Shifting social imaginaries : exploring the penetration of early childhood development into a rural Malawian village

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Shifting Social Imaginaries:

Exploring the Penetration of Early Childhood Development into

a rural Malawian village

Thandeka Cochrane

Student Number: 5869498

Masters in Cultural and Social Anthropology Graduate School of Social Sciences

Universiteit van Amsterdam Supervisor: Ria Reis

2nd and 3rd reader: R. van Dijk, J. Olthoff 10th July, 2014

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Abstract

Early Childhood Development (ECD) is a powerful paradigm which has become very popular in the last few years as part of development strategies around education for young children. As a potent discourse and construction of knowledge based on assumptions of the universality of the child, ECD makes claims to an authority-to-knowledge about how to ‘best’ raise children. However, like all discourses, ECD is caught in a field of asymmetrical power relations where ECD is seen as the superior knowledge on childcare and child raising. The African nation of Malawi has adopted this paradigm as part of its attempts to tackle the education crisis in the country. In this paper I explore the dynamics around the penetration of ECD, as a discourse and practice of knowledge, into a rural Malawian village. I show how ECD creates an exclusionary authority-to-knowledge that creates problematic power relations which cause tensions and conflict between the two diverging social imaginaries of ECD and the local community. These tensions and conflicts are explored in two sites of struggle within which the diverging nature of the social imaginaries of ECD and the local community are illuminated. I explore how relations of love within the community are not the affectionate and intimate relations propagated by ECD, but rather are marked by performances and practices of respect. These performances and practices of respect trump an affectionate and intimate love because they are central to maintaining the boundaries of the moral order and ultimately the social contract of the community. I then show how fantasy and fairytales, which are also promoted by ECD, also come into conflict with the boundary making processes of the community, luring children to cross boundaries into the liminal world of witchcraft and magic. This paper shows how ECD is a discursive construction and practice of knowledge/power embedded in asymmetrical power relations which is bringing into rural Malawi a different social imaginary to the one present, thereby ushering in the possibility of a shift in the local social imaginary.

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Acknowledgements

Every thesis is a trial in its own way.

Every step taken alone into the unknown is a terrifying and exciting challenge.

Every attempt to do justice to the people and the places one has encountered, embraced and been awed and humbled by is a flailing blunder.

Writing this thesis was a roller coaster of emotions, from ecstatic wonder and excitement to moments of deep frustration and frightened loneliness. But throughout this maddening and magical journey I have been infinitely privileged in the companions who have walked with me along the way.

I would like to give thanks to the incredible people I met in Malawi, they took me in, in a country where I knew no one and was, at first, completely lost. Diane and Nico welcomed me with such warmth into their world, guiding me and guarding me throughout my time in Malawi. Without them my fieldwork would never have been possible. Mercy, Madalitso, and particularly Kamoza and Chisomo took me into their homes and became my family. I can never do justice to the kindness, sacrifice and spirit of humanity that they showed me in taking me in, feeding me, protecting me, guiding me through villages and taking care of all my needs. Thank you for teaching me so much about the world, about its beauty and the depth of kindness that one can find in it. Thank you for being my family.

I can never do justice to all of the people who helped me along the way, who laughed and cried with me, fed me, held my hand, showed me the way, showered me with generosity and kindness. What they taught me is worth infinitely more than this document could ever be.

Lastly I would like to thank my supervisor, Ria Reis, whose endless enthusiasm and support kept me going through moments of despair and confusion, who guided me with a kind smile and sharp insight through the mess of my own thoughts so that I could eventually put this work to paper. Thank you.

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List of Acronyms

CBO – Community Based Organisation CBCC- Community Based Childcare Centre CCAP – Central Church of Africa Presbyterian ECD – Early Childhood Development

ECDE – Early Childhood Development Education GoM – Government of Malawi

MSCE – Malawi School Certificate of Education NGO – Non-Governmental Organisation

ToT – Trainer of Trainers UN – United Nations

UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNICEF – United Nations Children’s Fund

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Introduction

They stared down at me from the walls with a strange malevolence, their cute little teddy bear eyes filled with distance and pain. They were nailed to the walls of Zwangendaba’s living room, nails sticking through their soft, fluffy stomachs and their adorable little hands. For some reason they filled me with a slight sense of horror, as if, on these walls, childhood had been crucified. ‘They’ were a collection of soft toys, three teddy bears and one rabbit, that had been nailed high up on the living room walls. The sight of cuddly, adorable children’s toys impaled on the walls and staring down at me was, to my eyes, extremely unnerving. I asked Zwangendaba why he had put them there and he

laughed, telling me, “it’s good for the children, it’s part of decorating the house….you know here, in the village and many parts of our country dolls are very scarce and very expensive, so when people are looking at them, yeah, they are enjoying it, even myself, when I look at them, I feel good”. I was struck by how differently Zwangendaba and I saw these crucified dolls, how far apart the meanings we attached to these life-less objects lay. Dolls for me were a toy imbued with life and imagination, so much so that even now I anthropomorphosize them, feeling uncomfortable when they are nailed to walls rather than in the hands of children. To Zwangendaba the dolls are a status symbol informing anyone who walks into the room both of his wealth and, importantly, of the value he lays in objects related to children and his relationship to children. Children, after all, have a special place in

Zwangendaba’s life a place which itself carries status, for he is a Trainer of Trainers (ToT), and is therefore responsible for monitoring and supporting multiple Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres in the Ekwendeni region of Northern Malawi. Zwangendaba is one of thousands of people in Malawi who have become part of the complex and extended ECD system in the country, as caregivers, ToTs, regional co-ordinators, members of NGOs, Government members and countless other positions.

Early Childhood Development is something that I encountered long before ever thinking of setting foot in Malawi. It was four years ago in my home country of South Africa that I first came across the

concept, and practice, of ECD. Like in many other African countries, ECD is pushed as part of the development agenda in South Africa. ECD does wonderful things for children, it gives them amazing opportunities and truly encourages their growth and development. It is certainly a good thing that it is being promoted with such enthusiasm and support by the global community, but in the few years during which I was privy to the practice of ECD, in Cape Town townships or the rural Eastern Cape, I

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always felt that it was a little one-sided, very much an imported paradigm that was being shipped into these communities to be unquestionably adopted with enthusiasm and aplomb. I felt that ECD was caught in the potent and pervasive networks of power and knowledge that so much shape the face of our global world. ECD to me did not give full recognition to the systems of thought of those who were asked to adopt and it did not take place in a sphere of power parity. I sensed that although ECD was being heralded as the future for the children of Africa (Garcia et al, 2008), there was a far more complex process going on on-the-ground, one which I wanted to unpack. My search to understand the penetration of ECD into rural areas in southern Africa eventually led me to the beautiful country of Malawi.

In the last decade Early Childhood Development, or ECD, has become hugely popular in the development industry and one of the most prolific pursuits of international and local development organizations working with young children in developing countries.1 ECD is a theoretical approach to the development of the young child, based, as the World Bank confidently tells us, on the “proven fact that young children respond best when caregivers use specific techniques designed to encourage and stimulate progress to the next level of development”.2 The Early Childhood Development approach is a comprehensive paradigm which has grown into one of the primary ways to address the needs of the young child in developing countries. The global reach of this approach is epitomized in the fact that "expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children" is Goal 1 of the UNESCO ‘Education for All’ campaign, a programme which is meant to bring educational parity to the world’s most disadvantaged peoples.3 In 2003 Malawi joined the international campaign to promote ECD by launching their National Policy of Early Childhood Development, bringing them firmly within the ECD fold.

As an internationally constituted and legitimated normative discourse Early Childhood Development is deeply saturated in relations of power and knowledge. It proclaims to know what is ‘best’ for a young child, from questions of health and nutrition, to forms of education and the kinds of personal

relationships one should build with a child.4 In this paper I seek to unpack the effects of the penetration

1_{http://www.unicef.org/earlychildhood/; http://web.worldbank.org/} 2_{http://web.worldbank.org} 3_{http://www.unesco.org/en/education-for-all-international-coordination/themes/efa-goals/} 4_{http://developingchild.harvard.edu/} 8

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of the ECD paradigm into a rural Malawian village. In analysing and unpacking the dynamics of this penetration I examine two levels of analysis. At the first level I look at ECD more generally, first examining how it manifests itself as a discourse of power and constructions of knowledge, and then exploring how it is articulated on the ground by caregivers and ToTs, both as a constraining paradigm of authority-to-knowledge and knowledge exclusion and as a mechanism which promotes agency and agential action. After this more general overview I hone in on what I term ‘two sites of struggle’. The two sites of struggle are areas where I see a conflict emerging between the social fabric of the

community I studied and the conceptual underpinnings of ECD. The first is a conflict around conceptions of love, what love means and how it affects social relationships. The second converges around questions of fantasy, fairytales and the child’s imagination, and how the wrong kind of imaginative stimuli can steer a child towards deviant behaviour. I analyse how both sites of struggle are struggles around the moral order which underpins the social imaginary of the community, and how ECD threatens to break the boundaries of this moral order, creating social instability, and ultimately a potential shift in the social imaginary. ECD is a potent paradigm saturated in relations of power which is penetrating and merging into countless villages across Malawi. In many ways ECD is both a positive and beneficial thing, but it is also a process marred by asymmetrical power relations within which the normative ontologies and social realities of those who enthusiastically adopt it are not met with a parity of power and value. In this paper I argue that ECD is an implanted pedagogical systems within an asymmetrical field of power, which is trying to teach us how to raise children. But if one examines the way in which fantasy and love are understood within the ECD framework, one discovers that they are not compatible with the way these things are understood amongst the people of Bandawe.

ECD in Malawi

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Malawi is a landlocked country in south-eastern Africa, bordered by Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique, and of course the very large and beautiful Lake Malawi. It is amongst the world’s poorest countries, with an annual Gross National Income (GNI) of $ 321,5 and a ranking of 170th out of 186 countries in the UN Human Development Index.6 The contemporary school system in Malawi is plagued by a number of difficulties. Primary schooling is free in the country, however although about 82% of Malawian children attend primary school, many of these schools suffer from severe resource poverty and have a high teacher to student ratio, with the average ratio in the country being 1 teacher to 72 pupils,7 and only around 40% of children actually completing their primary schooling.8 There is also the added problem that all schooling from the 5th Grade onwards takes place in English, which causes difficulties for both teachers and pupils.9 Like many countries in Africa, Malawi is suffering under an education crisis and is struggling to provide for its children the opportunities that they need to compete in a globalising world. One of the approaches the Government has taken to address this education crisis is to implement a Government strategy for Early Childhood Development in the county.

In Dakar in 2000, UNESCO launched its ambitious Education for All programme, with the aim to stimulate actions towards ensuring education for all children of the globe. This conference was the catalyst for Malawi’s drive towards pushing Early Childhood Development Programmes in the country. In 2003 Malawi launched the National Policy of Early Childhood Development, the goal of which was to "promote a comprehensive approach to ECD programs for children aged 0-8 years to safeguard their rights to fully develop their physical, socio-emotional, cognitive, spiritual and moral potential" (UNICEF report:4). According to the Government’s ECD Comprehensive Training Manual, a hefty 362 page document published by the Government of Malawi, ECD refers to “all aspects of a young child’s needs, growth and development: physical, social, emotional, cognitive, spiritual and moral, and creative potentials” (2012:19). The manual then continues, “ECD further refers to a

comprehensive approach to programmes for children from birth to eight years of age, their parents and community, it includes nutrition, education, psychological support and development, water and

environmental sanitation in the homes, communities and institutions” (2012:19).

5_{http://data.worldbank.org/country/malawi} 6_{http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/MWI.html} 7_{http://www.beehiveschool.com/mzuzu/mzuzu.php} 8_{http://www-wds.worldbank.org} 9_{http://lilongwe.usembassy.gov/advising_services6.html} 10

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ECD in Malawi is reasonably well guided and controlled by the government. There is a clear government plan and strategy for setting up ECD centres, there is a government curriculum for the training of trainers and an ECD teaching manual for the trainers themselves. The implementation of ECD in Malawi is steered by the Early Childhood Development Department in the Ministry for

Gender, Children and Community Development. This Department is technically the ultimate authority on ECD in Malawi and the source of all official Government documents on ECD. It is this Government Department which produces, prints and distributes all the official ECD training manuals to trainers, manuals for caregivers, manuals for parents, syllabi and various other documents that are associated with ECD learning and teaching. As such, despite its relatively small size and budget, it still holds a lot of discursive and bureaucratic power in the field of ECD.

Although the Government discursively and ideologically supports ECD, its severely restricted fiscal budget has meant that in reality there is very little actual material support for the 9703 registered ECD centres in the country. The Government does not set up any ECD centres themselves, nor do they financially support any ECD centres. In fact it seems that mostly what the government structures do do is create a macro-framework for ECD implementation in Malawi through their provision of training and manuals. They create the conceptual framework and produce the knowledge that underpins ECD practices in Malawi, however the everyday on the ground running of the centres is left very much up to any interested parties. These interested parties are generally church organisations or international NGOs, who work in conjunction with the local communities.

The ECD system in Malawi is based on the concept of CBCCs, Community Based Childcare Centres, the ‘community based’ element being heavily emphasised by the government. The idea is that through civic education communities will learn about the value of ECD and about the need for their community to set up a CBCC where ECD can be practiced. They will then set up their own centre, staff it with volunteers from the community and generally take all responsibility for running it. The Government takes on the responsibility of providing training for the volunteers from the centres. Essentially the Government plays a strong role at the macro, policy level of ECD, but has a weak presence at the micro, on the ground level.

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The strong ideological support by the government for ECD programmes and projects but lack of real infrastructural support on the ground has meant that there is a lot of scope for non-governmental organisations to work on ECD in Malawi. The result of this is that although the government provides much of the conceptual structure for ECD in Malawi most centres are run by outside organisations or the churches. In the Northern Region of Malawi, where I conducted my fieldwork, one of the major players in ECD is the Central Church of Africa Presbyterian (CCAP). The CCAP has a staff of two dedicated entirely to ECD in the Northern Region. It was these two staff members, Linda and Samuel, who were my initial contact persons in Malawi. Linda and Samuel are in charge of a complex network of regional Trainers of Trainers (ToTs), caregivers and a total of 400 ECD centres. The ToTs are regional co-ordinators who are responsible for monitoring, supporting and sometimes doing training, in up to 30 ECD centres in their region. It was through Samuel and Linda that I was able to enter the villages where I did my fieldwork, in each village in which I stayed they introduced me to the local ToT and ensured that I could live with them. In my quest to find the ‘best’ village to stay in I passed through the village of Ekwendeni 1, a little homestead near a mission hospital and trading centre, and Mperembe, a trading centre at the end of a two hour long dirt road. But my final resting place was the village of Chituka.

Setting

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Chituka is a village nestled on the coast of the beautiful Lake Malawi in Northern Malawi. Malawi has a very high population density with a mostly rural population, which means that although Chituka is a rural village on the coast of the Lake, it is certainly not a remote and isolated village. Chituka forms part of an expansive village metropolis that spans the length of the Lake, with one village merging into another without any obvious distinction, to the ignorant outsider, between the ‘borders’ of the villages. The four primary villages in which I spent most of my time were Chituka, Chifirwa, Mchaya and Makuzi, all clustered around Bandawe point, a prominent hill which gives the area its name. As my research area spanned across multiple villages which all merged into each other I have chosen to refer to my research area as the Bandawe area or region. The Bandawe area is primarily inhabited by people who call themselves Chitonga, but as those who call themselves Chitonga are a diverse and wide-spread group I have favoured using the phrase ‘the people of Bandawe’ to refer to the people within the communities I studied. Despite using the collective term ‘people of Bandawe’, I of course do not see the people of Bandawe as a bounded or homogenous group, but rather as the diverse multiplicity that they are.

The village of Chituka itself is not so much a single entity conglomerated around a communal area but rather a collection of houses strewn through the dense forest, connected by long dusty sand paths, which would turn into torrents of mud when the rains came. In Chituka I stayed in the home of Mandala Banda, a CCAP ToT. Mandala Banda is a 56 year old man who lives in a well constructed brick home with his brother, his mother and eight children. I lived in a rather unusual household of men without wives, but plenty of children. Both Mandala and his brother, Dulani, have been left by their wives, but still looked after a large group of children, most of whom were not their own children but were related to them in various ways.

Method And Reflexivity

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Method

In total I spent three months in Malawi, between January and March 2014. Of those three months I spent five days in the village of Ekwendeni, three days in the village of Mpherembe and 37 days in Chituka. The rest of my fieldwork time was spent returning to the towns to refuel and restock.

The majority of my research consisted of semi-formal interviews. Using semi-formal interviews helped me to circumnavigate the fact that the language barrier I experienced prevented me from engaging in small-talk and passive listening. A core reason why interviews formed the bulk of my fieldwork data is that my topic of enquiry was one which revolved around people’s perceptions and conceptions of ECD. In trying to understand people’s conceptual world, their own insights and perceptions as expressed in interviews become paramount. Within this thesis I have changed all the names of my interlocutors in order to give them some form of anonymity and protection.

In total I conducted semi-formal or formal interviews with 65 people, a number of them twice and a handful, those working at the CBCCs and my hosts, I interviewed multiple times. I also read through a number of the Government handbooks on ECD and some other official training materials that ToTs or caregivers were given. However as this material is in short supply, it was not always that easy to get hold of.

Although I did not engage in much small talk my semi-formal interviews were prolific and gave me the chance to speak to a large spectrum of people. Due to various constraints I was not able to work much with a translator and so my interviews focused primarily on people who spoke a modicum of English. My inability to speak the local language severely hampered my ability to engage in small talk, or to speak with children and listen in to children’s conversations. Fortunately however, there were a large number of people who were able to speak some degree of English, and so I was still able to interview very many people in the villages. I interviewed people from all walks of life, from a local Village Headman, to primary school teachers, to a family living across the road from us, in an attempt to get a wide sense of the perceptions of ECD in the villagers. My primary interlocutors however were the caregivers and ToTs working at ECD centres. These caregivers were also my safety network in the

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villages, they knew me and would ensure that I did not get lost in the labyrinth of bush-paths between the villages. As my friends and the people who were my initial contacts in any village, the caregivers acted as my entry point into an area, finding other good and interesting contacts for me and introducing me to them. I found most of my interviewees by snowballing off the caregivers in the centres.

Although the majority of my research data comes from interviews, I did of course also live in the village of Chituka. Living intimately in the home of a village family gave me great insight into the everyday lives of the villagers and particularly my host family. For the duration of my stay in Ekwendeni, Mpherembe and particularly Chituka, I was deeply enmeshed in the daily lives of the people of the village, not only in this life as a social construct, in my experience of the community, but also in the physical and material realities of their lives. As Michael Jackson argues, participating in the embodied everyday experiences of the people one is studying is in itself a methodology of learning, it is a means of gaining a deeper, embodied understanding of the field (Jackson, 1983).

Coupled with my interviews and simply being in the world of my interlocutors, I also did a fair amount of participant/observation, primarily in the three ECD centres closest to me, which I regularly visited. Detailed and extensive participant/observation in the centres allowed me to see how caregivers actualised and implemented their ECD knowledge. I was able to directly witness the knowledge that the caregivers imparted to the children and the ways in which they dealt both with teaching the children and interacting with them.

Reflexivity

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In living in the village my fieldwork ‘site’ became not only a place that I learnt to navigate and

understand, but it began to become a very part of my being. Antonio Gramsci tells us that it is the duty of every intellectual to “understand and feel” the works they study (Pizza, 2003:4). The world of the Malawian village is not just a new cognitive place, it is a visceral and powerful material reality, a material reality which seeps into the psycho-social realities of place and space. The Bandawe region, although rather densely populated by Malawian standards, is nonetheless dominated by its natural environment, it is lush and verdant, particularly in the rainy season, with the houses hidden amongst copses of trees, trees which over-run the landscape. This verdant forest hugs the lake shore where the heat of the forest suddenly opens up to the blissful reprieve of the wind and the water, an endless blue reaching to the horizon. Anna Tsing asks us to create ethnographies that “refuse the boundaries that cordon nature from culture” and Tim Ingold in his work on the dwelling perspective has argued that we should see human life as being conducted simultaneously in two domains, the social domain and the ecological domain of inter-organismic relations (Tsing, 2012:141; Ingold, 2000:172). Although I did not specifically construct an interspecies ethnography, nor in fact focus much on the natural environment when doing my ‘proper’ ethnographic fieldwork, unbeknown to me the ecological

domain penetrated into my psyche, into my very being whilst I was in Malawi. In my everyday actions following village life my own life became one which was marked by the early morning rituals of washing in a bucket, the attempts to eat and read books by the light of a solitary flickering candle, by the long walks to find electricity, and the hunger pangs between meals, making thoughts about food a constant refrain, by all the various little elements that make up an experience of being.

The ontological reality of my fieldwork experience became more and more powerful as I was

immersed deeper and deeper into the ecological and material reality that surrounded me. The effect of this was incredibly important for me to able to have something more closely resembling an ontological understanding of the people I lived with. Gillian Goslinga has argued that every act of fieldwork is an ontological betrayal, but that this is particularly the case when it comes to fieldwork that looks at witchcraft, where the anthropologist, rather than accepting the potential ontological truth of witchcraft, always seeks to translate witchcraft and witchcraft experiences into ‘rational’ structural processes which can be understood within the terms of the anthropologist (Goslinga, 2013). My visceral immersion into the world surrounding me in Malawi helped me to move a tiny bit away from this ontological betrayal and toward an acceptance of the potential ontological truth of witchcraft, which in turn helped me to see with greater clarity the depth to which witchcraft and magic are part of the mode

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of being in the Chituka area. This insight was important to allow me to follow the thoughts that lead to my exploration of fantasy and fairytale, an exploration which forms the second site of struggle in my thesis.

During my time in Malawi, whilst I was undergoing an ontological shift in consciousness I was nonetheless still firmly embedded in my own contingency, a contingency which most profoundly showed itself in my inability to divorce my research process from the political. Anthropology, Peter Pels argues, is subject to the flaw that that the anthropologist discovers the impossibility of maintaining the liberal desire for the individual autonomy of choice and opinion at a distance from political

struggle over existing inequalities in the world (Pels, 2000:136). Although Pels has very rightly critiqued the anthropological confession as merely another means whereby which to accrue a neutral stance as an ‘expert’ and politically distance ourselves, I nonetheless must confess, and hope that in my agnostic confession I can do a little justice to Pels’ critique (Pels, 2000:154). I would like to

acknowledge that I was firmly enmeshed in a quagmire of political struggles over existing inequalities. There is a powerful and problematic tension in both my fieldwork and my re-presentation of that experience, between my desire to act as an anthropologist who seeks to understand those I encounter on and within their own terms, and my guilt-infused self, who as a ‘white’ South African feels that I must withhold all judgement and seek only to help. Not only am I myself heavily caught up in the desire to do justice to the people of the Northern region of Malawi to support them in all their endeavours to fulfil their capabilities (in a Senian sense)10 in the world, but the entire action of injecting ECD into Malawi is completely enmeshed in political struggles of various sorts, both on the macro-political level of the Government, NGOs and Church organisations, and on the most micro level the individual local villagers who voluntary involved themselves in ECD centres in order, in part, to assist in creating greater equality for the young children of Malawi. Although my paper outlines conflicts arising from the emergence and penetration of ECD into the Bandawe region, in the end I

10_{Amartyr Sen has developed a theory of justice based on the idea of ‘capabilities’ as part of justice and freedom.}

Capabilities are understood as a person’s capability to achieve something, something as complex as a life goal, or as simple as being able to have access to water. Your capabilities to achieve something are determined by a mixture of things such as your social and cultural capital and the physical and material or discursive and structural constraints you experience. Capabilities for Sen are a form of ‘agency-freedom’ within a just society within which justice should value ‘a person’s ability to take part in the life of the society,’ essentially the ‘freedom’ of participatory parity. Freedom is the “processes that allow freedom of actions and decisions, and the actual opportunities that people have, given their personal and social circumstances” (Sen, 1999:17). ‘Unfreedoms’ are those things which undermine people’s capability to achieve something, things which keep them from participating in a just society with perfect parity (Sen, 1999; Sen, 2009). Thus Senian capabilities are not just a question of being able to do something, but a question of freedom, justice and participation parity.

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cannot help but still fully support ECD in Malawi. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a vital step for the children of that country, they are not isolated idyllic ‘African’ village children, but members of a complex and increasingly globalising world and they have every right to get as much help as possible to be able to negotiate that world on terms of equality and parity. My only hope is that this paper may contribute a little to understanding both the complexities of the process of ECD penetration as not merely beneficial ‘aid’ but as an entire process of knowledge construction around the young child and an unwritten struggle for the conception of the young child. I also hope to illuminate the way in which the people of Malawi, the individuals on the ground, are knitting their own new processes and realities with the threads of ECD.

Section 1: Theoretical Framework

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Education: A Site of Reproduction and Struggle

One of the most enduring theoretical frameworks within anthropology of education has been that of education as a form of social and cultural reproduction (see for example Collins, 2009; Pelissier, 1991; Garrett and Baquedano-Lopez, 2002; Watson-Gegeo and Gegeo, 1992). In the last decade however, seeing education as cultural reproduction has been heavily critiqued as a reductionist functionalist or structuralist analysis, with anthropologists opting in favour of more actor and agency focused analyses (Yon, 2003:419-424). Writers such as Hervé Varenne and Daniel Yon have urged for an anthropology of education that sees education and schools not merely as places of (re)production, but as places of ongoing powerful transformation and change and as sites for the contestation of meaning (Varenne, 2008:10&14; Yon, 2003:421). Education need not however be either production, or a space for agential action, it can be, as many anthropologists now see it, a space for both, it “both recruits students to a dominant framework even as it provides a powerful language for rethinking and recreating this framework” (Stambach and Ngawne, 2011:303). ECD centres, as sites of education, should be seen as spaces both within which children and caregivers are co-opted into (re)production of particular ‘cultural’ norms and practices, and as spaces of possibility and contestation which create and foster agency.

Yet despite their dualistic nature as sites of (re)production and contestation and agency, it is important to not fail to recognise that systems of education are always saturated in power relations. As Paulo Freire tells us, “there is no such thing as a neutral educational process”, and ECD is no exception to this (Shaull, 1972:15). Processes of education cannot be viewed merely as the imparting and

acquisition of reasoned and objective knowledge but must been seen as embedded in global discourses within which educative institutions are “made in the image of particular ideas about what is

meaningful and material, what is worth knowing and what is not” (Stambach and Ngwane, 2011:306) and where “trajectories of learning fit into and reproduce larger systems of cultural meaning and practices” (Baquedano-López and Hernandez, 2011:199).

There has been a lot of literature written about the school system as both a space for creation,

innovation and contestation, but also as a space for socialization, cultural reproduction and ideological and discursive power struggles. A lot of this literature has focused on critiquing the power of the

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school system, looking at the way in which ‘minorities’, those whose norms are not reflected by the ‘dominant order’, suffer under structural and symbolic violence, marginalization, domination and exclusion within these systems (Collins, 2009). The literature discussing these dynamics within the school system is extensive – and yet it is precisely all these difficulties, which have so long been part of an ideological battlefield around schooling, that are emerging, largely uncontested, in the sphere of Early Childhood Development.

Early Childhood Development as theoretical framework for the nurture and raising of the young child is practiced in institutions that are almost identical to schools, acting as a prelude to that institutional system. Just like schooling, Early Childhood Development is equally firmly embedded in a “politics of knowledge” with the accompanying normative underpinnings within which are contained

“understandings of what is ‘best’, ‘right’ and ‘ethical’ for children, and these understandings bring choices: choices about which knowledge is ‘best’ and ‘right’ to form and motivate the everyday business of early childhood” (Mac Naught, 2005:1). ECD is a discourse and practice that is steeped in relations of power which reflect the asymmetrical power relations of the globalising world, where ECD is a paradigm within which are embedded the norms and ontological realities of the social imaginary of those who produce and propagate the paradigm.

Power/Knowledge

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Power has often been viewed in anthropology in terms of dominance, hegemony and resistance (see especially Scott, 1990). This discourse of power as control or dominance and resistance has much tenure in anthropological studies of power, but it problematically feeds into a discourse of dichotomies, of oppressor versus oppressed, of power as something which is held by one side over another, and where the other side expresses their agency entirely through resistance (Ortner, 2006). This discussion of course forms part of the age-old structure/agency debate in the social sciences, within which

anthropologists and others have been trying for decades to unpack the dichotomous dualism of these two concepts. In my understandings of power I would like to move away from the

dominance-resistance dichotomy to a view of power as part of all social relations. In trying to understand power in relation to ECD as a discursive construction of knowledge I turn to the works of Michel Foucault.

Foucault has often been critiqued for an all too encompassing conception of power which leaves little room for anything else (Rabinow, 1984:12-13). Sherry Ortner articulates this when she describes Foucault as being on the far end of the spectrum on the invasiveness of power, as she tells us, Foucault believes that power is “socially ubiquitous, suffused through every aspect of the social system and psychologically deeply invasive” (2006:6). It is hard to dispute that for Foucault power is indeed part of all social relations, but this does not and should not automatically be equated to dominance, repression or hegemony. As Sara Mills argues “power is seen by Foucault not as something which is imposed on another but as a network or web of relations which circulates through society” (Mills, 2003:30; see also Foucault, 1980:92-98). Power is thus ever pervasive but it is not automatically dominance or repression, it is an element that is contained within social relations and its expression impacts the nature, form, shape and direction these take.

Foucault’s conception of power as part of networks of social relations is useful, but it is actually Foucault’s connection between power and knowledge that is most pertinent to my paper. ECD as a theoretical paradigm about how to best raise a young child is in its very essence a paradigm of knowledge, it is both literally about teaching children in the classroom and it seeks to create a knowledge, a superior knowledge, of the young child. ECD does not practice power through the classical framework of domination and resistance, but rather it enacts power as a paradigm of knowledge. In order to understand the power embedded in ECD as a paradigm of knowledge it is important to understand the relationship between power and knowledge.

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Following Foucault I insist that knowledge produces power, and power produces knowledge. They are intricately intertwined and one constitutes the other (Gutting, 2005:53). As Foucault tells us, “power and knowledge directly imply one another, there is no power without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations” (Foucault, 1977:27). Knowledge is not neutral but rather the product, the outcome, the expression of power relations. It is Foucault who has given us the concept of a “politics of

knowledge”, showing us that knowledge itself is caught in a web of power plays (Foucault, 1980:69). What this tells us is that knowledge is not an abstracted body of knowing ‘facts’, but it is something that is socially produced, it is therefore ultimately “power rather than facts about reality, which make things ‘true’” (Hall, 1996:293). It is thus power relations and not knowledge itself that will determine the type of knowledge that is produced, reproduced, validated and legitimated, creating “discourses of truth” which are endowed with potent effect (Foucault, 1980:93). Foucault takes this production of knowledge within power relations very far arguing that knowledge supported by power comes to form ‘regimes of truth’ and these regimes of truth not only direct our knowledge but actually produce the parameters of knowledge so that thinking certain things, or in certain ways, is not only not considered legitimate but actually becomes something our minds are not able to do.Within a ‘regime of truth’ “certain knowledges become admissible or possible,” and others in converse are non-admissible or not possible (Foucault in Fox, 1998:416). In this way knowledge is not only the product of power but also a producer of power. It is the socially produced discourse of truth which determines, and then

legitimises, what is ‘known’, ‘real’ or ‘true’. Knowledge thus has power by creating parameters of possibility, not just of action but of legitimate thought. Bourdieu sums up this relationship between knowledge and power most eloquently when he tells us, “the theory of knowledge is a dimension of political theory because the specifically symbolic power to impose the principles of the construction of reality – in particular, social reality – is a major dimension of political power” (Bourdieu, 1989:165).

ECD as a discourse of knowledge of what is ‘best’ for the young child is infused with precisely the power relations that are embedded in power/knowledge. ECD has not yet formed a ‘regime of truth’ itself, but it is heavily embedded in one of the prevailing ‘regimes of truth’ of our contemporary state, namely that of empirical fact and science. It is a powerful discursive formation which makes particular

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claims to authority of knowledge, not only the content of specific knowledge, such as how to read with a child, but also the means of garnering such knowledge, through psychological and scientific

observations and studies of children. ECD, as a discursive formation around knowing what is ‘best’ for a child makes a claim to an authority to knowledge, not just knowing what is ‘best’ but knowing how to know what is best. Claims of authority to knowledge which tell us what is ‘best’ and most legitimate based on particular forms of garnering knowledge, are inevitably acts of power (Foucault, 1980:85). This claim to authority which is based on assumptions of a-political knowledge is particularly evident in the ECD assumption of the universal model of childhood. Within the discursive construction of early childhood development enframed in a politics of knowledge there is presumption of a “universal model of childhood” in which a particular, but actually culturally constructed, conception of childhood is “perceived as a natural feature of human development that consists of a standard series of stages in the passage toward adulthood” (Theis, 2001:100). Sheila Aikman, in her study of schooling amongst the Arakmbut of Peru, highlights this by describing the local school and the formal education system as an “an implanted pedagogical system” which was concerned with “transmitting objectified

knowledge that is selected, organized and presented according to predetermined aims”, with the knowledge transmitted in school resting its authority “on an implicit claim to universality” (Aikman, 1999:6&29). This universal model undergirds ECDs authority to knowledge, through the universal model ECD becomes a culturally and socially transferable paradigm which is based on ‘facts’ and ‘truths’ about the child. But as Foucault has shown us, discourses of fact and truth are actually embedded in relations of power, and so when the discourse of ECD penetrates into the rural areas of Malawi, it is, in its very essence as a discursive construction of knowledge, an execution of power. If knowledge is power, as Foucault so convincingly shows us, then ECD, as knowledge, holds immense power.

Agency, Structure and Power

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An analysis of power can easily fall into the trap of seeming to become an analysis of hegemonic structures. It is therefore vital within such an analysis to give full recognition to the power and

presence of agency. Although, like Foucault, I see power as ubiquitous, this does not mean that power excludes agential action, for agents, after all, are also able to exert power. Being often seen as the converse of ‘power’ understood as structure, agency has suffered much of the same fate as power has in that is has been understood within the dichotomy of structure and resistance. But agency and structure are not separable entities that must stand in conflict and collision with one another, they are dialectically and “mutually constitutive” (Graaff, 2006:14), structure constrains the nature and possibilities of agency, but it is also in the end agency that begets and shapes structures; there is no agency outside structure and there is no structure without agency (Ortner, 2006). Although agency is an articulation of power and freedom, an ultimate expression of will and practice, agents are not to be understood as “autonomous, individualistic” entities that can, through sheer willpower, triumph over their contexts (Ortner, 2006:130). The possibilities for agents thoughts and practices are still

constrained by the ‘structures’ that surround them, which are almost always embedded in asymmetrical power relations and the agents social/historical contingency, which act as powerful constraints upon actors’ agency and practice (Ortner, 1984:147). Much like Foucault’s power and Bourdieu’s habitus, these power relations and social/historical contingency enframe the possibilities of thought and action for agents, but within those possibilities actors are able to take up potent strategies and actions which in the end are what ultimately shape, transform and reproduce the structures and constraints within which the actors operate.

Above I have argued that ECD is a powerful discursive construction of knowledge of what is ‘best’ for a child, but, importantly, within its actualisation on the ground and in classrooms and centres ECD is very much a practice, and it is within this practice of ECD that the actors own potent agency becomes most clearly articulated. As an on-the-ground practice the discursive and theoretical constructs of ECD are enacted and realized every day in ECD centres by caregivers and ToTs, and in the homes of

parents, who in their practices actively form and shape the processes, structures and discourses of ECD. It is within these practices, this active and conscious enactment of ECD, that the actors on the ground are most clearly and most powerfully able to enact and express their agency. Like all

‘structures’, ECD is both a powerful discursive construction and a systemic structure, but it is one that is created by agents, shaped by agents, and most importantly for my paper, practiced by agents. ECD should not be understood as a monolithic structure which is suppressing all agential action, but rather it

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should be seen as a complex network and web of interacting and interpenetrating discourses and practices taking place in a field of power.

Social Imaginaries

In my theoretical framework for understanding the penetration of ECD in to rural Malawi power is seen as embedded in discursive constructions of knowledge, but it also seen as expressed in practice, practices which are enacted through active agents, who are both constrained by the ‘system’ within which they operate but equally in turn shape that system. In seeking to describe the vast and pervasive subterranean social and cultural impact and influence of ECD on the Bandawe region and the potential change it might usher in, I need however to make recourse to one final further theoretical construct namely the concept of the ‘social imaginary’.

Social imaginaries are those amorphous things that give structure, coherence, meaning and legitimacy to our social practices, they are the undercurrents that run through our social understandings of

ourselves and of our society, the sense-making system that gives structure and form to what constitutes our ‘reality’. The social imaginary functions as the central master-frame for the interpretations of one’s world which encompasses both the ‘real’, the likely and the possible (Andersson, 2010:10; Vigh, 2006:483). It is the creative core of the social-historical and psychic worlds of a given society which creates for each historical period its singular way of living, seeing and making its own existence, its world and its relations to it, ultimately providing the forms for defining what is ‘real’. As Charles Taylor expresses it, the social imaginary is not just a set of ideas, it is more than that, it is “what enables, through making sense of, the practices of society” (Taylor, 2002:91).

In seeing the social imaginary as the master-frame for our sense-making of what is ‘real, likely or possible, we can relate it directly back to Foucault’s understanding of power/knowledge. For Foucault

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knowledge, as produced through power relations, acts in the same fashion as the social imaginary, it creates the conditions for the possibilities of thought, for what we are able to think and for our ways of thinking (Foucault, 1994:xv).In this sense I see knowledge and the social imaginary as intimately interlinked, knowledge and knowledges are understood and framed within the social imaginary, knowledge is a permutation of the social imaginary, it is not separate, above or outside of the social imaginary but rather an expression of it, a part of it. In my understanding the concepts of knowledge and the social imaginary are not separable and are often hardly distinguishable, for they are both the basis of our sense-making processes of our world, and they both create the limitations for our practices and thoughts. The social imaginary is however broader in its scope than ‘knowledge’ or ‘knowledges’, in that it is more amorphous and encompasses all social practices.

The social imaginary is a particularly useful concept in trying to understand gradual yet foundational social change in the very sense-making structures of a social group. A social imaginary is of course not a fixed entity or a social script, it is an ever mutating and changing field of orientation (Vigh,

2006:483). The progenitor of the concept of the social imaginary, Cornelius Castoriadis, had

envisioned the changes occurring in the social imaginary as created ‘ex nihilo’, as ruptures from what preceded (Gaonkar, 2002). This conception of change in the social imaginary has not however been picked up by those who have taken up the term after him. Although my own conception of the social imaginary aligns closely to that of Castoriadis, for whom the social imaginary forms the fundament of that which creates the ‘real’ in a social system, it is to Charles Taylor that I turn for a conception of change within the social imaginary. Taylor views changes in the social imaginary not as a rupture, but rather as slow and gradual shiftings of the imaginary through what he terms a ‘long march’ (Taylor, 2002). Taylor speaks of social change occurring through a process in which what is originally just an idealization or theoretical approach gradually infiltrates and transforms the social imaginary by being taken up and associated with social practices (Taylor, 2002:110). This happens, Taylor argues, mostly by people taking up, improvising or being inducted into new practices, practices which are made sense of in the new outlook, a new context (Taylor, 2002:111). It is precisely as such an idealisational or theoretical approach that becomes inducted into new practices which are made sense of within a shifting social imaginary, that we can view the framework of ECD.

The concept of social imaginaries gives us a theoretical framework with which to understand deep and pervasive processes of social change, particularly social change that is driven by idealisational

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changes. As Taylor argues, the reality of today’s world is one of multiple modernities which can be understood in terms of divergent social imaginaries (Taylor, 2002:91). My claim is that in the penetration of ECD into rural Malawi, and more specifically the Bandawe area, we can see the merging, meeting and clashing of two of these ‘modernities’, two divergent social imaginaries which are interpenetrating each other. When discussing conflict born of a divergent habitus, which is similar to the concept of social imaginary, Bourdieu tells us that these conflicts are born of different

“conditions of existence which, imposing different definitions of the impossible, the possible, and the probable, cause one group to experience as natural or reasonable practices or aspirations which another group finds unthinkable or scandalous, and vice versa” (Bourdieu, 1989:78). Imported educational institutions, particularly in places like post-colonial Africa, have the power, by being born of different definitions of the impossible, possible and probable and legitimised within asymmetrical power relations, to change the social world, the social imaginary, of the communities importing them. As Stambach and Ngwane so eloquently argue about education in Africa, it “first defines and objectifies the social world in a particular way, and then slowly transforms the principles upon which core social relations rest” (Stambach and Ngwane, 2011:304).

The penetration of ECD centres, practices and theories into the Bandawe area can be seen within this framework, as a socially and culturally constructed discourse of truth embedded in asymmetrical power relations which makes universalist claims about what is ‘best’ for the child, thereby enacting a form of symbolic violence upon those who must adopt this framework. Within its discursive

construction and practices ECD first defines the social world in ways that reflect particular norms and practices, a particular social imaginary, and then it slowly transforms the principles upon which the core social relations of the community rest, in other terms, it shifts the local social imaginary. I argue that we can see the penetration of ECD into rural Malawi as the potential catalyst for a gradual shifting of the social imaginary, induced through the introduction of knowledges and practice embedded within asymmetrical power relations. It is of course also, within all this talk of knowledge, power and social imaginaries, vitally important to remain cognisant of the fact that there are active social actors involved in this process and that they shape, alter and morph the structures entering their communities.

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Section 2: On The Ground

ECD as ‘Best’ For Children

In Malawi one can see the relationship between power and knowledge in the apparent immense ideological and normative force which the paradigm of ECD carries as the ‘best’ way to raise children in the country. Wherever I went and whomever I spoke to, ECD was touted as a universally beneficial thing that was bringing possibilities for prosperity to Malawi and its children. Those involved in ECD, from caregivers in the centres, to ToTs, to staff members in NGOs, churches and of course the

Government, trumpeted the virtues and benefits of ECD. Samuel from the CCAP office told me that ECD was so important because “if these children are taught the proper way of living while they are young, we will have a better society.” Zwangendaba, a ToT from Ekwendeni told me a similar thing, saying, “if we involve these children when they are young, they will grow up to be good citizens. If they will be educated they will become of benefit to the village.” Even the CBCC committee of the Mpherembe CBCC, who are an interesting collection of elderly residents from the town, told me that ECD centres were vital for all communities because “children become clever and make Malawi a good nation.” Many of the respondents I spoke to saw ECD as a means to create a better Malawian society. Part of the reason why ECD has such discursive and ideological power is precisely because it contains such a promise for the future, it is sold as giving one’s children a better chance in life.

James Collins argues that processes of education are always saturated in relations of power and

domination through the creation of discursive dualisms which have created a language of dichotomies, dichotomies which have become reified and embedded in ideological structures (Collins, 1995:75). These dichotomies of literate vs illiterate, written vs spoken, educated vs uneducated, modern vs traditional have generated forms of symbolic and structural violence which marginalise and exclude those who fit onto the ‘wrong side’ of these dichotomies (Collins, 1995:75; Foley, 2010:220). These dichotomies also form part of a neo-colonial process of domination, marginalisation and exclusion which undermines indigenous and local cultures, and particular indigenous epistemologies (Bialostok and Whitman, 2006:381&390; Watson-Gegeo and Gegeo, 18-20). In Malawi one can see a dichotomy being formed between those who are ECD educated and those who are not, there is a divide between

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those who ‘know’ ECD and those who ‘do not know’, with those who ‘do not know’ lying on the wrong side of the line.

As the ‘best’ way to raise children ECD is not just a theory for childrearing practices but a normative paradigm that has imbedded within it an inherent judgement on the childrearing practices that are not ECD. As Linus from Save the Children said, ECD centres are “bringing a very important influence on how parents should take care of their children,” and they “create evidence for a different way of raising children that works.” In this discursive framework ECD becomes the better option, a new way of childrearing that should be adopted. As Reginald quite literally told me, “ECD is the best for the children”. Those who were bringing ECD into communities, in particular caregivers and ToTs who are all community members but are intimately involved in ECD, went further than presenting ECD merely as the ‘better option’, they saw the lack of ECD as something highly detrimental. Zwangendaba said of children who grow up just at home and do not go to ECD centres, “they are nothing”. Mary, the ToT from Mpherembe, told me that children who go to CBCCs are “very clever” but those who don’t go to CBCCs, “they are dormant”. Of children who stay at home, Mary believes, “they learn nothing.” Amongst ECD practitioners there was a strong consensus that parents often do not understand ECD and its value. The caregivers and ToTs argued that the system of learning and interacting at ECD centres is very foreign to parents, particularly the emphasis on learning through play and the ‘child-centred approach’ of ECD centres. Mary lamented that, “it’s difficult to parents to understand, if you are saying children should be playing with playing materials, they say, ‘Ah, our children are not learning’”. The idea that parents ‘don’t understand’ is powerful in the ECD discourse, and as was hinted at by Linus, ECD is very much projected as a means for Malawian parents to learn how to take care of their children. Amongst ECD practitioners, those ‘in the know’, there is the perception that Malawian parents do not know how to best raise their children. Jens told me that “Malawians have very little knowledge about how to raise their children.” And Linda said that amongst Malawians, “there’s not an awful lot of parenting that takes place.” The idea that parents do not know ECD but must learn it is so pervasive that it even goes under its own word, ‘sensitisation’. In Malawian ECD parlance ‘sensitisation’ is the process through which NGOs, ToTs, caregivers, the Government and various interested parties seek to expose parents and communities to the ethos and practices of ECD, teaching them its value and benefits and how to practice ECD themselves. The emphasis on

‘sensitisation’ in Malawian ECD shows that there is a conscious desire to make ECD part of everyone’s everyday practices and understandings.

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The ethnographic evidence seems to indicate that the ECD discourse carries with it a ‘claim to authority’ which has given it ideological power as the ‘best’ way in which to raise children. From the way in which people in the villages and in the towns spoke about ECD it seems that the discourse has gained immense currency and that in its legitimation of its own parameters as determining what is best for the child it has created a problematic asymmetrical power relation of knowledge, where one

discourse, with its accompanying symbolic and moral order, its social imaginary, takes precedence as the ‘best’ knowledge for raising children.

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Caregivers and Agency

It is pivotal to acknowledge that relations of power and asymmetry are embedded in the process of ECD penetration into the rural areas of Malawi. However it is equally important to recognise that the people of Bandawe are not passive recipients of structural domination, but are active agents who engage with, respond to, effect and transform the ECD structures that are entering into their

community. In this section I will outline how ECD is practiced on the ground by the caregivers and ToTs at the centres and show how the inability of caregivers to access and have authority over the knowledge which they are supposed to not only understand but embody and practice creates both a dynamic of expanded and simultaneously limited agency.

Learning ECD

In Malawi being a caregiver is a voluntary position, and as such there are no requirements for the job other than enthusiasm and a desire to take it on. To equip them to become ECD practitioners in their local CBCC the caregivers are generally assisted in attending local or regional training workshops. On average these ECD training workshops generally last only two weeks, a very brief time period in which the caregivers have to learn all aspects of ECD knowledge. The primary source material for this training is the Government training manual. This manual not only covers Early Childhood

Development Education (ECDE), which forms the primary focus of my thesis, but also all the other aspects of ECD, from cognitive development to hygiene and nutrition, all for the young child from zero to eight years of age (GoM, ECD Training Manual, 2012). As is undoubtedly clear, this is a gargantuan task, a demand on knowledge acquisition capacities which are nigh to impossible for anyone to meet.

In the Northern region the difficulty of this task is compounded immensely by the fact that all the manuals that the caregivers and ToTs receive are in English. Every single manual, from the training manuals to the parents’ sensitisation manual to the curriculum, is in English. The result of this is that a large number of the ToTs and caregivers struggle to comfortably read their own teaching or training manuals. The fact that the manuals are all in English creates a very problematic power dynamic around ECD knowledge, excluding those who are most in need of it, namely the caregivers who actually work

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with children, from accessing the source from which they are supposed to get their knowledge. The exclusion from knowledge due to the fact that the manuals are all in English was clearly expressed to me by one ToT, who told me that the manuals are in English explicitly so that “only those who have MSCE [Malawi School Certificate of Education] can have that knowledge”.

My observations indicate that because the caregivers, for the most part, struggle to read their training manuals, if they are lucky enough to get one, they are generally left piecing together the knowledge they can remember and then adding their own conceptions and practices in all the areas where their training knowledge is not ‘adequate’. In my observations of and discussions with caregivers it became clear to me that the training the caregivers received was neither long enough nor congruent enough with their own cultural capital and knowledges to make them confident in their knowledge of ECD and able to take ownership of the knowledge they had briefly been exposed to. In most centres caregivers would spend much of their time with children doing rote learning of primarily English words and songs. I would constantly come across the same songs and ‘poems’ as they were called, ‘poems’ such as ‘I know calendar’ where the children have to name all the months of the year, or ‘Counting

numbers’, ‘Days of the Week’, ‘Alphabet-a Letters’, ‘Ten Green Bottles’, ‘Fly Away Peter’ and a variety of other English nursery rhymes. These songs were so pervasive across the centres that I was soon able to sing them myself. Singing curriculum songs is of course not in itself an indication of a struggle with knowledge at all, however my observations seemed to indicate that many caregivers were not comfortable with these songs and litanies. There were a number of centres where the caregivers would run through one song after another, without a break, and I often witnessed caregivers singing songs where they themselves did not know the words to the songs, but they would gallantly plough on despite their own struggles. Sticking strictly to prescriptions and a small number of songs, even when it was clear that the children were bored, was an indication to me, not that the caregivers are somehow terrible caregivers, but rather that they were grasping at knowledge, forms of teaching and ways of relating to children, that they were not confident in and that they were trying to mimic in an attempt to produce the ‘correct’ kind of knowledge that was expected in an ECD classroom.

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Uncertainty of Knowledge

ECD in its very nature is not just a little bit of extra information for someone to learn but a philosophy and theory of practice that seeks to govern almost every element of childrearing and creates specific types of child-adult relations. As such a micro-technology of power it is of course not possible for caregivers, who often have only a modicum of formal education, to fully absorb and internalise the ECD paradigm. The caregivers’ brief exposure to the ECD paradigm followed by the expectation that they will afterwards be able to comfortably practice ECD, means that many caregivers are in a position of uncertainty. They are expected to look after children, to rear them, in accordance with this new and complex paradigm without actually having a full grasp of it. This is of course not in any way the caregivers ‘fault’, no human being on earth could absorb, understand and then implement a new and complex paradigm after learning about it for two weeks with texts in a language they do not

understand and without actually seeing it in practice but only learning about it in theoretical form.

The uncertainty of knowledge that the caregivers experience reduces their agency in their interactions with the children because they are not the owners of the knowledge which they are supposed to apply. “Knowledge”, as Prophet Sekani told me with much insight, “is power”. Prophet Sekani is a prophet who also runs an ECD centre in his church, and a man who quite succinctly extolled the difficulty of the relationship between knowledge and power, and how grappling with knowledge and yet not having authority over it can leave one powerless. The Prophet explained that “knowledge is power, knowledge brings truth, confidence [...] anyone who has knowledge has confidence”, and if you have knowledge coupled with confidence, you have the “ability to do something else”. From my observations and discussions with caregivers it seemed that they had had an insight into the ‘knowledge’ of ECD, but that they were not able to gain an authority-to-knowledge and so harness the power that this knowledge has within it to be confident in it and take ownership over it.

In my paper I would however go further with the argument of authority-to-knowledge. The caregivers, I believe, are not only confronted with a lack of confidence in knowledge to which they were too briefly exposed, they are also being asked to absorb and adopt a paradigm which is born of a different social imaginary to their own, they are thereby trying to make sense of practices for which the

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making mechanisms lie in another social imaginary. Here one can argue that the caregivers become the subjects of a form of symbolic violence and are constrained by relations of power/knowledge.

Uncertainty creates Agency

By this point it may seem that I have trapped the caregivers in a structural-straightjacket of knowledge-exclusion and passivity. But it is my claim that it is precisely their ‘lack’ of immersion in the ECD paradigm that allows for a greater expression of agency within the practice of ECD. The way in which the caregivers are subjected to the knowledge of ECD and the power this holds over them often leaves them in a very conceptually murky space within which they have to somehow successfully practice ECD without having fully embodied it or having complete ownership over it. And yet, after their two weeks of training, they must still return to their centres and practice ECD, they must do something in the classroom with the children. As the ultimate practitioners of ECD, the ones who construct its daily actualisation in practice, the caregivers play the determining role in creating the contents of their practices. The space of uncertainty of practice created by ‘insufficient’ training means that the caregivers necessarily need to implement and exercise their own knowledge and thus power and agency. So whilst they are in the midst of struggling with a lack of authority over the knowledge they were meant to be implementing, caregivers concurrently simply implement what they do know, and structure the practices in the classroom according to their own perceptions of what is important and what has to happen. Almost all caregivers, for example, focused heavily on prayer, praying and Bible stories with the children. Spirituality is a part of the ECD curriculum and agenda in Malawi, but it is not very paramount within it. In most centres and amongst most caregivers however, spirituality and spiritual practice and teaching took a primary and central role in their practices and approaches, thereby shaping the ECD classroom to align more closely to local norms.

Shifting social imaginaries : exploring the penetration of early childhood development into a rural Malawian village