Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2016 by Wiseman Alexander W.;

Author:Wiseman, Alexander W.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Published: 2016-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

THE SIMPLE DICHOTOMY

Beyond ascribing to himself the labels ‘white saviour’ and ‘Freirean educator’, Straubhaar does give a fuller description of himself in an attempt to position himself in relation to his account. He tells us:

[M]y White privilege was compounded by several other facets of my personal identity: namely, my status as an upper-middle-class young man in his mid-20s with advanced degrees, as well as my organisational status at CDP as the in-house researcher and academic ‘expert’. (p. 385)

OK. That’s clear then. He is a member of the oppressor class. Elsewhere he speaks of his ‘educated White outsider-ness’ (p. 388). Because the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy only admits of two positions, and on any analysis Straubhaar seems an obvious candidate for one rather than the other, he does not see any need to unpack his attributes and look at them separately.

Outsiderness is an interesting case in point. Outsiders can do things that insiders cannot do. They can suggest things that insiders cannot suggest. They can be bound by, or choose not to be bound by, local taboos. They are listened to politely. But most importantly of all, they eventually leave.

There is a reason why companies engage external consultants when they envisage a major change or a restructuring of the organisation. Insiders can choose to bring in consultants, can specify their brief and can encourage them to frame their recommendations in a certain way. Insiders can use outsiders to make proposals that would not carry as much weight if they were made by insiders.

Long since I stopped wondering why universities with some of the most advanced expertise in every field imaginable, professors who act as consultants to other organisations, buy in external consultants when they seek to reform themselves. Here is a business school with some of the leading experts on human resources, who have held consultancies with major oil companies and multi-national corporations, but the senior management of the university will hire in expensive expertise from outside when they want to reform their own human resource procedures. There is a school of architecture, but they will not be invited to advise on, much less design, the new open interactive spaces where students can work together collaboratively. That contract will go to an external partnership of architects.

Insiders have an axe to grind, are involved in the day-to-day politics of the organisation and cannot be trusted to be impartial and to rise above the hurly burly. Outsiders, goodness only knows why, are presumed to be above such things. On the other hand, external consultants are engaged in a very different kind of politics; their eye is on the main chance, namely a repeat contract or subsequent consultancy. They can therefore be relied upon not to stray too far from giving the advice that their paymasters want to hear. Outsiders are thus engaged in and disengaged from the institutional politics that preoccupy insiders, and that ambivalent position can be used to advantage by insiders.

And in the end, the outsiders, the consultants, the visitors will leave and

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