Breastfeeding Privatization in Public Education: Classroom Mothers in Neoliberal Times and the Patriarchal Mother-Power in School

ISBN-13: 9789811902628 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023 / 199 str.

Meral Apak

Opis

This book unveils women’s empowerment as mothers as a notion in the school system that reinforces patriarchy rather than weakening it. It discusses how empowerment is a contested notion, even though it is mostly praised in terms of women’s emancipation. This book explores the concept that although women are breastfeeding education as mothers in the neoliberal education system, they are not necessarily doing so as a self-sacrifice as one may generalize in the context of neoliberal economy. Instead, this book argues that women are doing this as a means of investment for gaining a sense of individual power, which ironically, reinforces patriarchal values. It presents demonstrative and descriptive practical incidences in the field.

Spis treści

1. INTRODUCTION

2. HISTORICAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND:

‘THE NEOLIBERAL TIMES’ AND EDUCATION

2.1 The Structure of Neoliberalism

2.2 The Neoliberal State and the Citizen

2.3 The Neoliberal Education

2.4 The Neoliberal Transformation Process in Turkey

2.5 The Issue of Neoliberal Governmentality and Schools

2.6 Decentralization and School-Based Management

2.7 The Teacher-Parent Shift in the Neoliberal School System

2.8 The Shift in the Mothers’ Role in the School System

3. UNPAID CARE LABOUR, VOLUNTARY WORK AND MOTHERHOOD

3.1 Unpaid Mother Labour and School as a Space for Hegemonic Reproduction

3.2 Voluntary Work

3.3 Patriarchal Ideology, Capitalism, and Motherhood

4. FORMS OF CAPITAL AND PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT

4.1 Women’s Cultural and Social Capital

4.2 Power and Empowerment

4.3 Participation and Parental Involvement

5. CLASSROOM MOTHERS: A RESERVE ARMY OF LABOUR BEHIND THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 

5.1 The Hidden Army of Mother-Labour Behind the School Sys-tem 

5.2 Classroom Mothers: A job description from Turkey and USA

5.3 The Beehive School

5.4 The Participants

6. SCHOOL AS A TERRITORY OF POWER AND CLASSROOM MOTHERHOOD AS A POWER POSITION

6.1 The Climate and the Culture of the School

6.2 Social Class of the Classroom Mother

    6.3 Capital of Classroom Mothers

7. CLASSROOM MOTHERHOOD AS A POWER POSITION

7.1 Social Capital as the ‘Catalysing Capital’

7.2 ‘Dispossession of Social Capital’ and ‘Network Blockage Strategy’

7.3 Adult Learning Practices of the CMs: Power-Gaining vs. Empowerment

7.4 The Privileges of Being a Classroom Mother

7.5 Tensions over Classroom Motherhood: The Power Clash with the Other Actors in the School

8. CLASSROOM MOTHERS AND THE NEOLIBERAL EDUCATION: A MATCH OR A MISMATCH?

8.1 The Neoliberal School as ‘Cooperative Businesses’

8.2 The Changing Parent Profile

8.3 Urbanization and the Emergence of the Classroom Mother-hood

8.4 What Happens When the Mother-Care is Taken out of the School?

8.5 Is a Feminist Parental Participation for Democratic Schools Possible?

8.6 The Current Power Situation in the School

8.7 What is to Eliminate: ‘Breastocracy’

8.8 What to Replace it with: Critical Feminist Pedagogy as a Means of Democratic Participation of Mothers in Schools

8.9 Neoliberal Transformation Process and the Mothers:‘As Natural as the Patriarchy’

8.10 Some Emerging Conceptualizations

8.11 Reproducing the Enemy: Gender and Class

8.12 Clues for Alternatives: From Breastocracy to Democracy

9. BIBLIOGRAPHY

O autorze

Dr Meral Apak is a critical education researcher chasing the odds in the “normal” within the realm of educational life and thought. Her work focuses on gender issues in education in the field of power, empowerment and “dis”powerment in a sociological sense. Apak has taught at various levels in public and private schools. During and after her Master’s degree in Women’s Studies, she actively participated in the establishment of women’s solidarity organisations and critical education associations. During her doctoral study in the field of Educational Sciences, she contributed to the establishment of BEPAM (Bogazici University, Center for Educational Policy Studies) and led the center from 2013 to 2017. Apak has taught at various universities in Istanbul and in Germany, and continues her research in Berlin.