) and Young (2008). The theory is illustrated by examples taken from debates about recontextualising the curriculum in South Africa. The implications of the theory for recontextualising the South African HE curriculum in the current post-colonial, globalising context are then discussed.

2 CONTEXTHigher education (HE) in Africa in the 21st century has to operate in both a post-colonial and a globalising context. On the one hand African intellectuals are calling for an end to the hegemony of Western thought and culture and for the Africanization of the higher education curriculum – or at least for greater responsiveness and relevance to African identity, culture and issues. In discussing the meaning of Africanization in current South African higher education debates, Kistner (2008) traces the genesis of the idea to Pan-African national-liberationist ideals of the 1960s. She argues that current calls for Africanization are rooted in Afrocentricism (the valorisation of all that is African), which is based on a binary code of the ‘modern West’ versus the ‘traditional African’.

So called ‘traditional African’ receives a boost with the assertion that local knowledge, val-ues and identities have been suppressed by colonialism and apartheid. They need to be freed from these shackles, it is argued, to be fully rehabilitated and recognised as aspects of ‘Af-rican epistemology’ and ‘African identity’ (Kistner, 2008, 97).

In South Africa, this vision is often fused with the post-apartheid transformation goal of achieving a more representative demographic profile on South African campuses and the assumption that this will lead to greater democracy and relevance.

Kistner (2008) suggests that recently, under the influence of modernising, neo-liberal discourses, the rhetoric of both Africanization and transformation have been linked to a commercialisation of the knowledge production process. The imperative to participate in a global economy puts pressure on governments to call for curricula that will contribute to greater economic productivity and high skills development (within a Western framework and neo-liberal macro-economic system). For example, in South Africa, the ‘Education White Paper 3: A Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education’ (1997) holds out a vision of a ‘transformed, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist system of higher education’ that will simultaneously, ‘meet through

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well-planned and co-ordinated teaching, learning and research programmes, national development needs, including the high-skilled employment needs presented by a growing economy operating in a global environment’; and ‘address the diverse problems and demands of the local, national, Southern African and African contexts’ (Department of Education, 1997, 1.14). Despite what policy documents imply, it is suggested that these two drivers of curriculum change in Africa do not necessarily work synergistically. In addition to addressing local issues and preparing students for the demands of a global economy, South African HE institutions are expected to become more effective and efficient, particularly in terms of improving graduation rates (NPHE, 2001).

Castells (2001) suggests that HE in the 21st century serves at least four (often contradictory) purposes—that is:

1. The production and application of new knowledge, (HE is now viewed as a productive force in the global information economy);

2. The training of professionals and bureaucrats;3. The selection and formation of dominant elites;4. The generation and transmission of ideology (i.e. an ideological (state) apparatus, despite

claims to be based on rationalism and humanism and thus ‘ideologically free’).

Castells notes that in developing countries, institutions of HE battle to manage these contradictory functions, particularly when they come under pressure from interventionist states to meet immediate political and social demands. As a result, particularly in post-colonial contexts, the third and fourth functions tend to be fore-grounded at the expense of the first two.

Before the question of how to respond creatively and responsibly to the curriculum development challenges of African post-colonial contexts can be answered, it is necessary to gather some theoretical tools in order to deepen the analysis.

3 A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR A SOCIOLOGY OF CURRICULUM

Given that the question of knowledge is key to curriculum theory, it is necessary to briefly revisit epistemological debates in order to understand and critique what may be regarded as a typical Western/ European position (naïve objectivism), a typical Afrocentric position (radical constructionism) and finally to propose a way forward (social realism). The description of the theoretical framework below is interspersed with examples of particular positions taken from debates about Africanising the South African HE curriculum.

From a modernist perspective, both European and African worldviews prior to the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason, were mythic and entailed a non-dualist worldview in which inner and outer truths were related-- the material world was typically viewed as a reflection of the metaphysical or spiritual. Truth was represented by mimetic or analogous metaphor and truth claims were validated by metaphysics and relationships of power rather than evidence. The power conferred by magical or sacred knowledge was usually protected by secrecy, invested in exclusive, secret societies, lineages or priesthoods. The laity was excluded from access to the means of knowledge production.


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In the West, the Enlightenment philosophers (from Locke to Kant) took the rational subject out of the world in order to observe and reflect on a separate world of empirical objects. This enabled the development of the scientific method where an unproblematic subject directly observes and represents objects in a pre-given empirical world (see Figure 1). Whilst enabling massive progress in describing, mapping and predicting the natural, material world, this monological gaze has been criticised as ‘naive objectivism’, owing to the fact that the mediating subjectivities, contexts and interests of the human observer are ignored.

When transferred to the social sciences and humanities, this epistemology results in an essentialist, context-free defence of a positivist Western canon (Maton 2009). This position is frequently critiqued by those who object to its lack of awareness of its inherent Euro-centricity,

The reason, it is suggested, that higher education institutions in our country remain largely unreconstructed is that there pervades an ingrained elitism and a dominance of Western cul-ture and intellectual hegemony. Such elitism and hegemony is alienating and in desperate need of reform. (…) We shall open up at least a possibility of Africa becoming a producer of knowledge rather than a faithful reproducer of Western forms of knowledge. (Pityana 2007, 12)

This South African Vice-Chancellor has even suggested a causal link between low graduation rates and cultural alienation,

It is not too far-fetched to suggest that the cultural alienation that many experience in higher education may be the reason behind the high drop-out and failure rates in higher education in South Africa. (Pityana 2007, 10)

In modernity, science (outer truth) has been cut off from art and morality (inner truths). This has created in Western thought, a deep fault-line between the humanities and the sciences. Muller (2008) reminds us that although the majority of the disciplines as we know them today arose only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a great divide has developed between the disciplines of the ‘inner’ and those of the ‘outer’ since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He explains

Figure 1: Naïve empiricism

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that under the influence of the Christian Church (a mythic worldview), inner discipline (as revealed by God’s word) was considered a precondition for understanding the outer disciplines (the world). However, since the Enlightenment Age, when theologians were replaced by secular humanists, the inner and the outer were no longer held together, and a rift that continues to the present day developed between the Humanities (knowledge dealing with inner subjectivities) and the Sciences (knowledge dealing objectively with the outer world).

Habermas (1971) has traced the development and domination of what he refers to as the ‘technical knowledge constitutive interest’ in Western societies. He shows how science, in the service of the will to control nature and increase productivity, has led to industrialisation and technological progress. At the same time, the technical interest has been allowed to colonise other (subjective and inter-subjective) forms of knowing that are underpinned by the ‘hermeneutic’ and ‘emancipatory’ interests. Wilber (2000) suggests that the dualism in Western thought is largely responsible for both the immoral disparities in the distribution of wealth and the destruction of the environment that plague contemporary societies.

There have been, throughout the modern age, idealist reactions against modernity’s ‘flat ontology’ that have sought to refocus attention on the subjectivities and inter-subjectivities of the knowers. Most recently, postmodern epistemologies have challenged the dominance of Western empiricism and the assumptions and ‘grand narratives’ on which it is based, asserting that there are only extrinsic or arbitrary grounds (usually a matter of social position and power) for distinguishing between experience and what is regarded as knowledge. In education, this position has been taken up by the New Sociology of Education, where, in its extreme form, all knowledge gets reduced to ‘voice discourses’; that is, knowledge is viewed as no more than a product of the power and interests of dominant groups to assert that their standpoints and experiences count as knowledge (Young, 2008) (see Figure 2). Taken to the extremes, the ‘discursive turn’ leads to the death of the object (the referent) and judgmental relativism. When knowledge gets reduced to the social and historical conditions of its production, all knowledge becomes culturally arbitrary (only ‘some people’s knowledge’) and thus equally valid. The imposition of ‘some people’s knowledge’ on others is regarded as ‘symbolic violence’. This radical constructionist position is attractive to feminist and postcolonial (e.g. Africanist) writers and activists, due to the fact that it can be used as a basis for de-legitimatising the hegemony of white, male, Western knowledge and expertise. Radical constructionism can also be used to assert the value of sub-ordinate groups’ experiences and for constructing new ‘prospective identities’, based on a narrative of becoming for a particular social category (Bernstein 2000, 76). Moore and Young (2001) explain the easy alliance between a postmodern, a radical constructionist epistemology and those concerned with social inequality:

Starting from the assumption that all knowledge is embedded in the interests of particular groups of ‘knowers’, postmodern critiques appear to provide powerful support for the cul-tural demands of subordinate groups, whether these are ethnic, gender or (although increas-ingly less frequently) class based. However, by arguing that knowledge is inseparable from how it is constructed, they cannot avoid the conclusion that all knowledge, whether based on professional expertise, research or the experience of particular groups, is of equal value. (Moore and Young 2001, 449)


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This position erroneously assume that because all people are equal (in terms of moral worth), the epistemological status their ideas and beliefs should also be regarded as equal-- in fact, epistemic privilege may even be granted to local/ indigenous knowledge and cultures (Sayer 2000). In South African curriculum debates, this postmodern position has been captured by Prinsloo:

Africanisation, from a postmodern perspective can be understood and located in a mixture of cultural, political, economic, social, ontological and epistemological initiatives to cel-ebrate the local, the particular, the distinctiveness of being African, and being in-Africa/ from-Africa. The establishment, celebration and (often) reinvention of African identities, African ways of being and ways of thinking are oppositional strategies against years of be-ing subordinated to the normativity of Western descriptions and prescriptions for ways (and classifications) of being and thinking. (Prinsloo 2008, 10)

Moore and Young (2001) critique standpoints such as these on the basis that they are unable to take us further than deconstructing dominant forms of knowledge and arguing about whose experience should inform the curriculum:

We are left with a sociology of knowers which says little about knowledge or the curriculum itself. (Moore & Young 2001, 453)

Following arguments of sociologists of education committed to social realism such as Moore and Young (2001), Moore and Maton (2001) and Young (2008), a ‘middle way’ is proposed that recognises both a social and an epistemic dimension to knowledge production. In other words, knowledge is viewed as a product of ‘both intra-discursive and referential relations’ (Sayer 2000, 33). With regard to the social relation, this position recognises that the knower’s history, culture, interests and experience inevitably enter into all forms of knowledge; and that knowledge draws on experience, but crucially, is not determined by and should not be reduced to it. This position

Figure 2: Radical constructionism

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holds that not all forms of knowledge are equal, nor are there no means of discriminating between different knowledge forms.

All knowledge has a subjective quality, which should be acknowledged reflexively. But it does not follow that this determines its truth-value or practical adequacy. (Sayer 2000, 60)

In fact, this position asserts that formal knowledge should be set apart from everyday knowledge precisely because it is different, can rise above the context of its production and is therefore more difficult to produce and learn.

With regard to the epistemic relation, Sayer (1992) points out that the nature of the object of study (the referent) also shapes and constrains what knowledge form is possible. He suggests that the relation between an object of study and a knowledge claim about it is a necessary epistemic relation (the relation between the referent and the sign is not entirely arbitrary); whilst that between the knowing subject and her knowledge claim is a contingent or arbitrary, social relation. Whilst recognising that all knowledge is socially constructed and therefore fallible, without reducing knowledge to the context of its construal, the social realist position holds that, under certain conditions, the epistemic relation can transcend the arbitrary, social relation. Historically, highly specialised knowledge has been validated by research and disciplinary communities who, through the practice of peer review, seek (but do not always succeed) to ensure that the epistemic prevails over the social relation. Thus, a social realist position holds that knowledge production (and its reproduction in education institutions) is shaped by both social and epistemic relations, and that, as a result, all knowledge is fallible, but not equally so (see Figure 3).

We now turn to a sociological conceptualisation of curriculum knowledge. Bernstein (2000) developed a concept called the ‘pedagogic device’ to describe and analyse the process whereby discourses of knowledge are translated into a curriculum and later into pedagogic communication. Provocatively, he states:

Figure 3: Social realism


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whoever appropriates the device has the power to regulate consciousness. Whoever appro-priates the device, appropriates a crucial site for symbolic control. The device itself creates an arena of struggle for those who are to appropriate it.’ (Bernstein, 2000, 38)

In post-colonial contexts, we should not be surprised at calls to decolonise the curriculum and attempts to place symbolic control in the hands of African elites:

The choice of what to teach, who to teach and how to teach and what to research has to be driven by Africans themselves, from our perspective, our vision of the future and our experi-ences … The uniqueness and originality of our identity and scholarship would determine our power, our value, our condition, our contribution and competitiveness in the global village. (Makgoba 1997, 175--176)

In conceptualising the pedagogic device, Bernstein sought to understand how society’s social structure shapes the way it distributes knowledge, and how its education system differentially specialises consciousness. The ‘pedagogic device’ operates at three distinct fields of practice, each with its own set of ‘rules’; that is, the field of production-- where new knowledge is produced and positioned; the field of recontextualisation, where knowledge from the field of production is selected and transformed into curriculum knowledge; and the field of reproduction, where actual teaching and learning takes place (with differential results). The table below summarises the structure and typologies of the pedagogic device. In this paper we are particularly concerned with the relationship between knowledge structure and curriculum and with the extent to which context gets into the recontextualising rules.

Table 1: The arena of the pedagogic device (from Maton & Muller, 2007)

Field of Practice Form of regulation

Symbolic structure

Main types Typical sites

Production distributive rules knowledge structure

hierarchical / horizontal knowledge structures

research publications, conferences, laboratories

Recontextualisation recontextualising rules

curriculum collection/ integrated codes

curriculum policy docts, textbooks

Reproduction evaluative rules pedagogy & evaluation

visible/ invisible pedagogic codes

classrooms, assessment

Bernstein observed that pedagogic discourse (the curriculum texts and teacher communication produced by the pedagogic device) has its own logic, which is different to that of the knowledge discourses produced in the field of production.

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Pedagogic discourse is constructed by a recontextualising principle which selectively ap-propriates, relocates, refocuses and relates other discourses to constitute its own order (Ber-nstein 2000, 33).

According to Bernstein, this is due to a ‘discursive gap’ that always occurs when knowledge is relocated from the field of production to the field of recontextualisation. This ‘discursive gap’ provides a space for ideology to play that is usually filled by the curriculum developer’s ideas about the purpose of education, the ideal moral and social order, and sometimes by notions of an ideal learner and of how learning occurs. Bernstein points out that, especially with regard to schooling, the state usually tries to set the ‘recontextualising rules’. These historically and culturally arbitrary ideas shape how knowledge discourses reappear in the curriculum and how pedagogic subjects (students) are constituted. As argued above, the current globalising and postcolonial context in South Africa has created the socio-political conditions for new ‘recontextualising rules’ to emerge as new elites seek to gain control of symbolic power and the pedagogic device by calling for curriculum renewal.

Late in his life, Bernstein (2000) began to work on the nature of knowledge itself. He first distinguishes between vertical and horizontal discourses-- the former describes abstract context-independent forms of scholarly ‘uncommon sense’ knowledge leading to specialised forms of consciousness, whilst the latter describes more concrete, everyday, ‘common sense’ knowledge forms, whose meaning is carried by their contexts (Maton and Muller 2007). Later, Bernstein divides vertical discourse into those knowledge forms with hierarchical knowledge structures and those with horizontal knowledge structures. Hierarchical knowledge structures have a ‘coherent, explicit and systematically principled structure’ (2000, 157), where meaning is hierarchically organised and integrative. Horizontal knowledge structures are segmentally and cumulatively organised, taking the form of a ‘series of specialised languages with specialised modes of interrogation and specialised criteria for the production and circulation of texts’ (2000, 157), such that different discourses sit alongside and compete with each other, rather than building vertically. Bernstein draws a final distinction between those knowledge structures with ‘strong grammars’ and those with ‘weak grammars’. Hierarchical knowledge structures exhibit strong grammars, whilst horizontal knowledge structures vary, with some having relatively stronger grammars and others relatively weaker grammars. For Bernstein, the ‘grammar’ of a knowledge structure is the degree to which its concepts and relations can be operationalised to provide relatively precise and consistent empirical descriptions that allow the knowledge to be tested and confirmed or disconfirmed empirically, thus contributing to the rational progression of that knowledge form. Maton and Muller (2007) suggest that knowledge structures with strong grammars advance due to the fact that their new theories integrate and subsume old theories and can be tested empirically. This is not the case with horizontal knowledge structures with weak grammars, where contestations are settled through critique and power:

In contrast, significant changes in horizontal knowledge structures are all too often ideo-logical rather than rational revolutions. Here alternative theories are in a war of hearts and minds, and choices between competing claims to insight are based more on a ‘knower code’, that is to say, on who is making knowledge claims rather than on what is being claimed and how. (Maton and Muller 2007, 27)


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Working within the social realist school, Maton (2000, 2006, 2007, and 2009); Moore and Maton (2001) and Maton and Muller (2007) have extended Bernstein’s analysis of knowledge structures to include an analysis of educational knowledge. Maton (2000) has developed ‘legitimation code theory’ for analysing the generative principles by which knowledge claims are legitimated and authorised. Similar to Sayer’s work quoted above, Maton’s analysis is based on the co-existence of two analytically distinct sets of relations that together shape education and knowledge production fields; the epistemic relation (ER) and the social relation (SR):

1. The epistemic relation that generates a knowledge structure is the relation between a knowledge claim and its object of study; (this is a non-arbitrary, necessary relation intrinsic to the knowledge itself).

2. The social relation that generates a knower structure is the relation between the knowledge claim and its subject or knower; (this is an arbitrary relation based on power relations and contextual contingencies).

Maton (2007) asserts that these two relations are always present in any knowledge claim, but the key to legitimation code theory is to identify which relation is dominant. Where the epistemic relation is dominant, the social relation is usually subordinate, giving a ‘knowledge code’ reading (ER+/ SR-). Where the social relation is dominant, the epistemic relation is usually subordinate, giving a ‘knower code’ reading (SR+/ ER-). Thus, if claims about knowledge are justified on the basis of the possession of specialised knowledge, skills and procedures, then a ‘knowledge code’ is assumed. If knowledge claims are justified on the basis of the possession of specialised dispositions, attributes and social location, then a ‘knower code’ is assumed. ‘Knowledge codes’ tend to underpin hierarchical knowledge structures with strong grammars and ‘knower codes’ tend to underpin horizontal knowledge structures with weak grammars.

Maton (2007) claims that the humanities and sciences have contrasting legitimation codes, and that these two sets of disciplines establish hierarchy (specialisation) in different ways. In the sciences, the hierarchical principle lies in its knowledge structure (ER+), while its knower structure tends to be flat and democratic (SR-). In other words, it doesn’t matter who you are in the science disciplines as long as you possess the correct knowledge and can carry out the required procedures and methods (i.e. can use the strong grammar). By way of contrast, in the humanities, the hierarchical principle lies in the knower structure (SR+), which tends to remain implicit, while its knowledge structure is less vertical and less clearly bounded, exhibiting a weak grammar (ER-). In other words, while the knowledge forms are more contested and open-ended in the humanities, who you are and the inner dispositions as well as social and cultural capital that you bring to your knowing is what counts (although this often remains implicit). When these knowledge forms get ‘recontextualised’ in particular curricula, there is likely to be more room for ‘ideology to play’ in a curriculum that draws on disciplines with knower codes (e.g. the humanities) than in a curriculum that draws on disciplines with knowledge codes (e.g. the sciences). These differences in the characteristics of knowledge forms and the constraints that these place on recontextualisation (curriculum development) need to be recognised in any debate about curriculum renewal.

Maton (2009) has usefully extended the analysis of ‘knower codes’ by proposing a cline from strong to weak ‘knower grammars’, based on the principle of the degree of openness of the

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code to potential knowers. He expands Bernstein’s notion of an ‘acquired gaze’ to differentiate between a ‘born gaze’: the most exclusive, based on genetic or biological explanations; a ‘social gaze’: relatively exclusive, based on social categories such as race or gender; a ‘cultivated gaze’: a more inclusive gaze based on a socialised disposition that can be acquired through the right kind of education and enculturation; and a ‘trained gaze’: an inclusive gaze that is potentially open to all knowers, based on training in the methods and procedures of the knowledge. Maton raises an important point that the greater the inclusivity of the knower code, the greater the potential of the knowledge to progress through cumulative knowledge-building.

The ‘social gaze’ is typically adopted by those in the humanities and social sciences, who take the radical constructionist or standpoint described above. For example,

Africanization as a counter-narrative is therefore, a strategy to encourage Africans to de-scribe ourselves and not rely on descriptions canonised and regarded as ‘true’. The act of describing ourselves requires in many cases, an actual search for, and finding of long-hidden or previously erased sources and traditions. (Prinsloo 2008, 18)

A similar position is adopted by the Vice-Chancellor who has called for the Africanization of South African universities. He defines Africanization as:

the process or vehicle for defining, interpreting, promoting and transmitting African thought, philosophy, identity and culture. It encompasses an African mindset, or mindset shift from a European to an African paradigm. (Makgoba 1997, 203)

The ‘social gaze’ also appears to have been adopted in the Strategic Plan for the University of South Africa (UNISA), where it is stated that the curriculum is to be ‘shaped by an African identity and context’:

Our intention is that African knowledge and knowledge systems should be developed in their own right and that they should mitigate the dominance of western canons. Through such scholarship, we intend to contribute to a multiplicity of voices, alternative canons and diversity in thought. (UNISA 2007, 6)

Maton (2009) points out that by replacing one social gaze with another, (e.g., a Eurocentric with an Afrocentric gaze), this position perpetuates ‘symbolic violence’, leading to the fragmentation of knowledge into a series of incommensurable standpoints and their discourses.

A variation of the ‘social gaze’ has been advocated by Thabo Mbeki as part of his African Renaissance project:

An African University cannot but be an important and critical part of the African Renais-sance. The challenge for the African University should be viewed as a call that insists that all critical and transformative educators in Africa embrace an indigenous African world view and root their nations’ education paradigms in an indigenous socio-cultural and epistemo-logical framework. (Mbeki 2005, cited in Pityana, 2007, 8)


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In this quotation, Mbeki substitutes African knowers for ‘all critical and transformative educators in Africa’, implying that those who exclude themselves from his project are non-critical and non-transformative. The danger of promoting a version of Africanisation that adopts the ‘social gaze’ is that the potential to integrate and build knowledge generated by a wide range of knowers is forfeited.

According to Maton (2009), the ‘cultivated gaze’ shares a common starting point for debate, based on a common canon and community of experience and most importantly, a shared means of conducting the debate. He explains that this enables the ‘cultivated gaze’ to allow a greater range of knowers into the debate, so expanding its base of knowers. In this way, there is potential for the new knowledge that the new knowers bring to build on the old knowledge and so integrate their positions within the old ‘legitimate gaze’. This more nuanced position is found in the debates around the Africanisation of the South African HE curriculum. For example, Pityana declares:

I do not believe that this (Africanisation of HE) should be understood as inserting a new knowledge hegemony; rather it should open up spaces for interplay between diverse knowl-edge systems. This requires acknowledgment and legitimisation of indigenous science alongside that of the Western tradition and subjecting both to critical scrutiny. (Pityana 2007, 4--5)

If one assumes that this ‘critical scrutiny’ will result in the further development and integration of knowledge, then this position could be categorised as representing Maton’s ‘cultivated gaze’. This position is more clearly promoted by a South African curriculum specialist who wishes to explore the notion of ‘engagement’ as a means of integrating indigenous ways of knowing into the academe. Le Grange wants to

disrupt the dichotomy between Western and indigenous knowledge(s) by creating new spac-es of engagement for knowledge production. Such a possibility lies in understanding how knowledge is/ was produced in all traditions: pre-modern, modern and post-modern. (Le Grange 2005, 1215).

I now consider the implications of applying Bernstein’s pedagogic device and typology of knowledge structures, and Maton’s legitimation code theory to the question, ‘How and to what extent should we respond to calls for curriculum relevance, responsiveness and Africanization?’ in South African post-apartheid higher education.

4 IMPLICATIONS FOR CURRICULUM RECONTEXTUALISATION In debating curriculum recontextualisation and responsiveness, it is critical not to loose sight of the importance of the social conditions required for producing and acquiring specialised knowledge. This means that the need to meet immediate social, economic and political demands should not be allowed to undermine these conditions, nor the social institutions that have developed to produce and validate knowledge. This is related to the second point-- namely, the recognition that some forms of knowledge are more powerful than others because they can be applied beyond the contexts of their production.

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We have seen that knowledge and knower structures differ for different knowledge forms. By recognising that different knowledge forms have different purposes, structures, grammars and legitimation codes, we can begin to understand that knowledge forms legitimated predominantly by the (arbitrary) social relation (‘knower code’) are more amenable/ vulnerable to calls for Africanization and social relevance than those legitimated predominantly by the (necessary) epistemic relation (‘knowledge code’). The structure of knowledge in the field of production and its underlying principles of legitimation impose certain enablements and constraints on what type of curriculum is possible to construct in the field of recontextualisation. It is likely that when a knowledge form with a ‘horizontal knowledge structure’ and a ‘weak grammar’ based on a ‘knower code’ gets recontextualised into curriculum knowledge, it will accord greater space to the interests, dispositions and social position of the knower, than a knowledge form based on a ‘knowledge code’ – thus, allowing more discursive space for the cultural arbitrary and ideology to play. On the contrary, when a knowledge form with a ‘hierarchical knowledge structure’ and a ‘strong grammar’, based on a ‘knowledge code’ gets recontextualised into curriculum knowledge, the non-arbitrary nature of its sequenced content, methods and procedures, shaped by the nature of the object of study, will suggest a vertical structure for the curriculum knowledge. This type of knowledge normally allows less discursive space to the interests of the knowers and relatively less space for ideology to play. If the recontextualising rules of the curriculum development context are allowed to over-ride this vertical structure, then the integrity of the knowledge will be forfeited, and it is unlikely that students will achieve the required levels of specialisation.

A key challenge for curriculum development is to be able to identify which are the necessary relations and conditions for knowledge production, progression and acquisition, and which are the socially and culturally arbitrary relations that can be changed without sacrificing the integrity and power of the knowledge form itself. This requires sociological research into the specific ways in which social interests have shaped knowledge in specific contexts, including the relations between everyday, common-sense knowledge and abstract codified knowledge (Young 2008).

In the debates around recontextualising the higher education curriculum in post-apartheid South Africa, the key to undoing the symbolic violence of (neo) colonialism without undermining the possibility for knowledge to progress, may be to aim for Habermas’ (1984) vision of a ‘discursive democracy’, where all knowers are welcome to participate in the debate, provided they meet certain conditions for communication (ideal speech) to occur. The goal would be to allow control of the pedagogic device to change hands without sacrificing the integrity of the knowledge heritage and its potential to progress via integration, subsumption and transcendence. Maton sums up this possibility:

The key to avoiding the Scylla and Charybdis of symbolic violence and relativism is to discover a gaze and a means of cultivating that gaze capable of embracing knowers from a multitude of social backgrounds. (Maton 2009, 22)

As suggested above, this is easier to achieve for knowledge forms with a knowledge code (e.g., the sciences) than for those with a ‘knower code’ (e.g., the umanities).Yet is it precisely those knowledge forms with a ‘knower code’, that African cultures, philosophies, art and music forms do, and can, make a significant contribution???.


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5 CONCLUSIONUndifferentiated calls for the Africanization and contextualisation of the curriculum (across all forms of knowledge) and for a curriculum that leads to economic development and competitive participation in a global economy are in practice, contradictory. Participation in a global economy demands high levels of scientific and technological specialisation and innovation. To achieve this, African universities need to offer high standard curricula, based on disciplines legitimated by a knowledge code. On the other hand, responding to calls for Africanization tends to focus attention on those knowledge forms legitimated by a knower code. An overemphasis on the latter could become a distraction and exacerbate the economic gap between those in the centre and those on the periphery of the global economy. Of equal concern though, is the fact that responding to demands of the dominant global order alone reproduces the fundamental epistemological divide between the ‘inner’ (subjectivity) and the ‘outer’ (objectivity) forms of knowledge which, amongst other pathologies, lead to cultural alienation or symbolic violence for many. It also leads to the irresponsible abuse of the environment by science and technology. Whether the integration of ‘indigenous knowledge systems’ into Western knowledge systems can contribute to overcoming the ‘great divide’ between the inner and the outer forms of knowledge remains a matter for further research and debate.

Finally, curriculum practice should also be understood as entailing ontological questions. This is largely beyond the scope of this paper. However, the recognition that curriculum practices construct particular identities and forms of agency for students should not be ignored. In a post-colonial, globalising context students are searching for new identities. They need to achieve agency and authenticity by learning new ways of thinking, acting and being. Learning is not only about acquiring content and developing skills; it is also about becoming and transforming the self. In order to do this, a curriculum should take students beyond the limitations of their natal contexts and cultures. They should learn about powerful, decontextualised, abstract and specialised forms of knowledge. However, in order to engage in (national) development and contribute to society, they need to return to concrete contexts of practice, and start seeing their old worlds in new, reflexive ways.

NOTES1 Dr. K. M. Luckett is a Senior Lecturer in the Higher & Adult Studies Development Unit, Centre for Higher

Education Development, University of Cape Town. She teaches on an M.Ed programme called Higher Education Studies. Her research interests include curriculum studies in HE, quality assurance in HE and the sociology of education and knowledge.

REFERENCESBernstein, B. 2000. Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. Lanham:

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.Castells, M. 2001. Universities as dynamic systems of contradictory functions. In Challenges of

Globalisation: South African Debates with Manuel Castells, ed. J. Muller, N. Cloete and S.Badat. (pp. 206--223).Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman.

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Department of Education, 1997. Education White Paper 3: A Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education. Pretoria: Department of Education.

Department of Education, 2001. National Plan for Higher Education. Pretoria: Department of Education.Habermas, J. 1971. Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press.Habermas, J. 1984. Theory of Communicative Action. Volume One: Reason and the Rationalisation of

Society. Boston: Beacon Press.Kistner, K. 2008. “Africanization in Tuition: African National Education? Mediations 24 (1):90:1--9le Grange, L. 2005. The ‘idea of engagement’ and ‘the African University in the 21st Century’: some

reflections. South African Journal of Higher Education 19 Special Issue:1208--1219.Makgoba, M. W. 1997. Mokoko: The Makgoba Affair: A reflection on transformation, Florida: Vivlia.Maton, K. 2000. Languages of Legitimation: the structuring significance for intellectual fields of strategic

knowledge claims. British Journal of Sociology of Education 21(2):147--167.Maton, K. 2006. On Knowledge Structures and Knower Structures. In Knowledge, Power and Educational

Reform: Applying the sociology of Basil Bernstein, ed. R. Moore, M. Arnot, J. Beck, and H. Daniels. London: Routledge.

Maton, K. 2007. Knowledge-Knower Structures in Intellectual an Educational Fields. In Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy: Functional linguistic and sociological perspectives, ed. F.Christie, and J.R.Martin. (pp. 87--108). London: Continuum

Maton, K. and J. Muller, 2007. A Sociology for the Transmission of Knowledges. In Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy. Functional Linguistic and Sociological Perspectives, ed. F.Christie, J.R.Martin. (pp. 14--33). London: Continuum.

Maton, K. (in press) 2009. Invisible tribunals: Progress and knowledge-building in the humanities. In title to be finalised A.Sadovnik, S.Semel, & P.Singh. New York: Peter Lang.

Moore, R. and K.Maton 2001. Founding the Sociology of Knowledge: Basil Bernstein, intellectual fields, and the epistemic device. In Towards a Sociology of Pedagogy: The contribution of Basil Bernstein to research, ed. A.Morais, I.Neves, B.Davies. and H.Daniels, (pp. 153--182).New York: Peter Lang

Moore, R. and M.Young 2001. Knowledge and the Curriculum in the Sociology of Education: towards a reconceptualisation. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 22(4):445--461.

Muller, J. 2008. In Epistemology and the Curriculum, ESRC Seminar Series, Seminar 2: Bath: University of Bath.

Pityana, N. B. 2007. Pathways to Excellence in Higher Education: Ten years of higher education reform in South Africa. Pretoria: UNISA.

Prinsloo, P. 2008. DRAFT From the margins: some queer reflections on Africanisation. In Curriculum Issues in Higher Education: Second African Conference on Curriculum Development in Higher Education (pp. 1--30). Pretoria: UNISA, South Africa.

Sayer, A. 1992. Method in Social Science: A realist approach. London: Routledge.Sayer, A. 2000. Realism and Social Science. London: Sage Publications.University of South Africa. 2008. 2015 Strategic Plan - an agenda for transformation. Pretoria: UNISA.Young, M.F.D. 2008. Bringing Knowledge Back In: From social constructivism to social realism in the

sociology of education. London & New York: Routledge.

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Some reflections on the Africanisation of higher

education curricula: A South African case study

Paul Prinsloo1

It is, of course, true that the African identity is still in the making. There isn’t a final identity that is African. But at the same time, there is an identity coming into existence. And it has certain context and a certain meaning. Because if somebody meets me, say, in a shop in Cambridge, he says “Are you from Africa?” Which means that Africa means something to some people. Each of these tags has a meaning, and a penalty and a responsibility.

(Chinua Achebe in an interview with Kwame Anthony Appiah, 1995:103)

ABSTRACTHigher education is often celebrated as the ‘powerhouse’ and ‘engine’ for development in Africa. Central to this mandate is the design and function of curricula in Higher Education Institutions in Africa. As the development discourse has moved away from a sole emphasis on economic development to human development, the content and the purpose of curricula in African higher education are contested. While higher education in Africa will continue to produce graduates who can contribute to the economic development of Africa, the critical move to emphasise human development requires higher education to produce critical graduates suited to finding solutions to the unique challenges on the African continent.

Critical graduates in an African context however, also means students who can formulate and question accepted Western canons of knowledge; discover, validate and celebrate the contributions of indigenous knowledge systems, and negotiate an African identity in its multiple intersectionality with gender, race, location, language, religion and cultural markers. This article will critically explore the Africanisation of higher education curricula in the context of the University of South Africa (UNISA). I will interrogate Africanisation as legitimate counter-narrative and the quest for an African identity and culture, propose a rationale for a critical African scholarship, and finally provide some pointers for the development of African curricula.

keywords: Africanisation, curricula, development, higher education, identity, UNISA

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1 INTRODUCTIONHigher education is seen as a key driver in the development of Africa. The relation between development and higher education is however, complex and often paradoxical. As the number of unemployed graduates increases, and the qualities of graduates become suspect, the direct relationship between higher education and development seems to be more complex than previously presumed. In the nexus of the relationship between education and development is the content and purpose of higher education curricula.

Curricula in higher education in Africa are not only seen as vehicles for addressing the acute skills shortages that many developing world economies face. Curricula are also envisaged to provide counter-narratives to colonial and Eurocentric canons of knowledge by celebrating African indigenous knowledge systems, values and cultures. As higher education increasingly faces demands from employers, regulatory bodies, national mandates and students’ expectations, curricula are highly contested and a contestable aspect of education.

The University of South Africa (UNISA), with approximately 300 000 students is the only comprehensive distance higher education provider in South Africa, and the biggest on the African continent. As one of the 10 biggest universities in the world, UNISA has the potential to contribute significantly to the need for critical graduates in South Africa and on the African continent. The vision of UNISA is furthermore ‘[t]owards the African university in the service of humanity’. With this vision, UNISA commits itself not only to serving the interests of broader humanity, but specifically to being the African university. The Africanness of UNISA does not only refer to a specific geo-political location, but also to a commitment to the Africanisation of curricula and being a specifically African higher education institution.

Although Africanisation is central to the identity of UNISA and its curricula, the exact parameters of Africanness are not necessarily clear. This paper will interrogate the notion of Africanisation at UNISA as a socio-political construct that can be understood as a specific reaction within the broader context of the postcolonial discourse. Within the context of the postcolonial discourse, Africanisation is a necessary counter-narrative to the historical and continuing hegemony of Western epistemological and ontological canons in African and specifically, South African higher education. The celebration of Africanisation as counter-narrative, though necessary, should however not be supported or promoted uncritically or unconditionally.

2 HIGHER EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT Outside the specific context of policy pronouncements, there is very little empirical or theoretical work, which contributes to a critical academic understanding of the relationship between higher education and development (Naidoo 2008:248). The relationship between development and higher education has developed from early neglect to centre stage (Comim 2007). Comim (2007:88) further postulates that it is impossible to have a proper understanding of current trends in development ‘without a proper account of the role of education in the promotion of human flourishing’. This paper does not explore the different phases in the relationship between development and higher education (e.g., Comim 2007)-- it only points to the broad development from the instrumental value of education in the context of economic development to the constitutive value of education in human development (Comim

Some reflections on the Africanisation of higher education curricula

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2007:88–98). Benavot (1989:15–16) plots the development in the relationship between education and development from an emphasis on education as human capital investment to transforming individuals’ values, beliefs and behaviour. Benavot (1989:16) concludes that the ‘effects of education on economic development were far more problematic and contradictory than earlier theories had assumed’ and that approaches to explain and predict the ‘presumed positive economic impact of education’ have become more ‘cautious and sceptical’.

Another author who is sceptical about the contribution of education to development is Naidoo (2008:248), who questions the underlying assumptions and unintended consequences of celebrating higher education as the ‘powerhouse for development’. In the early 1990s powerful governments and international organisations like the World Bank saw higher education ‘as an incubator for social and economic change’, and in service of ‘decreasing the disparity between rich and poor nations’ (Naidoo 2008:248). A powerful assumption was that ‘increasing and improving higher education will automatically lead to social and economic development’ (Naidoo 2008:249). This assumption underestimated the ‘multifaceted and historically constituted social, political and economic difficulties faced by developing countries’ (Naidoo 2008:249). Naidoo (2008:250) continues to question the direct link between the reliance on a skilled population as ‘a motor for development’. While Naidoo (2008) questions the notion of higher education as the powerhouse of development, Comim (2007:92) critiques the assumptions underlying the emphasis on economic development including the sole emphasis on economic growth; the skilling of a workforce for specific markets; wellbeing assessed as GDP per capita; and performativity in teaching and assessment. In contrast to the instrumental value of education in service of economic growth, Comim (2007:92–100) explores the constitutive value of education in the service of human development. In her conclusions Comim (2007:99–100) alludes to the fact that education in the service of human development should inherently address human wellness in a very broad sense to include ‘emotional dependence and alienation that follows from the state of deprivation’ resulting from a critical consciousness as proposed by Freire (1973).

If education (and in particular higher education) has to contribute to the flourishing of humankind, more than just economic wellbeing and employment is at stake. Dei (2007) and others describe a critical consciousness as essential to the project of human development. Dei (2007:106) proposes an anti-colonial approach which ‘recognizes the importance of locally produced knowledge emanating from cultural history and daily human experiences and social interactions’. An anti-colonial approach

…is a theorisation of issues emerging from colonial relations. It deals with the implications of imperial/colonial structures of knowledge production and (in) validation, the understanding of local indigenousness and the recourse to agency and resistance (Dei 2007:106).

In the context of schooling in Ghana, Dei (2007) contests the emphasis on nation-building, while ignoring difference as a constitutive element of Ghanaian society. After engaging with socioeconomic status, ethnicity, language and religious differences in the context of school education in Ghana, Dei (2007:118) criticises the Ghanaian emphases on nation-building, the creation of a common citizenry and the promotion of social integration and cohesion. These emphases result in a neglect of difference as an integral part of Ghanaian society. The current emphasis on sameness ignores social constructs like religion, ethnicities and the resultant material-- and political effects (Dei 2007:119).

If higher education is to contribute to the flourishing of humankind and not only to its economic wellbeing (as proposed by Comim 2007 and others), the question remains: How should higher

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education in Africa respond to the human development needs of the continent? Hountondji (2000:40) reproaches higher education in Africa by pointing out that ‘[m]ost universities in Africa today have become huge factories of product unknown fifteen years ago: the unemployment of cadres of learned people’. While Hountondji (2000:40) bemoans the fact that job markets demand different types of graduates, others point out the still Eurocentric nature of much of the higher education curricula in Africa (Pityana 2007).

In the light of the above, higher education and its curricula are highly contested and contestable discourses as different stakeholders bet their claims for different purposes (Prinsloo 2007). While acknowledging the existence of these different claims, this paper deals specifically with the claim to Africanise higher education curricula. The next section explores how one institution of higher education (UNISA), addresses the Africanisation of the institution and curricula.

3 AFRICANISATION IN THE CONTEXT OF UNISAUNISA has committed itself in its 2015 strategic plan – an agenda for transformation (University of South Africa 2007:5; hereafter referred to as SP) to “promote[s] African thought, philosophy, interests and epistemology’. The purpose of this promotion is ‘to address the legacy of neglected and marginalised issues relevant to South Africa and the rest of Africa’ (SP 2007:5). The strategic plan states that the commitment to become ‘the African university’, does not mean that UNISA is interested in ‘taking over or colonising Africa’, but that the emphasis is being ‘part of Africa’ and ‘100% African’ (SP 2007:6). As such, as well as being located and rooted in the African context’, UNISA will strive for and promote ‘critical scholarship from an African perspective’ so that it ‘becomes an authentic part of the global knowledge enterprise’ (SP 2007:6).

The SP (2007:6) continues to state that ‘our intention is that African knowledge and knowledge systems should be developed in their own right and that they should mitigate the dominance of western canons. Through such a scholarship, we intend to contribute to a multiplicity of voices, alternative canons, and diversity in thought’ (SP 2007:6). The strategic plan also identifies the African renaissance as an opportunity to serve the specific needs of Africa through collaboration and research (SP 2007:6).

In the Institutional Operational Plan 2008 to 2010 (2008, hereafter referred to as the IOP), UNISA commits itself to ‘reach a common understanding of the appropriate ways in which our programme offerings and organisational culture and practices should be specifically shaped by an African identity and context’ (IOP 2008:5).The IOP (2008) does not provide further clarification of what exactly this will entail and who will be responsible to provide leadership within UNISA in order to reach such a common understanding. There is reference to the forging of ‘further strategic partnerships and alliances with selected institutions and governments in Africa to promote Africanness’ (IOP 2008:13). The IOP (2008:15) commits UNISA to the promotion of academic discourse ‘by inviting African and international scholars to present lectures on relevant higher education issues’ (IOP 2008:16) It can be deduced that the commitment to employment equity (EE) targets (IOP 2008:11, 21) and the development of a cohort of ‘black, young and women researchers’ (IOP 2008:15) are expected to contribute to making UNISA ‘100% African’.

In a Founder’s Lecture at UNISA, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof NB Pityana refers to the fact that ‘higher education policies after apartheid [have failed] to provide alternative frameworks of knowledge


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production to those provided by [the] dominant Western knowledge system’ (Pityana 2007:4). It is important to notice that Pityana does not promote a new hegemony, but rather an opening up of ‘spaces for interplay between diverse knowledge systems’. As a way forward, Pityana (2007: 6–8) proposes that indigenous African knowledge systems be rehabilitated; the walls between knowledge silos be broken down; the adoption by African educators of ‘innovative and creative ideas for curriculum reform (2007:6); research expertise be shared by the setting up of networks between African scholars; and lastly that there should be a new generation of academic leadership. Pityana (2007:12) concludes by stating that South African ‘higher education institutions … remain largely unreconstructed … [and that] there pervades an ingrained elitism and a dominance of western cultural and intellectual hegemony’. It is therefore necessary to ‘open up at least a possibility of Africa becoming a producer of knowledge rather than a faithful reproducer of Western forms of knowledge’ (Pityana 2007:12).

Africanisation, as envisaged by UNISA, therefore addresses the following four foci:

a Africanisation as a legitimate counter-narrativeThere is a need for an African higher education counter-narrative, which would address the elitism and dominance of the Western canon and celebrate alternative frameworks of African indigenous knowledge systems, thoughts, philosophies and ways of interpreting meaning.

b The quest for an African identity and culture This refers to the promotion of a specific Africanness in curricula, organisational culture and identity.

c A critical African scholarship This encompasses a critical scholarship from an African perspective, which does not seek to become a new hegemony, but will provide for a dynamic interplay between knowledge systems, epistemologies and ontologies.

d The development of African curriculaThis counter-narrative should also address specific ‘neglected and marginalised issues relevant to South Africa and the rest of Africa’.

Below is the critical interrogation of the four aspects of Africanisation in the broader context of the postcolonial and identity discourses.

AFRICANISATION AS LEGITIMATE COUNTER-NARRATIVEAfricanisation is a powerful and necessary counter-narrative, aimed at decentring Western descriptions of African identity. Loomba (1998:57) states that colonialism shaped knowledge and knowledge production in profound ways and that ‘no branch of learning was left untouched by the colonial experience’ (Loomba 1998:57). As colonial powers interacted with ‘the rest of the world’, the boundaries between myths, definitions of the ‘other’, stereotypes, images and ideas and ‘scientific’ and canonised knowledge blurred and often became extinct (see for example Loomba 1998:57–69). ‘Over time, colour, hair type, skulls shape and size, facial angles or brain size were variously taken up by the scientific discourses as the most accurate indexes of racial differences’ (Loomba 1998:63).

Large portions of world history were edited, discarded and reshaped to fit European and North American epistemologies and ontological beliefs. The official Western canons of knowledge resulted in structured

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features of ‘social formation’, consisting of a ‘set of material practices maintained by relations of power’ affecting every aspect of the ‘other’s’ existence, self-definition and self-worth (Brah 1996:53). Through Africanisation, Africans counter-describe themselves, interrupting normative descriptions as ‘the other’ (Fanon 1967, 1986; Bhabha 1994). Postcolonialism (like many other ‘isms’) is however, not a homogeneous phenomenon (Loomba 1998; Young 2001). Africanisation, from a postmodern perspective, can be understood and located as a mixture of cultural, political, economic, social, ontological and epistemological initiatives to celebrate the local, the particular, the distinctiveness of being African and being-in-Africa/from-Africa. Like feminism, anti-racism and queer studies, which questioned meta-narratives of patriarchy and heteronormativity (see for example Brah 1996; Flannery & [Hays AUTHOR, date please]; Malinowitz 1992), Africanisation interrogates the colonial meta-narratives and replaces these universal meta-narratives with affirmative self-descriptions and small local narratives (Lyotard 1979).

In an attempt to value the ‘self as African’, the discovery of traditions and ways of meaning-making, indigenous knowledge systems, religions and erased histories of civilisation occupy an important place in Africanisation as curriculum projects (to which we will later return).

THE QUEST FOR AN AFRICAN IDENTITY AND CULTURE In searching for the parameters of an African identity, there are a number of options. The first option is to claim that there is something like an quintessential African identity (as proposed by Senghor 1993) or an ‘irreducible Africanness’ (Oloruntoba-Oju 2007). Senghor (1993:27–31) for example proposes that there is an ‘African personality’, ‘a cultural black world’, and an African ontology (also see Van Wyk & Higgs 2004). Mensah (2007:59) is more critical of such a construct and asks, ‘Can we really say that there is a pure, unadulterated African culture that is being destabilised by globalisation?’

The search for a quintessential African identity and culture is an archaeological project that searches for, and falls back on archives of identity and belonging (Bhatti 2009). Such an archaeological approach to identity often results in searching for long-hidden or previously-erased sources and traditions, longing for what existed once, and have since been lost. Wilmsen and McAllister (1996) have illustrated that identities are not only shaped by memories and discoveries, but that identities and particularities are also often invented and re-invented. Appiah (1995:105) suggests ‘Invented histories, invented biologies, invented cultural affinities come with every identity; each is a kind of role that has to be scripted, structured by conventions of narrative, to which the world never quite manages to conform’. Appiah (1995:105) continues to warn that while these identities are ‘invented’ they are not less ‘real’. Appiah (1995:106) warns that in identity politics the participants should seriously take note of the ‘attendant mystifications … and mythologies’. This approach necessitates epistemologies of perpetual longing for the glorious past that may never have existed. Brah (1996:101--102) in the context of the homogenisation debate in India warns that [p]re-colonial India was a heterogeneous entity, and that people were much more likely to define themselves in terms of their regional, linguistic or religious affiliation than as Hindustanis. Indeed, it may be possible to argue that ‘Indian identity’ as a set of identifications with a nation-state was the outcome of resistance and struggle against colonialism, rather than something that existed prior to this period.

In contrast to an archaeological approach to defining an African identity, a palimpsest approach involves not the deconstruction and de-layering of the different gestalts of an identity in order to


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discover the ‘original,’ but to take the present gestalt at face value and see it as a point of departure for defining identity as dynamically constructed and fluid at a specific time and place, as proposed by Brah (1996):

identities are marked by the multiplicity of subject positions that constitute the subject. Hence, identity is neither fixed nor singular; rather it is a constantly-changing relational multiplicity. However, during the course of this flux identities do assume specific patterns, as in a kaleido-scope, against particular sets of personal, social and historical circumstances. Indeed, identity may be understood as that very process by which the multiplicity, contradiction, and instability of subjectivity is signified as having coherence, continuity, stability; as having a core – a continually changing core but the sense of a core nonetheless – that at any given moment is enunciated as the “I” (Brah 1996:123--124; italics in the original).

Kowalczyk and Popkewitz (2005:423) question national and continental identities as ‘natural, uninterrupted homogeneity’, and instead propose identity as an ‘evolving heterogeneity’, a ‘palimpsest or constellation’ of identities and citizenships (2005:425; see also Brah 1996; Britzman 1995; Sumara & Davis 1999). Difference is therefore, the result of a multiplicity of factors in any given time and context, with each temporal or more permanent gestalt (such as gender or race) having socioeconomic, political and interpersonal ramifications. Boellstorff (2005) points out that many elements in an individual’s identity can actually be incommensurable in a specific context, for example being Indonesian, male, Muslim and gay. In an African context, Epprecht (1998, 2002) and Nyong’o (2007) explore the incommensurability of being African and gay. This multidimensionality of identity in the intersections of geopolitical and social locations is often countered by the freezing of identity in fundamentalist ways, whether it is one’s own identity or the ‘other’s’ (Bhatti 2009).

The above insights enrich the debates around Africanisation and the African identity of UNISA by foregrounding the complex relationships that impact on how identity is produced, reproduced, legitimised and normalised. Identity, like sexuality, is not a stable category (Sumara & Davis 1999:204) and identity as marked by a ‘multiplicity of subject positions’, is ‘neither fixed nor singular’ (Brah 1996:123). The act of describing ourselves as Africans, as feminists (as queer discourses have shown), is however not a simple process disembedded from racial, class and socioeconomic realities and structures.

We have so far already posited Africanisation as a legitimate counter-narrative of self-description and affirmation, grounded in an understanding that the African identity is multidimensional and dynamic. We have also accepted the value of the discovery of negated and often-erased knowledge systems and ways of making meaning. We have acknowledged that even when some of these new histories and cultural gestalts are invented, with no real historical basis, they are nonetheless ‘real’. Higher education should also interrogate the different claims made by the Africanisation project and expose the hierarchisation and rehierarchisation (Kowalczyk & Popkewitz 2005) resulting from Africanisation as a cultural project. In the next section the paper will therefore, posit the need for critical African scholarship as a non-negotiable part of Africanisation.

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6 A CRITICAL AFRICAN SCHOLARSHIP No education system is ever neutral (Apple 2004). Education (like curricula) is always in the service of a particular ideology. Curricula flow from, and result in ways of seeing the world which find expression in material conditions and structures. The act of developing a curriculum is therefore, firstly an immense responsibility. Curricula impact on generations to come, as evidenced by the curricula Africa received from its colonial masters. Given the huge impact curricula have on generations to come, we should therefore, in developing curricula, be wary of the masters we serve. Africanisation, as a curriculum project, is also not neutral. It is per se oppositional as well as validatory and affirmative. Those who uphold Africanisation should, to the same extent, be critical of claims, assumptions and beliefs.

One example of the need for a critical African scholarship should suffice. Many authors celebrate community and ubuntu ‘as the very fabric of traditional African life’ (Van Wyk & Higgs 2004:203) and as a (if not the) uniquely African contribution to South Africa and the world (e.g., Coertze 2001; Mbigi 1995; Teffo 1994; Tutu 1994). There are also some critical voices regarding not only the empirical foundations of ubuntu, but also its use and function in the legitimising discourses of South African nation-building. Nkomo (2006:13), for example, states that ‘[m]uch of the writing on Ubuntu is prescriptive and largely lacks research depth’. Marx (2002:52), for example, states that although ubuntu has become

… the main signifier[s] of African identity, there is significantly no historical evidence [that] has been produced to substantiate this alleged community value. … In this way, the various power structures, different forms of political rule, repression, and the exploitation of women, slaves and clients are left out of the picture.

Other researchers are cautious about the term and its currency in the discourse of nation-building and reconciliation in South Africa (e.g., Maluleke1997, 2001; Marx 2002). Maluleke (1997:343) states that ‘the notion of ubuntu has now become fashionable’. Marx (2002:53) warns that the use of ubuntu in the nation-building rhetoric ‘emerges as a formula that at one and the same time excludes and includes, integrates and rejects. On the goal of unity and harmony, the practice of exclusion and separation follows inevitably, because identity can only be established through difference’. The discourse on ubuntu, in the context of nation-building, is one that needs critical debate and deconstruction. It would seem as if ubuntu is part of a campaign to romanticise an ‘idealised, ahistorical, pre-colonial Africa’ (Marx 2002:60). The use of the term ubuntu and the notion of community as legitimising constructs in service of a new elite has to be critically interrogated, as proposed by inter alia Chisholm (2005), Jansen (1990, 1999, 2000) and Weiler (1990). Hoppers (2000) for example, has pointed to the way in which notions of aid and development function as ‘discourses of concealment’. To what extent does ubuntu and community function as discourses of concealment in the service of the notion of a universal African? The celebration of ‘communal values’ resembles what Jansen (2004) calls a ‘politics of salvation’ (Jansen 2004). Surely higher education has a role to play in nation-building (as Higgs (2002) proposes) – but certainly a more critical interrogation is required?

Ubuntu and the selective celebration of the function of communal life in Africa disregard the fact that communities not only include, but also exclude (Biesta 2004). The acts and processes of inclusion and exclusion have always been done according to criteria, whether it was gender, race, ethnicity and/or age. The acts of describing and establishing who fitted into the categories of inclusion de facto


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determined those who did not fit. The descriptions and classification of who fitted and who did not fit stemmed from context-bound and established norms, stereotypes, folklore and perceptions. Many of these descriptions are however, defined overnight, as recent histories in Rwanda and Kenya and the xenophobic violence in South Africa during 2008 has shown. In a moment someone can become an ‘other’ by virtue of their race, ethnicity, gender, language, dress or nationality. In the blink of an eye someone can be excluded, excommunicated and exorcised according to seemingly arbitrarily chosen criteria.

In adopting a hermeneutics of suspicion, higher education should not only interrogate the Eurocentric canons but also question the new epistemologies of perpetual nostalgia for an Africa lost and found. As the African identity is being mapped, it is crucial for higher education to empower individuals with multiple intersecting and often incommensurable identities to negotiate their own and other individuals’ trajectories in a polycentric word (as proposed by Bhatti 2009).

7 TOWARDS AN AFRICAN CURRICULUMThe exploration of the previous dimensions of the Africanisation project has laid the foundation for considering the notion of an African curriculum.

Although it is accepted that Africanisation as a counter-narrative should address specific ‘neglected and marginalised issues relevant to South Africa and the rest of Africa’ (SP 2007:5), Africanisation should also entail questioning and interrogating accepted (and promoted) taxonomies such as ‘human rights’, ‘development’, ‘aid’ and so on (Hoppers 2000:284). As Hoppers (2000:288) postulates, opposition to ‘technologies of domination’ by African scholars also entails ‘reconstruction of truths from the discourses of concealment of violence’, direct confrontations with these ‘technologies of domination’ and the ‘documentation and analysis of the manner in which identities were legislated, and how the physical as well as mental spaces were regulated’. How will an African curriculum give expression to the interpenetration of indigenous, local, and global modern cultures as proposed by Mensah (2007:63)? Mensah (2007:67) posits that notions of Western academic imperialism underestimate the dynamic multidirectional traffic between the West and Africa.

The paper contends that the African curriculum has three dimensions:

(a) The African curriculum should in the first place arise from, and contribute to African canons of knowledge and praxis, not as exclusionary and opposing Western canons, but as equally worthy and scientifically rigorous and valid. How do curricula at UNISA encourage students to explore and celebrate indigenous sources and alternative canons of knowledge in juxtapo-sition to and/or additional to Western canons?

(b) There is also a need for the African curriculum to critically interrogate all knowledge claims and ‘discourses of concealment’ (Hoppers 2000), regardless of the locality of their origin. No education is neutral, and it is accepted that all education systems serve a particular ideology or meta-narrative. How does an African curriculum empower students to interrogate/decode/recode different knowledges and knowledge claims (Bernstein 1977, 1996)? How does the Africanisation project allow students to question and theorise specific African gestalts of oppression and inequality, such as female enslavement in the trokosi practice in Ghana (Ben-

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Ari 2001), female genital mutilation in Kenya, the killing of albinos for traditional medicine practices, child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the practice of identifying old women and children as witches?

(c) The third and final dimension of an African curriculum has to do with the manner in which the curriculum encourages students to apply their learning to the unique challenges they face in their local communities impacted by global changes. How does an African curriculum al-low students to use a language of possibilities (Freire 1989); growing out of cultures of blam-ing and dependencies to become active participants in pedagogies of rage and hope, critique and possibility? (Hoppers 2001; Giroux 20002).

8 CONCLUSIONAfricanisation, within the broader debates of describing and defining African epistemologies could benefit from a critical interrogation and a hermeneutics of faith and of suspicion (as proposed by Josselen 2004). Africanisation as counter-narrative does have a place and function in present-day African higher education. Feminist and queer theory discourses have posited that identity is always a relational construct and the total sum of complex and overlapping socioeconomic, historical and political interests. Identity always locates the bearer in broader systems of meaning. From the above exploration, I would like to postulate that the discourses on Africanisation could benefit scholars if it is premised from a more critical interrogation, which also explores the current debates as possible discourses of concealment and epistemologies of perpetual longing for a paradise lost. In following Barnett (2000) I propose that higher education, and UNISA in particular, should create heterotopic spaces (in the Foucaultian sense), celebrate heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981 and as suggested by Pityana 2007) in a vibrant public sphere (as proposed by Habermas 1984, 1987), in which our graduates can (also) fulfil roles as public intellectuals (as proposed by West 1992 and Wood 2001).

I close this reflective exploration on Africanisation with a quotation from Appiah (1995:108):

If an African identity is to empower us, so it seems to me, what is required is not so much that we throw out falsehood but that we acknowledge first that race and history and metaphysics do not enforce an identity: that we can choose, within broad limits set by ecological, political, and economic realities what it will mean to be African in the coming years.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS• An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 2nd African Conference on Curriculum held in

South Africa, 16–18 September 2008. • I would like to acknowledge the input into and comments on an earlier draft of this article by Prof

Catherine Hoppers and Prof Pam Ryan and the encouragement of Prof Phillip Higgs.

NOTE1 Dr Paul Prinsloo, Education Consultant, Directorate for Curriculum and Learning Development (DCLD), Unisa2 http://www.edb.utexas.edu/faculty/scheurich/proj3/giroux2.html Retrieved on 25 August 2008.


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Inequality: why is it back on the development agenda?

Duncan Green1

ABSTRACT‘Inequality and redistribution have been out of fashion, with rich country decision makers for many years and warrant barely a mention in the Millennium Development GoalsHowever, this is now changing. A rash of high profile publications from the World Bank and the UN have argued that tackling inequality is one of the most urgent tasks of our time. This paper summarizes current evidence on the extent, impact and causes of rising inequality within and between countries, and critically examines the nature of renewed official interest. It identifies failings in the absence of issues of power and rights from a discourse focussed largely on equality of opportunity. The paper explores some recent success stories in reducing inequality in Latin America and East Asia, and concludes by setting out an agenda for addressing inequality at national and international levels.

keywords: empowerment, equity, inequality, redistribution, rights, World Bank

1 INTRODUCTIONWhen pressed for his views on inequality and redistribution in the 2001 election campaign, Tony Blair famously ducked the question by replying, “It’s not a burning ambition for me to make sure that David Beckham earns less money’ (Guardian, 2001). Inequality and redistribution have been out of fashion with rich country decision makers for many years and warrant barely a mention in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed by the international community during the course of the 1990s2. That absence has been reflected in the teaching agenda at tertiary level. However, this is now changing. The year 2005 saw a rash of high profile publications (World Bank, 2005; United Nations (UN), 2005; United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2005), from the World Bank and the UN arguing that tackling inequality is one of the most urgent tasks of our time.

This renewed interest in inequality sprang from several causes:

• the manifest failure of the Washington Consensus view that ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ to reduce poverty fast enough to meet the MDGs


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• new research which demonstrates that high levels of inequality are bad for growth as well as poverty reduction

• renewed attention to the sources of political tension arising from the ‘war on terror’. • climate change has drawn attention to the historic injustice that those countries least responsible

are those most severely affected, raising issues of compensation from polluting countries to help poor countries adapt

• Most recently, widespread anger over the inequitable treatment of capital and workers in responses to the 2008/9 financial crisis has led to broader discussion on the distributive impacts of crises and responses.

Not that the World Bank, or even the UN have suddenly become red-blooded redistributive socialists. The core of their concern with inequality is not that is intrinsically unfair, but that high levels of inequality are bad for both growth and poverty reduction. The World Bank argues for equality of opportunity (e.g., access to education, freedom from discrimination, equality before the law), with only a minor role for greater equality of outcome, namely; avoiding absolute deprivation. The role of redistribution, whether through progressive taxation or radical land reform, is treated with great caution, and its risks emphasized.

The World Bank’s analysis underlines that inequality is about much more than income – almost every aspect of the life chances of the poor, from access to clean drinking water to vulnerability to crime, conflict and even natural disaster, is plagued by inequality between the weak and the strong. In practice, however, much of the policy debate comes down to inequality of income, and a small number of essential services (health, education, clean water and sanitation).

Whereas the academic literature used previously to stress the positive role of income inequality in rewarding ‘wealth creators’, thereby encouraging innovation and growth, in the course of this decade the economic arguments that inequality is bad for growth and poverty reduction have gathered momentum. The main links are:

• Inequality wastes talent. If women are excluded from top jobs, the overall impact on the economy is to squander half the nation’s talent. If banks refuse to lend to poor people, then good economic opportunities will be wasted.

• Inequality undermines society and its institutions. In an unequal society, elites find it easier to ‘capture’ governments and other institutions, and use them to further their own narrow interests, rather than the overall economic good.

• Inequality undermines social cohesion: ‘vertical inequality’ between individuals is linked to rises in crime, while ‘horizontal inequality’ for example between different ethnic groups, increases the likelihood of conflicts that can set countries back decades and cause enormous suffering

• By determining the size of the crumbs that the poor receive from the economic table, inequality prevents growth from reducing poverty: a one percentage point increase in growth will benefit the poor proportionately more in an equal than in an unequal society.

• Inequality transmits poverty between generations. Most cruelly, the poverty of a mother can blight the entire life of her child. Around 30 million children are born each year in developing countries with impaired growth due to poor nutrition during foetal life. Babies born with a low birth weight are much more likely to die, and to be stunted and underweight in early life, increasing their

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chances of ill-health and death in childhood and, should they survive, condemning them to a lifetime of sickness and poverty.(Chronic Poverty Research Centre, 2004)

These arguments were brought together in ‘The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better’, published in 2009. This argued that across an extraordinary range of measures of well-being, including levels of trust, life expectancy, obesity, teenage pregnancy, crime, low birth weight, HIV and AIDS and depression, more equal countries do better (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009).3

Although at first glance the World Bank’s emphasis on equality of opportunity looks timid – little more than the American Dream plus a safety net – it allows for some pretty radical interpretations. Firstly, the distinction between opportunity and outcomes is artificial, since today’s outcomes shape tomorrow’s opportunities. Even if they go to the same school or live in the same barrio, children of the better off and/or educated are more likely to do better. In order to achieve genuine equality of opportunity, public action is needed to ensure that a village girl from a poor lower caste in India can achieve the same educational outcome as a boy from a rich family in Delhi, for the same effort. Achieving this would require an extraordinary state effort to break the cycle of inequality by compensating for the initial disadvantages (nutrition, lack of family support, free time available for homework etc) faced by the girl. This interpretation of equality of opportunity bears little resemblance to the traditional criticism that equality of opportunity is tantamount to saying ‘we are all equal because all of us have the right to dine at the Ritz’.

2 POWER AND RIGHTS – THE MISSING PIECEInequality is much more than a technical barrier to growth or poverty reduction. Writing in the fifth century BC, Plato reminded Athenian lawmakers of the moral abhorrence provoked by extreme inequality. ‘There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth’, he wrote, ‘for both are productive of great evil.’ (Quoted in UNDP, 2005)

Extreme inequality provokes outrage and condemnation, and is intimately bound up with notions of human rights. The idea that all people, wherever they are, enjoy certain basic rights has become increasingly influential, not least through the international human rights framework established by the UN. This commits countries to equal civil and political rights, to ensuring minimum standards and to the ‘progressive realization’ of economic and social rights (Anderson and O’Neill, 2006).

In moving the focus from poverty to inequality, it is impossible to avoid politics. Inequality is about some people having more than others. So is politics. And the two interact – powerful people use their political control over institutions, individuals or the use of force to benefit themselves, often at the expense of others.

For the multilateral bodies that dominate thinking on development, such as the World Bank or the various UN agencies, this poses a dilemma. Such organisations are, at least in theory, supposed to be impartial, technocratic bodies. Yet their own analysis is leading them inexorably into the minefields of politics. In its 2006 World Development Report, the Bank recognised as much, saying:

the analysis of development experience clearly shows the centrality of overall political condi-tions—supporting the emphasis on governance and empowerment in recent years. However, it


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is neither the mandate nor the comparative advantage of the World Bank to engage in advice on issues of political design. (World Bank, 2005)

As this excerpt implies, the Bank and others have tried to skirt around the ‘P’ word of politics by talking instead about ‘governance’ (sometimes caricatured as ‘government with the politics taken out’) and ‘empowerment’. These concepts cover areas such as the separation of powers between governments, parliaments and the judiciary, the rule of law, government transparency and accountability, and strengthening the role of civil society organisations, but steer clear of politics per se. Critics argue that trying to deal with these issues without taking politics head-on leads up an intellectual and developmental blind alley (see for example Lockwood, 2005). Political elites that benefit from the current levels of inequality and injustice will always do their best to frustrate reforms, until their power itself is challenged.

3 HOW EXTREME IS INEQUALITY? Inequality exists both within and between countries. The extent of inequality between countries is breathtaking, a form of ‘postcode lottery’, where the greater part of your life chances are determined by the random circumstances of your birth – where you are born (rich or poor country, town or countryside) and who you are (boy or girl, ethnic minority, living with a disability, the physical wellbeing of your mother, especially during pregnancy).

In terms of income and the quality of life, gulfs separate the haves from the have-nots. On the (conservative) assumption that the world’s 500 richest people listed by Forbes magazine have an income equivalent to no more than 5 per cent of their assets, their income exceeds that of the poorest 416 million people. The risk to women of dying from pregnancy-related causes ranges from 1 in 18 in Nigeria to 1 in 8,700 in Canada (UNDP, 2005). In poor countries as many as 30 per cent of deaths among women of reproductive age (15- 49 years) may be from pregnancy-related causes, compared with rates of less than 1 per cent for developed countries (UNDP, 2005).

Inequality of opportunities and provision between countries drives such unequal outcomes. Per capita spending on health ranges from an average of more than $3,000 in high income OECD countries with the lowest health risks to $78 in low-income countries with the highest risks, and to far less in many of the poorest countries (UNDP, 2005).

For the poor, inequalities can cancel out the benefits of living in a better off society. The average income is three times higher in high-inequality and middle-income Brazil than in low-inequality and low-income Viet Nam. Yet the incomes of the poorest 10 per cent in Brazil are lower than those of the poorest 10 per cent in Viet Nam. The transfer of just 5 per cent of the income of the richest 20 per cent of Brazilians would lift about 26 million people above the $2 a day poverty line, cutting the poverty rate from 22 per cent to 7 per cent (UNDP, 2005).

Regionally, Latin America is renowned for a level of inequality that is ‘extensive, pervasive and resilient’, and for the exceptional slice of national wealth owned by the very rich. Research in Africa suggests that at least in terms of income, inequalities are as high as in Latin America, a finding that may surprise those who assume that at African levels of poverty, all are more or less equal. Asia

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contains both countries with low levels of inequality (Taiwan, Viet Nam), and others where inequality is rising fast towards Latin American and African levels, notably China (ODI, undated).

Within countries, inequalities can also be grotesque. In Brazil, the favelas of Rio’s (largely black) marginalised poor cling to the hillsides, overlooking the luxury condominiums and beach playgrounds of the (generally white) mega rich. In Latin American countries with large indigenous or African descended populations, such as Bolivia, Guatemala or Brazil, incomes of these groups are half of that of their ‘white’ compatriots (World Bank, 2003).

Rising inequality has had a profound impact on the quality of life across the countries of the former Soviet Union. In the village of Belasovka, Russian people describe the dominant emotional tone as ‘everyone is on their own now; the poor envy the rich and the rich scorn the poor; we don’t visit friends as often as we used to; people are hostile and alone (Chambers, Narayan, Shah and Petesch, 2000).’

Within developing countries, internal inequalities in life opportunities are just as stark as those in income. Children born into the poorest 20 per cent of households in Ghana or Senegal are two to three times more likely to die before age 5 than children born into the richest 20 per cent of households. Nowhere is the injustice of inequality more evident than in the phenomenon of ‘missing women’. Due to discrimination against girls and women, which starts even before birth, through selective abortion, the world’s female population is lower than it should be, compared to men. Recent estimates put the number at estimated 101.3 million -- more than the total numbers of people killed in all the wars of the bloody 20th century. Eighty million of these are Indian and Chinese women – a staggering 6.7 per cent of the expected female population of China, and 7.9 per cent of the expected female population of India (Chronic Poverty Research Centre, 2004).

4 IS INEQUALITY RISING OR FALLING? Trends in inequality are widely disputed, and many gigabyte-hours have been spent by economists ‘proving’ that inequality is rising, falling, or staying the same. Every participant in the discussion can find academic grounding for their position. The key to the differences lies in what is being measured, how averages are employed, and whether inequality between or within countries is being discussed.

If we compare the average GDP per capita between countries, unweighted by population, inequality between countries appears to be increasing. In 1990 the average American was 38 times richer than the average Tanzanian. Today the average American is 61 times richer (UNDP, 2005). However, once weighted by population, inequality appears to be decreasing, due to rapid growth in India and China (using average GDP per capita for each country ignores rapidly rising inequality within those countries).

If we compare incomes globally, between all individuals irrespective of nationality, the choice of statistical measures and reference years determines whether you conclude that inequality is increasing or decreasing.

The use of percentages, rather than dollars, also serves to mask the true extent of absolute inequality. If Luxembourg and Nicaragua, at opposite ends of the world income distribution, grew at the same annual rate of 2 per cent per capita a year for the next 25 years, inequality between them would be seen as constant. Yet the per capita yearly incomes in Luxembourg would increase from $17,228 (PPP-


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adjusted) to $28,264, an increase of more than $10,000 dollars. The per capita income of Nicaragua, by contrast, would increase by a mere $375, from $573 to $940, during the same period (World Bank, 2005).

The UN finds that income inequality within countries is generally increasing (UN, 2005):

Within-country income inequality rose between the 1950s and the 1990s in 48 of the 73 countries, for which sufficiently reliable data are available. Together, these 48 countries account for 59 per cent of the combined population of the countries included in the analysis. Within-country income inequality remained relatively constant in 16 of the countries under review, though the data sug-gest that the situation has worsened in three of them during the past few years. Only nine of the countries included in the analysis registered a decline in income inequality between the 1950s and the 1990s-- included in this group are the Bahamas, France, Germany, Honduras, Jamaica, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, and Tunisia

There are some grounds for cautious optimism when it comes to non-income dimensions of inequality. In 1970, most adults in the world could not read or write. Now most can. Since the 1960s, the average life expectancy in developing countries has risen from 48 to 63 years.4 This development was due to the global spread of health technology and to major public health efforts in some of the world’s highest mortality areas. Since 1990, however, HIV/AIDS (predominantly in many African countries) and social and economic chaos in some transition economies (largely in Eastern Europe and Central Asia), have reversed some of the earlier gains. Life expectancy in Russia has dropped by 4 years, or 6% since 1970 (from 69.7 to 65.4), and male life expectancy has dropped by even more. However, it is HIV/AIDS that has wrought much more havoc in Botswana, where it has reduced life expectancy by nearly 20 years since 1970 (from 56.1 to 36.6) (UNDP, 2005).

5 WHAT DRIVES INCREASING INEQUALITY? At the heart of increasing inequality lies work. The main assets of the poor are their hands, and the way that they are being paid for their labour, and the nature of that work, is crucial in determining whether they escape from poverty, or are trapped in a world of back-breaking labour with no escape. According to Kofi Annan, ‘the best antipoverty programme is employment. And the best road to economic empowerment and social well-being lies in decent work’ (UN, 2005).

Whether an economy depends on agriculture, manufacturing or services has a crucial impact on inequality. Despite urbanisation, poverty continues to be more prevalent in rural areas, and agriculture generates more jobs than the other sectors, particularly if it is run by small-scale farmers rather than capital-intensive agribusinesses. Small-farm based agricultural growth is therefore, one of the best ways to reduce inequality (DFID, 2005).

Globally, economies and jobs are shifting out of agriculture into manufacturing and, increasingly, into services such as retail or finance. In those sectors, the nature of the job is fast changing. As economies become more technology- and knowledge-intensive, those with an education fare relatively better than those who are not educated. Each additional year of education now increases the average individual worker’s wages by 5-10 per cent (Goldin and Reinert, 2006), and the differential continues to rise, as huge numbers of new low-skilled workers enter the global workforce through the integration

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of countries such as China. The shift from manufacturing to services, and within manufacturing, to smaller production units, ‘informal’ enterprises, and female workforces, has undermined the power of traditionally male-dominated trade unions, making it harder for them to organise to secure decent wages and conditions.

The inequalities brought by changes in technology and business models have been compounded by political decisions. Worldwide, governments, often encouraged by the World Bank and other donors, have moved to ‘flexibilize’ labour laws, undermining trades unions, lowering minimum wages and making it easier to hire and fire workers. Young people in particular, face a global shortage of stable, well-paid jobs that bodes ill for the future.

Internationally, political decisions have also stacked the card-deck of global economic governance against the poorest countries, exacerbating the gulf between nations. The powerful nations have insisted on opening up developing country markets to flows of capital and goods, where rich country corporations stand to benefit, while restricting the flows of people (through increasingly tough immigration laws) and knowledge (through laws on intellectual property) that would predominantly benefit the poor countries.

Through the influence of the IMF, World Bank and other international institutions, powerful nations have promoted a remarkably ahistoric recipe of trade and investment liberalisation that flies in the face of almost all historical experience (Chang, 2001). While the Bank and others argue that poor countries can kick start development by opening up their trade and capital markets, successful countries from the US and Germany right through to China and Viet Nam have showed that such liberalisation happens as an economy grows in size and complexity. Countries in Africa, Eastern Europe and to a lesser extent Africa, that have followed the ‘shock therapy’ of the Washington Consensus have seen plenty of shock, but precious little therapy.

While defending the broad direction of reforms in recent decades, the World Bank concedes that trade liberalisation has exacerbated inequalities:

In many countries, opening to trade (often coinciding with opening to foreign direct investment) has been associated with rising inequality in earnings in the past two decades. This is especially so for middle- income countries, notably in Latin America. Opening to trade often boosts the pre-mium on skills as firms modernise their production processes (skill-biased technical change, in the jargon of economists). This is bad for equity if the institutional context restricts the capacity of workers to shift into new work—or limits future cohorts’ access to education.

The Bank also concedes that poorly-designed privatisation programmes in Latin America meant that after some initial improvement in coverage and indicators, for example infant mortality, the costs to governments started rising after a few years as companies cherry-picked the more profitable sectors, and services often became more expensive for poor consumers (World Bank, 2005).

6 WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN AT NATIONAL LEVEL There is a growing consensus on the ways to achieve greater equality of opportunity, but much less on whether redistribution is required, and how to create greater equality of outcomes in people’s


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lives. To return to the quotation at the start of the section, decision makers disagree whether David Beckham should be more heavily taxed in order to fund schools and hospitals for the poor. The World Bank stresses the potential economic disruption caused by high income taxes or radical land reform, but others believe that progressive redistribution of assets is needed to kick-start a virtuous cycle of inclusion and growth.

There are three entry issues that policy makers should explore in order to address inequality at a national level (Ferreira, 2004):

Endowments: governments should provide access to decent education, healthcare, water and sanitation, enable the poor to gain access to the financial system, guarantee basic infrastructure and in some cases, redistribute assets such as land.

Process: poor people need to be part of the governance of politics, justice, public services, and the markets for land, labour, and products, which in return requires government action to guarantee them a voice in the face of possible opposition from vested interests.

Outcomes: governments need to break the cycle of the transmission of inequality, for example, via inheritance and property taxes and affirmative action, providing social protection and training and other programmes to enable the poor to work their way out of poverty.

Above all, any serious attempt to reduce inequality must get off the fence on the issue of politics. The World Bank argues that the way to ‘break the power and inequality vicious circle’ is to recognise that ‘societies prosperous today are so because they have developed more egalitarian distributions of political power, while poor societies often suffer from unbalanced distributions.’ The first thing that must be redistributed is power – all else follows from that.

One has to wonder if such a political shift will ever take place-- is it possible that the entrenched elites will always frustrate such attempts to give power to the people? In some Asian countries, elites saw the long-term case for equality, both in terms of preventing social division and building the nation, and in terms of building a thriving economy. Countries such as Taiwan and Viet Nam have combined astonishing growth with high levels of equity. In Indonesia and Malaysia, governments managed to reduce inequality over an extended period through redistribution and employment generation (UN, 2005). China however, is fast becoming the ‘Latin America of Asia’ with spiraling levels of inequality drastically reducing the ability of its continued growth to keep reducing poverty.

In South Africa (after apartheid) and in Brazil (under the governments of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the Workers Party led by Lula) popular movements have carried business elites with them in attempting to redistribute wealth and opportunity in hitherto appallingly unequal societies. (ODI, undated) In Brazil, successive governments have, in the last decade, managed to lower Brazil’s world inequality, which ranked from 2nd to 10th by a mixture of good economic management (e.g., controlling inflation, which customarily hits the poor hardest) and redistributing income to the poor through various government schemes such as the ‘bolsa familia’, which pays poor families a monthly stipend if they ensure that their children are vaccinated and attend school (Ferreira, Phillippe, Leite and Litchfield, 2005). Other improvements, such as making sure Brazil’s education system serves the poor as well as the rich, bode well for further improvements in the future.

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What motivates national elites to take poverty seriously? In a fascinating survey (Reis and Moore, 2005) of the attitudes of developing country elites towards poverty, few identified poverty as a serious ‘threat’. Although they worried about crime, they did not see a strong link between poverty and crime, and were more worried about organized gangs; since the collapse of Communism, they no longer fear organized revolution and strangely, they made no link between poverty and disease – rich people believe that a combination of segregated living spaces and modern medicine can protect them.

But while fear may have subsided, the authors of the survey were optimistic that more positive forces for change are gaining ground. They argue that historically, the spread of democracy plays a crucial role in the shift to a set of ‘positive drivers’ (appeals to common interests) and ‘national altruistic arguments’ (e.g., national pride). This was particularly true in the case of education, although the reasons for the elites’ enthusiasm for educating the poor varied between seeing equality of opportunity as a good thing in itself, to wanting to correct the bad habits and ‘traditional’ thinking and prejudices of the poor!

Historically, reforms and redistribution often follow a ‘shock’ such as war or civil unrest, as was the case with the land reforms in much of East Asia after World War 2, which established the basis for the take-off of countries such as South Korea and Taiwan, or the US New Deal that followed the Great Depression. In some cases, such reforms were brought about by the efforts of enlightened elites-- in others, they were driven from below, for example, by the demands by demobilised soldiers and others for a ‘land fit for heroes’ that led to the creation of the post-war welfare state in Britain.

Does this mean only catastrophe can bring hope? Fortunately, not always--countries such as Viet Nam, (and perhaps China, if the government’s current concerns on inequality are to be believed) have reformed before collapse and crisis struck. Going further back, massive steps on areas that did not involve an immediate redistribution of assets, such as universal women’s suffrage, the public provision of education, the introduction of the minimum wage, or the abolition of slavery were introduced by elites without a crisis, in response to pressure from below by the organisations of the poor, be they political parties, trades unions or social movements such as the abolitionists or suffragettes.

Other developments may be increasing the opportunities for the kind of peaceful changes that have occurred in the former Soviet Union, the demilitarisation of Latin America, the rise in multi-party democracy in Africa and the more recent ‘colour revolutions’ in the Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. The growing global acceptance of basic human rights, such as the right to a vote or equal rights for women, strengthens the hands of those that demand equity, and rising literacy creates potential for a wider involvement of the poor, as does the increasing difficulty faced by those that would prevent the flow of news and information via the internet or other channels. History may be on the side of change.

7 WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN AT INTERNATIONAL LEVEL? Closing the formidable gaps between nations requires action on many fronts. Firstly, there are a number of areas where the rich countries could help by simply ceasing to do harmful things, such as tolerating corruption or tax avoidance; unfairly restricting migration; sitting on their hands on climate change; or denying developing country firms access to the latest knowledge and technology.


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The year 2005 saw some progress on debt and aid, although much still needs to be done, to hold the G8 to some rather flakkey promises to increase aid by $50bn by the year 2010, and extend debt relief to those countries that need it.

On trade, however, the paralysis of the Doha round has demonstrated the rich world’s reluctance to make trade fair for the developing countries. While debt and aid are politically straightforward -- cheques, however generous, require a mere flourish of the Chancellor’s pen -- trade reaches into the heart of domestic politics. Vested interests, from US steel makers to the EU sugar lobby, excel in putting politicians under pressure to do the wrong thing. Reforming trade takes real political courage, and the travails of the Doha round showed the limits to that courage.

More broadly, the failures of the Washington Consensus policies of the 1980s and 1990s across large swathes of the developing world have led to a crisis of belief in the Bretton Woods Institutions. These are now coming out with increasingly nuanced, and self critical analyses (albeit implicitly so), but what impact the rethink among the Washington-based policy wonks has on the ground largely remains to be seen.

At the very least, the crisis of the Washington Consensus should loosen the economic strait jacket on developing country governments, allowing them to follow a more heterodox approach to development. The‘same destination, different speeds’ of the liberalisers is becoming a more historically literate ‘same destination, different paths’.

8 CONCLUSIONSUnlike poverty, inequality continues to rise in most countries. Inequality deprives citizens of their rights, destabilises nations and explains why a hard core of some 400 million people are likely to remain chronically poor unless the current system changes. Tackling inequality head on, through a combination of redistribution and pro-poor growth, makes sense on numerous grounds, both instrumental and normative. And there are good news, too--countries and governments have shown that inequality can be lowered, giving their poorest citizens a less meager slice of the cake.

Tackling inequality inevitably leads to a struggle for rights, and engagement with issues of politics and power; it gets people angry, not least because it is an issue that affects both North and South. Inequality and its opposite-- equality, deserve a central place on the teaching agendas of tertiary education institutions everywhere.

Duncan Green is head of research at Oxfam GB and author of From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World (Oxfam International, 2008, published in Southern Africa by Jacana Media). His daily development blog is on http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p

NOTES1 Duncan Green is Head of Research at Oxfam in London, UK. 2 gender parity in education is the only aspect of inequality overtly addressed in the MDGs3 For a discussion of The Spirit Level, see http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=2504 DFID, Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work for the Poor, 2006, p57

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REFERENCESAnderson, E. and T. O.’Neill. 2006. ‘A New Equity Agenda?’ London: Overseas Development Institute. Chambers, R., D. Narayan, M. K. Shah, and P. Petesch (2000) Voices of the Poor:Crying Out for Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press for World Bank.Chang, H.-J. 2001. Kicking Away the Ladder. London: Anthem Press.Chronic Poverty Research Centre. 2004. Chronic Poverty Report 2004–05, CPRC.DFID (2005). Growth and Poverty Reduction: The Role of Agriculture, London:Department for International Development (DFID).DFID (2006). Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work for the Poor:Department for International Development (DFID).Ferreira, F. 2004. Inequality in Developing Countries, presentation at Overseas Development Institute, London. Ferreira, F., G, Phillippe, G. Leite and J. Litchfield, (mimeo, 2005). The Rise and Fall of Brazilian Inequality:

1981-2004 (Author, please give publisher’s name and place of publication if this is a book)Goldin, I. and K. Reinert. 2006. Globalization For Development, Washington DC:World Bank.Guardian (2001), Letwin: Tories should redistribute wealthLockwood, M. 2005. The State They’re In, Bourton on Dunsmore: ITDG Publishing.ODI (undated), Inequality in Developing Countries, Policy Briefing Pack, London: Overseas Development

InstituteReis, E. and M. Moore. 2005. Elite Perceptions of Poverty and Inequality, London:Zed Books.UN (2005.) The Inequality Predicament: Report of the World Social Situation 2005,New York: United Nations.......... Human Development Report 2005, New York and Oxford: UnitedNations Development Programme and Oxford University Press.Wilkinson, R. and K. Pickett. 2009. The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.

London: Allen Lane World Bank 2003. Inequality in Latin America & the Caribbean: Breaking with History?, Washington DC: World

Bank. World Bank 2005. World Development Report 2006, Washington DC: World Bank.

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‘Feeling it on the skin ...’ Reflections on issues-based

teaching and learning in development and human rights

education

Bertrand Borg, Toni Pyke and Colm Regan1

ABSTRACTWe are all somehow interconnected in a rapidly-evolving world. As members and participants in an ‘internationalised neighbourhood’, we are challenged to deliberate on our roles and duties within this global community and assess the ‘relevance to self’. Yet, realising our interconnectedness and assessing how to engage with the wider issues that this demands is difficult, especially when the issues are perceived to be ‘over there’. In this article, the authors grapple with the challenges and difficulties associated with addressing and educating around issues of human rights and development, and how these link in locally. The article explores some of the literature within development education, summarises a framework for engagement with the issues and outlines the benefits of two creative methodologies – art and identity -- to practically and critically engage with the issues. The authors warn that the methodology is not for the faint-hearted, and that the learning and teaching is a two-way, constantly evolving process.

keywords: arts-based methodologies, critical reflection and engagement, Develop-ment and human rights education, issues-based learning, popular educa-tion methodologies

1 INTRODUCTION‘Relevance to self’ is a key component to how individuals (and communities) assess the importance of ideas, values, norms and frameworks for interpreting and engaging with the world beyond their immediate ‘neighbourhood’ (Yankelovich 1991, Sen 2009.). As our local ‘neighbourhoods’ become international through a variety of interconnections and structures, this ‘relevance to self’ becomes an ever-greater challenge, no more so than in the area of education, especially human rights education and development issues. Recent decades have witnessed a significant increase in ideas and arguments concerning our relationships and duties in this internationalised neighbourhood (Sen 2009; Pogge 2008; Singer 2009 and Unger 1996). While

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‘intellectually’ accepting the importance and relevance of international frameworks such as those of human rights, world citizenship and sustainability (to name but three such frameworks), individuals and communities continue to exhibit ‘emotional resistance’ to embracing the relevance and implications of such frameworks, especially with regard to the (necessary) actions and duties they imply (Yankelovich 1991, Sen 2009 and Barry 1982).

The issues and dilemmas described above pose an immediate and far-reaching challenge to those of us who are directly engaged in popular education on agendas such as those of human rights, sustainable development and human (under)development itself. Having outlined and described a broad educational framework through which to approach such an agenda, the challenge on how to address it methodologically and practically in a creative and yet intellectually-robust manner remains. This article seeks to briefly outline and reflect on two approaches used by Irish-based education NGO 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World, and draw out some key lessons and learning with regard to the issues outlined above. The contexts of 80:20’s work have included Northern Ireland (working on the ‘peace process’ there); Zambia (working alongside partner NGO Women for Change on women’s rights in the context of HIV and AIDS) and Malta (partnership programmes with the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies – MEDAC, which focuses on the ‘education’ of young diplomats and NGO personnel).

2 OUTLINING A FRAMEWORK FOR ENGAGEMENTEducational engagement with the challenges of international citizenship in an obscenely unequal world has fostered an extensive literature describing and analysing a variety of frameworks for approaching the issues (see for example Hicks and Townley 1982, O’Cuanachain 2005 and Tibbits 2005). As part of its work, the Development Education Commission (an NGO-convened grouping of educationalists, activists, researchers and teachers from the UK and Ireland) offered a synthesis of much of this literature in the context of development education (Development Education Commission 1999). For the Commission, any such interpretative framework needs to address four different, yet inter-related areas as follows:

• Knowledge, ideas and understanding – factual information about the shape of our world, ideas about why it is shaped the way it is, about connections between wealth and poverty, progress and inequality, about relationships internationally.

• Attitudes and values – about oneself and others, about social responsibilities, about learning, behaviour, beliefs, subject knowledge and about society locally and internationally.

• Skills and capabilities – skills that help us to understand and engage with our world – analytical and communication skills, interpersonal and social skills, the ability to link knowledge and understanding with action, etc.

• Behaviour, experiences and action – social relationships, personal behaviour, opportunities to participate meaningfully, competence at carrying out tasks, fulfilling potential, linking ideas, action and behaviour.

Development (human rights, sustainability, etc.) education is argued to be a process by which people, through personal experience and shared knowledge, explore and engage with:

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• Dispositions and values: gain experience of, develop and practice dispositions and values, which are crucial to a just and democratic society internationally and to a sustainable world.

• Ideas and understandings: engage with, develop and apply ideas and understandings which help to explain the origins, diversity and dynamic nature of society, including the interactions between and among societies, cultures, individuals and environments.

• Capabilities and skills: engage with, develop and practice capabilities and skills, which enable investigation of society, discussion of issues, problem-tackling, decision-making, and team making.

• Actions: take actions that are inspired by these ideas, values and skills, and which contribute to the achievement of a more just and caring world.

In her introduction to the key publication of the Commission, Essential Learning, the (then) United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson reinforced this framework:

‘Relevant provisions of international instruments provide a definition of human rights education as training, dissemination and information efforts aimed at the building of a universal culture of human rights through the imparting of knowledge and skills and the moulding of attitudes. This entails the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedom; the full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity; the promotion of understanding, tolerance, gender equality and friendship among all nations, indigenous peoples and racial, national, ethnic, religious and linguistic groups; the enabling of all persons to participate effectively in a free society; and the furtherance of the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.” (Development Education Commission 1999:7)

The remainder of this article focuses on how this framework has been, in the context of the issues and challenges outlined in the introduction, ‘translated’ into practical, popular educational methodologies through the use of ‘identity boxes’ and through art (especially public murals – a popular currency in Northern Ireland). The case studies arise from the context(s) of the work described above in a variety of settings and with different groups of ‘learners’ and ‘teachers’. The article concludes with some broader observations and reflections on the agenda.

3 ISSUES-LED LEARING3.1 Relevance to self – Using ‘identity boxes’Identity boxes have been in use for many decades and owe their inspiration to art, art education and psychology. Many great artists have expended much energy and creativity in trying to capture the essence of ‘identity’ – see, for example, the works of Frida Kahlo, Van Gogh, Pepon Osorio, James Rosenquist, but especially the assemblages of Lucas Samaras and Joseph Cornell that focused on the theme of personal identity, and how this can be expressed through the use of objects and symbols.

Our overall aim in utilising this methodology is to directly address a number of key questions, which influence and shape our understanding of the world immediately around and beyond us, and in shaping how we interpret and engage with that world. What is our ‘received identity’; and what is our ‘chosen identity’-- how do they expand outwards and inwards-- and how do they change over time? Is our individual or collective identity what we are or what we would like to be? Who, and what forms our identity? Can identity be changed? In what ways does our identity influence how we see things,


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especially issues such as human rights, universal rights, rights and responsibilities? Other objectives have included exploring how our ‘lived experience’ is a rich source of information and analysis; reflecting on the influences that mould our values and beliefs; who we are and what we ‘stand for’; building a sense of each individual while, at the same time, building a sense of the group and relating identity to specific issues (inter-culturalism, sectarianism, human rights, gender, HIV and AIDS, etc.)

3.2 The Process briefly described and analysedUsing discarded cardboard boxes each person constructs ‘a box’ of whatever size with two windows cut in each side; the box is then ‘decorated’ using a variety of materials – paint, magazine clippings, keywords, symbols, graphics, photographs, etc.,-- reflecting initially, our received identities and subsequently our chosen identities; family background, race, nationality, religion, gender, age, heritage, passions and preferences, etc. Additional areas of focus could include how a person sees him or herself, how a person thinks others might see him or her, his or her beliefs, convictions, etc. These items are chosen and illustrated through a series of individual and group reflections, exchanges and debates-- participants in the process (including the ‘teacher’) are also encouraged to think and talk about how identity has changed over time. These discussions and illustrations form the outside ‘skin’ of the box (identity).

Decorating the inside ‘skin’ of the box involves a more detailed and reflective process of considering our own identity (human rights), journeys to date and the forces, individuals, events and influences that have shaped and moulded it – this dimension revolves around more substantial reflection and discussion-- including the taking of limited ‘risks’ in terms of personal biographies and reflections. Collages are made with images of each journey, transferred onto acetates, which are then used to cover the ‘windows’ on the sides of the box. While each box is individual and personal, the activity of creating it ‘in public’ and through group discussion generates considerable mutual learning and exchange around many of the core issues and challenges raised earlier. Additional clear sheets exploring other related topics can be ‘hung’ inside the box illustrating the various ‘layers’ of identity each individual possesses.

When all individual boxes are complete and are all displayed together (having been introduced and described by their makers), a rich and complex discussion can be generated around the process and its outcomes. The comments below, taken from a workshop in July 2009 from the Mediterranean Academy for Diplomatic Studies annual summer school in Malta, typically illustrate such a reflection:

• The activity provided us with the ability to observe others both in terms of the content and ‘shape’ of their box and also as regards the process of making it – ‘everybody made their own box individually, but by doing it together in a group, we could observe each other and our boxes as they took shape. The individual and group discussions that took place added hugely to our knowledge of each other and of our own ‘‘human rights journeys’’, and they certainly contributed to our sense of being a group with much in common’.

• We had an opportunity to ‘play’ and to be creative – ‘making the box reminded me of many things I enjoy doing – cutting and pasting, building a collage, using paint and colours. I never thought I would use these activities for something as ‘serious’ as this’.


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• The box is a practical and relevant activity for human rights – ‘making something tangible like my own human rights identity box brought human rights ‘‘home’’ for me – it was about me, my life, things I had not thought about for a long time (and certainly not in this way) but it was also a very practical activity and to see all the boxes together in the end was most impressive and striking.’

• An opportunity to make something personal from something that is impersonal – ‘the cardboard and the magazines we used to ‘‘decorate’’ the boxes were very impersonal and yet, the way we used them made the end product very personal – this was interesting. Also, my box became very personal to me and, at the same time, it was ‘public’ and impersonal, I found this an interesting way to work’.

• The boxes were non-judgemental of the people who made them –‘“everyone made their own personal box and no-one interfered in the making of them – there was plenty of discussion and not a little ‘‘competition’’ between us over how we made the boxes and yet no-one commented in a judgemental way on each other’s box.’

• ‘It gave me freedom to breathe’ –‘thinking about the shape and content of my identity box gave me a sense of freedom and the opportunity to ‘‘breathe’’ about something that was important to me’.

• The activity related to us through the use of words, pictures – we made something from nothing –‘we used images, pictures and words from rubbish magazines – we related all of this to ourselves and in this way I can say we made something out of nothing.’

• It made us think outside the box in order to create the box – ‘in order to make the box, we were encouraged to think outside the box about ourselves, about our own human rights stories and journeys and about how they were shaped. And, to capture this in a multi-dimensional object made us think about things differently’.

• ‘It made us extrapolate ourselves into an outside context’ –‘ I had not thought about myself and human rights in this way before, the box is very personal and yet, I made it publicly and it was ‘on show’ even as I made it, so it was both personal and public at one and the same time. We had to build out from ourselves into the public realm of human rights – a very interesting and challenging way to do this’.

• The activity reflects human rights qualities – ‘the activity itself, working together, sharing ideas and approaches, helping each other make the boxes and then displaying them all together at the end reflects my own understanding of what qualities human rights promotes.’

• It was an ‘act of completion’ –‘seeing boxes all together in the end created for me a sense of having made something – it was a sort of act of completion – starting and finishing something myself’.

3.3 Exploring genocide through art Genocide is perhaps one of the most complicated human rights issues to explore within an educational framework-- not simply because of the nature of the crime(s) itself, but because the closer one analyses it, the more one begins to ask questions of events, and also of oneself. The progression from asking ‘who did this’ to ‘could it happen to me’ is rapid, and students soon face the most difficult question of


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all – if the perpetrators were not monsters, but ordinary people who committed monstrous acts, could we all, potentially, be capable of genocide?

3.3.1 The genocide muralIn 2004, 80:20 brought two schools – one from the Republic and one from Northern Ireland – together to create a public mural about genocide. The mural was timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, but the aim was to use the anniversary to learn not only about what happened in Rwanda in 1994, but also for the students to relate that horror to their own country’s difficult history.

Ireland’s history of sectarian violence and division made the project especially challenging. While the nature and scale of the conflict throughout the ‘Troubles’ was limited, the language used and the classification of individuals that became an inherent part of the conflict were perturbing enough for some commentators to argue that conditions in Northern Ireland were approaching those found in many societies on the verge of genocide (Stanton, 1998).

In light of this history, the decision to paint a mural about genocide, together with two schools from opposite sides of the border takes on additional meaning. Rather than simply a remembering of events in Rwanda, the mural used the (controversial) juxtaposition of Rwanda and Northern Ireland to help students – and viewers – explore the nature of genocide: its causes and history, what could have been done to prevent it in the past, and perhaps most importantly, what they, as individuals, could do to help prevent it from happening again.

The use of art was a central component of the project--using art brought with it a number of benefits, which more traditional methodologies do not provide. Public art moves away from a one-way ‘banking’ form of education (Freire, 1996), wherein students are treated as a tabula rasa, onto which information is deposited. The very nature of art requires learners to think critically about an issue, in order to then visualise what exactly they wish to communicate. The mural project sought not just to impart information (in the form of facts, dates and numbers), but also to create it (by providing a space, literally and figuratively, for public debate about genocide). Public art, by its very nature forces students into everyday life, blurring the artificial division between society and the classroom (Dewey, 1963). As the student-artists create and the public observes, the two engage in a form of mutual learning, which allows both parties to explore their own identities (Rogers, 1973).

The mural was created in four layers, with each layer having a different pedagogical goal. The initial stages involved a more traditional approach, through a number of intensive workshops, wherein the students negotiated an agenda and worked out what exactly they wanted to learn (for themselves) and how they wished to share that knowledge (with the wider public).

3.3.1.1 The first layer of the mural dealt with facts. The group decided to focus on three key pieces of information; that is, places; where genocide occurred, or was alleged to have occurred; the dates when genocides occurred throughout history; and the methods used for killing. When listing the methods, the words were painted in the active tense, lending them an added urgency. The challenge was to create a mural that not only spoke to its creators, but which also invited debate from the wider public. Some of the names chosen and painted onto the mural were therefore, purposely controversial--the


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treatment of Aboriginal Australians, the plight of Armenians in the aftermath of the First World War, or the events in Northern Ireland.

3.3.1.2 The second layer concerned itself with imagery -- how to best visually depict genocide? Maxine Greene has written of the value of the visual arts in developing young people’s sense of civic engagement, as they are presented with an issue, and then encouraged to visualise an alternative reality. As they look upon the world from a detached perspective, students discover the possibility of creating new worlds, rather than simply replicating the old (Greene, 2007). The visualisation of facts and ideas – an indirect form of problem-posing -- forces learners to critically analyse not just the issue at hand, but also the way that they, as individuals, relate to it within the world (Freire 1996). Debate raged over what image or images would be most effective, with the students eventually agreeing that a sea of human skulls – a stark, ominous graphic – would best convey the horror of genocide.

3.3.1.3 The third layer sought to ‘humanise’ the mural through the addition of personal testimonies of survivors of genocide and those affected. One of the dangers when analysing genocide is that, amidst the sea of numbers and historical narrative, the individual moral and psychological implications are left to fall between the cracks. When teaching about genocide, these can be difficult to convey--how does one break through the ‘disconnect’ that a student experiences when analysing an historical event? It is the moral questions that underpin the study of genocide that make it what Brenda Trofanenko, <<AUTHORR, is this a source; if so insert date and list under references>>> has called ‘difficult knowledge’. By inviting participants to actively seek out a personal testimony and add it to the mural, we sought to highlight the human face of genocide and discourage a hierarchy of suffering, in which the ‘importance’ of different genocides was gauged by raw statistics.

3.3.1.4 The mural’s fourth and final layer introduced a socio-political analysis of genocide by familiarising participants with Gregory Stanton’s Eight Stages of Genocide (Stanton, 1998). Stanton has analysed incidents of genocide throughout history and identified a progressive series of events common to all of them-- these were distilled into 8 steps, or stages, beginning with ‘classification’ and ending with ‘denial’. The mural, composed as it was of 8 large wood panels, lent itself perfectly to their inclusion, and each stage was printed along the bottom of each board.

This fourth layer represented the mural project’s analytical dimension. The first layer introduced factual data, the second encouraged participants to visualise their learning and the third layer sought to bridge genocide’s history with its human implications through the introduction of personal testimonies. The fourth layer had an altogether different function-- that of helping participants understand just how societies as diverse as Germany, Turkey, Serbia, Rwanda and others could all, at some point in their history, perpetuate the premeditated extermination of an individual people. Stanton’s eight stages approach universalises an understanding of genocide-- none of the stages are outlandish, and the gradual progression from distinction of the ‘other’ to fear, hate and eventually extermination of ‘them’ is logically laid out. It deconstructs the comfortable assumption often made of genocide-- that it is the fruit of barbarous individuals, or an aberration that is the child of circumstance.

3.4 The mural project, therefore, concluded with an invitation to personal responsibility.

The artistic process served as metaphorical concentric circle, beginning with a disinterested look at the facts and figures, circling in to the human effect that genocide has had on (other) individuals and


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finally, drawing participants into the realisation that genocide has implications not just for its victims throughout history, but for everyone. For the participants – young people from either side of the Irish border, who grew up in the wake of the Good Friday agreement and the peace process – the importance of this lesson cannot be understated. In order to understand who we are, we must first understand where we come from. We are all born with a past, and we are who we are because of those who came before us. To detach ourselves from that past is to deform our present relationships, and misconstrue our futures (MacIntyre, 1981). It is only by understanding our predecessors and their motivations that we can prevent our own worst excesses from being realised.

4 CONCLUSION

…critical reflection on practice is a requirement of the relationship between theory and practice. Otherwise theory becomes simply ‘blah, blah, blah’ and practice, pure activism… to teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowl-edge…although the teachers or the students are not the same, the person in charge of education is being formed or re-formed as he/she teaches, and the person who is taught forms him/herself in this process. In this sense, teaching is not about transferring knowledge or contents. Nor is it an act whereby a creator subject gives shape, style, or soul to an indecisive and complacent body… (Paulo Freire 1997)<<AUTHOR, is this a quote?

The process and methodologies utilised in issues-led education enables learners to practically and critically engage and immerse themselves within the development or human rights agenda. It is, in a sense, a very demanding form of education-- learning becomes a two-way process, not a spectator sport in which students simply sit back and ‘absorb’ information as the teacher divulges it. Students must consciously appraise what they are learning, relate it to their own experiences, and eventually make what they learn a part of themselves (Chickering & Gamson, 1987). The challenge is ongoing – not only for students, but also for teachers.

During the process learners are encouraged to find out more about issues for themselves: researching appropriate information to begin to understand the issue asking questions and debating their findings and ideas, contacting/lobbying appropriate agencies and government bodies, interacting with the media, challenging conventional wisdom, arriving at group conclusions through democratic processes, critical reflection, and finally applying and communicating this learning with a wider audience through creative media – in this case, art (Blumenfeld et al., 1991).

There are key benefits and lessons that learners can derive from the methodologies described-- such as learners becoming actively engaged in their own education, drawing on their own perspectives and experiences and bringing their own values and value judgments into the process with less emphasis on direct information transmission from the ‘educator’. Learning through a variety of methodologies introduces new skills as well as opportunities to learn about issues from a multiplicity of perspectives and approaches. As is clearly the case with a focus on genocide, issue-based learning encourages the making of connections between ‘local and global’ issues and their relevance to self and promotes a greater sense of ‘ownership’ of the agenda.


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Such approaches enable learners to begin to understand some of the complex issues around global inequality and injustice and feel that they are able to make a difference in a variety of ways. They also facilitate flexibility and adaptability to different types of learners and learning situations (Blumenfeld et al.1991), in addition to allowing students a greater degree of choice and help capitalising on their internal motivation (Bransford, Sherwood, Vye & Rieser, 1986; Bruer, 1993; Resnick, 1987). Learners are encouraged to investigate and seek resolutions to problems and acquire an understanding of key principles and concepts (Blumenfeld et al.1991).

This article has sought to explore the benefits of issues-led teaching methods in human rights and development education. It has discussed the nature and goals of development education, looked at two practice driven examples of applying issues-led methodologies from 80:20’s work and deconstructed the pedagogical benefits such methodologies provide.

By their very nature, issues concerning development and human rights are as much about ‘hard’ factual data as they are about exploring human dignity, the nature of justice and other intangible issues of morality. It is these values, and our disposition towards them, which lend development and human right issues their relevance-- as yeast makes bread rise, so too does an understanding of these values give human rights and development issues relevance. The Universal Declaration is given a context by its Preamble and its reference to ‘barbarous acts’-- any discussion on development will necessarily involve value judgments; and one cannot meaningfully analyse genocide without exploring human nature, morality and collective responsibility.

Effective human rights and development education must, therefore, provide learners with the analytical space necessary for them to examine these concepts and their attitudes towards them. Issues-led methodologies, with their focus on creativity, critical evaluation and self-exploration, encourage such analytical space. When coupled with traditional classroom teaching methods, they allow both teacher and learner to move beyond fact-based knowledge, to a point of critical understanding and reflection – of an issue, and of their relationship with it.

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the prac-tice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world (Shaull in Freire 1982:13)

NOTES1 Colm Regan. Coordinator, 80:20 Educating & Acting for a Better World, St. Cronan’s BNS, Vevay Road, Bray, Co.

Wicklow, Republic of Ireland. Tel: +353 1 286 0487, fax: +353 1 2764979, email: [email protected]

Bertrand Borg, Education Officer, 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World, St. Cronan’s BNS, Vevay Road Bray, Co. Wicklow, Republic of Ireland. Tel: +353 1 286 0487, fax: +353 1 2764979, email: [email protected]

Toni Pyke, Editor, www.developmenteducation.ie. c/o PO Box 4174, Pretoria 0001, South Africa. Tel: +27 (0)82 955 2229, email: [email protected]


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REFERENCESBarry, B. 1982. Humanity and justice in global perspective, In R.Pennock and J. W. Chapman Nomos XXIV:

Ethics, Economics and the Law, New York: New York University Press, 219—252.Blumenfeld, P. C., Soloway, E., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Guzdial, M., and Palincsar, A. 1991. Motivating

project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. Educational Psychologist, 26, 369-398.

Bransford, J. D., Sherwood, R. S., Vye, N. J., and Rieser, J. 1986. Teaching Thinking and Problem Solving: Research Foundations. American Psychologist, 41, 1078-1089.

Bruer, J. T. 1993. Schools for Thought. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT PressDevelopment Education Commission. 1999. Essential Learning for Everyone: Civil Society, World Citizenship

and the Role of Education. 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World, Ireland and Development Education Centre, Birmingham

Dewey, J. 1963. Experience and education. New York. MacmillanFreire, Initials.1996. Title<<AUTHOR, this ref has been cited in the text>>>Freire, Initials. 1997. Title <<<AUTHOR, this was also cited in the text>>Freire, P. 2001. Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy and civil courage. Lanhan, Maryland. Rowman &

Littlefield. MacIntyre, A. 2007. After Virtue: A study in moral theory. 3rd ed. London. Gerald Duckworth & Co.O’Cuanachain, C. 2005. Citizenship education in the Republic of Ireland, In Osler., A. (ed.) Teachers, Human

Rights and Diversity. Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books.Pogge, T. 2008. World poverty and Human Rights. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Polity Press.Resnick, L. 1987. Learning in School and Out. Educational Researcher, 16(9), 13--20Rogers, C. 1976. Client-centred therapy. London, Constable.Sen, A. 2009. The Idea of justice. London, Allen Lane.Shaull, R. 1982. Foreword, In Freire, P. 1982. Pedagogy of Hope. New York, Continuum.Stanton, G. H.1998. The eight stages of genocide. Yale Genocide Studies. Series, GSO1?? AUTHOR, Title.

online. Available at: http://www.genocidewatch.org/aboutgenocide/8stagesofgenocide.html (accessed on?) Tibbits, F. 2005. Transformational learning and human rights education: Taking a closer look. London, Routledge.Yankelovich, D. 1991. Coming to public judgement: Making democracy work in a complex world. Syracuse,

University Press.

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Women and HIV and AIDS: A development education

perspective

Valerie Duffy1

ABSTRACTWe are all somehow interconnected in a rapidly-evolving world. As members and participants in an ‘internationalised neighbourhood’, we are challenged to deliberate on our roles and duties within this global community and assess the ‘relevance to self’. Yet, realising our interconnectedness and assessing how to engage with the wider issues that this demands is difficult, especially when the issues are perceived to be ‘over there’. In this article, the authors grapple with the challenges and difficulties associated with addressing and educating around issues of human rights and development, and how these link in locally. The article explores some of the literature within development education, summarises a framework for engagement with the issues and outlines the benefits of two creative methodologies – art and identity -- to practically and critically engage with the issues. The authors warn that the methodology is not for the faint-hearted, and that the learning and teaching is a two-way, constantly evolving process.

keywords: AIDS, complexity, community, development education, gender, HIV, intesectionality, methodology, vulnerability

1 INTRODUCTION

The AIDS pandemic combines the basic elements of sexuality, blood, morality, illness, and death, of violence, stigma, rejection, and despair, of compassion, hope, and courage. Re-sponses to it raises questions about the understanding and interpretation of illness, behav-iours and beliefs and individual responses and motivations, as well as an understanding of national and international socio-economic and political contexts.

(Ghosh et al, 2004: 89)

It is of little wonder that the late Zambian President Dr. Levy Mwanawasa declared HIV and AIDS a national emergency. Zambia, a country with up to 12 million people, has one of the highest levels of HIV and AIDS; and is one of the poorest countries in the world.

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According to the 2007 Zambia Demographic and Health Survey (2007: xxiv) it is estimated that one in seven adults in Zambia live with HIV – with a prevalence rate of 14 per cent among the 15--49 years age group down from 15.6 per cent in 2001/2002. This is in spite of the fact that almost 100 per cent of those interviewed were highly informed about HIV and AIDS, and that 73 per cent of women and 74 per cent of men in the 15--49 age group agreed that using a condom every time a person has sexual intercourse reduces the risk of contracting HIV (ZDHS, 2007: 197). It is women however, who have higher rates of infection --at 16 per cent compared to 12 per cent for men within this age cohort. In fact, women seem to have a higher rate of infection in all age groups, and thus a major focus for both intervention and research has been on them.

According to the January 2009 Joint Mid-term Review of the National AIDS Strategic Framework of Zambia (xv), there are wide variations by age, sex and geographic location. HIV prevalence is lowest (4.7%) in the 15--19 age group and highest (23.6%) in the 35--39 age group (the most economically productive group). Variations by province reveal an HIV prevalence of 6.8 per cent in the Northern Province and a prevalence of 20.8 per cent in Lusaka Province. HIV prevalence decreased in some provinces such as the South, where it has dropped by 3.1 per cent, but has increases in the Western Province by 2.1 per cent.

Some of the consequences for those who are most affected is a decline in their standard of living, growing deprivation, poverty, unemployment, and gender inequality. As a result, HIV can be spread through lack of knowledge about HIV and other STIs, liberal sexual behaviour, certain cultural practices, transactional sex, substance abuse and coercive sex (Zambian Corridors of Hope, 2009: 2).

Zambia is deemed capable of attaining Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 6, which indirectly focused on HIV and AIDS by 2015, due to a combination of supportive strategies implemented by the Zambian government together with its national and international partners. However, a number of key challenges have been identified in the Zambia MDG Progress Report for 2008 (Ministry of Finance, 2008: 22). These include the negative cultural<<<AUTHOR, please name those practices>>>practices and poor economic status of women that prevent them from demanding safer sex, which in turn, inhibit them from addressing factors affecting Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) uptake. In addition to this, fear; stigma; discrimination and inadequate privacy and confidentiality; inadequately trained and located health professionals to tackle the increased disease burden due to HIV and AIDS, limited resources and low usage of condoms all compound the situation.

In 2005, of the 179 countries ranked on the Human Development Index, Zambia was ranked at 165, making the country one of the world’s poorest countries with significant negative consequences for agriculture, land rights, and rural development; environment and natural resource management; education; health and violence; transport; energy; water supply and sanitation; labour markets, employment, and microeconomic-enterprise development; safety nets and food security and urban development. Approximately 80 per cent of the Zambian population in rural areas continue to exist in wretched environmental conditions, where they do not have access to basic health care, medical staff, essential drugs and even the most basic health infrastructure, with a similar situation in education, water and sanitation (statistics indicate that 88 per cent of urban dwellers have access to safe water, as opposed to only 41 per cent of rural dwellers-- and while 39 per cent of urban dwellers have access to proper toilets, only 2 per cent of rural dwellers have access to proper toilets (LCMS, 2006).

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According to Kelly (Regan, 2006: 260), the poor are most vulnerable to HIV infection as a result of poverty, where there is less scope in their lives for making real choices affecting areas such as work, where and how they live, how they will spend, how they will occupy themselves during their free time, etc; they live under immense pressure to meet immediate needs and have few incentives to delay gratifications and the pressures they experience in meeting their daily living requirements make it unrealistic and difficult for the poor to be concerned about a disease that may not affect them until later in their life.

2 HIV AND AIDS AND THE VULNERABILITY OF WOMENAccording to Human Rights Watch (2007: 3), it was estimated that in 2006, some 57 per cent of those infected with HIV in Zambia were women, and among these women were girls and young women aged between 1524. This group was four times more likely to be infected with HIV than their male counterparts. Despite considerable expenditure and resources committed to education to raise the profile of the effects of the virus and on the need for behaviour change, less than 25 per cent of the population has gone for Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT).

Throughout Africa women remain second class citizens – subordinate in their personal and social relationships to men – and this makes ‘it difficult for them to negotiate safer sex and to use condoms consistently, for fear of being abandoned or assaulted’ (Human Rights Watch, 2007: 10). Women have unequal access to property rights where (in many Sub Saharan countries) they ‘neither inherit nor keep property upon divorce on an equal basis with men’ (Human Rights Watch, 2007: 9--10). Violence against women constitutes a major problem (including in Zambia) and such ‘accepted’ violence leaves women open to the possibility of being infected with HIV where they are unable to negotiate safe sex.

According to Fr. Michael Kelly (Regan, 2006: 264), women are disadvantaged in many fundamental ways. Their biological makeup means that women are more vulnerable, for example, giving birth at an early age or having numerous pregnancies can expose women to the risk of infection. Being seen as second-class citizens as a result of social and cultural beliefs; having to participate in ceremonies and practices that allow the spread of HIV; having an unfaithful partner/husband; experiencing violence and rape; being dependant on male relatives and/or having limited access to economic and property resources; having to engage in sex work to support their family and having a significantly limited voice in the bedroom to negotiate safe sex means that women are routinely and systematically vulnerable and has led to the feminisation of AIDS.

The feminisation of HIV and AIDS refers to the growing number of women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa, who are:

much more severely affected than men, with especially stark differences between the sexes in HIV prevalence among young people; women and girls becoming infected and dying at younger ages than men and boys; and the negative impacts of the AIDS epidemic which are more severe for women and girls than for men and boys.

(Kelly, Lecture notes, 2009).

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Women’s subordinate position in society is not only an obstacle for their empowerment, but also compounds their vulnerability to HIV and AIDS. Recent research (Ministry of Finance, 2008; Poku et al, 2007; Alfsen 2004; Yeboah, 2007; Human Rights Commission, 2008; Human Rights Watch, 2007; Muyoyeta, 2007; Booth, 2004) provides key insights into the nature and extent of such vulnerability and the different levels at which it operates focusing especially on their biological, economic, educational, political, legal and socio-cultural vulnerabilities in a context of effective disempowerment.

2.1 Biological - women are mostly vulnerable to infection, owing to their biological makeup-- male to female transmission is seven times more than female to male transmission. Semen remains in the body of the woman for some time after sexual intercourse as they are the ‘recipients’ (van Dyk, 2008: 35). For men, the contact time with vaginal fluids is far shorter and are therefore, less exposed. In addition to this, women are more at risk because any sores that they might have in the vagina makes the virus easy to be transmittable—in the same manner, if a woman has other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) the virus is easily transmittable. . Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) often go undetected and untreated in the body of a woman and are less visible than in the male body. The practice of ‘dry sex’ is another factor, and it involves the use of herbs, which reduce the fluids but enhance the risk of bleeding and tearing, thus exposing the woman to greater risk. If a woman has sex from an early age, she could also be at risk due to her body not being fully developed. All of these issues combined with the status of women in society play a key role in shaping the extent, spread and effect of HIV and AIDS.

2.2 Economic - according to UNICEF (December 2007: 1), Zambia, has one of the highest incidences of poverty in the world (according to 2006 reports, 64 per cent of people of the people in Zambia were impoverished), with poverty systematically undermining human rights and ensuring that the poor remain marginalised and excluded.

African women produce three-quarters of the continent’s food and regularly form the majority of workers in the fields, the homes and the markets but yet they are amongst the poorest of the poor. Despite their productivity, they remain heavily dependent on men due to lack of access to capital or credit or control over household resources and also due to patriarchal practices and traditions, including those that relate to the economic position of women. These practices and traditions extend into the ownership of land or property with women routinely restricted in the ownership and inheritance of land or wealth. Lacking power or control over household or communal resources makes women subservient to men and relatively powerless in negotiating (including sexual relations), thus increasing their vulnerability.


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Poverty Situation in Zambia (2002--2006)

Indicator Measure 2002 2004 2006

National Incidence % 67.0 68.0 64.0

Incidence of Extreme Poverty % 46.0 53.0 51.0

Rural Poverty (% of rural population) % 72.0 78.0 80.0

Urban Poor (% of urban population) % 28.0 53.0 34.0

Source: Ministry of Finance and National Planning – Economic Report 2004 and LCMS Report, CSO, 2004 and 2006 (in National HIV/AIDS/STI/TB Council, April 2009: 12)

It is for these reasons that many women and young girls are often forced into prostitution or ‘transactional sex’ (or risky sexual relationships with, for example, older men or ‘sugar daddies’) as an ‘economic necessity’ in order to provide for their families, despite knowing that this may lead to the transmission of HIV. It is a survival strategy for many as they are sometimes left with no other options. One such example comes from a field visit during the development of the National Strategy for Prevention of HIV and STI’s in Zambia (2009: 12):

There is no food here. So when a young girl brings money home the mother is happy. Some oth-ers ask their daughters why they don’t go out and find food like their friends. Mothers do not ask questions when their daughters bring home food purchased by selling sex. They are just happy to have a meal for that day.

(Luapula Province Informant, 2008)

Many girls are taken out of school early in order to help at home or to provide care for sick family members, and are subsequently deprived of education, thus reinforcing their subordination, vulnerability and disempowerment. At this stage of the analysis it is important to explore the educational dimension of women’s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.

2.3 Educational -- access to education (formal and non-formal) is vital economically, socially and politically. The educational challenge of HIV and AIDS in Africa is deeply rooted in pervasive gender inequalities in African societies and the subordinate status of women and girls. For economic, social, family, health and cultural reasons many young girls are forced to leave school early and this reality greatly contributes to lower female literacy rates than those for men and to generally poor educational attainment. In the last Zambian census (in 2000) only one quarter of males aged 15--24 were illiterate, whereas one third of females of the same age were illiterate. The number of literate girls aged 15--24 actually declined from 74.9 per cent in 1990 to 70.1 per cent in 2000. Adult literacy rates in 2000 were standing at 67.2 per cent, with women’s literacy rates standing only at only 58.3 per cent- - an increase of only 2 per cent in 10 years. According to the Zambia HIV Prevention Response and Treatment Modes of Transmission Analysis, (2009: 23), men and women with higher education levels have higher HIV prevalence than those with lower education levels.

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HIV and AIDS pose an enormous threat to the progress already made in girl-child’s access to, and completion of basic primary education. Education is a critical mitigating force for developing life skills and knowledge in terms of supporting themselves and their families. By assisting girls in overcoming the effects of HIV and AIDS and supporting them in gaining access to education, they can become more empowered to support themselves, their families and communities and also contribute to national development. These points illustrate the important role that the education of women and girls has to play in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

2.4 Political and legal structures -- most cultures in sub-Saharan Africa are patrilineal, so when a woman marries through customary law, she will then be a part of her husband’s family or tribe and therefore, any property will be passed along through the males in the family. Women can often only access land or property through their fathers, brothers, husbands or male relatives, and cannot legally own land.

In much of rural sub-Saharan Africa, there is limited access to legal information on or access to African national courts regarding the rights of women. Poor educational capacity is often further compounded by lack of access to even basic information on, for example, ‘property grabbing’ by the family of a deceased husband or partner and its status in existing law – this increases the vulnerability of women faced with the economic realities of HIV and AIDS.

In Zambia, there are two ‘legal systems’ – the ‘modern’ court system and the ‘traditional’ court system and, depending on location and practice, these systems do not treat issues identically, with the traditional system being predominant in many kingdoms. Women, and especially rural women, are routinely at the mercy of the economic, and specifically property, traditional customs and law because of the patriarchal nature of traditional practices.

2.5 Socio-cultural factors – of particular significance in terms of female vulnerability is the subordinate social status of women in many societies and the cultural practices and traditions that sustain that subordination. For example, the payment of ‘lobola’ (bride price) is still prevalent as an essential ingredient in constituting a valid ‘traditional’ marriage, and this reality places married women in a subordinate and penalising economic relationship. Referring back to previously cited vulnerabilities of women, the majority are not only maintained, but are reinforced by cultural practices such as initiation (where women often are required to publicly display subordination), those relating to women’s health (traditional ‘infertility treatments’), to sexual intercourse (‘dry sex’ which increases women’s vulnerability to infection during such sex) and the accepted practice of multiple sexual partners for men. To illustrate the point, it has been argued (in National HIV/AIDS/STI/TB Council, June 2009: 23) that in Zambia, people married or living together are the largest group with the most HIV infected people; HIV prevalence in these men is 16 per cent (higher than average for men) and 15 per cent in women (slightly lower than average for women)’. Among the major findings is that a substantial percentage – 21 per cent of new infections are estimated to occur in people who report that they have only one sexual partner. Low levels of male circumcision in most of the country, inadequate condom use, and a range of social norms increase risk and help drive Zambia’s varied epidemic...


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much more effective efforts are needed with regards to multiple and concurrent partners, transactional and intergenerational sex, and discordant couples in order to reduce incidence (National HIV/AIDS/STI/TB Council, June 2009: i) Women do not have sufficient power to negotiate condom use within a relationship. Furthermore, women have insufficient power outside of a relationship to leave it if they are at risk of infection.

3 HIV, AIDS, WOMEN AND THE ROLE OF DEVELOPMENT EDUCATIONThrough focusing on many of the key intersecting aspects of the pandemic, development education provides a comprehensive overview and understanding of the issue and through its emphasis on methodologies in education, an important ‘entry point’, through providing people with an opportunity to be heard and to learn by highlighting and exploring their own experiences and knowledge. For development education, this understanding and engagement is crucial in designing successful interventions, especially those concerned with the information, education and communications dimensions of the pandemic.

Paulo Freire and Robert Chambers are two of the best known educators and activists who insist on beginning with the individual’s understanding and experience of their own situation, and on working in practical ways to assist them in their own learning outcomes. In this view, the individual is the expert in many, fundamental ways -- the person with key elements of information and understanding about his or her own lived everyday situation. For Freire, education is:

A process of continuous group discussion (dialogue) that enables people to acquire collective knowledge they can use to change society. The role of the teacher includes asking questions that help students identify problems facing their community (problem posing), working with students to discover ideas or create symbols (representations) that explain their life experiences (codifica-tion), and encouraging analysis of prior experiences and of society as the basis for new academic understanding and social action (conscientisation).

(Shor, 1987)

For Chambers, education is about empowering -- it is linked with distinctive behaviours, attitudes and approaches:

We are not teachers or transferors of technology, but instead convenors, catalysts, and facilita-tors. We have to unlearn, and put our knowledge, ideas and categories in second place. Our role is to enable others to do their own appraisal, analysis, presentations, planning and action, to own the outcome, and to teach us, sharing their knowledge. The ‘other’ may be local rural and urban people, women, men, children or old people, or member of an organization or group. They are often those who are weak, marginalized, vulnerable and voiceless. They can do many of the things we tend to think only we could do. ‘They can do it’ means that we have confidence in their capabilities. We ‘hand over the stick’ and facilitate their mapping, diagramming, listing, sorting, sequencing, counting, estimating, scoring, ranking, linking, analyzing, planning, monitoring and

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evaluating. Many practitioners and trainers consider the term PRA should only be used for pro-cesses which empower.

(Chambers, 2002)

Using interactive educational methodologies assists us in moving away from the traditional ‘banking model’ of education to a new way of interactive and innovative ways to support people in learning more about a particular subject and more about themselves. Freire has described formal education as suffering from ‘narration sickness’, arguing that narration turns students into ‘containers’, into receptacles to be filled by the teacher. The more completely he/she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher he/she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better the students they are (Freire, 1972).

Within a Freirian framework, an important goal of peer education is to provide a context for the development of people’s critical consciousness about their sexual health. It should do so through stimulating the development of insight into the ways in which social relations, particularly gen-der relations constructed within conditions of poverty, undermine the likelihood of good sexual health. It should also stimulate the development of the belief that existing gender norms can be changed, as well as scenarios for alternative ways of being. It is on the basis of such critical think-ing that a group of people is most likely to engage in collective action to challenge social relations that place their health at risk.

(Campbell, 2003: 51).

However, using interactive educational methodologies creates a challenge for the educator/facilitator. There are many fears involved -- fear of the unknown, fear of questions, fear of failure. Interactive methods means that even the most planned workshop can take an unexpected turn because of an intervention from the group. An experience facilitator needs to be capable of accommodating this and responding accordingly. A famous example of these challenges is provided in Ngugi’s Petals of Blood (Ngugi, TW, 1978). Ngugi narrates the story of a teacher who takes his pupils out of school and into the fields for a practical lesson:

Count the number of petals and pistils and show me its pollen…Right…This is a worm eaten flower.” He was pleased with himself. But when the children started asking questions: ‘Why did God allow this and that to happen…Man…Law…God…Nature…he had never thought deeply about these things and he swore that he would never again take the children to the fields. Enclosed in the four walls he was the master, aloof, dispensing knowledge to a concentration of faces look-ing up to him.

Chickering and Gamson (1987: 3--7), in Seven Principles for Good Practice, argue that:

Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just by sitting in class listening to teachers, memorising pre-packaged assignment, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.


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4 DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION AND INTERACTIVE METHODOLOGIES According to Regan (2003, 2006), development education can be summarised as a process by which people, through personal experience and shared knowledge-- gain experience of, develop and practice dispositions and values, which are crucial to a just and democratic society internationally and a sustainable world; engage with, develop and apply ideas and understanding, which help explain the origins, diversity and dynamic nature of society, including the interactions between and among societies, cultures, individuals and environments; engage with, develop and practice capabilities and skills which enable investigation of society, discussion of issues, problem-tackling, decision making, and team making; and take actions that are inspired by these ideas, values and skills and which contribute to the achievement of a more just and caring world.

The use of popular educational methodologies is one of the hallmarks of much of development education with the major objective of raising awareness of the way in which society is structured and the political, economic, social and cultural systems in which people live. Through effective use of this methodology, people learn to become more active agents in the struggle to achieve a more equal and just society.

Participatory education means that everyone teaches and everyone learns, and this can contribute greatly to group cohesion and mutual learning as there is respect for the learners, who form the starting point and the key focus of the process in contrast to the focus being on the teacher in more traditional banking models of education. For Zambian NGO, Women for Change, participatory education strengthens people’s abilities to organise themselves and causes people to reflect on what they have done and what they need to improve (WfC, Introduction to Popular Education Methodologies, 2009: 4).

5 DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION IN ZAMBIA: CASE STUDIES Personal experience and shared knowledge are key elements of development education methodology where, through interacting personally and educationally with others, an individual or group identify, share and reflect on common understandings and knowledge, learn and develop skills and capabilities in order to begin to agree common entry points for improving their situations.

The following section presents a number of practical examples of how development education and the use of interactive methodologies translate into practical educational interventions; the core focus is on gender and HIV; how this relationship is framed differentially in the lens of gender; how society can reinforce or challenge gender discrimination in the context of the virus and on the learning outcomes of such approaches.

5.1 Case study 1: Gender perspectives in Western Province, ZambiaDevelopment education exploration of the pandemic (in this case in partnership with six local NGOs supported by Concern Worldwide) typically begins with a series of small group discussions to help maximise participation, to give those who might be shy to speak out an opportunity and a supportive context in which to find their voice and in order to maximise opinions, viewpoints and perspectives on the subject and to generate a lot of ‘information’ upon which to focus subsequent discussion and

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debate. The larger group is then was divided into smaller mens and womens groups, with each invited to identify and describe key issues in relation to women’s rights and HIV and AIDS in their area. Following such a discussion, the findings from each group are presented, highlighting the key issues common among the groups.

In the most recent fieldwork of this researcher, the four key areas identified by the men’s groups in Western Province were education, health and safe sex, employment and culture and tradition. Typically, mens groups highlight access to HIV and AIDS health services as being problematic for women (especially married women), where they are not ‘free’ to disclose their status to their husband for fear of retribution. An example was provided of a woman hiding her Anti Retroviral (ARVs) drugs from her husband in a bag of mealie meal. Reproductive rights were also identified as an issue where the woman’s right to choose and decide how many children she might give birth to being overruled by her husband (who may want more children) even if the health of the woman is at risk. Employment rights and promotion in a job was another area of concern, where a woman is expected to have sex with her boss in order to move up the corporate ladder, making her vulnerable to HIV.

Cultural practices and traditional beliefs such as sexual cleansing, initiation ceremonies (‘advertising your daughter who is now grown up and ready to be married’) and early marriages place women and girls at particular risk of being infected. One group suggested that some young girls are at risk from their teachers who, in exchange for higher grades expect sexual favours. Women are also not assertive when it comes to sexual intercourse. It was suggested by one group that women do not have a say, if their husband wants sexual intercourse. ‘I’ve paid for you. Why should you deny my conjugal rights?’ as a result, many women are unable to negotiate for safer sex and the use of a condom. Unlike men, women often have less access to the basic necessities of life such as food and shelter. What compounds their poverty is the fact that they are less mobile when compared to men, especially because most of the times they have children to look after. It was also felt that women have high levels of illiteracy and because they are not empowered, they do not have the capacity to say ‘no’. As a result, men can take advantage of this and expose them to HIV infection and therefore, AIDS.

The four key areas identified by the women’s groups were health and safe sex, employment, violence and culture and tradition. Women’s groups typically identified a range of key issues, some of which were similar to those identified by the men’s groups, but with the key emphasis being on the rights of women to assert control over their own bodies. As women are most at risk biologically during sex, it is they who should have the right to make decisions on safer sex routinely asserting, ‘we don’t know our rights in marriage’. According to the women’s groups men take over in all aspects of the bedroom. While ignorance of rights is part of this reality for women, so too is the cultural role of being submissive to your husband and the teachings shared by female family members in advance of marriage on how a wife should behave. In marriage, men are seen to be heads of the household and are deemed to be the decision makers, and this leaves women with little or no say regarding their general wellbeing.

For the women’s groups, culture and tradition were highlighted as being responsible for the spread of HIV and AIDS through practices such as sexual cleansing, submissiveness in marriage and initiation ceremonies. The rights of women are often not recognised (nor those of children) where women may be forced to have babies even when they know they are HIV positive. The right to use condoms and the right to <<AUTHOR>> use contraceptives or protection as in condoms? protection after birth – are all


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dependant on mutual understanding and a ‘non traditional husband’. The sexual abuse of women, even in marriage, is highly problematic for those women involved and can be a very shameful experience where women are afraid to acknowledge and discuss what is happening. Men are far more assertive than women, and the reason why women do not reveal their status to their husband is because they fear their husbands might file for divorce. Some women may also experience discrimination at work if word gets out that they are HIV positive.

The key learning outcomes identified in the course of these discussions include the recognition that HIV and AIDS are not solely health issues, but are complicated by the intersectionality of biology, education, culture, economics, and politics --all groups agreed that women are treated as second-class citizens in their homes and community, and this places them at risk of contracting HIV and AIDS, and that key cultural practices and traditional beliefs undermine the possibility of equality between men and women. These outcomes have significant implications for intervention strategies.

5.2 Case study 2: Exploring gender rolesThis activity explored the daily and occasional roles assumed by men and women-- during the exercise, the group examines how different types of activities are undertaken only by men or women, or if they are shared by both. The objective of the exercise was to deepen participant’s understanding of the differences between gender and sex roles. Typically, men and women held the discussion in separate groups and what followed are the outcomes of such discussions in a Women for Change programme in the Western Province.

Having divided the large group into two separate same sex groups, each group, through discussion and debate, identified their expected gender roles and whether the work involved had to be done on a daily basis (D) or occasionally (O).

The mens group (identified as ‘Us with beards’) reported on ‘Misebezi Ya Banna’ – (men’s work) identifying ten key roles, including cutting trees, fishing, using spear/lamping, ploughing, tilling/farming, driving a car, building a house, harvesting, burying the dead, fishing, and herding cattle. When these roles were discussed in details, it was agreed that all of them could be called ‘occasional work’ that one does not have to do every day.

The women’s group reported on their -- Misebezi Ya Basali – (women’s work) and identified cooking (D), growing food (O), fetching firewood (O), sweeping (D), pounding (D), drawing water (D), carrying a baby (D), making the bed (D), digging cassava (O), basket fishing (D), washing plates (D), washing children (D), getting pregnant and giving birth (O), washing clothes (O), selling vegetables (O).

The outcome of the exercise immediately stimulated considerable and often heated debate as it was obvious that women have more daily duties to perform than men. This lead on to a discussion on whether some of these daily and occasional duties can be shared to lighten each others’ burden and speed up the work; ‘Men should help making the bed, cooking and drawing water. Women work all day and at night’. It was agreed that ‘lutusa kuka mezi’ – (men may help women draw water) and ‘kulela mwanana’-- (take care of babies) other than ‘kuinanga feela’-- (we just sit).

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Some of the learning outcomes for participants from this discussion included the recognition of the significant differences between the daily and occasional workloads of men and women in the community; the fact that the division of labour is significantly determined by gender and sex roles and that through working together, each person’s workload could be reduced and the work completed in a shorter time to be benefit of everyone.

5.3 Case study 3: The Development treeThe Development Tree is a popular development education activity used to assist communities in analysing their different levels of development based on how they see themselves--it enables them to compare their progress in development with that of others. Each group is presented with a drawing of the Development Tree and each group is invited to comment on what they see-- following this, each the group is asked to discuss how the tree relates to development. Subsequently, each group is asked to compare their community or work with that described on the Tree and to reflect on where they are on the Development Tree and consider why.

Level 1 is where people are unaware of what is happening around them and do not have the necessary information on how to begin to work themselves out of poverty. At level 2, people have begun to realise that change needs to happen and they talk with each other to develop a plan together, but are still unsure. At level 3 the plan is in place and things are happening and perhaps participants have had advice and assistance from other groups and organisations and information is available, and so informed decisions can be made. At level 4, development is happening. The local community is in control of their own development and have ownership of how they are progressing. The community begins to reap the rewards of their work. At level 5 the fruits of development are harvested. These are the profits from the work undertaken together. The community works with others to enhance their yield – government, organisations. The community must still work together to continue to be successful and not give up at this stage. At level 6 the group is enjoying the fruits of development. The group is at its most successful, and have achieved whatever goals they set at the very beginning of the process. They can initiate projects without assistance and are very happy. They are at the very top of the tree. They even go and share their experiences with others. Then at level 7 groups begin to fall down. Having reaped the benefits of all their work, they become sloppy and lazy and they begin to lose out as they are failing possibility due to unforeseen circumstances of weather or disease, or perhaps this is due to conflict within the group or selfishness.

Women for Change works with some of the poorest people in Zambia, who are based in the rural areas. There are many reasons why poverty is high in rural areas—and these include distance from markets, education, gender, and HIV and AIDS. In particular, the pandemic has infected or affected many of the most productive people. HIV and AIDS has, as a result, worsened poverty and caused much food insecurity among the affected families and communities. Women have been greatly affected and through Women for Change, members have gone through a process of gender analysis and moved onto working on the issues that have been keeping them and their community poor. As a result, it is now, more important than ever, that everybody (men and women) learn how to sustain themselves in order to protect themselves in the future from the potential social and personal consequences of the pandemic.


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At a local district meeting of Women for Change members, each group were asked to present how they had progressed during the year and to state at what level on the Development Tree they thought they were. The following outcomes are typical of such discussion and analysis:

The first group believed that they were level 5, with the fruits of their development being harvested and with people regularly eating-- they have been making and selling beer; each member had a chicken and some shared pigs. They had received these pigs and chickens from Women for Change; and have started to share the offspring of these and had amassed significant savings. They also made baskets and sweeping brooms to sell.

When this information was discussed further in the larger group it was agreed that this community were only at level 3 – a plan is in place and action is happening. The decision was made on the basis that some of the groups within the community had not done little with the pigs and the chickens that they were given; that in order to get to level 5, they would have to increase their farming, beekeeping, cultivating and selling of honey.

The second community group also believed that they were at level 5 and began by explaining their work. Seed had been a problem to find in the area the previous year, but this challenge has been overcome; they secured transport to go and buy the seed. A bore hole had been sunk in their area and they had 30 protected wells in addition to two oxen and an oxcart. They had two ploughing machines and significant savings. Farming inputs were not a problem and they had transport to move their food to the markets elsewhere. They were now in a position to give some smaller groups a loan from their own resources-- one such group had cassava fields. They explained that most people in their area do not have access to basic education with children going no further than grade7. This meant if someone qualified to go to second level, they had to move to another area and rent accommodation there. The profit they make from selling cassava now pay for school fees and for renting accommodation. They had set up a co-operative locally and some groups within the area had managed to buy TVs driven by a generator, and one man had bought a solar panel.

The participants agreed that the following were the key learning outcomes from the activities--

(a) it is important to begin to understand in detail that there are different levels of development which groups can attain if, and when they apply themselves

(b) hard work, diversification and shared responsibility yields results, and (c) Even when goals have been achieved, it is important to continue to assess and reassess objectives.

6 CONCLUSIONIt can be deduced, from these case studies that development education and interactive educational methodologies are very beneficial to local people in a

non-academic setting and are pitched at a level at which they can be understood and controlled. This methodology contends that education begins with an individual, and builds on what they know, and taking them on a journey to greater understanding of how things could change and how they themselves could effect such change. Education is brought about therefore, not through the teacher or the facilitator, but from the people themselves, from the ground up. Recognition and respect given to

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those involved in this interactive learning process where the achievement of results is determined by the progress of the individual and group, and at a pace that they determine.

The intersecting issues involved in the HIV and AIDS pandemic in one of the poorest countries in the world, can, on paper, produce many so called easy responses and solutions. These case studies serve to highlight the complexity involved in dealing with the HIV and AIDS pandemic – even when the subject matter does not solely focus on HIV and AIDS. Poverty, gender inequality, distance from education and health services and markets, lack of education or information are among only some of the difficulties experienced by rural people in Zambia. When some or all of these issues are combined together with HIV and AIDS, then the barriers to wellness and progress are indeed greatly inhibited.

NOTE1 Valerie Duffy is Coordinator of the Zambia Programme of development education NGO 80:20 Educating & Acting

for a Better World.

REFERENCESAlfsen, A. 2004. Environmental Factors in HIV/AIDS Epidemic Development, New York Academy of Sciences:

New York.Booth, K2004. Local women, global science, Indiana University Press.Campbell, C. 2003. Letting them die, Indiana University Press in association with the International African

Institute.Central Statistical Office. 2003. Zambia 2000 Census of Population and Housing, Population Projections Report,

Central Statistical Office, Zambia.Central Statistics Office. 2006. Living Conditions and Monitoring Survey 2006, Central Statistics Office, Zambia.Central Statistics Office et al, March 2009. Zambia Demographic and Health Survey 2007, CSO and Macro

International Inc, Calverton, Maryland.Chambers, R, January 2002. Relaxed and Participatory Appraisal: Notes on practical approaches and methods for

participants in PRA/PLA-related familiarisation workshops, Participation Centre, Institute of Development Studies, United Kingdom.

Chickering, A. W. and Gamson, Z. F. 1987. Seven Principles for Good Practice, AAHE Bulletin 39Freire, P. 1972. Pedagogy of the oppressed, Harmondsworth: Penguin.Ghosh, J et al<<AUTHOR, please write all authors>>, 2004. HIV and AIDS in Africa: Beyond epidemiology.,

Blackwell Publishing: United Kingdom.Human Rights Commission, 2008. State of Human Rights in Zambia 2007, United Nations Development

Programme.Human Rights Watch, December 2007. Hidden in the Mealie Meal, Human Rights Watch.Kelly, M. J. in Regan, C (ed.) (2006), 80:20 Development in an Unequal World, Bray, 80:20 Educating and Acting

for a Better World.Kelly, M. J. October 2009. AIDS and Women. Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection Sponsored Lecture at

UNZA School of Education, Zambia.Ministry of Finance, 2008. Zambia MDG Progress Report for 2008, Ministry of Finance, Zambia.Muyoyeta, L, 2007. Women, Gender and Development, WfC Zambia and 80:20 IrelandNational HIV/AIDS/STI/TB Council, January 2009, Joint Mid-term Review of the National AIDS Strategic

Framework of Zambia 2006-2010, National HIV/AIDS/STI/TB Council Zambia.


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National HIV/AIDS/STI/TB Council, April 2009, National Strategy for Prevention of HIV and STI’s in Zambia, National HIV/AIDS/STI/TB Council and the Government of Zambia.

National HIV/AIDS/STI/TB Council, June 2009, Zambia HIV Prevention Response and Treatment Modes of Transmission Analysis, UNAIDS, Global HIV/AIDS Program, the World Bank.

Ngugi, TW, 1978. Petals of blood, E.P. Dutton: New YorkPoku, N. K., Whiteside and Sandkjaer, 2007, AIDS and governance, Ashgate Publishing, England.Regan, C, (2003, 2006), Irish aid and development education, Irish Aid, Ireland. Regan, C (ed.) (2006), 80:20 Development in an unequal world, Bray, 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better

World.Shor, I, 1987. Freire for the classroom: A sourcebook for liberatory teaching, Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook

Publishers.Simbaya, J et al, September 2009, Round 4: Behavioural Surveillance Survey, Zambia 2009, Zambian Corridors

of Hope HIV/AIDS Prevention Initiative, Zambia.UNAIDS-WHO joint publication on the AIDS epidemic. Online. Available at: http://data.unaids.org/pub/

epireport/2006/2006_epiupdate_en.pdf.UNICEF, December 2007, Input to the Periodic Review – Human Rights Council, UNICEF.van Dyk, A, 2008. HIV AIDS care and counselling. Pearson Education: South Africa.Women for Change and 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World, 2009, Introduction to Popular Education

Methodologies, Women for Change Zambia and 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World, Ireland.Yeboah, I. E.A. 2007. HIV/AIDS and the construction of Sub-Saharan Africa: Heuristic lessons from the Social

Sciences for policy, In Social Science and Medicine, Volume 64, Issue 5: 1141.

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