Research seminar
Maribel blasco (CBS Department of Intercultural Communication and Management (IKL))
Linking lives with schooling: the micro-politics of educational decision -making in urban Mexico
The paper explores how students and their families negotiate the right to secondary schooling in vulnerable contexts in Mexico. Analysis of the role of education in life trajectories has traditionally paid much attention to the role of schooling in individual lives, but correspondingly little attention to the cultural logics at work in other arenas of social life and to significant others such as parents or peers. Yet institutions such as the school are ‘deeply infused with cultural meaning’, and not only for the students directly involved. Both the way in which education fits into life trajectories, and the strategies through which people legitimise their educational choices to significant others as well as the impact that those choices have on the latter, are culturally shaped. The paper employs three life-course principles to conceptualise these dynamics: development and ageing as lifelong processes; linked lives, and the concept of moral career, originally coined by Goffman.
Edward Ashbee (CBS Center for the Study of the Americas):
Moral values and structures of political opportunity in the US
Although concerns such as abortion and same-sex marriage attract relatively few responses when opinion pollsters ask about the ‘most important issue’ facing the country, some polls suggest that there is a generalized sense of disquiet about morality in both ‘blue’ and ‘red’ states. Traditionally, this has been regarded as a Republican issue. Indeed, there were widespread claims that moral concerns denied Al Gore backing from key groupings in 2000 and drew socially conservative voters to the polls in 2004 thereby securing President Bush’s re-election victory. However, recent polling data suggests that there are some, albeit limited, opportunities open to the Democrats that may enable them to reframe the concept of ‘moral values’ and make inroads into the ranks of ‘values voters’. This paper looks at the relative importance of ‘moral values’, considers the approaches that Democratic candidates have adopted, and assesses the strategies that they may embrace between now and the 2008 presidential election.