It seems as if Ignatieff's team are turning up the heat, though I can't say I've changed my position about whether or no there should be a summer election. I like this quote from NDP finance critic Thomas Mulcair, regarding the Conservatives' new report on stimulus spending:

"Why did they make the announcement hundreds of kilometres away from Parliament and not in Parliament as they were supposed to do with a cream-puff interview with Mike Duffy, the former TV guy from CTV who's now a Conservative senator?"

I think he just answered his own question.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that an election would be more about Ignatieff becoming Prime Minister, and not about kicking out the Cons or building Liberal support in the ranks (as well as recruiting new members, which is clearly a priority at the moment).

If my own observations are anything to go by, recent Liberal fundraising efforts have been focused on gathering cash for the federal party specifically, rather than for the riding associations (for example); this is another example of the urgency being stirred up around "preparedness" for a summer election.

"Competition" Is the Theme!

Here is the companion piece for all those New York Times articles about the angry parents of pre-schoolers.

Implication

Here is some interesting and disturbing news posted on Slashdot.

I wonder how Judith Butler would feel about this? Perhaps she'll tell us.

Post-Script

Thanks to the CBC. Perhaps this kind of thing is encouraging the Ontario Liberals to do things like this. Is that where the student assistance funding went, then?

Long-Winded Ranting Analysis.

A blog post about a blog post, sadly enough, but here is something from Macleans' PSE bloggers that made me cringe.

Now I'm starting to wonder whether the federal Liberals could lose points in Ontario, and thus potentially the next election*, via McGuinty and the current debacle with PSE in Ontario. It highlights the issue with PSE funding (i.e. the transfer payments that come from the feds, but are divvied up at the provincial level--from what I can gather), though student assistance is administered by the federal government as well as the provinces. The entire system is far from transparent, and so many changes have been made in the past 15 years that it's hard for most people to follow along. The latter comment applies acutely to the student loan programs.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation expires (if that is the correct term--or its mandate expires) at the end of this year, and is expected to be replaced with a consolidating system of national grants. What Stephen Harper and the Conservatives may do with that system isn't something I can personally predict, though it's possible the plans are already in place and I simply haven't yet access the right information. In any case, I find it interesting that the CMSF was only given a 10-year mandate at its creation in 1998; can we not assume that student need will continue to increase as the PSE system expands, which has been the plan for quite some time-?

The CMSF claims that a recent Statistics Canada report (on the ongoing National graduates Survey) shows that student debt has been "frozen" by the injection of need-based grants between 2000-2005. One wonders a) whether this is really the case, naturally, given that after reading enough such studies it becomes clear that numbers can be made to look like anything; and b) how long will this remain so, even if it is the case right now? The McGuinty plan to cut student assistance (to bring things back to the Liberals) is an example demonstrating that the climate of recession is likely to be an unfavourable environment for garnering attention to student need, including for the (federal) transition from the CMSF to to some other grant system (under the current Conservative government).

*If we were to have an election right now, this kind of issue could cause a problem. I'm not keen on the idea of another federal election soon, partly for this reason: my opinion is that the Liberals should wait until they don't have to count every percentage point on a poll to know that the Conservatives are getting booted out. In other words, something more solid than a 2-point lead, and some time for Ignatieff to establish himself and develop a PR groove.

Creative generalization.

"He says lie down, shut up, take your clothes off... you do."

James Burke's description of the authority of doctors provides an example of why I enjoy his perspective on history: it's a blunt, humourous and--for all intents and purposes--totally accurate representation of our trust in the medical system, and by extension (I'm sure Burke would add) in science itself.

This description is provided in episode six of Burke's series The Day the Universe Changed (called "What the Doctor Ordered"). In this episode, Burke connects the establishment of a doctor-centered medical expertise with the army surgeons of the French Revolution (on the one hand), and with the development of systems of bureaucratic efficiency that are echoed in today's managerialist institutional climate (on the other).

Burke's 'connectivist' approach is what I enjoy about his series, and, I've come to realize, it's what I enjoy in a number of theorists who have informed my own way of thinking--particularly Harold Innis and Michel Foucault. Innis and Foucault might seem like an odd couple to put in a room together. While questions of knowledge--not just epistemology, but also questions about the political economy of knowledge--are at the heart of the matter for both authors, their views on the subject differ theoretically. However, as intellectuals they share a fascination with the processes and mechanisms of societal and civilizational change and, not coincidentally, with communication and its media--from language and its 'formations' to Innis' sweeping historical accounts of communication technologies. Both authors betray a concern with the organization of power, and they both combine this with the investigation of ways of knowing and the (possible, and historically contingent) instrumentalities of knowledge. This encompassing interest is what leads the authors to politics, to culture, to economics and to the rituals and problems of social organization and social life over time.

For Burke, there is the same concern with knowledge and its use. The connections made are between the grand abstractions of theory and the one-off solutions to pressing demands of everyday life, with an emphasis on the complex and quirky effects of circumstance, politics, greed, curiosity, religion, objects and technologies, and the new social relations engendered by (and engendering) everything else. In other words, historical messiness: not a deviation from the kind of theorizing provided by the 'grand narratives', but rather an attempt to theorize the messiness as is, to trace historical developments as emergent and interconnected in multiple, multidimensional ways, and from which patterns develop in any case--just not always predictably or in ways that seem to 'fit'.

For example, take Burke's narrative of medicine: theory and practice, another persistent divide, had to be synthesized in order for medicine to take on the shape it has today. In other words, surgeons who 'practiced' in the 'field' became doctors who taught what they'd learned to others, and they taught it in institutional environments. Additionally, the doctor had to become an expert, with control over the patient based not on coercive power but on knowledge. Knowledge, in turn, was generated in new environments and in new ways--the hospitals, built to house large numbers of sick people according to their ailments, provided the evidential input (in the form of patients) for observation, description and classification--all of which was recorded. Statistical analysis, a new mathematical tool, was brought to bear on this data as medical experts sought numerical patterns that could describe and explain (and predict!) the physical world. And for the first time, the patient became just that--an object to be acted upon by medical technologies.

The nineteenth-century concern for numbers was influenced, of course, by other developments--an example of which is the one Burke points to, the overpopulation of English cities during the (second) industrial revolution. In other words, mass urban society--confronted with the epidemic of cholera, which required a radical solution that involved the use of numbers to track human activity and correlate it with disease (early epidemiology, and the famous London water-pump).

This development, which ultimately pointed to the mobilization of numbers to make change (including to the landscape of London), was relevant in multiple fields of activity in the nineteenth century--including education. Numbers became more important because there was simply more of everything: more people living in crowded cities, more patients collected together in larger hospitals, more students in the schools. It was hard to get a grip on all those people, never mind finding a way of getting them to act in the right ways at the right times--and the more people there were, the more you needed to get them to act the right way, if anything was going to work at all. The connection between nations and numbers is important here too--exemplified in the well-developed notion of the 'citizen'.

Thus, "the transition by medicine from bedside to hospital to chemistry is complete. And with it, the disappearance of the patient from our story. His complaint, once voiced personally and authoritatively, is now reduced to a string of numbers on a computer terminal." Burke places the point of numeric spread in the medical profession, which developed an authority that was to extend to numerous areas of our lives--articulated through the use of numbers, statistics, correlations, causes and effects. The (manageable) 'population' is born, and here there is a clear connection with Foucault's theories of governance--and his discussions of 'medicalization', as well.

Burke, in the final episode of Connections (series 1), gestures at a linear wall chart of the "History of Agriculture" and articulates his central thesis: "This makes you think in straight lines. And if today doesn't happen in straight lines [...] why should the past have?" Ultimately, Burke's question has implications for the pursuit of (instrumental) knowledge--implications that are clearest in the context of the contemporary university and its shifting position in a network of knowledge "production". What assumptions might be undermined by this kind of "emergent" view of innovation, in a socio-political landscape so littered with both past accounts and future plans for "strategic" discovery? In what ways might national governments, for example--ever-more dependent upon marketable "innovation" and the development of policy that leads to this profitable result--come to implement/re-iterate linear narratives of "progress"? The search for a successful template for development, or for a proven path to prosperity in uncertain economic times, is constrained by risk, highlighting a last point from James Burke (Connections, series 1, episode 1): knowledge of the future is power over the present. But what role might there be for a re-assessment of the messy, non-linear past?

Related Links: A nice piece on Harold Innis. A great blog post about generalism. A piece about generalism vs. specialization.