I’ve been having a really tough time getting my head around Gibson-Graham’s project “to enlarge our conception of what constitutes ‘the’ economy” (“The Diverse Economy” 19) into an economic understanding “emptied of any essential identity, logic or organizing principle or determinant” (19). My immediate impulse is to ask: well, if you’re doing that, what makes anything economic? Doesn’t the whole term “economic” then lose its meaning?
Part of me still thinks it kinda does, but in my slow way, I’m coming to understand that The Economy can be a heterogeneous body, something that’s different from itself in the same way that feminism has constructed a de-essentialized understanding of femininity that is different from itself. While the widespread contemporary conception is one that Gibson-Graham describes as having shifted “from an understanding of the economy as something that can be managed (by people, the state, the IMF) to something that governs society” via “a hegemonic move through which representations of economy have slipped from their locations in discourse and landed ‘on the ground,’ in the ‘real,’ not just separate from, but outside of society” (1), we might construct an alternative understanding by which, if The Economy is heterogeneous, it can contain practices other than the capitalistic. In a way, this is what The Tutor and Gerry and Notio and others have been going on about for a while, only I was too thick to pick up on it: philanthropy, the gift economy, and associated phenomena are forms of economic activity that may serve as alternatives to capitalism’s all-consuming and pitiless Leviathan.
Which brings me back to questions of definition. What is an economy, anyway? What constitutes economic activity? If our understanding of the economy is to be enlarged and heterogeneous, then what isn’t economic?
According to Colin Williams in “A Critical Evaluation of the Commodification Thesis”, an economy consists of the production, distribution, and allocation of goods and services (526). A commodified economy, on the other hand, produces goods for the purpose of exchange, which itself “is monetized and conducted under market conditions and. . . motivated by the pursuit of profit” (527). This is a useful distinction, and one that helps me towards my end of developing an understanding of the economics of higher education and the composition classroom that doesn’t necessarily lead exclusively towards an understanding of classroom activity as ultimately commodified, vocationalized, or otherwise trivialized. In other words, it makes me hopeful. I can use an economic lens and still understand that the stuff that happens in my classroom doesn’t have to be all about exchange value.
Which is a good thing, because today was a fine day, despite its pain-in-the-butt beginnings. I live in the hills almost exactly 20 miles away from my Big State U campus in Collegeburg, and my car had an electrical tantrum yesterday, so I left it at the garage up the street last night and took the bus in to work today. Or, rather, buses, since I took the little tiny last-stop-on-the-roads-into-the-hills bus from here into Fat City, and then caught the big bus from Fat City to campus: all told, an eighty-minute commute.
But so here’s the good part, which — as usual — was the teaching. I had students do anonymous mid-semester course evaluations today, as a way to help us figure out ways to improve stuff over the rest of the semester, and make things better for future semesters. Here are the questions I used (which are pretty much the ones I usually use, and I’d be grateful for any suggestions or ideas for revision to these questions that folks might offer):
- What have you learned so far in this course? What effects has the course had on you? Try to list and explain a few things.
- What are some things you haven’t learned, practiced, or tried that you would like to do in the second half of the course? Try to list and explain a few things.
- What aspects of the course content have been most helpful to you?
- What aspects of the course content have been least helpful to you?
- What aspects of the way I teach have been most helpful to you?
- What aspects of the way I teach have been least helpful to you?
- What is the most important thing you would change about the course content and/or the way I teach?
- What is the most important thing you think I should not change about the course content and/or the way I teach?
- What questions do you have, or what aspects of the course and the way I teach would you like to see explained more fully?
Obviously, I can’t share here, publicly, any of the specific answers that students gave (yes, I know they were anonymous, but still: it’s a respect thing). But I’ll just say: God bless ’em. They’re the best students in the world, as far as I’m concerned. Their generosity and insight, even in critique, reminded me today, yet again, why I love this job, and why — as always — I’ll change some things around and try to make class go better in the remaining weeks. (And if any of you abovementioned students are reading this and congratulating yourself on your cleverness at having found me out: shouldn’t you be working on your annotated bibliographies?)
So I took the two buses home, reading the evals, walking with the soles of my shoes about six inches off the ground, and it took me an hour and forty minutes on the way back, and I got in the door and fed the girls and had me some leftovers and a couple glasses of wine, with some Frank Sinatra on the stereo. And then I read some stuff about economics. Like Ice Cube said: today was a good day.
I’m stealin’ those questions. 🙂
Our departmental eval form uses iterations of these questions. One thing I saw commonly at Big State U. campus was that students complained that they weren’t getting enough direct instruction in grammar (which doesn’t work), or enough correction of their punctuation (which doesn’t work). While I can’t help but think of those responses as a sign that my class was successful in some way, it’s a shame they feel as though they are missing out on something they should get.
What I guess it boils down to is a more or less complete disconnect between what students want and the goals/objectives of the course as prescribed by the institution and/or articulated by the instructor. How do you avoid that? Syllabus design? I always include a bit about my philosophy for the class, but it hasn’t yet managed to fend off the masses of students apparently unstinting in their desire for direct instruction in the conventions of academic prose.
Glad to learn that your concept of “economy” is finessed and you can wield it with confidence.
On the mid-term evaluation front. Some questionnaires weave in an appreciation for application (effort). Sometimes the question targeting how much effort the student thinks they are contributing to the course is detachable i.e. students don’t have to hand back that answer with the others. Sometimes good to balance the construction of student as consumer with that of student as contributor. Easy enough to do within the space of evaluation.
Interesting idea, Francois. I might incorporate that into any course eval I do independently of the college. I wonder, though, what that might signal to the student regarding the relationship between “working hard” and still not “succeeding” (getting that A).
You got it. “The Economy” posits an Economic Man, a rational actor, with only rudimentary motivations other than the selfish. Out of these elements, plus market transactions, all of society is allegedly excogitated and modelled. Yet the assumptions are both false and perniciuous. We are social creatures, limited altruists, romantic and sentimental fools, we have ideals as well as strategies. Given the way the right wing has promoted the free market as if it were the one needful thing, supercedeing citizenship, freedom of speech, political freedoms, freedom of critical thought, it is important that we reassert a less crass and crabbed view of mankind. Philanthropy is both the finest expression of economic man, and one of his methods of social control, and also the image of a radically different kind of social structure. Caritas and solidarity and volunteerism and intentional communities are other ways to getting at a view of society that is less morally constricted. Another term is vocation, or calling, something that teachers understand from personal experience, that of giving much and getting little of material value in return.
Chris & Francois, I agree, with both the value of what Francois suggests and the potential problem Chris notes. The process model of writing instruction (after Walker Gibson and Donald Murray but perhaps more often iconically associated with Peter Elbow, as right or wrong as that association may be) in fact attempts to locate value in that appreciation of application. In fact, one could almost see Murray’s essay “Teach Writing as Process Not Product” as an argument for privileging use value over exchange value. At the same time, I suspect Chris might be speaking from an experience of the student who brings a labor theory of value to the classroom: “I worked for 2 hours on this essay; therefore it deserves an A.” I’ve certainly encountered such arguments myself. I’m not arguing for some transcendent evaluation of the aesthetic quality of the ideal paper here — I really think the goal of writing instruction is not so much to produce a semester’s worth of brilliant papers as it is to help students learn the habits that will help them become good writers — but simply pointing out that it’s the type of work one learns to do as well as the amount of work.
But, yes, there’s also a simple correspondence: write more, and you’ll get better. Don’t, and you won’t.
I think you all just pushed me to say something really smart but really obvious about the intersection of economics and pedagogy.
This is going to go into the dissertation.
Well said, Tutor. I wish I’d come to understand that angle of your project sooner: the critique of neoclassical economics as the intersection of rationality, selfishness, and atomistic solipsism.
How can instructors offer opportunities for course participants to question the labour theory of grade? I.e. how can they offer a simple play back of the assumptions: “Because I spent 2 hours working on this, I should get an A.” Point to the competition – performance based on how well everyone else does. Point to the future, “If you invest a little bit of time processing the feedback on this performance, you might be able to improve your personal best in the next round. And that personal best could be less time or higher mark or both.
Chris, I think the asking of the question, the invitiation for a bit of self-reflexion, signals an instructor / institutions that cares enough about the subject position of the student to offer the space and time for the question to be posed in such a fashion that it is not a guilt-tripper yoking effort & performance. Sometimes the student who is doing very well and coasting might reassess their engagement with the course and become a collective resource. Sometimes the student who feels that a tremendous amount of effort is going into achieving a low grade may be able to set learning objectives independent of the grade. I.e. the question gets asked to caputre a kind of snapshot that can feed into further evaluation and learning outside the parameters of the course. It may well be worth risking a plaints of those that feel hard done by if more students acquire analytic knack.