Disucussion for September 7 session - click "Edit" to add your notes/questions, then "Save":

Questions from Tom

About Marullo and Edwards

*The authors (p. 897) express concern about "increased reliance on market mechanisms", and they explicitly "reject the logic that the best way to attain the optimal society is for each individual to seek to maximize his or her own personal gain". What justification do they give for denying conventional wisdom? Do you think their position on this is well-founded?

*Do you agree that "For community service and educational outreach to solve our social problems rather than simply ameliorate thier negative consequences....,it must adopt a social justice approach rather than a charity approach" (p. 899)? Is social justice a realistic goal in contemporary American society?

*The authors write (p. 902), ""If students' causal explanation of a social problem such as poverty, illiteracy, or homelessness points to flaws or weaknesses in individuals' characteristics, it is quite likely that they have missed entirely the social justice dimension of the problem". Does this mean that people who are homeless, illiterate, or poor never bear any responsibility for these problems?

*Do you agree with the authors' claim in the Conclusion that "it is not enough to do the right thing. One's reasons for doing good works must also be good"?

About Bickford and Reynolds

*Is the boundary between service and activism as blurred as the authors make it out to be?

*Can faculty promote activism without pushing a political agenda? Is it improper for them to push a political agenda?

*What do the authors mean by "the pretense of objectivity and the importance of situating oneself in the research process"? Do you find them persuasive on this point?

Questions/reactions from Todd

Sam Marullo and Bob Edwards, "From Charity to Justice"

• "This [raising the status of forms of scholarship other than "discovery"] will force the academy to rethink its standard criteria for judging scholarship..." (p. 896) - How could this happen? What new criteria could be adopted?

• If the "transformation" model [Figure 1, p. 898] is so great, how did the "status quo" model ever achieve dominance?

• Article reminds me of two quotes:
  • "When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why are the poor hungry, they called me a communist." —Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian Bishop
  • "Charity is not needed when justice prevails" - Ralph Nader

• Some sources of contemporary injustice...
  • Authors cite globalization of the economy, retraction of welfare state (p. 899)
  • I'd add, at least, the U.S. incarceration boom, decline of progressive taxation, growth of corporate legal and political power (e.g. corporate personhood, Buckley vs Valeo, expansion of intellectual property, international trade agreements), growth in disenfranchised population (convicts, non-citizen economic refugees), increasing effectiveness of public relations and marketing research, power of lobbyists to "capture" regulators/politicians and steer policy to their own benefit, away from public interest, through campaign funding, the "revolving door", and bribery; increasing misalignments of health policy and public health (growth of uninsured, unsustainable increases in health care costs), consolidation of media ownership and psychological power of mass media, rise of U.S. as sole superpower with leaders at least temporarily unaccountable to the rest of the world (e.g. immunity from International Law), decline of labor unions and labor rights in the u.s., lack of widespread understanding of the implications of categorical (race, gender, sexual orientation,..) advantage/disadvantage even as total forms of categorical exclusion have receded, professionalization of social movements and decline of civil society, aggressive promotion of free-market ideology - feel free to add more

• Charity versus justice - Examples?

• "six questions that should be asked about any community-based or educational research work" (pp. 900-910) - Pick a service project you were involved in and apply these questions to them.

Donna M. Bickford and Nedra Reynolds, "Activism and Service-Learning: Reframing Volunteerism As Acts of Dissent"

• Service and activism - Examples of the distinction? Complementarity or competition between them? Relationship to charity versus justice?
  • "service addresses people, and activism addresses structures" (p. 231)

• "..service learning, while it can be activist, is too often infused with the volunteer ethos, a philanthropic of charitable viewpoint that ignores the structural reasons to help others" - A sound critique?

• Irony: Community service is often (including in the legal system) seen as a means of punishment - observation by Tom today, also related to Schell quote on p. 232

• Consider paragraph beginning "A more insidious problem.." (p. 232) - Think about in relation to the trip to Glide

• What are these? Examples?
  • "do-gooder mentality" (p. 233)
  • "arrogance of believing ourselves at the center" (p. 233, from Rich 1986)
  • "relationships based on difference" versus "relationshps based on connection" (p. 237)
  • "consciousness raising" (pp. 238-241)

• "The question that remains is why service-learning has been embraced in the university setting, while activism makes people uncomfortable." (p. 247) - Well..?

Jonathan Baron, Thinking and Deciding (excerpts)

• What is the just world hypothesis? (pp. 412-413)

• "When people behave selfishly, then, it is likely because they have deceived themselves into the belief that they are behaving justly." (p. 426) - How do we know this?

• "In short, Americans tended to respond to unfairness by joining in, by avoiding being "suckers". Dutch subjects responded to unfairness by trying to eliminate it through electing a leader." (p. 458) - What could cause such a difference? What role should universities have in addressing this?