Listen to thisIn last month’s issue of CYC-Online , Kiaras Gharabaghi wrote very thoughtfully about the field of CYC and what will become of it as we approach the second quarter of the 21st century. As usual, his writing was nuanced as he described CYC as a movement that developed practice and theory during the 20th century. He pointed to the alliances and fractures, the ins and the outs, the networks and coalitions that characterized CYC over the half century of development that brought us here. He spoke to the strengths and weaknesses of how we developed as CYC internationally and interpersonally. He worried about how the field will shift and change as the old generation from the 20th century gives way to the new generation of the 21st.
As I read his remarks, I was reminded of a retreat I was invited to by Mark Krueger where I met Kiaras a little over a decade ago. It was a gathering of Mark’s choosing, made up of a small group of people he respected in CYC. The purpose of the gathering was to set a direction for the field as we entered the 21st century. It was a rich and profound discussion, that was initiated because of a certain unease about where we were headed. There was concern about an emerging diversity of theoretical positioning that to some participants was no longer recognizable as CYC. One of us talked about attending a CYC conference where there was a workshop by an up-and-coming scholar. They reported walking away with a profound sense of disorientation and confusion. What had been presented just didn’t connect with them as being at all grounded in the field of CYC.
The roots of CYC in the zeitgeist of the mid-twentieth century with its foundational interest in humanism and a certain kind of phenomenologically tinged relational encounter was shifting. There were new currents of postmodernism, critical theory, post-humanism, critical race theory among others. The question of whether these new formulations could be encompassed within the definitional parameters of traditional CYC was very much in question.
At the gathering, Kathy Skott-Myhre and myself represented the edge. We had written and presented on all of the contentious theories and approaches. In a very real sense, Mark had invited us precisely because we didn’t fit and I have always admired him for that. He was prescient about how things were changing and what kind of opportunities and crises might be implied. While he was always a bit skeptical of the emerging alternative visions for CYC, he made the effort to try them out in his own writing and thinking. He seemed to want to see what might happen if the old and the new bumped up against each other—would something useful and innovative be produced? In a piece (Gharabaghi, Skott-Myhre and Krueger, 2012) that Kiaras, Mark, and I wrote about the conference and the collision of theoretical perspectives, Mark said,
The challenge is not to see the work through a postmodern, modern, relational, or development lens, but rather all these lenses and any others that can deepen and enrich understanding of praxis as a way of being, doing, and thinking grounded in responsible, ethical, self-aware, and accountable action and interaction . . . What is learned from the field’s relational and developmental theories is combined with learning from music, philosophy, art, film, science, literature, and whatever else might provide insight. (p. 58)
This laudably ecumenical approach seems to me to be very much in tune with the increasingly diverse and rich tapestry of thought and action that characterizes the best and worst of the 21st century thus far. We live a world of ever shifting definitions and linguistic constructions driven by global cyber institutions that produce knowledge of all kinds at astronomical speeds. In their worst instantiations, these institutions act without regard for the material world that we actually inhabit. This abstract system of disconnected cyber force can produce an ever-proliferating set of binary/oppositional definitions that can pit us against one another in brutal kinds of ways. However, at its best, the globally connected cyber world can amplify our capacity to produce and embrace difference as creative force,
Negotiating this extremely complex landscape are the young people coming of age in what might be described as postmodernity reified in its best and worst possibilities. Mark’s call to open ourselves to multiple ways of making sense of the world grounded in “praxis as a way of being, doing, and thinking grounded in responsible, ethical, self-aware, and accountable action and interaction” is more necessary than ever. To find the core of our work in the ineffable rhythms of the arts and philosophy as an infinitely diverse palate of human production would seem to imply radically new ways of producing the work we do with young people. The question is, do we in CYC have the capacity to embrace this emerging social landscape, or are we so riven with nostalgia for a world already passing away, or fear of the world coming, that we are incapable of giving a meaningful response relevant to the lived experience of young people in the 21st century?
Part of the problem it seems to me is that when the field of CYC was emerging in the mid-twentieth century there was a sense of coherence centered on a belief that core characteristics of the work could be identified and disseminated. There were leaders in the field who could identify these characteristics and refine them, teach them, and develop them. These core theoretical propositions and practices could be used to develop a consensus as to what constituted good practice. Once we had the field sufficiently defined, we could set up trainings and university degrees, as well as professional standards and levels of certification. The drive was towards a common lens that we could all share and develop. When faced with complexities, contradictions and antagonisms of the 21st century social, I have to wonder if this 20th century vison for the field still functions. Do we need a new vision?
In his column, Kiaras wisely points out that the generation who developed the field of CYC in its current instantiation is passing. As a member of that generation, I question whether the legacy we have left behind is sufficiently robust and flexible. Are we leaving the kind of groundwork that will accept and nurture new seeds that will yield unrecognizable growth adapted to the new world. The question gives me pause and makes me reflect on what we are leaving behind. For me, first and foremost, I still believe that the humanistic values of encounter, relational work, lived experience, and the life world are actually more relevant in the emerging world of the 21st century. But, I would also suggest that these values and practices need to be updated to current conditions.
In that regard, I have been struck by the radical disconnect that my students are experiencing when they enter the institutions where CYC is most commonly practiced. They are not finding spaces where CYC foundational practices can be engaged as serious praxis. In listening to them, I am less and less sure that the continued focus on residential care and other similar institutional settings as the assumed site for practice works any longer.
There may have been a time in the mid to late twentieth century where such settings could be innovative and humane. A place where actual relational encounter between workers and young people could bring about mutual transformation. Some of these 20th century institutions could be pretty radical in their experimentation with relational care, life world engagement, child and youth rights and the assertion of youth voices.
However, with the corporatization of the non-profit sector, the grass roots nature of those institutions that characterized the late 1960’s has largely faded into a pale reflection of its transformative possibility. Without a doubt, CYC offered seriously radical ideas about how work with young people might be done in truly humane and ethical ways. But as time has gone on, it seems to me that much of what we offered as radical innovation has been hollowed out and compromised. In large part, we have not left a legacy that would provide the tools necessary to challenge the benign brutality of the 21st century child care institution. In a way, it is almost as though we have given up on the radical nature of CYC in order to accommodate discourses of professionalism, and the practices of mainstream psychiatry, social work, and psychology.
I don’t believe this increasingly corporatized version of CYC has the necessary innovations required to work effectively with young people in the 21st century. I can’t imagine that transformative CYC work will be found in bureaucratic calls for more regulation, training, and prescriptive models of care. Imposing discipline on both workers and young people in the name of ethics and risk management seems to me to be the antithesis of how the field came into being.
When we go back and remember where the field originated, it was made up out of work driven by the contingency of relationship grounded in the life world of workers and young people. It originated from the bottom up, not the top down. There is a lineage of profound rebelliousness, idiosyncrasy and free-spirited ethos that I fear might well be left behind in the rush to be taken seriously by the minions of neoliberal capitalist non-profit institutions. I would argue that we ought to fight with everything we have to resist the seductive call to be minions of global capitalist enterprise. Our lineage is rooted in the affirmation of life in its variability, not profit and the promise of faux security and safety. Our lineage of alterity is well worth sustaining because it allows for the amplification of creativity and living force. But, to leave that kind of legacy would require that we shift the trajectory of the field away from its seemingly endless desire to be “taken seriously.”
While the work itself is deadly serious and calls for serious and dedicated people, that is different than seeking the approbation of a system designed to rob us of our very capacity for human affiliation. Without a doubt, we live in highly precarious times that threaten our very lives, but the answer to that threat cannot be found in the world of risk assessment and bureaucratic solace. If there is a field of CYC it is not to be found in more regulation and training. Nor is it to be found in a constant rehearsal of twentieth century ideas about a world of work that is already gone or rapidly fading.
To my generation, I would say that we knew this once. We were the up and coming generation that was determined to create a new world for young people. And to some degree we opened the door to that work. But somewhere along the line, we began to think that the tools we used to open the door were the best and only tools. But the legacy is not the tools. The legacy is the affirmation of living humane engagement. In affirming life, the tools always have to be adjusted to the conditions within which they are used. And the development of the new tools is the task of the next generation. Will that constitute a field of CYC as we have understood it thus far? I don’t know and I may not be the best person to ask. After all, I am the elder that when asked at the gathering convened by Mark, where do you see the field going replied, “I don’t want to be part of a field.” Perhaps that is my legacy.
