Papers by Sid Mohandas
Knowledge Cultures , 2024
This article highlights the connections, tensions and contradictions that materialise when postco... more This article highlights the connections, tensions and contradictions that materialise when postcolonial and Dalit lifeworlds are brought together in intra-active analysis. While a postcolonial critique offers important insights into the historical and ongoing workings of colonial capitalism, its implementation as a global design for liberation produces erasures that put Dalit lifeworlds at risk. The complexities and challenges of (not) belonging produced through a coloniser/colonised binary are highlighted by foregrounding theorising as embodied practice. In short, foisting the blame on colonialism produces a set of evasions that problematically reinforce notions of savarna innocence and ensure varna futurity. Through the savarna re-imagination of a national, homogenous 'Hindu' identity, Dalit lifeworlds are subject to a process of what Reghu (2010) refers to as 'inclusive exclusion,' wherein although the Hindu Order includes Dalits, it excludes them from the dharmic domain of caste Hindus. For the Dalit subject confronted by the affective intensities of caste hierarchies, this movement towards savarna innocence is profoundly disconcerting, as it relieves savarna responsibilities for onto-epistemic violences that predate colonialism and, more urgently, for the ongoing violences sustained through a refusal to be accountable. Contemporary analysis must attune to how the varna ideology intermingles with colonial capitalism to reconfigure relations; however, the article argues that this requires moving away from the totalising claims of postcolonial critique. The essay concludes by welcoming and proposing theoretical heterogeneity as a potent strategy to generate space for staying with the trouble of (not) belonging, potentiating meaningful alliances that make Dalit lifeworlds possible.
Gender and Education, Feb 19, 2021
ABSTRACT In the past few decades important work has been undertaken to unsettle essentialist conc... more ABSTRACT In the past few decades important work has been undertaken to unsettle essentialist conceptualisations of gender/sex in the early years workforce. Through an auto/ethnographic diffractive engagement that thinks with feminist ‘new’ materialist and postcolonial scholarships, this paper uncovers the need to move beyond an exclusive focus on diversifying the workforce by simply increasing the number of men. Moving beyond the narrow focus enables a richer and more expansive understanding of gender/sex that exposes colonialism and reveals everyday practices of early childhood educators to be shaped by place, space and matter. By attending to how matter matters in early years, child-sized chairs are used as a point of entry into this research inquiry to explore how gender/sex is produced through pastpresent, material-discursive-affective and more-than-human entanglements. The paper proposes that complicating understandings of gender/sex is important to decolonise early childhood spaces, and so hold space for the emergence of difference that is unmodulated by whiteness. Recognising the agentic potential of matter further opens up possibilities for that which is not yet, but available to us, to make life more thinkable in cis-white heteropatriarchy.
Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2023
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, Aug 22, 2022
This article demonstrates how feminist posthumanism can reconfigure conceptualisations of, and pr... more This article demonstrates how feminist posthumanism can reconfigure conceptualisations of, and practices with, ‘child’ in Montessori early childhood contexts. It complicates Montessori’s contemporary reputation as a ‘middle-class phenomenon’ by returning to the earliest Montessori schools as a justice-oriented project for working-class children and families. Grappling with the contradictions and inconsistencies of Montessori thought, this article acknowledges the legacy of Montessori’s feminism while also situating her project within the wider colonial capitalist context in which it emerged. A critical engagement with Montessori education unsettles modernist conceptualisations of ‘child’ and its civilising agenda on minds and bodies. Specifically, Montessori child observation (as a civilising mission) is disrupted and reread from a feminist posthumanist orientation to generate more relational, queer and expansive accounts of how ‘child’ is produced through observation. Working with three ‘encounters’ from fieldwork at a Montessori nursery, the authors attend to the material-discursive affective manifestation of social class, gender, sexuality and ‘race’, and what that means for child figurations in Montessori contexts. They conclude by embracing Snaza’s ‘bewildering education’ to reach towards different imaginaries of ‘child’ that are not reliant on dialectics of ‘human’ and ‘non-human’, and that allow ‘child’ to be taken seriously, without risking erasure of fleshy, leaky, porous, codified bodies in Montessori spaces.
Montessori Life, 2023
When we trace the roots of the Montessori approach and locate it within its historical context, ... more When we trace the roots of the Montessori approach and locate it within its historical context, contradictory stories begin to emerge. On one hand, we can see how Montessori was primarily formed as a response to various social injustices and thus emerged as a justice-oriented project. On the other hand, the marks and traces of colonialism are clearly visible throughout Montessori’s work. Addressing the latter is where the challenge lies for the Montessori community, and will be the primary focus of this article. A critical engagement with Montessori entails that we find ways to hold these contradictory narratives together, and consider how we can make Montessori work for contemporary childhood.
Oxford University Press, 2023
There is a growing body of feminist scholarship that has taken up “new” materialisms to research ... more There is a growing body of feminist scholarship that has taken up “new” materialisms to research childhoods. Feminist “new” materialisms, as the name suggests, are marked by a renewed attention to matter. In previous feminist research, such as those informed by feminist post-structuralist and sociocultural approaches, matter was assigned an inert, passive, and determinate role; a substrate on which language and discourse acted upon. In contrast, new materialist ontology views matter as lively, active, and indeterminate, and inseparable from the discursive as expressed in the concatenated term “materialdiscursive.” This is to by no means put feminist post-structuralisms in opposition to new materialist thought, or to assume a radical break from past feminist interventions; instead, feminist new materialisms hold onto the advances made by feminist post-structuralisms while simultaneously expanding its focus beyond just language and discourse. While the “new” in new materialisms is an attempt to distinguish itself from older forms of materialisms such as Marxist-inflected materialism and “scientific” materialism, the claims to “newness” have been a matter of contention. As pointed out by Indigenous and Black scholars like Eve Tuck, Zoe Todd, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Uri McMillan, and Tiffany Lethabo King, Black/Indigenous philosophies and cosmologies in diverse locations have held similar views for centuries and millennia, where nonhuman agencies, transient materialities and human-nonhuman relations marked by reciprocity have shaped Black/Indigenous lifeworlds. The feminist inflection of “new” materialisms invite such productive frictions, to ensure West’s hegemony is disrupted while simultaneously enacting care in how Indigenous/Black thought is brought in conversation with new materialisms. In line with other critical approaches in childhood studies, feminist new materialisms disrupt Western humanist and developmentalist approaches, troubling linear, individualized, and deterministic notions of childhood. Childhood is viewed as a leaky, messy and indeterminate terrain, always already more-than the bounded “child.” This is not to undermine the advances made in childhood studies to enhance children’s agencies via multimodal listening, rather such agencies are viewed as inseparable from the nonhuman world. Donna Haraway’s concept of “naturecultures” and “diffraction,” Karen Barad’s agential realist concepts such as “intra-action” and “phenomena,” Stacy Alaimo’s notion of “transcorporeality” and “material memoirs,” and Jane Bennet’s “thing power” all enable disrupting human exceptionalism produced through forced cuts and boundaries imposed by Western epistemological traditions. Foregrounding the entanglements of matter, discourse, affect, temporalities, place, and space offers critical and affirmative possibilities in the field of childhood studies.
Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2023
Equimundo, 2022
From education and achievement to mental health and well-being to violence and aggression, the ‘s... more From education and achievement to mental health and well-being to violence and aggression, the ‘state of boys’ has long been a feature of UK (and global) educational, societal and political debate. Against this backdrop, a raft of evidence-based research has not only contested the notion of a singular ‘state’ of boys, but also complicated the category of ‘boy’ and, therefore, what it means to be a boy today.
This literature review aims to capture some of this research in order to provide insight into the complex and ever-changing conditions of UK boys and to inform practice and thinking in this area. Understanding the multiple ways that boys, boyhoods and masculinities are constructed and produced in contemporary societies, and how these relate to other gender formations, is fundamental if we are to support and respond meaningfully to the diverse experiences of boys.
Equimundo , 2022
From education and achievement to mental health and well-being to violence and aggression, the ‘s... more From education and achievement to mental health and well-being to violence and aggression, the ‘state of boys’ has long been a feature of UK (and global) educational, societal and political debate. Against this backdrop, a raft of evidence-based research has not only contested the notion of a singular ‘state’ of boys, but also complicated the category of ‘boy’ and, therefore, what it means to be a boy today. This literature review aims to capture some of this research in order to provide insight into the complex and ever-changing conditions of UK boys and to inform practice and thinking in this area. Understanding the multiple ways that boys, boyhoods and masculinities are constructed and produced in contemporary societies, and how these relate to other gender formations, is fundamental if we are to support and respond meaningfully to the diverse experiences of boys.
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 2022
This article demonstrates how feminist posthumanism can reconfigure conceptualisations of, and pr... more This article demonstrates how feminist posthumanism can reconfigure conceptualisations of, and practices with, ‘child’ in Montessori early childhood contexts. It complicates Montessori’s contemporary reputation as a ‘middle-class phenomenon’ by returning to the earliest Montessori schools as a justice-oriented project for working-class children and families. Grappling with the contradictions and inconsistencies of Montessori thought, this article acknowledges the legacy of Montessori’s feminism while also situating her project within the wider colonial capitalist context in which it emerged. A critical engagement with Montessori education unsettles modernist conceptualisations of ‘child’ and its civilising agenda on minds and bodies. Specifically, Montessori child observation (as a civilising mission) is disrupted and reread from a feminist posthumanist orientation to generate more relational, queer and expansive accounts of how ‘child’ is produced through observation. Working with three ‘encounters’ from fieldwork at a Montessori nursery, the authors attend to the material-discursive affective manifestation of social class, gender, sexuality and ‘race’, and what that means for child figurations in Montessori contexts. They conclude by embracing Snaza’s ‘bewildering education’ to reach towards different imaginaries of ‘child’ that are not reliant on dialectics of ‘human’ and ‘non-human’, and that allow ‘child’ to be taken seriously, without risking erasure of fleshy, leaky, porous, codified bodies in Montessori spaces.
Gender and Education
In the past few decades important work has been undertaken to unsettle essentialist conceptualisa... more In the past few decades important work has been undertaken to unsettle essentialist conceptualisations of gender/sex in the early years workforce. Through an auto/ethnographic diffractive engagemen...
Early Years
ABSTRACT This paper attempts to open out investigations in ECEC by working beyond anthropocentric... more ABSTRACT This paper attempts to open out investigations in ECEC by working beyond anthropocentric accounts of gender. Drawing upon feminist new materialist philosophies we ask whether it might be possible to reconfigure ideas about gender that recognise it as produced through everyday processes and material-affective entanglements. In order to do this, we work with Montessori materials, spaces and practices to grapple with the ways that gender is produced through human-material-semiotic encounters. By focusing on familiar Montessori objects, we follow diffractive lines of enquiry to extend investigations and generate new knowledge about gender in ECEC. This shift in focus allows other accounts about gender to find expression. We argue gender can be encountered as more than an exclusively human matter; and we go on to debate what that might potentiate (i.e. that if gender is fleeting, shifting, and produced within micro-moments there is freedom to break free from narrow framings that fix people, such as ‘the Male Montessorian’, in unhelpful ways). An approach that foregrounds affect and materiality makes a hopeful, generative and expansive contribution to the field. Abbreviation: ECEC, Early Childhood Education and Care
Taylor & Francis, 2021
In the past few decades important work has been undertaken to unsettle essentialist conceptualisa... more In the past few decades important work has been undertaken to unsettle essentialist conceptualisations of gender/sex in the early years workforce. Through an auto/ethnographic diffractive engagement that thinks with feminist ‘new’ materialist and postcolonial scholarships, this paper uncovers the need to move beyond an exclusive focus on diversifying the workforce by simply increasing the number of men. Moving beyond the narrow focus enables a richer and more expansive understanding of gender/sex that exposes colonialism and reveals everyday practices of early childhood educators to be shaped by place, space and matter. By attending to how matter matters in early years, child-sized chairs are used as a point of entry into this research inquiry to explore how gender/sex is produced through pastpresent, material-discursive-affective and more-than-human entanglements. The paper proposes that complicating understandings of gender/sex is important to decolonise early childhood spaces, and so hold space for the emergence of difference that is unmodulated by whiteness. Recognising the agentic potential of matter further opens up possibilities for that which is not yet, but available to us, to make life more thinkable in cis-white heteropatriarchy.
Early Years, 2019
This paper attempts to open out investigations in ECEC by working beyond anthropocentric accounts... more This paper attempts to open out investigations in ECEC by working beyond anthropocentric accounts of gender. Drawing upon feminist new materialist philosophies we ask whether it might be possible to reconfigure ideas about gender that recognise it as produced through everyday processes and material-affective entanglements. In order to do this, we work with Montessori materials, spaces and practices to grapple with the ways that gender is produced through human-material-semiotic encounters. By focusing on familiar Montessori objects, we follow diffractive lines of enquiry to extend investigations and generate new knowledge about gender in ECEC. This shift in focus allows other accounts about gender to find expression. We argue gender can be encountered as more than an exclusively human matter; and we go on to debate what that might potentiate (i.e. that if gender is fleeting, shifting, and produced within micro-moments there is freedom to break free from narrow framings that fix people, such as ‘the Male Montessorian’, in unhelpful ways). An approach that foregrounds affect and materiality makes a hopeful, generative and expansive contribution to the field.
This research explores early years leaders’ perceptions of how Ofsted affects their subjective we... more This research explores early years leaders’ perceptions of how Ofsted affects their subjective wellbeing. It takes a mixed method approach, drawing data from an online survey (n=146) and in-depth interviews (n=7) with early years leaders in the UK. Even though the survey data shows that an overwhelming number of early years leaders experience stress, the in-depth interviews reveal a more complex story with the interplay of several factors contributing to the perceptions of the impact of Ofsted on wellbeing. The findings are discussed along with previous research using the following themes that emerged during the interviews: the impact of the inspection process, work overload, personal values in relation to Ofsted’s values, the role of senior management, and the role of participants’ personal qualities. In conclusion, a collaborative, relational and democratic style of inspection propelled by trust, respect, co-agency and dialogic forms of listening, was valued and welcomed by the participants of the research.
The paper explores the role of men in early years from its historical context in the UK, where si... more The paper explores the role of men in early years from its historical context in the UK, where significant shifts have been witnessed from the inception of the infant school movement in the early 19th century to current developments and initiatives to recruit more men in the field. The essay critiques the 'we need more men' script in order to engage in alternate stories that take into consideration the complex nature of gender diversity.
Teaching Documents by Sid Mohandas
Montessori International, 2020
Sid Mohandas explores how early childhood education is riddled with inequalities, and proposes th... more Sid Mohandas explores how early childhood education is riddled with inequalities, and proposes the need to reclaim feminism in early years
Montessori International, 2015
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Papers by Sid Mohandas
500 word essay on Montessori and Disability commissioned by AMS for the publication Equity Examined.
https://amshq.org/-/media/Files/AMSHQ/Educators/Community/Special-Publications/Equity-Examined---A-Collection-of-Essays.ashx?la=en
This literature review aims to capture some of this research in order to provide insight into the complex and ever-changing conditions of UK boys and to inform practice and thinking in this area. Understanding the multiple ways that boys, boyhoods and masculinities are constructed and produced in contemporary societies, and how these relate to other gender formations, is fundamental if we are to support and respond meaningfully to the diverse experiences of boys.
Teaching Documents by Sid Mohandas
500 word essay on Montessori and Disability commissioned by AMS for the publication Equity Examined.
https://amshq.org/-/media/Files/AMSHQ/Educators/Community/Special-Publications/Equity-Examined---A-Collection-of-Essays.ashx?la=en
This literature review aims to capture some of this research in order to provide insight into the complex and ever-changing conditions of UK boys and to inform practice and thinking in this area. Understanding the multiple ways that boys, boyhoods and masculinities are constructed and produced in contemporary societies, and how these relate to other gender formations, is fundamental if we are to support and respond meaningfully to the diverse experiences of boys.