Conference Agenda

The term "poly-crisis" is currently about to become one of the most popular catchphrases used in the "political and social language" (Koselleck & Richter 2006) of our time. It pretends to characterize the current global situation in general and refers to the simultaneous occurrence of multiple crises and challenges in various domains, such as economy, environment, health, politics, and humanitarian issues. The British Historian Adam Tooze describes ‘polycrisis’ as the interaction of multiple crises and heterogenous shocks at once forming a "cascading and converging" set of challenges that have the potential to reshape our world in profound ways (Tooze, 2022). In this interpretation, the term does not merely signify the simultaneous occurrence of a series of singular critical events but rather serves as outstanding characteristic of present times and seemingly a novel phase in history. In this interpretation, it is not least the complexity of the phenomenon termed as ‘polycrisis’ which is particularly striking and generates the everyday experience that the associated events must be effective, but not entirely and immediately graspable.

The compelling reference to contemporary phenomena of crises has always been a key argumentative tool for justifying educational programs in history (Dollinger, 2021; Hemetsberger 2022; Wrana, Schmidt & Schreiber 2022). Not surprisingly, this is also evident in recent documents related to current issues of educational agenda setting issued by supranational organizations (see European Commission et al. 2023; OECD 2023; UNICEF Innocenti 2023). The same might be expected for the current development of local curricula in educational institutions.

At the moment, there is still limited knowledge about how the situation of ‘polycrisis’ is reflected on the local level of institutionalised education and everyday pedagogical practice (e.g. Ameli 2022). This applies not least to the question of how concrete representations of a world situation regarded as ‘polycritical’ can be investigated from a social science perspective in educational settings, especially in order to go beyond the simple affirmation of crisis diagnoses as dominating in public agenda setting discourses. And finally, the question arises: What is the special contribution of ethnographic research strategies in this context? The symposium addresses these issues by following several perspectives: Firstly, it clarifies from a historical and systematic point of view the interrelation between the justification of educational ambitions, visions or programs and crisis-ridden time diagnosis; secondly, it discusses methodological issues of investigating global phenomena of crises from the perspective of educational ethnography; and thirdly, it focuses on dealing with phenomena of crisis on the local level of educational institutions by referring to insights and findings from two different ethnographic research projects conducted in Germany and Switzerland. This ultimately leads to the overarching questions of the symposium: How can characteristics of the pedagogical processing of crisis phenomena be captured ethnographically? How do these phenomena manifest themselves in local practices and in connection with socio-material arrangements? And are there similarities/differences in the pedagogical processing of crises in different contexts and pedagogical settings, and if so, what are they?

Considered as the key characteristic of the current era, the narrative that the world has entered a state of polycrisis represents a crucial aspect of the contemporary public debates. This state is marked by the simultaneous occurrence of multiple individual crises, such as climate change, inflation, increasing social inequality, or migration. These crises overlap in time, amplifying each other and their entanglement seems to challenge human problem-solving abilities in unforeseeable ways (Tooze 2022). Regardless of this specific emphasis, the narrative of the poly-crisis exhibits characteristic features well-known from other forms of diagnosis of the times as it interprets the present in the light of a seemingly ‘predictable’ past and calls for immediate action (Alkemeyer et al. 2019). From a historical perspective, diagnoses of crisis have often been the basis for thinking about new forms of upbringing and education (e.g. Koenig 2019). This trend can be traced back at least as far as the Age of Enlightenment (Winandy & Hermetsberger 2020). In the context of the Western world, it can be observed that the societal reflection on states of crises regularly has included their pedagogisation (e.g. Dinkelaker 2023). This encompasses not only the use of diagnoses of crisis to justify new pedagogical programmes, but also the promise of being able to overcome the current state of crisis through suitable forms of education, learning and teaching. In other words: In times of crisis always sets the stage for rethinking pedagogy. As a result, the pedagogical discussion all too easily falls into an affirmative relationship with the prevailing crisis diagnoses, which makes a reflexive approach to them at least more difficult, if not impossible. Against this background, in our programmatically and methodologically oriented presentation we will discuss the narrative of polycrisis as a form of diagnosis of the times by problematising the implications which prepare the ground for subsequent processes of pedagogisation. Then, we will ask which contribution educational ethnography can make when it comes to the question of how to study the manifestations of the current polycrisis and its pedagogisation from an educational science perspective. In doing so, we will focus in particular on the potential of ethnography to analyse a multi-local state of crises at the level of local pedagogical practices. Not least we will address the challenges associated with the fact that scientific research and its institutions may themselves be affected by the impact of the global polycrisis (Morra 2021).

Alkemeyer, Thomas; Buschmann, Nikolaus; Etzemüller, Thomas (2019): Einleitung. Gegenwartsdiagnosen als kulturelle Formen gesellschaftlicher Selbstproblematisierung in der Moderne. In: Thomas Alkemeyer, Nikolaus Buschmann und Thomas Etzemüller (Hg.): Gegenwartsdiagnosen. Kulturelle Formen gesellschaftlicher Selbstproblematisierung in der Moderne. Bielefeld: transcript (Sozialtheorie), pp. 9–20. Dinkelaker, Jörg (2023): Krise als Schema der Pädagogisierung der ökologischen Frage. In: Malte Ebner von Eschenbach, Bernd Käpplinger, Maria Kondratjuk, Katrin Kraus, Matthias Rohs, Beatrix Niemeyer und Franziska Bellinger (Hg.): Re-Konstruktionen – Krisenthematisierungen in der Erwachsenenbildung. Opladen, Berlin, Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich, pp. 47–58. Koenig, Heike (2019): Enabling the Individual: Simmel, Dewey and “The Need for a Philosophy of Education”. In: Simmel Studies 23 (1), pp. 109–146. Morra, Francesca (2021): Towards an Ethnography of Crisis. The Investigation of Refugees’ Mental Distress. In: Anthropology in Action 28 (2), pp. 36–43. Tooze, Adam (2022): Welcome to the world of the polycrisis. Today disparate shocks interact so that the whole is worse than the sum of the parts. In: The Financial Times 2022, 28.10.2022. Online available https://www.ft.com/content/498398e7-11b1-494b-9cd3-6d669dc3de33, last ceck 31.01.2024. Winandy, Jil; Hemetsberger, Bernhard (2021): Ordering the mess: (re-)defining public schooling as a remedy. In: Paedagogica Historica 57 (6), pp. 717–727.

Approaches to materiality and "material culture" have a long tradition in ethnography. Systematically tracing theoretical traditions guiding ethnographic research and analysis, Tilley (2001) highlights the significance of "material culture" as an established and highly relevant object of ethnographic analysis. In our contribution, we first take up this systematization and update it with contemporary practice theoretical (Schatzki 2002, 2010), new-materialist (Tsing 2015), and post-humanist (Taylor 2013, Taylor & Pacini-Ketchabaw 2018) approaches. Concomitantly we claim that (a) (global) crisis phenomena can be understood as a component and result of socio-material processes; (b) they are expressed in (local) socio-material arrangements and practices; (c) it is via these arrangements that they can be analyzed. To do so, we ask how the relationship between global(crisis) phenomena, local socio-material arrangements and practices in kindergarten can be conceptualized and researched based on our ongoing long-term ethnographic research project. With a glimpse in the researched kindergartens, we can see that nature as a theme is a leitmotif guiding through the school year: Easter allows for the engagement with the theme of chicken and eggs, Christmas goes along with small festivities, involving special foods and decoration from nature, a sheep shearing event with the processing of wool etc. We identify strong socio-material aspects when observing everything related to “nature” in kindergarten. We can distinguish three overall modes in this relatedness: (1) a ‘profound-hypernaturalization’ in a city center kindergarten; (2) a ‘technologization/instrumentalization of nature in nature’ in a countryside kindergarten, and (3) a ‘humanized nature’ in a kindergarten on the outskirts of a city. Regarding these three different modes of integrating ‘nature’, we will reconstruct connections between these socio-material arrangements, practices and global (crisis-)phenomena such as the ecological crisis and its associated discourse. How are these connections shaped, and what do they mean to whom? We can assume two basic (contradictory) ways of relating one to the other: The socio-material arrangements are either used to produce a “wholesome” relation to nature which is discussed as one aspect of a good childhood, and which tends to conceal problematic aspects. Or they are used to raise awareness for the vulnerability of non-human life and ecosystems with the primary aim to protect nature from human action. In our talk, we want to lay out these fields of tension based on empirical insights.

Schatzki, T. R. (2002). The Site of the Social. Penn State University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271023717 Schatzki, T. R. (2010). Materiality and Social Life. Nature and Culture, 5, 123–149. https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:144844080 Taylor, A. (2013). Reconfiguring the Natures of Childhood. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203582046 Taylor, A., & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2018). The Common Worlds of Children and Animals. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315670010 Tilley, C. (2001). Ethnography and Material Culture. In P. Atkinson, A. Coffey, S. Delamont, J. Lofland, & L. Lofland (Eds.), Handbook of Ethnography (pp. 258–272). SAGE Publications Ltd. Tsing, A. L. (2015). Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton University Press.

In the current age of poly-crisis, the youth welfare office is an institution that is charged with handling individual crises, while simultaneously adapting to external crises, such as pandemics, climate change and war-induced migration. Exploring this ambivalent position, this contribution asks how (pedagogical) organisations, such as the youth welfare office react to external crises and how crisis phenomena potentially affect the youth welfare office’s handling of individual crises? The handling of individual crises is institutionalized in youth welfare in Germany since the 1920s in the institution of the youth welfare office whose authority is particularly based on dealing with individual crises that can occur in the process of growing up. Throughout its history, it has been questioned whether it is a pedagogical authority but at the very least, however, it arose "from the idea of education" (Vogel 1960). Its invention goes back to the idea that children and young people have a right to education and that they are fundamentally educable (Müller 1994; Rätz 2018). Nowadays, the effectiveness of the youth welfare office as an organisation are additionally under pressure as many German youth welfare offices claim to be "in crisis" due to high staff turnover, cost pressure and outdated administrative methods. This complex demand of handling of individual crises while being in crisis itself is constantly challenged by external crises and calls to effectively adapt to them. The ethnographic fieldwork of my PhD project, which was carried out in two youth welfare offices during the corona pandemic in Germany, provides astonishing answers and insights. My research revealed which internal and external organisational crisis narratives existed and how they interacted. And my findings demonstrate that despite this context of having to adapt to external crises the existing institutional structures largely persisted as such, with only small measures of adjustment: Help plan meetings were held on greenfield sites, places in care were created in paediatric clinics to maintain day-to-day business. Therefore, my contribution shows that certain constellations of regulation and "safeguarding" of growing up do not inscribe the handling of external crises into their ‘machine room’ lightly. Instead, my findings indicate that in particular, authorities that are related to pedagogical processes remain persistent through a focus on administration (Biesel und Schrapper 2018, S. 426) and, hence, the dealing with crises is rather based on organizational measures than on pedagogical innovations.

Biesel, Kay; Schrapper, Christian (2018): Das Jugendamt der Zukunft. Zentrale für gelingendes Aufwachsen oder Kinderschutzamt? In: Michael Böwer und Jochem Kotthaus (Hg.): Praxisbuch Kinderschutz. Professionelle Herausforderungen bewältigen. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, S. 422–448. Müller, Carl Wolfgang (1994): JugendAmt. Geschichte und Aufgaben einer reformpädagogischen Einrichtung. Weinheim: Beltz (Edition sozial, 2). Rätz, Regina (2018): Von der Fürsorge zur Dienstleistung. In: Karin Böllert (Hg.): Kompendium Kinder- und Jugendhilfe. Wiesbaden: Springer VS (SpringerLink Bücher), S. 65–92. Vogel, Martin Rudolf (1960): Das Jugendamt im gesellschaftlichen Wirkungszusammenhang. Ein Forschungsbericht: C. Heymann (Schriften des Deutschen Vereins für Öffentliche und Private Fürsorge, 215).