Investigating feminist resistance in education Deirdre Barron Faculty of Education Deakin University Geelong Abstract Marginalisation is a result of particular constructions of subjectivities through discursive practices- normalisation. Foucault, according to Ball (1990), identifies the human sciences, and certain attendant knowledges, as central to the normalisation of social principals and institutions of modern society. Thus, marginalisation is not imposed by 'police' restrictions, but it seduces, manipulates and encourages normalisation. In this paper I set the theoretic framework for analysing the normalising processes that arise through the conflict between the segments of society that are central and those that are marginal. There are many frameworks which can be used to examine the power relations in society. I develop a story that indicates that by identifying 'how' the dualistic social order is maintained and 'how' individuals position themselves in relation to these discourses it may be possible to reconstruct environmental, science and gender education in schools. Introduction Current approaches to gender and environmental reform in school based science and environmental education have been identified as inadequate in changing the unequal location of females and nature in the social formation (Greenall Gough 1995). This inadequacy is not a result of any deficiency on the part of women endeavouring to overcome oppressive educational practices. Rather, it can be said that what has been achieved is the identification inequitable practices. This is only part of the process of social change. Women now need to identify 'how' these inequitable practices are held in place. In identifying the how it will be possible to reconstruct gender reform practices that recreate a more just society. To identify the 'how' we need to move beyond the structural analysis of women's oppression. We need to understand 'how' they have been able to change the dominant or hegemonic discourse from a masculinised perspective to include a feminised perspective. One way to do this is to look for instances where women have brought about social change. Not to concentrate on the structural obstacles that they have been able to overcome but rather, to look at how they have been able to centralise their own discursive practices. An exclusive focus only on the structural obstacles to women's equity would give the impression that science as an institution as well as the individual men in science have been totally resistant to women's scientific activities, and that women have rarely succeeded in this institution. Of course, neither is the case. This kind of preoccupation with 'victimology' must be balanced with studies of women's resistance to marginalization and their achievements (Harding 1991:30). The women in my research are members of groups that are seen as contributing to the development of gender reform and or environmental reform within school based curriculum. Their achievements can be read as ways in which they had overcome some structural obstacles in educational institutions or as sites of resistance. Focusing on women's construction of educational reform can be interpreted as looking at utopias. I argue that this needs to be done as we need to envisage the world we want before we can actively work towards it. This can be expressed as nostalgia or it can be expressed progressively. I privilege the new construction of a future not based on a false glorification of the past. ie. a different kind of progress then currently imagined. But as Harding's (1991:30) words above indicate we need to balance this view with 'studies of women's resistance to marginalisation and their achievements'. I am interested in looking at the resistance to marginalisation by feminist (and ecofeminists) within the professional development field. The role of professional development in gender reform Blackmore, Kenway, Willis and Rennie (1992) in looking at gender reform policy tell us that the introduction of these policies has not seen any significant change in girls' post-school choices. These authors see the narrow vocational meanings imbedded in these policies as failing to adequately address the interests and current choices made by girls. While Blackmore et. al. (1992) points out that teachers will privilege particular readings of policy documents therefore constraining this reading it is also important to note that the policy documents act as a constraint to other ways of constructing practice. This can also be equally applied to the area of professional development. That is, while the texts, verbal or otherwise, presented by professional development groups can not dictate the readings that teachers will make of these texts, they do work to construct practice. For this reason an understanding of the power of professional development practice is an essential part of gender reform programs and environmental reform programs. Current directions for gender reform in education Kenway and Willis (1993) tell us that there have been four broad approaches to gender reform projects at the level of policy, professional development and in the schools; changing choices; changing girls; changing the curriculum; and changing the learning environment. Historically and currently, Kenway and Willis (1993) tell us, the desire to broaden girls post-school options has been behind the push to increase the retention rates of females in school and post-school education. However, in this endeavour the reform processes have concentrated on changing girls choices. Changing choices has been premised on the view that there is a particular way of knowing that has more value than other ways of knowing. According to Kenway and Willis (1993) this has worked to endorse masculine ways of knowing and to undervalue 'women's work.' The second approach, changing girls, has a similar underpinning to changing choices. However, rather than seeking to get girls to change their subject choices it endeavours to change the development patterns of girls. Such an approach, Kenway and Willis (1993) argue, sees girls as deficient,, again women are undervalued, the girls' own strengths ignored. Changing the curriculum could have meant a transformative curriculum but it has usually meant making the curriculum more girl friendly. Such an approach has relied on strategies such as overcoming stereotypes; in the text books and in the images of women's work. The last of the approaches, changing the learning environment, has not been undertaken successfully. Kenway and Willis (1993) tell us that the construction of the learning environment is permeated by the dualistic representation model male/female. Within this dualistic learning environment the construction of gendered subjective positions has been manifested in violence against femaleness and female sexuality. Greenall Gough (1995) identifies similar approaches to environmental reform at the level of policy, professional development and in the schools. Changing people's behaviours has been the dominant approach in environmental education. Gender and environmental reform in the context of social movements Historically gender and environmental reform programs have developed from the understandings generated by activists in the women's and environmental movements. The women's, environment and various multicultural and multiracial movements of the 1970s have often been labelled the 'new social movements' (Jill Blackmore, Jane Kenway, Sue Willis and Leonie Rennie 1995; Robyn Rowland 1984). These social movements were a response to the perceived '...social problems that have been generated by contradictions and inequities in the ways different aspects of life are organised' (Carolyn Sherif 1976:366). Through these movements the dominant image of a patriarchal modern society was challenged, the future of our culture was opened up to debate, our economic organisation, our way of working and living were called into question. Emerging from its roots in Marxism, feminist and environmental analyses of the 60s, 70s and 80s have tended to concentrate on the human subject, an autonomous self regulating being. Foucault (1990) raises the notion of the human subject as an effect of historically located, disciplinary processes and concepts. The construction of individuals and groups The challenge for the women's and environmental movements of 1960s and 1970s was to identify the dominator and the dominated. According to Touraine (1983) the embodiment of adversaries as well as the recognition of individuals as social actors is an important aspect of social movements. Through this identification the oppressed would be able to exert pressure on the oppressors and emancipation from clutches of the oppressor would follow. Uncovering the practices of the oppressor was thus a central concern. However, there is a concern that if we continue to only look at the practices of the oppressor then we may conceal ones own complicity and our oppression of others. That is, we need a theory of power that is able to make visible the many different subject positions available to individuals. Such a theory would need to think of the 'wielders' of power as being just as inextricably caught in its webs as the supposedly powerless. It would have to see power in terms of relations built consistently into the flows and practices of everyday life, rather than something imposed from the top down (McHoul and Grace 1993:7) This means that we need to question the very notion of power and empowerment. The notion of empowerment carries with it a notion of power as property and that it is possible for someone with 'power' to confer power on another. Thus, empowerment takes on an either/or hierarchical dichotomy, empowered/ disempowered, empowering/disempowering. Such a universalisation of the notion of power does not address the different forms of power that operate in any relationship. Power then does not have to be understood as always operating in an oppressor/oppressed relationship. Yet, through my own experiences as a woman, sharing stories with other women and the literature by feminist scholars, I know that the power relations among individuals are important and are often based on social, political, and material asymmetries as argued by critical theorists. Such an analysis leads to questions of 'self'. Poststructuralist theory and the construction of self Within Postructuralist theory the individual is constructed by the discourses that are available. The individual is also able to resist certain discourses. However, the effects of normalisation operate so that individuals will privilege particular constructions of their subjectivity. A cautionary note, poststructuralist theory should not be understood as the new 'truth' in social theorising. The desire is not to substitute and alternative and more secure foundation...but to produce an awareness of the complexity, historical contingency and fragility of the practices that we invent to discover the truth about ourselves (Lather 1991:7). Poststructuralist theory sees power relations analysed in terms of discursivity. This is based on the argument drawn from FoucaultÕs (1980) Òregimes of truthÓ; that discourse organises our perceptions, our ways of knowing, making some things visible and others invisible, some things true and others false. Gough (1994) stresses the need to be cautious in entering the discussion of the construction of 'truth'. He reminds us of the words of Rorty (1980 cited in Gough 1994:1) that '...to deny the power to "describe" reality is not to deny reality'. In an analysis of Foucault, Barrett (1991) stresses that discourse differs from language in that it is related to context. This attacks structuralist assumptions that the dominant class is able to frame the ways in which subordinate groups live by ÔfixingÕ the meaning of symbols. Power can thus be understood in the context of discourse and knowledge. In seeking to understand how we come to know it is not only necessary to examine the discourses that are made available, it is equally important to examine the positionality of individuals within these discourses and the active process of knowledge production; a theory of subjectivity. Knowledge is not produced in the intentions of those who believe they hold it. It is produced in the process of interaction...Knowledge is not the matter that is offered as much as the matter that is understood (Lusted 1986:4). Individuals, through learning the discursive practices of a society, are able to position themselves within those practices in multiple ways, and to develop subjectivities both in concert with and in opposition to others. Thus, while our subjectivity is constructed for us it becomes us as we actively take up subject positions and we are only able to construct ourselves within discourses that are made available to us. But since meaning is not fixed, the availability of subject positions is always in a state of flux. If we see society as being constantly created through discursive practices then it is possible to see the power of these practices, not only to create and sustain the social world but also to see how we can change that world through the refusal of certain discourses and the generation of new ones. Hegemonic discourses foreground practices and techniques accorded value in coming to understand 'truth'; "We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we can not exercise power except through the production of truth" (Foucault 1980:93). Thus, through the analysis of discourse, poststructuralists are able to develop their understanding of the relation between persons and their social world (Davies 1989a) which has important implications in conceptualising social change implemented through the generation of counter-hegemonic discourses. I use the term counter hegemonic rather than oppositional discourses because oppositional discourses do not always offer a disruption to the unequal power relations in society. While it is possible for oppositional discourses to be counter hegemonic, eg. poststructuralist ecofeminism, any discourse which supports the hegemonic order can not be considered counter hegemonic, eg. liberal (eco)feminism. Thus, while oppositional and counter hegemonic discourses can be the same they are not always the same and as such cannot be used interchangeably. This implies that counter-hegemonic discourses need to critique both dominant and oppositional discourses and their place in the hegemonic order. If discourse is then the conjunction between power and knowledge, an appropriate means of understanding power and knowledge is through the deconstruction of discourse and discursive practice. An important aspect of understanding the constraints of our subjectivity is the notion of marginalisation. Marginalisation is a result of particular constructions of subjectivities through discursive practices (normalisation). Normalisation is understood as, ...the establishment or institutionalization of those disciplines, knowledges and technologies that lay the ground for the emergence of the autonomous, self-regulating subject (Gane and Johnson 1993:9) Foucault, according to Ball (1990), identifies the human sciences, and certain attendant knowledges, as central to the normalisation of social principals and institutions of modern society. Thus, marginalisation is not imposed by 'police' restrictions, but it is the result of discourses that seduce, manipulate and encourage normalisation. I see as central to any understanding of feminist resistance an analysis of normalising processes that arise through the conflict between the segments of society that are central, including those who produce education policy, and those that are marginal, for my study women in feminist professional development. I intend in my PhD work to make visible the women who have had a history in the development of curriculum reform. In uncovering this history I hope to show that women have resisted masculine interpretations of the world, and women have been able to normalise some of the concerns of women. Feminist poststructuralist theory draws on the theory outlined above, while maintaining the feminist understanding that gender is a basic organising factor. It is vital that we understand that poststructuralist feminism does not abandon liberal/socialist and radical forms of feminism - but that it offers a way of understanding how power is maintained through discourse and discursive practices. An ecofeminist poststructuralist perspective sees the culture/nature dualism as a basic organising factor. It deconstructs discourses to uncover how they create 'regimes of truth' that marginalise the feminine and nature. It is important to mention here that this understanding of the positioning of nature is built on the premise that nature is one element of the environment. That is, whilst environment is often thought of as being synonymous with nature and natural systems, such a definition is not adequate because it ignores the social component of the environment. As Weston (1986) argues, the social and economic choices that we make help to shape our environment. The importance of nature as a component of the environment cannot be neglected, but we need to see the environment as more than nature and natural systems, it must also include people and our social systems. The dual analysis of females and nature draws on the understanding that words that describe the 'ideal' male are also the words used to describe an ÔidealÕ human (Ives 1984) and according to Keller (1986) they are the same words that define 'ideal' science in our culture. Dualistic thinking has served the specific historical and political purpose of mystifying and naturalising as it maintains male hegemony. Rather than being inherent in nature or the human condition, these dualisms are, like other modes are ordering, describing, analysing, and categorising human perceptions and experience are products themselves of human intellect. We tend to mistake our cognitive techniques to comprehend the universe for the universe itself. They are cultural constructions that, like all other such constructions, are ultimately related to our experiences and perceptions within the social, economic and political context of our lives. This can be interpreted to mean that, in western cultures, maleness is assumed to be the proper way of being and masculine scientific knowledge is assumed as the correct way of knowing. Hence, in the culture/nature dualism humanness (culture) equates to maleness and scientific knowledge. Nature as opposite to maleness is constructed alongside femaleness. Fawcett (1989) argues that the attribution of human personality to nature (anthropomorphism) raises the possibility of nature being constructed as equal to man . But by constructing nature as female, were female is already constructed as inferior, man (culture) maintains his superior position (Fawcett 1989). Merchant (1990b) adds to this argument that discourses based on the false assumption that 'nature is dead' construct women along side of nature as inert and passive, this also works to endorse the perceived superior position of males. Thus, an ecofeminist poststructuralist perspective would examine the gendered and cultural underpinning of hegemonic discourses in developing an understanding of the ways in which these discourses work to construct women and nature, each as the same, but different and inferior to males (Bird 1987, Bleier 1984 1988, Brown and Switzer 1991ab, Di Chiro 1987, Keller 1986 1989 1992, King 1990, Spretnak 1990). That is, how do discourses of gender work to sanction discourses of environment and visa versa? And how do these discourses sanction other hegemonic discourses? Addressing these questions may be helpful in exposing the ways in which the interests of the dominant group are supported by discourses on gender and environment. It may also be helpful in exposing the ways in which subordinate groups, including females and nature, become marginalised by dominant groups within the hegemonic order. This raises the possibility of disrupting hegemonic discourses. Since oppositional discourses have survived throughout the development of Western civilisation, it would be helpful to understand what practices have taken place to continue these discourses? How then have women worked to resist these masculine world views? How do women work to develop counter- hegemonic discourses that not only challenge masculine, scientific interpretations but disrupt and transform these interpretations? That is, in order that we can transform masculine, scientific interpretations of the world we must first develop an analysis of the discourses that the women have been exposed to, how and why they take up some of these discourses and how and why they have resisted other discourses. Ecofeminist poststructuralist theory , therefore, offers me the tools to explore, not only who exercises power and the practical outcomes of the exercising of this power but, also, how the mutual constitution of individuals achieved? The word how is the key to Foucault's concept of power...we can only study the 'who' of power - who exercises power - in conjunction with the 'how' (Barrett 1991:136). A framework for investigating feminist resistance There are many frameworks which can be used to examine the power relations in society. In identifying 'how' the dualistic social order is maintained through hegemonic environmental, scientific and gender discourses and 'how' the participants in this research position themselves in relation to these discourses I hope to make visible a different reconstruction of environmental, science and gender education that may not be as public as the policy statements but may be influencing agents of change in the schools. In investigating this issue I intend to look at * How, and it what ways, decisions made about environmental education projects? Who are involved? Whose interests are being served? * How, and it what ways, are decisions made about science education projects? Who are involved? Whose interests are being served? * Where do we find opposition and conflict? How do political and administrative institutions try to deal with the groups and movements which insist on being taken into account and even participate in decisions and planning. *What strategies are used to regulate or resolve conflicts? How do technocratic elites entrench or adapt themselves to the challenges from movements and change agents? * What impact do these conflicts have on decisions and the process of decision making? * What types of social restructuring take place around these conflicts? * Is it worthwhile for feminists and environmentalists to draw on the dual marginalisation of women and nature in their struggle for a more equal location for women and nature in the social formation? In trying formulating understandings of how women have engaged with these issues and how they have resisted or taken up masculinised versions of the world I look at the discursive practices of women and ask, *What dualist thinking is evident in the discursive practices? *What storylines are being made relevant? *What discourses are being mobilised? *Whose interests are being served by these discourses? (Davies and HarrŽ 91/92) Conclusion To examine feminist resistance we need to first examine oppressive discourses that function to marginalise females and nature. We must also locate breakthroughs in feminist practice that have challenged men's dominance, and to look for instances where women have disrupted the culture/nature, female/male dualisms. In doing this it is also important to record 'women's history' in the development of school based curriculum and professional development. This history is interpreted as parallel but marginal to the masculine history of curriculum development. Such an approach would firstly, further the exploration of the development of women's perspectives. Secondly it would add to the body of scholarship concerned with developing an understanding of women's resistance to marginalising discourses. Using an ecofeminist perspective leads to the understanding that the subordination and exploitation of nature is premised on and informs the discourses that act to subordinate and exploit females and vise versa. The power for these discourses to be oppressive arises when one perspective, the ÔmasculineÕ, is valued over another, the ÔfeminineÕ; when one way of knowing is understood to be the ÔtruthÕ (Foucault 1980). While I find it impossible to ignore current feminist and ecofeminist understandings of the unequal distribution of power in society, the benefits of adopting an ecofeminist poststructural perspective compel me to take up such an analysis. Such an approach not only develops an understanding of how knowledge is underpinned by selected truths, but also makes visible how even emancipatory politics can contribute to maintaining existing power relationships. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ball, Stephen (1990), Foucault and Education: Disciplines and Knowledge, London, Routledge. Barrett, MichŽle (1991),The Politics of Truth, Oxford, Blackwell. Barron, Deirdre (1993), 'Children's Perceptions of Environment: a poststrucuralist account of how lower primary school boys and girls construct their perceptions of environment', Honours thesis, Faculty of Education, Deakin University, Geelong. Bird, Elizabeth (1987), 'The Social Construction of Nature: Theoretical Approaches to the History of Environmental Problems', Environmental review, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 255-264. Blackmore, Jill, Jane Kenway, Sue Willis and Leonie Rennie (1992), 'What's Working For Girls?: The Reception of Gender Equity Policy in Two Australian Schools', in The New Politics of Race and Gender, New York, Falmer Press. Bleier, Ruth (1984), Science and Gender: A Critique of Biology and its Theories on Women, Wisconsin, Pergamon Press. Bleier, Ruth (1988), 'Lab Coat: Robe of innocence or Klansman's Sheet?' in Teresa de Lauretis, Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, Basingstroke, UK, Macmillan. Brown, Valerie A and Margaret A Switzer (1991a), Engendering the Debate, Discussion Paper, prepared by the Australian National University for the Office of the Status of Women Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Brown, Valerie A and Margaret A Switzer (1991b), Where have all the women gone? The role of women in the sustainable development debate, Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University, Mimeo. Davies, Bronwyn (1989),Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales: Preschool children and gender, Sydney, Allen and Unwin. Davies, Bronwyn and Rom HarrŽ (1991/92), 'Contradictions in lived and told narratives', Research on Language and Social Interaction, Vol. 25, No. pp. 1-36. Di Chiro, Giovanna (1987), 'Environmental education and the question of gender: A feminist critique' in Ian Robottom, Environmental Education: Practice and Possibility, Geelond, Deakin University. Fawcett, Leesa (1989), 'Anthropomorphism: In the Web Of Culture', Undercurrents, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 14-20. Foucault, Michel (1980),Power/Knowledge, New York, Pantheon Books. Foucault, Michel (1990), Power Philosophy Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984, New York,Routledge. Gane, Mike and Terry Johnson (1993), Foucault's New Domains, London, Routledge. Gough, Noel (1994), 'Understanding "nature':constructivism after poststructuralism.' in Contemporary Approaches to Research in Mathematics, Science and Environmental Education, Deakin University, Burwood Campus, Greenall Gough, Annette (1995), 'Fathoming the Fathers in Environmental Education: a feminist poststructural analysis,' PhD thesis, Faculty of Education, Deakin University, Geelong. Harding, Sandra (1991), Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women's Lives, Ithaca, Cornell Univerity Press. Ives, Roslyn (1984), 'The maleness of science', The Australian Science Teachers Journal, Vol. 30, No. 92, pp. 15-20. Keller, Evelyn Fox (1986), 'Making Gender Visible in the Pursuit of Nature's Secrets' in Teresa de Laurentis, Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, Basingstoke, UK, Macmillan. Keller, Evelyn Fox (1989), 'The Gender/Science System: or, Is Sex to Gender as Nature Is to Science?' in Nancy Tuana, Feminism and Science, Indiana, Indiana University Press. Keller, Evelyn Fox (1992), Secrets of Life /Secrets of Death: Essays on Language, Gender and Science, New York, Routledge. Kenway, Jane and Sue Willis (1993), Telling Tales: Girls and Schools Changing their Ways, Canberra, Department of Employment, Education and Training. King, Ynestra (1990), 'Healing the Wounds: Feminism, Ecology, and the Nature/Culture Dualism' in I Diamond & G F Orenstein, Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, San Francisco, Sierra Club Books. Lather, Patti (1991),Feminist Research in Education: Within/Against, Geelong, Deakin University. Lusted, David (1986), 'Why pedagogy?', Screen, Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 2-14. McHoul, Alec and Wendy Grace (1993), A Foucault Primer: Discourse, Power and the Subject, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press. Merchant, Carolyn (1990a),The Death of Nature: Women. Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, New York, Harpers San Francisco. Merchant, Carolyn (1990b), 'Ecofeminism and Feminist Theory' in I Diamond & G F Orenstein, Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, San Francisco, Sierra Club Books. Rowland, Robyn (1984), Women Who Do and Women Who Don't Join the Women's Movement, London, Routledge and Keagan Paul. Spretnak, Charlene (1990), 'Ecofeminism: Our Roots and Flowering' in I Diamond & G. F. Orenstein, Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, San Francisco, Sierra Club Books. Touraine, Alain (1983), The Post-Industrial Society: Tomorrow's Social History: Classes, Conflicts and Culture in the Programmed Society, (trans. F.X. Mayhew), London, Wild House. Weston, Joe (1986),Red and Green: A New Politics of the Environment, London, Pluto Press.