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Studying Culture Jamming to Inspire Student Activism

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Critical Voices in Teacher Education

Part of the book series: Explorations of Educational Purpose ((EXEP,volume 22))

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Abstract

My interdisciplinary work now involves understanding arguments, media literacy, and economic literacy, as well as critical mathematics literacy. I am moving from teaching university students in an activist academic environment to teaching people in communities, in the streets, with the goal of education for activist participation in social justice. Part of this work will involve active, cultural intervention to change community discourse. To develop these ideas, I wrote a teacher resource guide for the film The Yes Men Fix the World http://theyesmenfixtheworld.com/guide/Main_Page. This chapter draws from that guide, focusing on the culture jamming and other artistic interventions that can be studied to inspire students to participate in struggles for justice. I will briefly discuss the work of The Yes Men, outline the structure of the teacher resource guide, and present a framework for thinking about the myriad kinds of artistic interventions that “jam up” our taken-for-granted assumptions and detail some specific interventions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    When Arthur Powell and John Volmink and I formed the Criticalmathematics Educators Group (CmEG) in 1991, following a conference we organized in October 1990, we decided to use one word to describe critical mathematics because of our hope that 1 day all mathematics education will be critical. In the future, we intend to create a website for the group, which will include the archive of the five CmEG Newsletters we distributed 991 and 1997.

  2. 2.

    www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/yes.html

  3. 3.

    http://theyesmenfixtheworld.com/teachers.htm

  4. 4.

    Schivone (2009), p. 53.

  5. 5.

    E-mail communication with the author, June 26, 2009.

  6. 6.

    http://www.WalmartWorkersRights.org/

  7. 7.

    The original link I had rotted, although the embedded video still works in the online guide: http://theyesmenfixtheworld.com/guide/SatireSelling_Wal-Mart. If that link does not work, try: http://www.singingfool.com/Title.aspx?publishedid=395355. The title of the Garth Brooks liberal song is “We Shall be Free.”

  8. 8.

    http://articles.latimes.com/19921029/entertainment/ca-909_1_country-music

  9. 9.

    http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/189691/October-282008/sherman-alexie

  10. 10.

    http://www.rent-a-negro.com/

  11. 11.

    Quote from Woodside (2001).

  12. 12.

    This work is in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, IL, and can be viewed at http://www.archinode.com/wtcmwj.html

  13. 13.

    http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/vivoleum

  14. 14.

    The Yes Men are currently planning to extend their work through The Yes Lab (http://theyesmen.org/lab), where activists can participate in “brainstorms and trainings to help [them] carry out Yes-Men-style projects of their own.” We are discussing the possibility of doing workshops for teachers, using the resource guide discussed in this article.

  15. 15.

    Dery (1993) http://www.markdery.com/archives/books/culture_jamming/#000005\%23more

  16. 16.

    http://www.populareconomics.org/ussen/

  17. 17.

    When I had to cut because of space, I tried to include art activists that might not be as well known as others, such as Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger, who are also included in the teacher resource guide.

  18. 18.

    Quoted on the website of The Actor’s Gang: http://www.theactorsgang.com/

  19. 19.

    Copied by the author from a plaque in the Brooklyn Museum.

  20. 20.

    The ongoing ACT UP Oral History Project (http://www.actuporalhistory.org/index1.html) is a collection of interviews which can be watched online that presents a “comprehensive, complex, human, collective, and individual pictures of the people who have made up ACT UP/New York.” The project’s coordinator’s hope is that these oral histories will “de-mystify the process of making social change, remind us that change can be made, and help us understand how to do it.”

  21. 21.

    http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?num=0&word=gran\%20fury&s=1&notword=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&imgs=20&pNum

  22. 22.

    Meyer (1995), p. 52.

  23. 23.

    Meyer (1995), pp. 7374.

  24. 24.

    http://www.billboardliberation.com/guidebook.html

  25. 25.

    Now that people can make their own stamps (http://www.usps.com/postagesolutions/customizedpostage.htm), all sorts of possibilities emerge… Although some may run into issues, like Jonah Peretti when he tried to personalize his Nike sneakers with the word “sweatshop.” (http://www.thenation.com/article/my-nike-media-adventure and http://www.shey.net/niked.html)

  26. 26.

    http://mudstencils.com/

  27. 27.

    http://www.womensaynotowar.org/article.php?list=type%26type=3

  28. 28.

    http://www.stolenbeauty.org/article.php?id=4951

  29. 29.

    As of this writing, Costco has stopped carrying Ahava cosmetics.

  30. 30.

    http://www.illdoctrine.com/

  31. 31.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ti-gkJiXc

  32. 32.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJnlPP7jm5s and also check out Jay Smooth’s “The Gay Hip-Hop Book” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9HgxFuzVaQ%26NR=1

  33. 33.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6kIMiNJQRY

  34. 34.

    http://www.realcostofprisons.org/

  35. 35.

    Abderrahmane Sissako, New Yorker video, 2006, 117 min, trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onRjI8yLsy0

  36. 36.

    http://artthreat.net/2007/04/bamako-film-puts-the-world-bank-on-trial-and-wins/

  37. 37.

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3846752822614629443#

  38. 38.

    http://thisiswherewetakeourstand.com/?p=22

  39. 39.

    http://www.theactorsgang.com/

  40. 40.

    http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/27/actor_director_tim_robbins_takes_up

  41. 41.

    http://www.adrianpiper.com/

  42. 42.

    http://www.johnsimsprojects.com/

  43. 43.

    http://www.wafaabilal.com/ and also see Democracy Now! March 9, 2010 for an interview with Bilal http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/9/105_000_tattoos_iraqi_artist_wafaa

  44. 44.

    Pascarella (2008), pp. 4042.

  45. 45.

    Flaherty (2009)

  46. 46.

    There are a number of different trailers on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rdS8zNp3ow%26feature=related

  47. 47.

    http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2009/05/slingshot-hiphop.html (May 2009).

  48. 48.

    http://www.systemofadown.com/main.html

  49. 49.

    http://www.screamersmovie.com/ Carla Garapedian, Armenian Recordings/Columbia Music Video, 2007, 95 min.

  50. 50.

    http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/newyorktimes

  51. 51.

    Attributed to Gandhi; found in Goodman and Goodman (2008).

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Public and Community Service (CPCS), The University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, USA

    Marilyn Frankenstein

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  1. Marilyn Frankenstein
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Correspondence to Marilyn Frankenstein .

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  1. , School of Education, Murdoch University, Dixon Road, Rockingham, 6168, West Australia, Australia

    Barry Down

  2. , School of Education, University of Ballarat, University Drive, Mt Helen, 3350, Victoria, Australia

    John Smyth

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Frankenstein, M. (2012). Studying Culture Jamming to Inspire Student Activism. In: Down, B., Smyth, J. (eds) Critical Voices in Teacher Education. Explorations of Educational Purpose, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3974-1_11

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