...and then he threw the book at them ~ 12/7/2007

“This self-same Government brings new meaning to fascism. In fashioning free-market, state-supported millennial capitalism, neoliberalism makes the corporate marketplace primary. It encourages consumption by redefining citizens as consumers and equating freedom with the choice to consume.

“The concepts of multiple democratic public spheres, civic space, citizenship, and democratic discourse disappear in the pedagogical practices ad spaces of millennial capitalism. In these deregulated corporate spaces a dismantling of the structures of public education welfare, housing, and affirmative action occurs. Corporate and (ad)venture capitalists define the new public morality. They know no shame. It is a racist Darwinian morality, celebrating the survival of the fittest.”
(Denzin, 2003: 231)

In this context motivation is the key component. Are governments and companies entering into regions of the world in conflict, out of purely altruistic reasons? Do they really think that modernization is the key to democratic evolution, to true and sustainable social justice? Not in Denzin’s opinion. More likely is the scenario that they are extending an ideological wing over these places in order to create new markets, new consumers, new worshipers at the altar of capitalism.

At the learning center, five rooms located at the entrance of a housing project and run by the local government, a similar analysis can be used. When I go there to help the kids with their homework, I am so often correcting their English, telling them Shakespeare is important, that math is real, etc. All of the things we talk about are essentially euro-centric, post enlightenment. There is little discussion of anything related to their own history (cultural and literal); so am I, as a volunteer, not being employed to turn these kids in “Americans” in order for them to be able to assume an American identity?

Part of the reason I chose to play mancala with them, is precisely because it is a non-European one. It’s simple, can be played outside of a capitalist system (in the sense that anyone can dig holes and collect pebbles without spending money), and it is familiar to them, thus part of their culture (as chess would be to mine). The reaction of the kids was telling. All of them knew how to play it, all of them were focused on it, and all of them had fun.

Will I have the same to say about soccer? I think it might get a bit more complicated because of the colonial legacy associated with the game. But, on another level, the game can be played outside of the system (one always hears about kids playing with rag balls) or at least with only a minimum contribution (say $5 for a ball). As the paternal character in Goal! said to the young latino protégé: “Look at this. Two jackets for a goal and a ball. That’s all you need.”