Struggling for knowledge in times of cognitive capitalism: youth and school in contexts of urban poverty

Abstract

From the time of the formation of modern capitalist societies, education, knowledge, and progress have been articulated in a variety of ways (Peters, 2010). It is possible to identify an array of modulations in the education, knowledge, progress trilogy since it was first articulated, and many of them merit studies of their own. Here, we are concerned with this trilogy in both the definition and the struggles of the marginalized population in the cities of the global south. As Bayat (2000) pointed out, one major consequence of the new global restructuring in the developing countries has been a double process of, on the one hand, integration and, on the other, social exclusion and informalization. Education has played a key role in both. In this article, we attempt to describe the dynamics of schooling within that tension where educational institutions become political spaces of the daily struggle for knowledge. Thus, on the basis of research carried out in contexts of extreme urban poverty in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, we will provide elements useful to understanding some of the dynamics that characterize current school life where the very possibility of learning becomes both a question of strategic intention and of rebellion.