Abstract
The 2011 Chilean student protests were a powerful social movement aimed at transforming education and, with it, the social spaces and formations of daily life. This social movement was pedagogical because students transformed the city into a classroom to gain control over the production of space. In this vein, the student movement provided a catalyst for reconstituting public education as a universal social right. Based on the perspective of spatial educational theory, I conducted a visual framing analysis of three photographs taken during the 2011 Chilean student movement. I employed a four-tiered visual framing method. The three photographs were purposefully selected from different media sources to represent the three dimensions of spatial educational theory, including learning in conceived space, studying in lived space, and teaching in perceived space. In doing so, this article provides a novel way to explain spatial educational theory by visually operationalizing it as a pedagogy for space during the Chilean student movement. This article also works to broaden our conceptualization of student movements as pedagogical events for social transformation.
Introduction
The 2011 Chilean student protests were a powerful social movement aimed at transforming education and, with it, the social spaces and formations of daily life. As one of the largest social movements since Chile’s return to democracy in 1990, this movement marked a rejection of market-oriented educational policies instituted under the Pinochet dictatorship (Cabalin, 2012, 2014). Following the overthrow of Chile’s democratic government in 1973, the military regime of General Pinochet instituted neoliberal reforms to privatize the public sector. In 1981, they installed a market-oriented educational system primarily based on parental choice and school competition (Bellei et al., 2014). Since then, Chile has steadily emerged on the international scene as a highly unequal society with students lacking equal access to quality education and university students facing the indentured servitude of student debt (Bellei and Cabalin, 2013). Consequentially, this market-oriented educational system has not only restricted the right to education, but it has also restricted the right to move within and throughout space. In response, the student movement provided a catalyst for students, as political agents, to rupture the neoliberal imperative by demanding free public education as a universal social right (Bellei et al., 2014). In this sense, as O'Malley and Nelson (2013) argued, the student movement was pedagogical because the city was transformed into a classroom for the “right to be in and move through space, about the right to have control over the production of space” (Ford, 2016a: 15).
Research in critical education has sought to understand the interrelationship between the spatial configurations of daily life and educational policy and pedagogy (Ferrare and Apple, 2010; Ford, 2013, 2014; Gulson and Symes, 2007a, 2007b; Lipman, 2011; Middleton, 2013; Neary and Amsler, 2012; Peters, 2011; Peters and Kessl, 2009). Peter McLaren (1998) first argued: “Critical pedagogy needs to move into the direction of challenging new carceral systems of social control through the development of a critical pedagogy of space” (454). McLaren argued for infusing a critical pedagogy of space with political economy to advance the struggle against the oppressive and exploitative nature of capitalism. Building on McLaren’s work and Morgan’s (2000) call to “interpret spaces as social texts” (285), Derek Ford (2017) developed a spatial educational theory and operationalized it as a revolutionary political pedagogy for space. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) insights regarding the social production of space, Ford’s pedagogy for space consists of a spatial–educational triad that includes three dimensions: (a) learning in conceived space, (b) studying in lived space, and (c) teaching in perceived space. By reading the spatial–educational triad into the 2015 Baltimore protests, Ford demonstrated that the triad is “not in a linear progression, but a constant and contingent dialectical movement across and between the three acts” (Ford, 2015: 193–194). However, what does this pedagogy for space look like? In this article, I methodologically extend Ford’s operationalization of spatial educational theory by considering research on the visual media framing of education (Allweiss et al., 2014; Cabalin and Antezana, 2016; Feuerstein, 2015). Indeed, visuals can provide a means for observing a pedagogy for space. As Rodriguez and Dimitrova (2011) argue, “visuals such as photographs [not only] seem closer to reality … [but they are also] powerful framing tools because they are less intrusive than words and as such require less cognitive load” (50). In this sense, spaces should not only be read as lexical text, but they should also be read as visual text, which can refine our understanding of the pedagogical nature of the 2011 Chilean student movement.
The purpose of this article was to conduct a visual framing analysis of three photographs to understand what the three dimensions of a pedagogy for space looked like during the 2011 Chilean student movement. Based on a review of the literature, I developed a coding scheme representing the three dimensions of Ford's spatial educational theory. This coding scheme guided the purposeful selection of three photographs. The photographs were obtained from different media sources, including The Guardian, The Boston Globe, and Wikimedia Commons. The unit of analysis was each photograph. I analyzed each photograph using a four-tiered visual framing analysis method (Rodriguez and Dimitrova, 2011). Together, the three photographs represented a pedagogy for space for “understanding and producing space in ways that disrupt the contemporary global political-economic order, and hopefully contribute to the overthrow of that order and the reconceptualization and enactment of a different order” (Ford, 2015: 8). Therefore, to inquire into a pedagogy for space during the 2011 Chilean student movement, I posed the following three guiding research questions:
What did learning in conceived space look like during a 2011 Chilean student protest? What did studying in lived space look like during a 2011 Chilean student protest? What did teaching in perceived space look like during a 2011 Chilean student protest?
This article proceeds in five sections. In the first section, I provide the background to and context of the 2011 Chilean student movement. This social movement consisted of student protests that will be depicted visually. In the second section, I present spatial educational theory as the guiding theoretical framework. In particular, the spatial–educational triad consists of three dimensions that provide the operational basis for observing the student movement as a pedagogy for space. In the third section, I review the methodology, including methods of data collection, coding, and procedures for conducting the visual framing analysis. In the fourth section, I carry out the visual framing analysis of the three photographs taken during the Chilean student movement. I use a systematic three-trope process, where each photograph is analyzed and discussed. In the last section, I provide some brief concluding remarks.
The background and context: The 2011 Chilean student movement
To understand the 2011 Chilean student movement, one must understand this movement as a moment, as a culminating event beginning with the democratic election of Latin America’s first socialist president, Salvador Allende, in 1970. Allende instituted a host of nationalization policies, for sectors such as copper and telecommunication, which threatened the USA’s economic interests (Klein, 2007). In response, the USA ran a host of political action projects, such as funding opposition leaders and running propaganda campaigns, to undermine the legitimacy of Allende’s presidency (Central Intelligence Agency, 2013). These political action projects helped to develop the conditions for a coup d’état led by General Augusto Pinochet on 11 September 1973, which marked a transition for Chile from democracy to dictatorship. Under the guidance of the University of Chicago economist Milton Freedman and the Chicago Boys (i.e. Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago), Pinochet restructured Chile’s political economic system (Harvey, 2011). This system repurposed the state to serve a subsidiary role, providing for the privatization of the public sector while increasing competition through deregulation and allowing for the opening of new markets (Ostry et al., 2016). One of these new markets was education. Upon Chile’s return to democracy in 1990, however, the continuation of neoliberal policies has exacerbated widespread discontent and socio-economic inequality in Chile, as it has for many other countries throughout the world (Harvey, 2011; Wubbena, 2016).
The neoliberal framework reconstituted public education into a market through the market-oriented principles of competition, school choice, and privatization (Bellei et al., 2014). With the state taking a subsidiary role, the privatization of education expanded a competitive market for school choice and student access and enrollment. However, prior to this competitive market in higher education, there were a limited number of universities (now referred to as the “traditional universities”). Because of the limited access, these universities had highly competitive admission for students, which regulated lower and working class students from access for economic and intellectual elites. However, the birth of the market model for higher education succeeded in increasing the institutional capacity for students and older adults to gain access to higher education. For example, in 1973, 67% of all students attended public universities, whereas, in 2013, 72% of all students attended private universities (Bellei et al., 2014). While the number of public universities remained steady over time, the competitive higher education market increased its institutional capacity with private universities and technical institutions, and this increase in institutional capacity provided many students and older adults with a chance to attend higher education. For example, while in 1990 student enrollment in higher education was only 17% in 2012, this student enrollment increased to 60% (UNESCO, 2012).
However, the increased enrollment in higher education also corresponded to decreased direct state funding, creating somewhat of a double-edged sword. While institutional capacity expanded access for students to attend higher education, the corresponding decrease in direct state funding pushed students toward obtaining private financing, such as private student loans, and other fees to attend university. For example, per the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2013), families and students in Chile are expected to fund more of their education than any other OECD member country. The increased dependency of students on private financing and increased institutional capacity for students to attend higher education has left many students facing the indentured servitude of student debt (Bellei and Cabalin, 2013). Along with other social, political, and economic forces as play, Chile has become one of the most economically unequal societies, having the highest level of income inequality out of all other OECD countries (OECD, 2016).
In response, the student organizations in Chile have played a major role in contesting the current neoliberal order. Although student organizations were banned under the dictatorship, the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH) emerged in the late 1980s to challenge the dictatorship before Chile’s return to democracy in 1990 (Bellei et al., 2014). CONFECH consists of federations of democratically elected students from public and private universities throughout Chile; however, before 2011, CONFECH excluded private university students (Bellei et al., 2014). In the late 1990s, CONFECH protested inequities in education and—motivated by the massive 2006 high school student movement—helped organize and lead the popular 2011 Chilean student movement (Cabalin, 2012, 2014). Two popular student leaders of this movement were Camila Vallejo, President of the Student Federation of the University of Chile (FECH) and Giorgio Jackson, President of the Student Federation of the Catholic University (FEUC). Bellei et al. (2014) suggest that CONFECH’s organizational success can be attributed to its student leaders’ ability to unify students as agents of political collectives, translating their power into mass protests for social transformation.
The 2011 Chilean student movement lasted over a seven-month period and consisted of some 36 massive protests (Bellei and Cabalin, 2013). In April of 2011, the first protest was held with about 8000 students (Bellei et al., 2014); the movement swelled to almost a million students one month later on 30 May 2011 (Cummings, 2015). This movement integrated many of the demands made from the secondary student movement in 2006; however, it also extended the reach of these demands to higher education (Bellei and Cabalin, 2013). According to Bellei et al. (2014), there were five central demands that served as the impetus for the student movement. These demands included equal access to higher education, expansion of public education, strengthening of state responsibility for regulating education, removal of the for-profit motivation behind education, and increased student access and participation in higher education (Bellei et al., 2014).
Students mobilized to support these demands by engaging in a variety of traditional and innovative protests (Bellei and Cabalin, 2013; Cabalin, 2014). The CONFECH student leaders led more conventional protest rallies, such as marches filled with scripted chants, signs, and slogans (Franklin, 2011). Other times the protests became creative acts, for instance, on 24 June 2011, a flash mob took place at the president’s house with students dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” while wearing gravestone hats displaying how much debt each student owed (Goldman, 2012). Students participated in hunger strikes, occupied university buildings, and held a kiss-in among other events (Delgado and Ross, 2016). Students also engaged in more resistive forms of protest, including activities like graffiti and confronting police with firebombs and rocks, to which the police responded with water cannons, tear gas, and brute force (Taylor, 2011). To understand the underlying pedagogical nature of the 2011 Chilean student movement, I now turn to the theoretical framework of spatial educational theory.
Theoretical framework: Spatial educational theory
Ford’s (2017) spatial educational theory served as the guiding theoretical framework. This framework consists of a spatial–educational triad that includes three dimensions: learning in conceived space, studying in lived space, and teaching in perceived space. In practice, the three spatial educational dimensions operate in a triple dialectical configuration. This triple dialectic among and between the three dimensions serves as the basis for operationalizing spatial educational theory as a pedagogy for space during the 2011 Chilean student movement.
Learning in conceived space
The first dimension of the spatial educational theory is learning in conceived space. Learning in conceived space includes a spatial dimension and an educational dimension. Concerning the spatial dimension, Ford (2016a, 2017) draws on Henri Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) conception of conceived space, which Lefebvre also refers to as representations of space. Representations of space order social relations in ways that have been conceived by others, such as map makers, city planners, politicians and policymakers, architects, real estate developers, and bankers, among others (Ford, 2016a). Conceived space embodies dictates that govern and control individuals and, therefore, collective autonomy and will. As Ford (2017) writes, “Representations of space tell us what to do in certain spaces; they tell us what is allowed and what is not allowed, where we should stand or sit, nap or congregate” (104). In essence, conceived space makes objects out of subjects or, rather, subjects become the embodiment of objects. In this sense, representations of space serve the capitalist mode of re-/production by prescribing paths, making encounters predictable and risk-free for transaction and exchange. For example, during the Baltimore protests, conceived space included things like “sports arenas, corporate headquarters, high-rise hotels and condominiums, and chain restaurants [that] take up the majority of space” (Ford, 2016a: 187–188).
Learning augments and operationalizes representations of space. To narrow in on learning in conceived space, Ford (2016a, 2017) draws on the work of Gert Biesta and Tyson Lewis. Accordingly, “learning is always concerned with and determined by ends (learning goals, outcomes, etc.)” (Ford, 2016c: 3). The logic of learning, like the logic of conceived space, is about the re-/production of capitalism and, therefore, learning is ultimately about social reproduction (Bowles and Gintis, 1976/2011; Giroux, 1983; Wubbena, 2015). Learning, however, holds within itself its own destruction. For instance, Biesta (2014) speaks of a learning society in which one is expected to embrace being a lifelong learner. In this sense, learning is about potentiality, what Lewis (2013) refers to as the organizing principle of the learning society. However, the actualization of potential by reaching learning outcomes destroys the potentiality of the learner (Lewis, 2011, 2013). Ford (2016a) adds that, “Learning, that is, describes a process and doesn’t denote the content that should be contained in that process, which eclipses discussions about the purpose of education” (183). This process allows the purpose of education and the learner to be made and re-made for the current and future needs of capitalism. Ford (2016a) provides many examples of learning in conceived space during the Baltimore protests, including “organized contingents of groups, scripted chants, well-formulated slogans and demands, printed placards, painted banners, and a clear spatial trajectory through the city” (188).
Studying in lived space
The second dimension of the spatial educational theory is studying in lived space. Studying in lived space includes a spatial dimension and an educational dimension. Ford (2016a, 2017) draws on Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) conception of lived space, which Lefebvre also refers to as representational space. Representational space, according to Lefebvre, includes the lived spaces of daily life. The representational nature of lived space is presupposed by representations of space and, therefore, the way space is conceived can render lived space as unrecognizable, because it is difficult to represent everything within a lived space. In this sense, representational space is produced in myriad ways and interactions, as it is inhabited on a daily basis. Representational space is also considered the space of the imagination—users may resist conceived space for the unimaginable or become passive to its domination (Lefebvre, 1974/1991). For example, during the Baltimore protests, Ford (2016a) notes, there was “wandering within and beyond boundaries … Instead of … orchestrated contingents, there were cries of indignation and anger and multitudinous swarms forming and disbanding; advancing, retreating, and advancing yet again” (189).
Studying augments and operationalizes representational space. Ford (2016a, 2016c, 2017) draws on Lewis’ (2011, 2013) theory of studying. The studier studies, and by studying, the studier, is concerned with perpetual activity focused on means without actualizing some predetermined outcome. For instance, Ford (2016a) argues that while learning is always a means toward some predetermined end, studying is about a means toward infinite potentiality. Through studying, the studier “interrupts the demand to actualize potential by introducing a hyphen in between potential and im-potential, so that the slogan of the studier becomes ‘I can … I cannot’” (Ford, 2016c: 4). As Lewis (2013) writes, studying “suspends ends yet does not retreat into pure potentiality. It is the ambiguous state of recessive sway that holds within itself this and that without choosing either” (147). In this sense, studying “opens up what has been learned to the possibility of being otherwise, opening up ellipses within the learning society that can be stretched to render it inoperative” (Ford, 2016c: 4). This is because studying holds within itself latent potential that is preserved from being actualized. Lewis (2013) refers to the method of the studier as a means to “experience the im-potentiality to be and not to be, do and not do simultaneously” (94). During the Baltimore protests, for example, Ford (2016a) writes that when night fell people started wondering within and beyond spatially prescribed boundaries as “bottles, cans, rocks, and other objects [were] constantly being hurled across the barricades. Many people [were] standing right up at the barricades, unafraid of the cops and the state power that they represent” (188). In order to bring learning in conceived space and studying in lived space together in dialectical tension, I now turn to teaching in perceived space.
Teaching in perceived space
The third dimension of the spatial educational theory is teaching in perceived space. Teaching in perceived space includes a spatial dimension and an educational dimension. Ford (2016a, 2017) draws on Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) conception of perceived space, which Lefebvre also refers to as spatial practice. Ford (2016a) comments, “In bodily terms, Lefebvre will refer to these spaces as perceived spaces, because they are tied up with the ways in which we think of—or fail to think of—the spaces that structure our lives” (182). In this sense, spatial practice becomes recognizable as a social formation. This social formation functions to organize and govern not only bodies in space but also how daily life is perceived. Lefebvre defines an extreme example of spatial practice as the “daily life of a tenant in a government-subsidized high-rise housing project” (38). This housing project, its location, and its relation to the city context are the dictates of conceived space. Yet, the spatial practice of tenants living within this government housing mediates conceived space and lived space through daily routines and their associated links with work and leisure to provide spatial continuity and cohesion (Lefebvre, 1974/1991). As Lefebvre (1974/1991) notes, spatial practice “secretes that society’s space; it propounds and presupposes it, in a dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates it” (38). For example, during the Baltimore protests, Ford (2016a) writes how Black religious leaders used the police station as a staging ground to organize the first of many protests.
Teaching augments and operationalizes spatial practice as perceived by the teacher. Ford draws on Biesta’s (2014) theory of teaching. Ford (2016a) suggests the teacher is made in the act of teaching by “bringing something new to the student, some idea, concept, object, or action; the teacher is responsible for arranging encounters … this new thing will be something that is new to the student, but not necessarily new to the world” (186). In this sense, teachers serve as a “collective organ” (Ford, 2016a: 190) made in the act of teaching, and they provide an intervention into the existing order of things. This intervention is political because teaching inherently functions as a governing mechanism that orients, balances, and anticipates the need for learning, studying, and teaching. Teachers can represent a variety of people, such as a teacher in the traditional sense, or leaders of a church or other organization. For example, during the Baltimore protests the teachers included the Fruits of Islam, Bloods, Crips, and Black Guerrilla Family, which “united to ‘minimize looting and refocus the youth’s righteous militancy’” (Ford, 2016a: 190). By operationalizing spatial educational theory as a pedagogy for space, we are provided with a framework for visualizing the pedagogical nature of the 2011 Chilean student movement.
Methodology
Sample
Data were based on a purposeful sample of visual documents (Merriam, 2009). The visual documents included three pre-existing photographs. Each photograph was selected to represent a different dimension of the 2011 Chilean student movement. I searched various online databases from 11 September 2016 to 26 September 2016 for variants of the key phrase: “2011 Chilean student protest movement.” One concern when using pre-existing images is copyright permission (Allweiss et al., 2014; Feuerstein, 2015). In response, I first searched the Creative Commons (CC) database (search.creativecommons.org) for images under the CC licensing agreement. This agreement allows the free use of images without permission. The CC database provides a point of access for search services such as Google Images (CC Search, 2016). I searched Google Images, Flickr, Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons, and YouTube (for screenshots). The search was filtered for images under CC copyright license agreement. I identified the first photograph from the Wikimedia Commons database. However, limited images were available under CC license, so I extended the search without the CC filter, using Google Images to identify the last two photographs. The second photograph was published online in The Guardian, and the third photograph was published online in The Boston Globe. I contacted both photographers by email and was granted written permission to include both photographs in this article.
Data Collection
Coding scheme: dimensions of spatial educational theory.
Note. The coding scheme was based on a review of the relevant literature (Biesta, 2014, 2015; Ford, 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c, 2017; Lefebvre, 1974/1991; Lewis, 2011, 2013).
Informed by the coding scheme in Table 1, I identified and selected three photographs based on varying degrees of both manifest content and latent content. First, I selected a photograph depicting learning in conceived space that used an extreme long shot of the city with a high-angle. This view provided an elevated perspective portraying the mass of student protesters and their relationship to the city context. I also looked for an image with students marching down a street lined with businesses while peacefully carrying signs and banners, conforming to the requisites of conceived space. Second, I selected a photograph depicting studying in lived space that used a long shot of protesters in an escalated state of tension with police. The photograph depicted student protesters as more chaotic while still making visible their actions as testing the boundaries of conceived space. Lastly, I selected a photograph depicting teaching in perceived space that used a medium shot of a student leader. I selected a photograph where a student leader was performing the balancing act between studying in lived space and learning in conceived space. This photograph required more interpretation and inference than the previous two photographs, because I needed to draw out the unobservable connections and dialectical relations between learning and studying.
Positionality
Since qualitative researchers are the instrument of data collection, analysis, and interpretation, I want to acknowledge my positionality. I engaged in reflexivity to make my positionality explicit by recursively examining, questioning, and explaining the potential influence of my past experiences on the research process (Creswell, 2013). I approached this project as a non-Latin critical scholar from the USA. My interpretations provided an outsider or etic perspective on the pedagogical nature of the 2011 Chilean student movement. While I observed the student movement through the news media, I was separated from this phenomenon by physical and psychological distance. As O'Malley (2017) cautions, “I am more able to argue credibility for the project's potential to inform, rupture, and problematize my own theoretical and lived understandings … rather than to narrate something identified as ‘Chilean experience’” (9). I, however, do share some closeness with Chile. My interest with Chile began early in my doctoral course work as I traced the roots of market-oriented educational reforms. I also became interested in the whole discursive milieu and pervasive logic of neoliberal thought. This interest led to my first engagement with research on education in the media beginning with Cabalin (2014a). Moreover, I studied in Chile as a Gabriela Mistral scholar, where I participated in a transnational research project on public pedagogy led by Michael O'Malley. These experiences coincided with my studies of critical pedagogy, media studies, and critical geography. And, these different streams of thought converged into the current research project.
Visual Data Analysis
The unit of analysis was each photograph. Each of the three photographs selected represented a different spatial–educational dimension of the 2011 Chilean student movement. To provide a detailed analysis of each of the visuals, I followed a similar analytical approach to previous research (Allweiss et al., 2014; Rodriguez and Dimitrova, 2011). This analytical approach was based on Rodriguez and Dimitrova’s (2011) four-tiered visual framing method. This four-tiered visual framing method stretches the analytical process from concrete and descriptive to abstract and interpretive. The first level required the analysis of visuals as denotative systems characterized by descriptions of who or what was being visually depicted. The second level required the analysis of visuals as stylistic-semiotic systems. This level examined the stylistic conventions and technical transformations in each photograph. The third level required the analysis of visuals as connotative systems. This level considered the symbolic meaning derived from persons and/or objects in each photograph. The fourth level required the analysis of visuals as ideological representations of the interests being served or not being served in each photograph. I analyzed each photograph at the four levels of analysis using a systematic three-trope process, where each photograph was separately analyzed and discussed.
Visually framing the 2011 Chilean student movement
In this section, I visually illustrate a pedagogy for space during the 2011 Chilean student movement. I provide a visual analysis of each photograph by employing the four-tiered visual framing method. I draw out and make explicit their spatial and educational features and their overall relation to each other to illustrate the student movement as a pedagogy for space. I carry out this visual analysis by addressing the research questions from the introduction.
What did learning in conceived space look like during a 2011 Chilean student protest?
Figure 1 represents what learning in conceived space looked like during one of the 2011 Chilean student protests. The photograph titled “Estudiantes Chilenos Marchando por La Alameda” (Chilean Students Marching on the Avenue) was obtained from Wikimedia Commons. The caption indicates the protest took place on 14 July 2011, a little more than two and a half months into the seven-month student movement. The caption also indicates the protest took place on “La Alameda” (i.e. The Avenue). A popular avenue in Santiago, Chile, the official name of which is Avenida Libertador General Bernardo O'Higgins, named after Bernardo O'Higgins, who led Chile’s independence from Spanish rule in the 1800s. Running east-to-west across the city center, the avenue gives symbolic significance over the struggle between democratic socialism and the current neoliberal capitalist-democratic order with the political economic policies and practices inherited from the military dictatorship. I now visually analyze a 2011 Chilean student protest as an example of learning in conceived space.
From “Estudiantes Chilenos marchando por la Alameda” [Chilean Students Marching on the Avenue], by Nicolás15, 14 July 2011 (Wikimedia Commons). Reprinted under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0. (Color online only.)
The photograph of learning in conceived space depicts peaceful student protesters carrying signs and banners, conforming to the requisites of conceived space. Conceived space is indicative of how “technocrats and city planners, bankers and bureaucrats, real estate developers and landlords” (Ford, 2015: 179) have conceived and configured the social space of the city. The re-/production of this space has provided for the ordering of encounters and a clear spatial trajectory where social relations occur, develop, and dissolve according to the needs of capital. For instance, the photograph contains particular physical features, including features that are part of the built environment and natural world. The central feature of the photograph is La Alameda filled with a mass of student protesters. La Alameda is lined by leafless trees planted in green grass that extends parallel alongside the avenue extending out to what looks to be a major intersection. Buses appear to be in operation, ensuring exchange value is not impeded by the lack of transportation to move within and throughout the city. There are sidewalks in the background extending both parallel and perpendicular to La Alameda. In the background, there is also a building that looks to be some type of business, and there is a large shadow, which suggests there is another building hidden from view that cannot be directly observed. The main avenue and the businesses that line it are important; they are “concerned with consumption, with order, with exchange-value” (Ford, 2016a: 181). Conceived space tells protesters “what to do in a certain space: they tell us what is allowed and what is not, where we should stand or sit, nap or congregate” (Ford, 2016a: 181) and, in this sense, the street guides the mass of protesters down an orderly and prescribed path.
In the photograph, learning in conceived space is illustrated in many ways. Perhaps one of the most prominent ways is in how conceived space directs protesters, guiding them down a prescribed path toward some end, likely a culminating event where student demands are projected on a loud speaker. In this sense, traditional protests are learning opportunities, because “learning is always concerned with and determined by ends (learning goals, outcomes, etc.)” (Ford, 2016c: 3). Moreover, the protesters seem to represent the indebted “consumer with a demand of knowledge” (Ford, 2015: 184) that only state power can supply through free education. Therefore, the protest is about the potentiality of the protesters, and this potentiality holds within itself the fruits of its own destruction. Traditional protests, as illustrated in the photo, are a means toward actualizing and, hence, destroying the collective potential of the protest event. For instance, by destroying the collective potential of the protest event through the actualization of demands or the perceived actualization of demands, protest events can be made and re-made to march against the social consequences of capital, similar to the student who is made and remade through lifelong learning “in order to fit the needs of global capital and to continually attain happiness, satisfaction, and health” (Ford, 2016c: 2). However, I would argue that learning in conceived space as illustrated by the street protest event in the photograph is very much accommodated and controlled for by the neoliberal order (Ford, 2016a). In fact, peaceful protests are built into the capitalist-democratic system (e.g., the city's issuance of protest permits and free speech zones).
Looking at the high concentration of student protesters marching down the avenue, we can observe that most of them are facing one direction while bystanders are either observing them or going on with their daily tasks and the everyday hustle and bustle in a major city. Clearly, the order of physical and social space “offer an already clarified picture” (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 189) of the city and state power as the main conceiver of this space. In this regard, notice the Chilean colored flag being carried in the lower left-hand side of the photograph. The colors of this flag (red, blue, and white) constitute many of the colors of other protest signs held throughout the crowd. These colors signify the patriotic nature of the protesters and their demands, suggesting a critique of the neoliberal economy itself rather than the Chilean political and social life. In this sense, the protesters “represent space through signs … backed up by state power” (Ford, 2015: 180). It is this state power that the protesters appeal to in order to destroy the potentiality of their student movement, which is characteristic of the learning society.
What did studying in lived space look like during a 2011 Chilean student protest?
Figure 2 represents what studying in lived space looked like during a 2011 Chilean student protest. Chilean photographer Ivan Alvarado took this photograph on 25 August 2011 in Santiago, Chile, and the photograph was published online in The Boston Globe (Boston.com, 2011). The photograph was taken on Alameda Bernardo O'Higgins Avenue, which runs through the center of the city. Recall that O'Higgins Avenue is popularly referred to as La Alameda, and it is where learning in conceived space also took place. Clearly, this photograph is vastly different from, but in many ways it is similar to, the photograph of learning in conceived space. However, this photograph illustrates the re-appropriation of La Alameda from exchange to use. While learning in conceived space is about signage, order, and reproduction toward a pre-defined outcome, studying in lived space is about affect (including feelings and emotions) and perpetual activity. Also, it is about use value that resists being reduced to exchange. It is about disorder and resistance to reproduction; it refuses to be reduced to signage or to being actualized. I now turn to analyze the photograph in terms of its characteristics related to studying in lived space.
From “A demonstrator throws a tear gas canister toward a riot police vehicle during a 48-hour national strike in Santiago on August 25, 2011,” Ivan Alvarado, 25 August 2011 (Photographer, www.ivanalvarado.com). Reprinted with permission. (Color online only.)
The photograph illustrates students studying in lived space during a 2011 Chilean student protest. Studying in lived space is less orderly and prescriptive than learning in conceived space. In fact, it could be said that, while conceived space precedes learning, studying precedes lived space. Studying becomes the mechanism for producing lived space that is unimaginable to conceived space because “learning is always concerned with and determined by ends (learning goals, outcomes, etc.)” (Ford, 2015: 186). For instance, centered in the above photograph is a protester dressed in dark clothing with a gray face covering. The protester’s arm is raised in a throwing motion with a tear gas canister in hand while other protesters can be observed wandering throughout the street in an unpredictable fashion. All of this studying is the inhabitation of lived space that defies the logic of learning; it “declassifies subjects (makes them unrecognizable to the learning apparatus)” (Lewis, 2016: 4). In fact, one can observe the remnants of the perpetual activity that studying elicits. For example, one can observe trash and objects sporadically spread throughout the street, as protesters inhabit lived space, wandering in and out of predetermined paths established by state power, making these conceived paths unrecognizable to the structure and order imposed by this power.
When studying in lived space suspends the rules of protest (Ford, 2016a), it evokes a repressive response from state power attempting to maintain the order and structure of learning in conceived space to meet the needs of capital. For instance, one can observe the trail of tear gas smoke that extends diagonally across the photograph from the protester’s hand and ending where the riot truck begins. The riot truck is splattered with orange, blue, and white paint across its protective metal grill, which covers the entire front of the truck. The use of the riot truck can be viewed as an attempt to regain control of the space as it had been conceived by state power—but lived space is clearly dominating in that its reconfiguration is made possible through the perpetual activity of study (Ford, 2016a). We might even say that the water cannon sending a high velocity stream of water extending toward protesters produces a defensive and motivating gesture for studying. This gesture provides for agility and maneuverability, making the lived space a training ground for the craft of study and, as Ford (2016a) notes, protests are “rehearsals for a revolutionary event, for something that we can’t quite envision yet, but we know is immanent in the present” (189). In this sense, study provides the protesters with im-potentiality, the “dance to the rhythm of ‘I can, I cannot,’ moving from retreat to advance and back again” (Ford, 2016b: 54). In addition, we can observe the presence of graffiti in the background of the photo. This graffiti is sprayed over the security gates in different colors covering the protected storefront of capital. The protection of the storefront serves a similar purpose to that of the metal guard covering the window of the riot truck. They illustrate the way capital and its protective forces of state power work in a coordinated fashion to reproduce the relations of production by collectively unifying political, economic, and cultural relations of society (Ford, 2015, 2016c). Yet, studying provides the pedagogical apparatus to resist these social relations. In this case, studying becomes a central act to social transformation. It is, as Ford (2016c) describes, a “beautiful moment of encounter, the opening up of the possible, the breeding ground of the new” (6). And, this breeding ground requires capitalism and its ilk of state power to be challenged pedagogically and politically. Clearly, studying is in tension with learning, and this tension requires political intervention. This political intervention can come from a traditional teacher, but it also may originate from a student leader or organizer, among others.
What did teaching in perceived space look like during a 2011 Chilean student protest?
Figure 3 represents an example of what teaching in perceived space looked like during the 2011 Chilean student movement. Chilean photographer Roberto Candia took this famous photograph at the height of the student movement on 11 August 2011, and it was published online in the The Guardian newspaper on 24 August 2011 (Franklin, 2011). The person centered in the photograph, Camila Vallejo, a student organizer and protest leader, was voted person of the year in 2011 by The Guardian newspaper (Oliver, 2011). The photo was taken on the grounds of the Palacio de La Moneda (“the currency palace”), which houses the offices of the Chilean president and three cabinet ministers. Located just north of the popular La Alameda, La Moneda is situated, covering an entire block, in downtown Santiago, Chile. This location has historical significance in the fight for education and against capital—signifying the violence necessary for the institutionalization of neoliberal education reforms. During the military coup on 11 September 1973, General Pinochet attacked La Moneda with a bombardment of air raids. Giving his last national address by radio, President Allende later committed suicide while Pinochet’s military soldiers stormed La Moneda. This background provides the foundation for understanding the photograph in terms of teaching in perceived space.
From “Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo sits among a peace sign created from empty tear gas canisters used by police against protesters,” Roberto Candia, 11 August 2011 (Photographer, www.robertocandia.com). Reprinted with permission. (Color online only.)
The photograph captures the essence of teaching in perceived space with CONFECH student leader, Camila Vallejo, crouched in the center of a peace sign on the grounds of La Moneda. Recall that in 2011, Vallejo was president of FECH at the prestigious University of Chile. Following the 2011 student movement, Vallejo was elected as a member of the Communist Youth of Chile (the youth arm of the Communist Party of Chile) to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Chile’s bicameral Congress. In the picture, Vallejo, in her early 20s, is casually dressed wearing muted colors, including blue jeans, brown leather shoes, a dark olive shirt, and covered with a black hoodie. Making slight eye contact with the camera lens, Vallejo’s intense gaze, deep in thought, is complemented by her silver nose ring and wavy dark brown hair. Surrounded by photographers at La Moneda, Vallejo arranges burnt tear gas canisters to form a peace sign on the ground. Students had collected the canisters after they were fired from riot cops during previous protests. Here Vallejo illustrates the central demand of the movement—free education as a universal social right. For instance, as Goldman (2012) reports: A few months after the protests began, President Piñera spoke from the steps of La Moneda. “We would all like education, health care and many other things to be free,” he said, ‘but when all is said and done, nothing in life is free. Someone has to pay.” “Obviously someone has to pay,” Vallejo retorted, “but there’s no reason why it must be families financing between 80 and 100 percent of it. Why not the state—through taxes on large corporations, the nationalization of resources, a reduction in financing for the military?” When yet another march ended in violence, Vallejo and her fellow students collected hundreds of tear-gas shells and brought them to La Moneda. “Here are more than 50 million pesos worth of tear-gas bombs,” announced Vallejo, money, she said, that could have been spent on education. Students formed the shells into a peace sign on the plaza, and Vallejo crouched in the center. (paras. 14–15)
What in particular makes Vallejo a teacher in perceived space? Vallejo’s peace sign constructed of the spent tear gas canisters was not only symbolic of the larger demand of the student movement for free education, but it was also symbolic of the necessary task of the teacher. Ford (2015: 192) suggests that what makes a “teacher a teacher is the act of initiation, leadership, intervention.” In the photograph, Vallejo advances political content into both learning in conceived space and studying in lived space by performing the “delicate balancing act of studying and learning, to perform the contradictory act of directing and organizing the processes of learning and studying” (Ford, 2016: 190). Vallejo treats the political site for intervention as the neoliberalization of education. In addition, she engaged in the delicate balancing act between studying and learning by inserting something new into the student movement—a peace sign made of spent tear gas canisters—that already existed. In this regard, the tear gas canisters signified the repression of studying. Studying is less accepting to state power than is learning, because learning can become subsumed within and accommodated by capital and state power. This is the urge behind the rhetorical ploy of peaceful protesting for capitalist democracy. In this sense, teaching illustrates the contradiction of capitalism through the tear gas canisters; yet, the arrangement of tear gas canisters also signifies the peace hoping to be achieved by the demands from the student movement writ large.
Conclusion
This article illustrated what spatial educational theory visually looked like during the 2011 Chilean student movement. In doing so, the article contributes to two main strands of critical educational literature: the interrelationship between space and educational policy and pedagogy (Ford, 2015, 2016a, 2017; McLaren, 1998; Morgan, 2000) and the visual media framing of education (Allweiss et al., 2014; Cabalin and Antezana, 2016; Feuerstein, 2015). By visually illustrating the pedagogical nature of the student movement, we can better understand “spaces of social engagement, encounter, creation, and transformation” (Delgado and Ross, 2016: 145). This article also extends O'Malley and Nelson's (2013) argument that the student protests in Chile were pedagogical events aimed at social transformation. In this vein, there are three main takeaways from this article that I would like to highlight.
Firstly, I illustrated that the 2011 Chilean student movement consisted of protest events that were pedagogical in one of three ways. For instance, a photograph depicting a peaceful protest illustrated learning in conceived space. In such pre-configured space, student protesters could be observed peacefully marching with signs in tow down a major street in Santiago, Chile. This type of protesting is very much accommodated by the neoliberal order. In fact, I would argue that it is built into the neoliberal system as a whole, providing for accepted displays of dissent and contestation while the underlying structural mechanisms of the democratic-capitalist system are left intact. It is at this point that studying in lived space makes its contribution as a disrupting force. Studying was illustrated by the perpetual activity of protesters in the street as they challenged the legitimacy of conceived space, and it is this perpetual activity that threatens the political-economic order of neoliberalism. Businesses closed their doors, and this evoked state repression with armored trucks, tear gas, and water cannons. In this sense, studying disrupts capital and its processes of exchange and accumulation. Here, the way the teacher perceives space plays an important role in not only balancing learning and studying, but by also using this balancing act as an intervening force to disrupt neoliberalism.
Secondly, media photographs of the 2011 Chilean student movement helped to visualize spatial educational theory as a pedagogy for space. In this respect, visuals are important framing devices (Allweiss et al., 2014; Cabalin and Antezana, 2016; Feuerstein, 2015; Rodriguez and Dimitrova, 2011), and visually framing spatial educational theory helps to bridge the theoretical-practical divide in a distinctly pedagogical way. This divide creates a distinction between theorists (those that think) and practitioners (those that do). Visuals are helpful in addressing this artificial division, allowing theory to be observed as it is practiced. In this article, theory can be observed as a pedagogy for space in the city streets during the 2011 Chilean student movement.
In conclusion, studying in lived space is often interpreted as a protest event turned into a riot that must be brought under state control and avoided at all cost. Ford’s (2015, 2016a, 2017) spatial educational theory provided a pedagogical framework for understanding that studying in the streets (e.g. wandering within and beyond prescribed boundaries, throwing tear gas canisters back at riot police, etc.) was just as pedagogical as learning or teaching. In fact, as Ford (2016c) argues, studying is an essential pedagogical activity (along with learning and teaching) for the transformation to a more human-oriented society that, at the least, seeks to maximize the advantage for the most disadvantaged (Wubbena, 2015). Indeed, Einstein (1949/1998) referred to this human-oriented society as socialism, because the “real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase [i.e., capitalism] of human development” (2). In this regard, although under Pinochet’s dictatorship Chile was one of the first countries to embrace neoliberal reforms, it has also become one of the first countries to begin transitioning away from neoliberal reforms for education (even as market-oriented educational reforms remain at the top of the policy agenda in countries like the USA). In sum, this article has attempted to illustrate the pedagogical nature of the 2011 Chilean student movement—a movement simultaneously for space and against capital—for public education as a social right.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article was supported in part by funding from the 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund.
