Navigating the Indeterminate Relationship Between Politics and Pedagogy. A Response to "Education as Commons, Children as Commoners: The Case Study of the Little Tree Community”

Authors

Derek R. Ford, DePauw UniversityFollow

Abstract

In their article, Pechtelidis and Kioupkiolis added a case study to research at the intersection of politics, pedagogy, and the commons. Examining the Little Tree Community to deepen our understanding of how education can operate as a common practice, they raised key questions about the political possibility of subjectification in an education in the commons, leaving the question of politics and pedagogy open. Case studies in general, especially in the article format, require a delicate balance of theoretical exposition, contextual explication, data presentation, and analysis. In this response, I propose one way we might refine the politics assumed in the common pedagogy in order to prevent the communing project and its analysis from reinforcing and stabilizing the capitalist and imperialist logics it wants to struggle against. I turn to the foundational role that the production and enclosure of subjectivities, social relations, and other resources necessary for capital’s continual accumulation, a process that includes enclosure, expropriation, and dispossession. This is not a critique of the political dynamics of their common pedagogical practices but rather an attempt to define the political teacher as one who navigates between the openness of pedagogy and the determination of politics.

Response to Article

Yannis Pechtelidis and Alexandros Kioupkiolis, Education as Commons, Children as Commoners: The Case Study of the Little Tree Community

Recommended Citation

Ford, D. R. (2023). Navigating the Indeterminate Relationship Between Politics and Pedagogy. A Response to "Education as Commons, Children as Commoners: The Case Study of the Little Tree Community”. Democracy and Education, 31 (2), Article 4.
Available at: https://democracyeducationjournal.org/home/vol31/iss2/4