‘They burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why’: stories at the intersection of social class, capital and critical information literacy
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Slides for a talk presented at Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference (CALC), Thursday 25 May 2023.
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‘They burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why’: stories at the intersection of social class, capital and critical information literacy
- 1. ‘They burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why’: stories at the intersection of social class, capital and critical information literacy Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference (CALC), Thursday 25 May 2023 Teresa Crew, Bangor University Darren Flynn, University of Northampton Rosie Hare, Jisc Andrew Preater, Goldsmiths, University of London Original content licensed CC BY 4.0 Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 2. Introduction to our authors Rosie Hare Teresa Crew Darren Flynn Andrew Preater Krishna Maroo (not speaking today) Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 3. What we’ll do today Introduction to our research project – 8 mins Speaker presentations – 32 mins or fewer Audience discussion, Q&A – 20 mins Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 4. What brought us together to write Introduction to our research project Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 5. What brought us together to write This was necessary due to gaps in the literature Introduction to our research project Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 6. What brought us together to write This was necessary due to gaps in the literature Our method, collaborative autoethnography Introduction to our research project Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 7. What brought us together to write This was necessary due to gaps in the literature Our method, collaborative autoethnography How we relate social class to critical information literacy Introduction to our research project Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 8. Rosie Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright Thornaby Central Library
- 9. Rosie, Teesside University Library Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 10. Rosie, Teesside University Library Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright “Deadline” by Junior Durrani https://www.instagram. com/juniordurraniart/
- 11. Teresa Main Arts Library, Bangor University Llall Llandudno Library (Up) Gladstone Library, Harwarden (Down) Runcorn Library.
- 14. Darren
- 15. Andrew (1) Torridon Road Library, Lewisham Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 16. Andrew (2) Edward Boyle Library, University of Leeds John Maltby, 1975 Martin Charles, 1981 Martin Charles, 1981
- 17. Andrew (3) Brotherton Library, University of Leeds & Senate House Library, University of London (Left image) Cavie78 (2014), license CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brotherton_Library_reading_room,_University_of_Leeds,_27th_Jun
- 18. Concluding questions “But what can I do?” and, What does this mean for your Critical Librarianship? Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 19. ● Recognise class inequalities ● Challenge stereotypes ● Show solidarity to others ● Reach out to like-minded library workers ● Remember the capital you bring to librarianship (modified from Crew, 2020 pp.135-139) In conclusion / Moving forward Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 20. “Working Class is not an accent to be lost … a savagery to be civilised … a roughness to be polished … [or] a background to be assimilated” [Shukie, 2020]. Instead we sparkle with pedagogical gifts … and are armed with an immense cultural wealth that challenges academia.” (Crew, 2020 p.139). In conclusion Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 21. References Ahmed, S. (2023). The feminist killjoy handbook. Allen Lane. Chang, H., Ngunjiri, F.W. & Hernandez, K.-A.C. (2013). Collaborative autoethnography. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315432137 Coonan, E. et al. (2018) CILIP definition of information literacy 2018. Available at: https://infolit.org.uk/ILdefinitionCILIP2018.pdf Cocker, J. Banks, N., Mackey, S., Senior, R. & Doyle, C. (1995). Common people [song recorded by Pulp]. On Different class. Island Records. Crew, T. (2020). Higher education and working-class academics: precarity and diversity in academia. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58352-1 Ettarh, F. (2018, January 10) Vocational awe and librarianship: the lies we tell ourselves. In the Library With the Lead Pipe. Retrieved 25 May 2023, from https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/ Shukie, P. (2020, October 12). Let’s do it. Let’s do it now. Working Class Academics Conference. Retrieved 23 May 2023, from https://workingclass-academics.co.uk/2020/10/18/lets-do-it-lets-do-it-now-by-peter-shukie Yosso, T.J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
- 22. Contact us Teresa Crew @drteresacrew Darren Flynn @patchedelbows Rosie Hare @rosiehare Krishna Maroo @krishnamaroo Andrew Preater @preater Ask anon: tinyurl.com/theyburnsobright
Notes de l'éditeur
- The title of our presentation today is also the title of our forthcoming article in Journal of Information Literacy on working class experiences of libraries and information literacy. Today, we will explore this and introduce some additional reflections on our experiences of libraries, without duplicating too much of our journal article text which you can read when it is out – real soon now.
- First, super quick our researcher-participants will introduce themselves. Our article includes more full postionality statements about our backgrounds and social and political contexts.
- To explain what we have for you today– I’ll introduce our session and tell you about the work we’ve done. Then the main part is speaker presentations based on photo reminiscences of some of our experiences with libraries and how they have shaped our understanding of how we “think critically and make balanced judgements about any information we find and use” (that is the CILIP definition of information literacy). We do want to ensure a decent amount of time for discussion and Q&A, in particular contributions from our friends and colleagues of working class heritage, so our challenge is to do our presentations in 32 minutes or fewer.
- What brought us together to write? The start of this work was an initial conversation between Rosie and I about some of our observations about attitudes within our profession to information literacy practices in higher education – we observed we thought, these reflect middle-class values and assumptions about various things - about academic practices, including notions of the “ideal” student and “correct” student behaviours. We realised we were thinking about this with reference to experiences rooted in social class. As to why, our observations included: Our profession is populated by the middle-class Our collection management and development privilege middle-class forms of knowledge and experience Our library policies are often developed with an imagined “ideal” middle-class student in mind Alongside this and most critically, we think librarianship accepts and reproduces deficit models of working-class students – of course, alongside other groups marginalised within education. Now possibly, this is not you doing this personally or deliberately – this is after all CALC and this is a self-selected group of critical librarians. Thinking about these ideas – based on observations of our experience – provided our starting point to question and problematise information literacy practices. We wanted to ask why these attitudes and assumptions are prevalent, but using our experiences of libraries and library work as a lens. Today, we explore these and introduce some additional reflections on our experience of libraries, without duplicating too much of our journal article text – you can of course read this when it is out.
- This work was necessary for us due to gaps in the literature. As library and education workers who want to implement social justice theory and practice in our work, we have always had to reach outside of our professional literature and reframe ideas and theory from other disciplines in our work. Our professional body of knowledge is limited in addressing concerns of social class. Even within critical librarianship movement, working-class knowledge and experiences remain underrepresented – so I wanna ask you, do you recognise this? And if so why is it? This is something we have reflected on, and do not have all the answers – but we would observe a tendency to want to talk about social class without actually addressing it directly; as well as discomfort critically engaging with social class elitism. One of our aims was to create the type of classed analysis that we recognised as missing from the literature – and that we hoped would reach and inspire other library workers of working-class heritage. Sara Ahmed wrote in the the Feminist Killjoy Handbook, “Books can be our buildings. We write ourselves into existence.”
- A little about our research method We used collaborative autoethnography (CAE) which is a method where multiple participant-researchers, that is, the participant and researcher being one in the same all write, share and reflect on our multiple narratives within a social context that is familiar to us. This was iterative, and includes group reflection on each others’ writing over a series of discussions followed by a collaborative thematic analysis. CAE can be highly exposing and personal, and the trust we formed as a group based on shared socially-classed experiences and identity was critical to ensuring we could create this counter-space in which we could create shared meaning from our experiences.
- In exploring our experiences of libraries and how these have affected our critical thinking about ours and our students’ and colleagues’ information literacy, we used Tara Yosso’s community cultural wealth model (CCW). This is a powerful critical race theory re-framing and contesting of Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of the value of elite and middle-class knowledge. To create some contrast with critical information literacy, in our article we call the default information literacy position hegemonic information literacy. We argue the traditional narrow framing of academic information literacy, including whose information and knowledge creation practices are valued is a contributor to deficit model thinking about working class students and communities. So, in Bourdieu’s terms, we argue information literacy skills act as embodied cultural capital that enable admission and acceptance into the academy, while lack or perceived lack of these skills warrants rejection. Within hegemonic information literacy, working class community knowledge is devalued.
- “But what can I do?” – more than you can imagine The person you can most easily develop and influence for positive change in your critical librarianship is yourself, and you have within you more than can imagine. Leadership exists at all levels, and there are actions we can take regardless of our position on an organisation chart; recognising this is much, much harder within unsupportive or hostile management structures. What does this mean for your Critical Librarianship? Critlib movement is, “a movement of library workers dedicated to bringing social justice principles into our work in libraries” and we argue, its richest theoretical development so far is within CIL. We suggest these critical approaches and principles can be applied much more widely to our critical librarianship using a social class lens. We will answer these two questions with a modification of some concluding points in Teresa’s book on working class experiences of academia.
- In terms of moving forward and next steps, these are some things we believe we can do practically – these are modified from Teresa’s summary points in her book, ‘Higher education and working-class academics’ and applied to library work.
- We want to leave you with this quote incorporating words from Teresa and from Peter Shukie, both involved in the Working Class Academics conference, with this idea that the working class “sparkle with pedagogical gifts” inspiring the title of our article in the connection we saw with the lyrics of Pulp’s Common People.