Political Socialization and the Construction of Subjectivities in Times of Pandemic
María Camila Ospina-Alvarado, Sara Victoria Alvarado, María Teresa Luna, Julián Andrés Loaiza, Ruth Amanda Cortés, Milton Andrés Salazar[1]participants and graduates[2]
Our collective positioning as a line of research in Political Socialization and Construction of Subjectivities of the doctorate in Social Sciences Childhood and Youth and of the master's degrees in Education and Human Development and in Educational and Social Development, in the face of the current demands and challenges to the social sciences and to the studies of childhood and youth in times of pandemic, starts from recognizing that there are more questions than answers, especially because the crisis has not ended, on the contrary, we are in a moment of intensification of its effects and uncertainties.
As an academic community with shared understandings, we have profound questions and concerns about issues such as the relevance of the epistemic, conceptual, and methodological frameworks we have built, the meaning of social research in this context of uncertainties and intensified inequalities, and its potential to promote transformation, denunciation, resistance, and individual and collective re-existence.
Likewise, the subjective, familial, and communal experience in each territory of the social, economic, and cultural crisis derived from Covid-19 has led us to review in greater detail the ethical dilemmas related to virtual interactions and the handling of intimacy in our research and online meetings: the ways in which we relate to other research actors in the construction of knowledge, the intentions and uses of that knowledge, and the languages from which we speak about life.
This collective problematization has invited us to consider elements related to: How can we position ourselves critically and proactively as researchers, assuming the role of interpreters of culture, organic intellectuals increasingly committed to generating situated knowledge and with the capacity for transformation through influencing public policy and actions with communities? How can we reach others, beyond the screens, how can we feel them, how can we understand them at a time when people feel overwhelmed, without time or space for themselves, because all the dynamics of life—exclusion, inequality, violence—are converging relentlessly in the family sphere? How can we emerge more humanized, more creative, more autonomous, strengthened as political subjects, and equipped to confront together the neoliberal model that plunders life in all its manifestations?
We understand that before the pandemic, virtuality in social research was not a central issue, but now, we must not only include virtual mediations in our research (as we have done through virtual ethnographies, video calls, platforms, networks, etc.), but we must also enrich them with greater content and meaning, recognizing their potential, as has happened with internships and online meetings. Faced with these new realities, we are asking ourselves: ¿What does it mean to conduct research in virtual interactions and settings? How can we maintain research as a relational practice? How can we not lose sight of the importance of faces and bodies? What new things do we need to learn? How do we overcome, in research, the digital divide that seriously affects rural, indigenous, peasant, and border populations; women; and older adults?
We are facing a giant gap that is not limited to access to the internet connection, but fundamentally to access to information and training to use these resources and means; to the availability of time to use these resources and means, with a great overload in care work especially for women; and to the possibility of real participation in processes and scenarios where these resources and means are used.
Even so, the pandemic has allowed us to explore creativity and methodological flexibility without losing rigor; to open ourselves to more experiences and voices, and to generate co-creation processes; to understand that interaction, relationship, trust, and affection transcend physical contact, touch, and smell; to conceive of narrative and its power to signify and transform through hope as a dynamism for action; to identify the importance of documentary analysis, discourse, and narratives; and to commit ourselves even more to resistance, transformation, and agency in research.
Furthermore, the line assumes the importance of relational and collective socialization processes in questioning the term of Social isolationGiven its implications for the breakdown of relational and social structures, and recognizing the importance of self-care and care for others, physical distancing is necessary, which, as Barcala (2020) has proposed, is different from social isolation. Social isolation distances us from the possibility of political action, understanding the political as those transformations that are woven in the space between us, in our openness to the world (Arendt, 2009).
We believe that socialization and the construction of subjectivities today must be considered in terms of the historical inequalities present in Latin America and the Caribbean, and particularly in Colombia, which are now intensified, exacerbated, and made more visible by the effects of Covid-19. This pandemic has revealed which lives deserve to be lived and which, as Agamben (1998) argued, are relegated to precarity and neglected by the State, reduced to a mere existence of bare life. Thinking about ourselves in terms of the care of children and young people implies critically analyzing the material realities that generate inequality within families and within the framework of social relations established with the State, the market, and civil society. Adding to this correlation is a problematic element of the pandemic context: the deepening of deficiencies in the quality of life for low- and middle-class communities.
As Morin (2020) would say, we are facing a challenge of complexity, confronted with the grandeur and the weakness of science, and grappling with uncertainty and the dynamics of crisis. In light of this, we believe it is urgent to revisit fundamental questions about our place in the world, our relationship with nature, justice, human dignity, equity, love, solidarity, and care.
The health crisis has revealed other pandemics related to inequalities and intersectional violence based on gender, class, ethnicity, race, context, generation, and other factors. The dynamics of care during the Covid-19 pandemic have also exposed contradictions and challenges to understanding and explaining life; therefore, it is necessary to address intersections such as social class gaps, the gender perspective, and the intergenerational perspective. Indeed, “the right to care, in turn, must be considered as a universal right of all citizens, from the dual perspective of those who need care and those who provide it” (Batthyány, 2020, p. 4).
Inequalities are visible in the conditions of misery that some children, young people and their relational agents experience in terms of not having the basic conditions of housing, sanitation, food, health, education, while others live their lives in opulence; situations such as overcrowding have been made visible, which marks the habitation of a large number of children and young people, which is not insignificant, given that as Heidegger (1951) has stated we are insofar as we inhabit.
Inequalities are also expressed in the lack of access to technologies that are now fundamental to education. This is particularly evident in rural contexts where children and young people have become part of the workforce in the agricultural economy, and where they, their families, and even their teachers face barriers to access. At the same time, there are cases where families are dissatisfied with the school for not meeting their needs, the school is dissatisfied with the families, and both are dissatisfied with the children and young people, as Llanos (2020) points out. Meanwhile, other children and young people are now participating in socialization and re-socialization processes that, in some cases, have become exclusively mediated by screens.
Gender inequalities are deeply intertwined with the historical legacy of patriarchy in Latin America and the Caribbean, and particularly in our country, where women are constructed as something other, silenced and subjected to intense violence. In this regard, it is crucial to reflect on and reconfigure the social organization of care. We are discussing a theoretical category still in the process of being established, but also one that carries a weight of historical demands, especially regarding the role of women in caregiving. In patriarchal societies like ours, the feminization of care work remains a constant, both in paid and unpaid labor.
Inequalities have a strong intergenerational impact, with some children expressing a desire to be adults so they can make decisions and participate; the silencing of children's and young people's voices; and the presentation of their experiences as either deficient or idealized, limiting their political engagement. Therefore, it is crucial for political agency and the strengthening of the political socialization processes in which they participate to avoid pathologizing and victimizing them, and to build collective coping capacities.
These are inequalities that, in addition to being historical, allow us to identify the importance of remembering, of constructing biographical analepses, in order to deconstruct and resignify, to uninstall dominant discourses and narratives of precarity, vulnerability and violence, to identify present actions that are necessarily collective and that enable the opening to future possibilities.
In addition to inequalities, there are the historical forms of violence present in our country, which increase during times of confinement, confusion, lack of job and economic opportunities, and fear for life, but which are made invisible; an expression of this invisibility is that in similar periods of previous years there are fewer reports of domestic violence, perhaps, as proposed by the ICBF (El Espectador, 2020), because there are fewer reports from the collective of teachers and educational institutions that are in less contact with children and young people.
As an academic community, we call for the importance of dismantling such violence and of making room for, highlighting, and strengthening diverse peacebuilding practices that involve experiences of reconciliation in making peace, that break down historical power hierarchies, that enable the weaving of "us," that focus on the unfolding of affection so normalized these days, that enable ethical responsibility (Mèlich, 2000) for one's own life and for the lives of others, that make room for future possibilities, and that enable the transformation of emerging conflicts in these times.
Addressing the multiple forms of violence within the Colombian population is a challenge aimed at reversing the equation of violence/peace, moving towards conflict/peace; in other words, giving priority to alternatives co-constructed by children and youth through their community practices. Indeed, it means overcoming deficit-based approaches and reorienting our focus towards integrative perspectives in the construction of situated knowledge. From a social and political agency standpoint, it is essential to work through socio-educational and psychosocial networks with both local and decentralized communities, so that we can democratize the design and development of coping strategies through in-person and virtual approaches to safeguard life and rebuild the relational, community, social, and cultural fabric.
In this context, it will also be necessary to clearly allude to the scenarios of possibility amidst the inherent conflicts of narrowing down reality. A recognition of the openings and reflections unleashed around different spheres, of solidarity and connections as memories of other times, recovered under current conditions, such as the recognition of the importance of human contact and contact with nature. A determined commitment, though not sufficient to recognize the value of dignity. Times of subjectivations, subjectivities and subjects protected, but not silenced in the face of the onslaught of those who, even in these times, continue to stain the earth red and weary the senses with pain.
It is necessary to call for recognition of the diversities that constitute the identities of girls, boys and young people (institutionalization, disability, migration, displacement, etc.); as well as the singularities present in the life history of each person, in their bodies and in their family, community, neighborhood, socialization processes, in social organizations, etc.; which are a necessary basis of human plurality, a fundamental praxis in political socialization and the constitution of political subjectivities.
Likewise, it is necessary as an academic community to re-semanticize our analytical categories and participate in the co-construction of others that allow us in these times to continue contributing to the creation of knowledge that enables transformations and political agency; the co-creation of new methodologies of dialogical possibilities is necessary, which link action and enable the "we".
Highlighted
Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: sovereign power and bare lifeValencia: Pre-texts.
Arendt, H. (2009). The human condition. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Barcala, A. (2000). Panel on challenges facing children and youth in times of pandemic. Research Line: Political Socialization, Subjectivities, Memories and Peacebuilding. Master's Program in Education and Human Development. CINDE – University of Manizales.
Batthyány, K. (2020). Gender Studies: Care and Social Welfare. Conceptual and Empirical Approaches in Latin America and the Caribbean [Unpublished manuscript]. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.
El Espectador (2020). https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/nacional/durante-la-cuarentena-se-han-vulnerado-los-derechos-de-mas-de-1250-menores-icbf-articulo-913919
Heidegger, M. (1951). To build, to inhabit, to think. Santiago, Chile: Catholic University of Chile.
Llanos, D. (2000). Panel on challenges facing children and youth in times of pandemic. Research Line: Political Socialization, Subjectivities, Memories and Peacebuilding. Master's Program in Education and Human Development. CINDE – University of Manizales.
Mèlich, JC (2000). Narration and hospitality. The absence of testimony. Barcelona: Anthropos.
Morin, E. (2020). Festival of uncertainties. In series Tracts of crisis of Gallimard editions No. 54. (Free translation by Jorge Dávila). Available at https://tracts.gallimard.fr/Fr/products/tracts-de-crise-n-54-un-festival-d-incertitudes.
[1] The authors are members of the Political Socialization and Subjectivity Construction Research Line of the Doctoral Program in Social Sciences, Childhood and Youth, the Master's Program in Education and Human Development, and the Master's Program in Educational and Social Development. In addition, many of them are members of the CLACSO Working Group on Childhood and Youth, which María Camila Ospina-Alvarado co-coordinates.
[2] We received diverse contributions from participants and graduates of our master's and doctoral programs, including Omar Andrés Camacho Sánchez, Luis Miguel Gallo, Jhoana Alexandra Patiño, Diego Andrés Díaz Jaramillo, Julián Castañeda, Luis Fernando Granados, Indira Granda, Jairo Velázquez, and Rafael Gómez. Furthermore, we incorporated reflections developed in the program's workshops, designed an instrument to gather the participants' perceptions, and fostered a purposeful conversation among professors on the topic.
[+] Thinking about the pandemic
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