A View of Lifelong Learning and the Information Society in Global Capitalist Culture

Oh, now today's post is going to be really fun for those of you who just went out to boxing day sales and spent the little money you had over after Christmas.  Or perhaps you got some money or gift cards and you thought to yourself, "oh, I really (insert desperate whiny voice) want that!"

Today's summary is from Chapter 5 of the Jarvis book again, which is titled:

The Information Society:  Learning global capitalist culture

It reminded me of something that happened this fall.  My 16 year old son had started drinking coffee.  He liked the local fast-food shop's coffee, but decided he wanted some at home.  So, I came home with a tin of coffee expecting him to be pleased.  (I think part of the thrill of coffee is entering this adult ritual at home!)  Instead of buying the brand that he had wanted, I purchased another.  Remember, this youth had not previously been drinking home-made coffee and therefore, was not familiar with the actual qualities of any brand.   He bemoaned his situation by saying something like, "but mom!  The best part of waking up is [brand x] in your cup!"  Indeed, I'm avoiding using the brand names here, but many readers will recognize the marketing  slogan that he had parroted.  In fact, he almost repeated it with the intonations of the music to which it is sung.  Advertising had created a desire and ascribed a certain value to a particular brand of coffee in a young mind that had no other information about coffee to go on.  

This is a running theme in the chapter under review here:  media creates desire and ascribes value to commodities.  I will share a related anecdote:  around our house, a running joke has become:  "but don't you know?  your house is supposed to smell like orange blossoms!"   which references the many ads we seem to come across for room fresheners.  

What this chapter does is provide an argument that we learn global capitalist culture, and we come to see it as unavoidable, inevitable, and "common-sense".  Jarvis argues a form of positive-feedback loop, as I see it, although he doesn't really position it that way himself: 

information is supplied,

primarily by Global Capitalist (GC) enterprises

which creates desire and value for commodities

and acculturates us in GC culture

then

our desire and acculturation

creates us as consumers more than citizens

and we support GC enterprises

partly by purchasing the ever-growing planned obsolete commodities

which themselves are primarily aimed at our entertainment

and

the forms of entertainment in which we engage

provide us with information

return to Line 1

or as T.J. Radcliffe would say:  "rinse, repeat"

(interestingly, a GC culture phrase itself)

I will now outline some of Jarvis' argument. 

• Jarvis takes a broad and learning-related definition of culture:  "it is the sum total of our learning" (p. 92)  We can talk about the culture of our families, our workplaces, our school, our country, our religious affiliation etc.  
• Jarvis sees GC as a culture.  It is a set of values and assumptions and ways of doing things that are held by a group of people and are perpetuated and (re)constructed through learning.  
• Since culture is (re)constructed and perpetuated through learning, those who control access to information and those who decide what information will be transmitted and how, have power to affect the values (and ultimately the actions) of individuals in a culture.
• An example comes to mind from the research of a friend of mine, P. Radabe.  He is interested in Afro-centric schools and the culture that is promoted within them.  This is an example of how those who control the information (curriculum) and how it is delivered (pedagogy) can influence (isn't that the point?) the values of the pupils learning in these schools.  The intent is to create a world view and culture that is an alternative to the white/Euro centric values and world-view promoted in main-stream schooling.  
• Similarly, those who control access to information (we'll discuss the forms shortly) can engage individuals in secondary socialization into membership in the GC culture. 
• The transmission of culture can never to complete and absolute:  decisions are made. Things are included; things are left out.  
• For instance, Schools have traditionally chosen what aspects of the culture they wish to promote (what does this generation think is important to pass on to the next?). 
• GC culture also chooses what aspects of culture to promote and it will provide information to support those values. Generally, knowledge that promotes happiness, human growth, democracy, citizenship etc would only be included if there is a profit to be made from it. 
• Jarvis discusses our needs as social creatures to be part of groups, even though we are increasingly becoming more individualistic. 
• When in groups, we acculturate to the group.  This secondary socialization has us conform to the values/practices/identifies of the group in order to maintain membership.  This is as true for membership in a church youth group as it is in the GC culture.  We exercise our freedom to join such a group, and relative freedom within that group, but membership itself comes at a price of some of our autonomy.  
• We 'join the group' of the GC culture when we become consumers.  In freely choosing to do so, we are relinquishing some of our freedom, although we don't experience it that way, partly because we have been secondarily socialized into this culture and see it as "the way the world is." 
• Once in a group, there is internalization and externalization of culture/values/ideas.  Groups and socializations are matters of interactions (with people, more or less).  Indeed, we learn from these interactions to conform, but, we also project values/ideas into the culture from our own biography.  One may be parroting out what has been learned by socialization into the group, or one may be introducing alternative, even transformative ideas into the group.  In this way, cultures are generally dynamic.  
• The ability of the individual to affect the GC culture, however, is significantly constrained. 
• The size of the culture and the power that supports it are gargantuan. 
• Although large groups may have the power to effectively contest aspects of the GC culture to be challenged, our increasingly individualistic society means that it`s harder to amass a critical mass of people to create such a group.  "It is easier to mobilise or manipulate individuals than groups..." (p. 97).
• Although the information/knowledge exchange in most cultures is significantly bi-directional (and we can choose to conform or not) a huge portion of the transfer in the GC culture is uni-directional. Information (and mis-information), values, emotions, sensory experiences, etc. (remember, learning involves the whole individual) are fed to passive individuals through the media:  A media (controlled by GC culture interests) which is increasingly pervasive and persuasive.

• Jarvis' presentation of the information society is different from what I have seen elsewhere.  

"The information society, then, is based upon sophisticated technological means of transmitting information at every level, including schooling, work and leisure." (p. 99)

"It is the profit motive that drives the information provision [the the GC culture] rather than the desire to pass on to the people worthwhile knowledge or even enjoyable knowledge or the knowledge that the older generation wish the younger ones to learn." (p. 99)

So, to Jarvis, we live in an information society not because we have more access to all sorts of information and not because we use information to advance society, and not because people are learning what will benefit their lives and the lives of others more than before.  Rather, we live in an information society because we are bombarded by uni-directional messages from GC culture, seeking to socialize us as a compliant and flexible consumerist/labour society with the desires for a lifestyle that will fulfill the demands of the GC culture.  Channelling Althusser's (1972)  state ideological apparatuses, Jarvis proposes that advertising is the ideological apparatus of GC. 

Jarvis includes a quote from Webster (2002, p. 154) which includes a quote by (Schiller, 1992, p. 3): 

"Informational developments are central to the spread of consumerism sine they provide the means by which people are persuaded by corporate capitalism that it is both desirable and inevitable way of life.  Through a sustained information barrage, attests Shciller, 'all spheres of human existence are subject to the intruding of commercial values...the most important of which, clearly is CONSUME.'"

•  Jarvis points out that advertising increases the value of a commodity.  The value of a commodity is not based on the cost to produce it, or its "use value" but rather on the desire (manufactured by advertising) and the amount of money one is subsequently willing to spend on it.  Jarvis doesn't mention this, but it strikes me as important that this is a relative decision.  Money allocated to the increased value of one commodity is at the expense of another purchase.  This competition raises the stakes for all the commodities involved, but also de-values, relatively, non-GC expenditures.
• Increasing the value of something through advertising, Jarvis claims, "...undermines the authenticity of individuals to place their own value upon phenomena....(and) decrease the humanity of the purchaser." (p. 101)
• Since GC culture/resources/power runs through the core of all other cultures as a sub-structure, the state is now limited in its response to GC culture to "cushioning people from the unrestrained forces of global capitalism."  (p. 101)  

• 
  

Jarvis' vision of Lifelong learning (LLL) walks lock-step with his vision of the information society. We are learning all the time, and we can't help it, because we are

"...exposed to the forces of the global capitalist culture all of our lives and in the process we actually become over-socialized into the consumer culture" (p. 102).

What we are learning is not just in the mind  It is in the whole person and includes values, attitudes, emotive conditions, beliefs, false data, unproven claims etc. 

• He reviews data regarding the inordinate amount of time people spend watching TV and surfing the Internet. 

"People spend more time receiving information from the media than they do from other people" (p. 103-104). 

Unidirectional learning like this is incidental and non-reflective.  It produces conformity, and not critical thinking. 

He considers this a new form of totalitarianism because "it orients the interests and concerns of many of the recipients."  The result, he says, is that those who have a high standard of living "...no longer feel the need to be active citizens." (p. 104).  They tend to believe that consumerist GC culture society must be right. 

He quotes Bauman (1988, p. 76-77): 

These pressures (of advertising), however are not experienced as an oppression.  the surrender they demand promises nothing but joy; not just the joy of submitting to something greater tha myself...but straight-forward, sensual joy of tasty eating, pleasant smelling, soothing drinking, relaxing driving, or the joy of being surrounded with smart, glistening eye-caressing objects.  With such duties, who needs rights? (p. 102). 

Jarvis reviews some evidence regarding the extent to which corporations are making themselves indispensable to schools (at all levels) and are increasingly positioned to influence (or control) the learning that goes on in them.  He says that currently, democracy and active civic involvement are played down.  He quotes Hyslop-Margison and Sears (2006, p. 15): 

...the central aim of neo

LLL extends beyond school and into the workplace where, Jarvis argues, workers are acculturated to be loyal members of the organizational culture.  They must learn and represent the values of the organization as the organization interprets them, or they risk inclusion (employment) in the group.  

In summary, Jarvis believes that we are indeed in an information society that relies on LLL.  But the learning that is going on lifelong and lifewide is acculturation to a GC culture which only accepts and rewards values associated with profit-making.  

Tomorrow, I will summarize Chapter 6:  Indoctrination and the learning society. 

I look forward to reading that, but wonder how much different it will be from the previous chapter.  

It includes sections on indoctrination and brain-washing, education, information transmission, truth, morality, and global totalism. 

A promising good time, don't you think?