It has been a while since our last entry in this blog
and although we have been quite busy – our session at the 12thAnnual IAS-STS Conference in Graz was well attended (we are still working on a paper to sum up the discussion) and last week our first joint paper was published in the peer reviewed journal fzg – Freiburger Zeitschrift für GeschlechterStudien – there seems to be little more to be
reported here. Most news and recommendations go as short messages on Twitter
anyway (thanks to Anita who is a superactive tweep *applauseandhugs*).
There is a topic, though, that has kept me awake for quite
some nights now and I feel like sharing – you are, as always, very welcome to
comment and share your thoughts on this! I have started a project with a secondary school
where the majority of students are from families with a more or less recent
history of immigration. I have learned that most of them are Muslims. The
school is located in a less privileged area of the city and it seems that the
students, as well, come from families with a lower socio-economic status. In short: I guess this is
not exactly a school academic institutions would jump at to work with (maybe to
study the kids rather than working WITH them). When asking the headmaster for
cooperation we were aware that this might be a new challenge for us but I have
been very much looking forward to working with the students. So, I am currently preparing for the
first project weeks in September which revolve around the topic FAIRNESS as an
umbrella term for social justice/injustice, ahimsa/violence which is a huge
field to work in. This is challenge number one.
The second one is that we want to start off with the 13/14-year-old
students’ own experiences with injustice and violence but we also want them to
think further, reflect their attitudes in regard to e. g. sexism, homophobia,
transphobia (that’s a tough one, right?), elitism/poverty/illiteracy etc. We
want to pick them up right where they are, make them aware that all these
phenomena are faces of structual and symbolic violence/social injustice. The ultimate goal is not only to make
them aware of them in general and maybe, hopefully, create a culture of acceptance
of diversity, but also to be capable to identify these instances of injustice in
the media – more specifically: in their favourite TV-series. Not exactly an easy objective – and this is
challenge number two.
The third challenge is my own small, prejudiced mind: I have
chosen to work with an intersectionality approach because I have not met the
students yet and I do not know how the students would define themselves (i. e. I
use categorisations when imagining the students and try to answer to as many of these categories but I
will probably also miss some). These are bad pre-conditions, I am aware of
that. So, I have this idea to give the students portraits of Austrian
immigrants with different national/cultural roots, who advocate some of the
above mentioned topics, e. g. a gay activist with Turkish roots fighting
against homophobia or an intersexual biotech-professor from Iran who founded
the Oriental Queer Organisation. But I also choose portraits of inspiring
individuals from all over the world – e. g. 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai from
Pakistan who advocates the right to education for girls in her home country and
for all children in the world. They should serve as role models – especially in
regard to the more controversially discussed topics like homosexuality or
transidentities. Now, my problem is that I assume that many of these people do
not share the same pre-conditions with the students I am working with. I have read somewhere that the cultural or religious background may not have such a huge
impact on the biography of a person as the socio-economic status and the
educational level of the family they come from (this sounds a bit elitist to
me, though). I wonder: Should I rather look for role models who, when growing
up, shared EXACTLY the same living conditions of my young fellow researchers or
is it ‘enough’ to have a history of immigration and cultural knowledge in
common for them to identify to a certain extend with these individuals and
their stories.
My overall concern is that the introduction of controversial topics
like non-heterosexualities and transidentities will turn into a disaster because
I have made wrong assumptions about the students I will work with. I guess I can only hope for the best, hope for the teachers to give me constructive feedback on my material and hope for openminded teens who will react with couriosity rather than with rejection...
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