Call for papers - "Critique, education and emancipation: from popular education to social struggles"

Editors
Dr. Jeremiah Morelock (Boston College – morelocj@bc.edu)
Dr. Felipe Ziotti Narita (São Paulo State University – felipe.narita@unesp.br)

Language: English

Since the 1950s and 1960s, with Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Passeron, Paulo Freire, Christian Baudelot and Roger Establet, critical theories on education highlighted how school systems reinforced social inequalities, but also pointed to prospects for changing society through education. In the 1990s and the early 2000s, a new generation of theorists pointed to the effects of market reforms on education (Christian Laval and Francis Vergne), decolonial and intercultural perspectives (Catherine Walsh), critical epistemologies for popular education (Marco Raul Mejía), the role of the curriculum in critical pedagogy (Michael Apple) and popular mobilization (Peter McLaren and Adriana Puiggrós), connecting critical approaches on education to popular struggle. In the 21st century, in light of the myriad of crises and sociotechnical transformations of capitalism, new critical efforts are important to revisit and refresh our understanding of the sociocultural contradictions surrounding education, and to consider the place of pedagogy in affecting social change.

Critique is one of the main normative principles of “popular education,” which encompasses diffuse forms of pedagogy (in formal or non-formal spaces) committed to social change and political participation. Collectives and theorists, in different contexts and embedding a variety of political assemblages, have challenged the contemporary distresses by putting critique into motion through perspectives and actions that diffuse new political imaginations. Critique must go beyond the denaturalization of the seemingly self-evident: it must posit the prospect of emancipation at the heart of theoretical thought.

In these terms, education is a crucial institution from which to cultivate subjectivities that look beyond the immediate state of affairs, and from which to feed political agency that defies the status quo. From Latin American molecular groups of popular education, exposing the strong asymmetries in peripheral countries, to the precarization of higher education under neoliberalism and managerialism, education – vital to the reproduction of society – has become a disputed field.

This special issue of Cadernos CIMEAC considers the varieties of critical theories and their theoretical and practical interfaces with many forms of social struggle in contemporary capitalism. We will privilege transnational perspectives, expositions of the contradictions of contemporary society, discussions of popular agency, engagements with critical theoretical angles in order to grasp sociopolitical mobilization, and explorations of the relationships between critique and social change via education and social movements.

Potential topics of interest:
- Critical theory and education
- The struggles for the common in education
- Decolonial pedagogy and postcolonial studies
- Public policy and social cohesion
- Political participation and community education
- Recognition and redistribution in pedagogical projects
- Education, inequalities and intersectionality
- Social movements and education
- Education and citizenship in an age of crisis
- Impacts of neoliberal reforms and austerity policy on education
- Antiracist pedagogy

Schedule:
Abstract submission: November 1, 2021.
Article submission: May 31, 2022.
Reviews: August 15, 2022.
Final articles: October 31, 2022.
Publication: December 2022.

Contributions must be submitted only via email (cadernoscimeac@gmail.com). In the message, the authors should inform that the article is directed to the special issue “Critique, education and emancipation: from popular education to social struggles”.

Guidelines:
- Arial, 12, line spacing 1,5
- Length: 15-25 pages (including bibliography, abstract, etc.)
- Abstract: maximum 250 words (+ 4 or 5 keywords)
- Sample: http://seer.uftm.edu.br/revistaeletronica/index.php/cimeac/article/view/4934/5444
- Bibliography (sample):
MOUFFE, Chantal. Agonistics: thinking the world politically. New York: Verso, 2013.
POLLETA, Francesca; JASPER, James. Collective identity and social movements. Annual Review of Sociology, v. 27, n. 2, 2001.
SORJ, Bernardo. On-line/off-line: a nova onda da sociedade civil e a transformação da esfera pública. In: SORJ, Bernardo. Internet e mobilizações sociais: transformações do espaço público e da sociedade civil. São Paulo: Plataforma Democrática, Centro Edelstein de Pesquisas Sociais, 2015.