Racial formation and education: A critical analysis of the Sewell report

The article provides an analysis and critique of the education component of the 2021 Sewell Report on Race and Ethnic Disparities. It commences by providing a critical summary of the report focusing on its spurious claims to objectivity, the erasure of racism and the inadequacy of its recommendations. The second part of the article focuses on developing a contextualised analysis of the report. Omi and Winant’s ideas about racial formation are used to provide a lens through which to interpret the Sewell report as part of a wider hegemonic project of the right to redefine what it means to be British in the context of a deepening organic crises of capitalism. The article outlines the nature of the crisis. It locates the report within a consideration of three ‘racial projects’ that have shaped education policy, namely, the nationalist, multicultural and antiracist projects. Through advocating a ‘colourblind’ approach to education policy and the selective appropriation of multicultural discourse, it will be argued that the report needs to be understood as part of a wider effort to reconfigure the nationalist project in response to crisis. It is suggested, however, that despite its many flaws, the Sewell report poses challenges for those who have traditionally been aligned to multiculturalism and antiracism in education. The article concludes by setting out a vision for a new progressive project aimed at advancing racial and cultural justice that it is suggested, can begin to address these challenges.

Walking the Walk: Democratizing Change in Teacher Education

In this essay, as a group of teacher educators, we discuss our experience of “walking the walk” of teacher education transformation at a time of urgent change. We reflect upon our process of integrating three key priorities in our preservice teacher education courses: education for sustainability; trauma-informed practice; and Indigenizing curriculum. Specifically, we reflect on how these processes were adapted according to the needs of individual courses and units, while at the same time making space for our strengths and our “unlearnings” as academics, and for the ethical considerations that troubled us. In this essay, we explore walking the walk of change and integrating social, environmental, and cultural justice principles in our work together toward equipping and enabling new teachers to be themselves agents of change.

CULTURAL JUSTICE, BASIC INCOME AND THE CAPABILITY APPROACH

In this paper, we elaborate on a theory of an evolutionary political economy capable of accommodating the issue of cultural justice by taking seriously the redistribution–recognition dilemma, a normative analysis of which has been put forth by Nancy Fraser. While accepting Fraser’s articulation of the dilemma, we resist her concluding that Sen’s capability approach is insensitive to cultural justice or the recognition of difference. There is no automatic guarantee, yet an intermediate theory of recognition or cultural justice could in theory be brought to bear on what is, after all, ‘a framework’. We argue that Fraser’s analysis is well suited to be such an intermediate theory, and propose a theoretical device for an evolutional perspective on redistribution and recognition. We concentrate on identifying the stage of the market process at which policy intervenes to remedy redistribution, and the stage of the communication process at which policy intervenes to remedy recognition. Interventions at the entrance stages of both processes are relatively effective and one possibility for such an intervention is to propose Basic Income, which would make it not inconsistent with the capability approach, even though this approach neither directly suggests such a policy not excludes others.

Evolution and crisis of multiculturalism in light of the ideas of polyethnic (cross-cultural) justice

The goal of this research lies in analyzing the essence and problems of the genesis of multiculturalism and its varieties, factors of crisis in its development, and overcoming the crisis situation in a broad ethical-philosophical context. The author demonstrates that the construction of multicultural society should be based not on a limited understanding of culture as a set of religious statutes, ethnic norms, customs and traditions, but on the philosophical conceptualization of culture as a system that forms profound values, the crucial of which is justice. Special attention is given to substantiation of the categories of “social justice” and “law”, which manifest as the essential grounds of a modern multicultural society. It is demonstrated that social justice is the determining basis for the development of modern multicultural societies, i.e. the necessary condition for harmonious coexistence of individuals, groups and society as a whole. The conclusion is made that on the one hand, the globalization processes strengthen the integration, forming a single sociocultural space, while on the other hand, complicate the adaptation of ethnic cultures and their representatives, which generates tension in cross-cultural interaction, as well as inclusion and positive reliance on social justice as the fundamental value of any society allows finding the ethical measure in regulation of issues emerging in modern multicultural societies.

The model of justice in Mordovian ethnic tales

Introduction. The research is determined by the current trends of globalization and the need to build a dialogue of cultures based on justice and giving the priority to the local models of justice. The subject of the research is the model of justice in Moksha and Erzia tales. The purpose of the work is to identify different models of justice of the Moksha and Erzia ethnic groups, their identity and the difference with models of other cultures, to generalize the content of the category of justice in the Mordovian ethnoculture. Materials and Methods. The research material includes Mordovian folk tales. The method of analysis is applied to identify the models of justice in the studied material. When comparing the similar tales of different cultures, we use the method of comparison and the principle of the reduction of the identities, which detects differences in the similarities; the method of generalization allows us to systematize the results, the method of synthesis lets us draw conclusions. The model of justice in folklore and tales has not been studied much, so the theoretical basis of the research covers the works devoted to the analysis of Mordovian folklore as a whole as well as various studies of the category of justice. Results and Discussion. The model of Mordovian justice includes collective labor, mutual assistance, collective ownership and self-government, creative work and a decent remuneration, ethnic education, upbringing in the tradition, freedom of the development, the perfectionism and the vertical social mobility, the reward of the virtue and the denunciation of the vice, fair judgment, everyone’s equality in the court, the marriage of the equals, reproduction, the identity and the identification, the unity of the human and the nature. The private ownership of resources, the work that does not save from poverty, unfair courts, restrictions on the freedom of development and education, the abuse of children and women, and the neglect of the elderly are assessed as unfair. Conclusion. The set of models obtained in accordance with different cultural approaches allows us to obtain a dimensial, complete, systematic image of ethno-cultural justice which provides us a better understanding of the culture of the people. The research has shown that the models of justice in Moksha and Erzia folklore are similar. It has revealed the general content of the Mordovian models of justice, as well as the unique features of the Moksha and Erzia models, their identity and differences with the models of other cultures.