Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed

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Opening up Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed
INTRODUCTION
When the contemporary reader first approaches Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the
Oppressed there may be some initial barriers to be confronted. First, precisely what
kind of book is it? Is it an education textbook providing instructions for achieving
adult literacy? Is it a manifesto for a ‘new person’, a quasi-religious exhortation to
social and political justice? Is it a call for revolution outlining a radical new method
for achieving ‘bottom-up’ social transformation? Second, in the light of so much
history and horror since 1970, the book may strike the reader now as a naive attempt
to combine elements of Marxism and Christianity to create a ‘new man’ devoid of evil
and self-interest. The positive references in the text to figures such as Mao Tse Tung
may sound now as deluded or even sinister. Finally, the book may also seem dated
and surprisingly limited in its set of concerns. For example, there are no explicit
references to gender or to the environment, no recognition of these issues as
warranting specific attention within a liberation process. Instead, there appears to be a
gender blindness throughout and a simple faith in the old modernist project of
fashioning the natural world to enhance human progress.
Of course, the book is a product of its time and circumstances. Freire’s work is
rooted in the concrete social, economic and cultural reality of 1960s Latin America.
This was a reality marked by, above all else, poverty and oppression. As many as 80%
of the population of Latin America were living in conditions of dire poverty. This was
the overwhelming reality that any book purporting to describe and contribute to social
understanding had to confront.
Freire himself was no detached theorist. The book was written while he was in
exile in Chile following the Brazilian military coup of 1964. Published in 1970, it
was based on many years of direct experience of working with the poor of Brazil and
Chile. Freire was born in 1921 in Recife, Brazil. While initially he taught Portuguese
in secondary schools, from 1946 he began developing adult literacy programmes.
That work was brought to an end with the military coup. Following a brief
imprisonment he went into exile in Chile. After the Portuguese language publication
of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed he was invited in 1969 to Harvard as a visiting
Professor. He later moved to Europe as a special education advisor to the World
Council of Churches. He finally returned to Brazil in 1980 where he took up again his
work in adult pedagogy. He was appointed in 1988 as Secretary of Education in Sao
Paulo by the Brazilian Workers Party. Freire died in 1997.
We still live in a world marred by widespread and systematic poverty. Added
to the threats posed by war and nuclear proliferation is the realisation that the planet’s
ecology is in crisis as a consequence of human action. In this context, Freire’s book
offers the modern reader enduring and significant ideas regarding the importance of
developing a critical consciousness; the necessity of affirming the project of
humanisation; and the centrality and necessity of dialogue as the key tool for social
progress. It seems to me that these are three values of the utmost importance, values
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which can act as an essential tool to assess the competing political ideologies
confronting us today. Freire opposed all received and dogmatic versions of social
reality, from both left and right – ‘They both suffer from an absence of doubt’ (Freire
1972: 18).1
In fact, the book is a ringing invocation of the necessity (both empirical and
normative) for human freedom. Throughout the text, Freire contrasts oppression and
liberation. These are the two polarities of the human existential condition. On the one
hand, the poor are oppressed by virtue of their poverty and are unable to be
themselves as free, human subjects. Yet they may accept this situation as fated or
unalterable. They may even fear freedom because it carries risk and the potential for
conflict. In addition, in situations of objective oppression and mass poverty, the rich
are not free either. They too live in fear and destroy their own humanity by their
violent suppression of their fellow human beings. Freire’s book can be understood as
providing a method to enable the poor to understand the structural reasons for their
poverty so that they can begin to liberate themselves and become free, autonomous
human beings. By so doing they liberate the oppressors too.
The key tool identified by Freire for achieving this liberation is education.
Freire argues for a new type of education – an education or pedagogy of the
oppressed, i.e. one constructed by themselves, out of their lived experience.
Conventional education is critiqued by Freire as embedded within oppressive
structures. Such education is designed to pacify, to render the student a compliant
object to be controlled. To overcome this reality, Freire develops a number of key
concepts – problematisation, de-mythologisation, conscientisation, the culture of
silence. It’s here above all else I think that we might find the book’s contemporary
relevance and enduring inspiration. Our education system remains co-opted into an
economic imperative centred on growth and inequality. Certain voices and certain
words are today reduced to silence in the public sphere. How to speak
straightforwardly out of one’s direct experience remains problematic. Oppressed
groups are obliged to translate their concerns into other language, especially the
language of economics and business. Even the term ‘the oppressed’ is politically
potent and almost never used to designate an empirically identifiable group of people.
Thus, officially, we don’t have ‘oppressed’ in Ireland.
A key moment in the path of liberation is when the poor ask what the nature of
the social world is. Is it really like the ‘natural’ world, i.e. governed by laws and
irrevocable processes? Or is it malleable – subject to human agency – and capable of
being constructed and re-constructed? The realisation that social reality is constructed
and that we can understand how it is constructed and how it may be changed is the
key moment when one moves from a naïve, mythical view of the world to an
analytical understanding. Freire’s normative or ethical claim is that the social world
should not have ‘oppression’, i.e. any curtailment of freedom. The goal of a proper
social system should be maximum humanisation.
I first encountered Freire’s work as an undergraduate student in UCG in the
early 1980s. Its vision of humanisation both as the end of political activity and as the
criteria for determining the means by which political action is conducted seemed to
me particularly exciting. Here was an approach which combined political,
1 The pages numbers cited are from Freire, Paulo (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin Books.
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philosophical and cultural processes to achieve radical social change but refused to
subordinate means to ends. In my subsequent work with homeless people in the
Dublin Simon Community I glimpsed the value of Freire’s emphasis on reading
reality ‘from below’, i.e. from the perspective of the poor and oppressed, rather than
imposing theoretical frameworks of liberation on them. Many times I was rightly
rebuked by homeless people, travellers and prisoners for my earnest claims that I
could understand their reality. The intrinsic value of giving the poor and oppressed
their own voices, their own words, has I believe enormous modern potency and value.
Indeed, Freire’s work continues to challenge many of the orthodoxies of
contemporary social theory. I will make some remarks on this below and explore
whether his core ideas continue to have resonance and application by examining
aspects of the well-known conflict between Shell and a small, rural community in
North Mayo. But first, it may be of value to briefly outline the key ideas in Freire’s
text.
BRIEF ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT
Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a short book. Freire states that
This book will present some aspects of what the writer has termed the ‘pedagogy of the
oppressed’, a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (be they individuals
or whole peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity. This pedagogy makes
oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection will
come their necessary engagement in the struggle for their liberation. And in the struggle this
pedagogy will be made and remade. (25)
Freedom
The core problematic addressed in the first chapter is what it is to be human. Key to
this for Freire is freedom. Freedom is ‘… the indispensable condition for the quest for
human completeness’ (24). The struggle to be human begins in the struggle to be free.
One can detect in Freire’s work here a very strong influence from French
existentialism, especially ideas developed by Sartre regarding how the human subject
is made through one’s actions and choices. However, in the Latin American situation,
this question is posed in the context of empirical dehumanisation through poverty. In
every situation and conflict, the issue of humanisation is always at stake. In claiming
their humanity, the oppressed should not themselves become oppressors (21). This is a
risk because initially, in liberation, the oppressed are tempted to become like their
oppressors because this is their model for what it is to be human and free.
Crucial to beginning the process of liberation is the awareness of oppression.
Oppression is defined as
Any situation in which A objectively exploits B or hinders his pursuit of self-affirmation as a
responsible person is one of oppression (31).
Oppression interferes with man’s ontological and historical vocation to be more fully
human (31). Oppression is kept in place by fatalism – the belief that one’s social
condition is the result of destiny, fate, fortune, God’s will, magic, or myth. Self-
depreciation and feelings of worthlessness accentuate this passivity. What is required
to overcome this is a new liberating praxis – ‘reflection and action upon the world in
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order to transform it’ (28). This can happen when people realise that it is we who
produce our social reality. Thus we can change it.
The key to awakening awareness and liberation among the oppressed is
critical and liberating dialogue. This is a point of the utmost importance for Freire.
‘One must trust the oppressed and in their ability to reason (41). Action must be based
on pedagogy not propaganda. Simplistic programmes, slogans, political templates are
not of value. In fact, they can form part of the oppressive disempowerment of the
people.
Pedagogy
In the second chapter Freire turns his attention specifically to the education system
and models of pedagogy. He asserts that contemporary education has a narrative
character – it suffers from ‘narration sickness’ (45).
Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the
narrated content. Worse still, it turns them into ‘containers’, into receptacles to be filled by the
teacher. The more completely he fills the receptacles, the better a teacher he is. The more
meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are. (45)
In this style of ‘banking’ education there is a focus on memory, repetition, rote
learning. The objective is to turn men into automatons. ‘The educated man is the
adapted man, because he is “more fit” for the world’ (50). For this reason, banking
methods cannot be used for the purposes of liberation (52) because its objective is to
change the consciousness of the oppressed so they adapt to the situation of oppression
(47).
The alternative to this is ‘problem posing’ education engaged in through
dialogical relations. Dialogue is the critical method involving an engagement between
student-teacher and teacher-student. The goal of liberatory education is the end of the
teacher-student contradiction (46). The objective is to achieve critical cognition,
where the students are ‘critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher’ (54). The
consequence of ‘problem-posing education’ is
… men develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and
in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality
in process, in transformation. (56)
Banking education mythicises reality whereas problem-posing education de-
mythologises it (57). People come to realise that they can control social reality. In this
context, the subversive power of the question ‘why’ is revealed – ‘No oppressive
order could permit the oppressed to begin to question: Why?’ (59).
Dialogue
In Chapter Three Freire addresses his key concern with dialogue.
Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world … If
it is in speaking their word that men transform the world by naming it, dialogue imposes itself
as the way in which men achieve significance as men. Dialogue is thus an existential necessity.
(61)
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For Freire ‘To speak a true word is to transform the world’ (60). ‘To exist, humanly, is
to name the world, to change it’ (61). For dialogue to be genuine and possible there
must be love, faith, hope, humanity and trust. ‘To glorify democracy and to silence the
people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate man is a lie’ (64).
If I do not love the world – if I do not love life – if I do not love men – I cannot enter into
dialogue. (62)
The objective of the pedagogy of liberation is now revealed as ‘the dialogical
man’. No libertarian programme can be imposed – that would simply be a return to
banking. Instead, freedom is to be uncovered through the process of dialogue and
engagement with the people. Any failure to respect the view of the world held by the
people is ‘cultural invasion’ (68), a point further developed in the fourth chapter.
The purpose of this process is to allow one to see critically. ‘Conscientisation
is the deepening of the attitude of awareness characteristic of all emergence’ (81).
This method puts the student at the centre of the process.
Social change
Finally Freire outlines how radical social change can occur in situations of deep
oppression. His concern however is to outline a process not a programme. Revolution,
he asserts throughout, can only emerge from dialogue with the people. ‘Dialogue is a
fundamental precondition for their true humanisation’ (107). The characteristics of
anti-dialogical action carried out either by the oppressors or by would-be saviours of
the people include:
Conquest (a key method of which is by inculcating myths)
Divide and rule (which includes not just dividing the people but also dividing
up social problems and social perspectives by not seeing the connections
between issues)
Manipulation (one component of which is the false image of the people
inculcated in them from the oppressors)
Cultural invasion (by which the invaders ‘impose their own view of the world
upon those they invade and inhibit the creativity of the invaded by curbing
their expression’ (121)).
By contrast, dialogical action – the object of which is to get the oppressed to
transform unjust reality (141) – is characterised by:
Co-operation – ‘subjects meet in cooperation in order to transform the world’
(135)
Unity for liberation
Organisation
Cultural synthesis
CRITIQUE
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It is important, in the spirit of Freire’s work, to subject this account to an initial
critique. On the positive side, Freire confronts two dominant myths still prevalent in
contemporary western society. First, is the myth of the individual as a kind of free-
floating asocial being and second, that of the social world as static and ‘natural’, in
the sense that its present form is inevitable and obvious. These myths taken together
amount to a powerful ideological justification for a view of the world that posits
personal effort and endeavour as the key criteria for achieving material and social
success within a fixed and naturally constrained social world. The implication of this
is that the poor are poor because of personal failure on their part and the rich are so
because of personal virtues and talents. This view of the world, if internalised by the
poor, can become a key component of the passivity, fatalism and low self-value which
Freire identifies as inimical to their capacity to understand and change the world.
However, there may also be a number of reasonable objections to the universal
reach of Freire’s arguments that warrant acknowledgement. The first might be to
enquire whether, in the context particularly of European social democracy, the
categories of oppressed and oppressor are so clear. Might there be a dichotomisation
here not readily applicable outside of the poor Southern nations of the world? In this
context the only options may not be between oppression and revolution. A middle-
way may be possible. In addition, what happens if the people do not want revolution
but reform? Will this be dismissed as evidence of false consciousness on their part?
A second issue that may be raised is whether the ‘new man’ heralded and
lauded by Freire is possible outside of a religious or ethical framework? The
invocation to faith, hope and love made by Freire clearly ring of Christian moral
virtues rather than proletarian class consciousness. Once again, the foundation of
these ideas within a specifically Christian Latin America may hinder their easy
translation or application to societies whose religious and cultural ethos is non-
Christian or even non-religious. In addition, Freire may be accused of being utopian
in this regard. Will human beings really behave in this virtuous manner once material
deprivation has been overcome?
Finally, one may also question whether Freire’s pedagogical ideas themselves
can have universal application. Is his depiction of ‘banking’ education a fair
characterisation of contemporary pedagogical practice? New educational theories now
animate and inform practice in the Western world. In addition, a teaching
methodology of teacher-student dialogue may not always be appropriate for every
academic discipline and setting. One thinks of mathematics for example or many of
the natural sciences. In these instances the teacher is required to be didactic in order to
equip the student to understand and operationalise core concepts and tools. It may not
be fair to characterise such pedagogy as necessarily oppressive.
These critiques serve merely to temper a facile universal application of
Freire’s ideas. However, Freire was clear that his analysis and concepts grew out of a
specifically Latin American context where overt and extreme social deprivation was
the norm. Within this context, and within any context of oppression, it seems proper
to ask what type of education should be applied, what its purpose should be, and what
is the model of the human being implied by our pedagogical practice.
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IRISH APPLICATION
How inspirational or relevant has this text been within the Irish context? The general
principle might be that these ideas are most receptive to those who are objectively in a
state of oppression. One of the most notable applications of Freire’s methods in an
Irish setting occurred in January 1985 when returned Columban missionary John
O’Connell established an educational programme with twenty four traveller activists
in Dublin. O’Connell had worked in South America and was anxious to apply Freire’s
pedagogical ideas in Ireland. With others he established the Dublin Traveller
Education and Training Group in 19852 and set out to create Freirean-based
consciousness awareness groups. These were hugely successful and had a major
impact on traveller understanding of their social position and oppression in Irish
society. It is clear that this early Freirean programme was a decisive moment in
creating the modern traveller rights movement. Until this time, travellers were
characterised by attitudes of fatalism regarding their position, invoking ‘God’s will’ as
an explanatory framework for their disadvantage. The immediate effect of the
programme was to change this language. From then, traveller activists spoke of
oppression and characterised their campaigning as a struggle for liberation. As Martin
Collins said when addressing the opening session of the National Seminar of Traveller
Parents and Learners:
Education needs to be about liberating Travellers, not about domesticating them. True Education
will give Travellers the tools to challenge their oppression rather than teaching them how to
become acceptable in a settled world.
Collins has confirmed that Freirean concepts and language are now embedded into
traveller activists’ psyche and mode of understanding the world.
The impact of O’Connell’s work alerts us to the important role played by Irish
missionary and development workers as a conduit for Freire’s ideas into Ireland. Even
as a minor member of the Irish El Salvador Support Group in the late 1980s I well
remember the energising impact of people returning and visiting from Latin America.
Many of them were imbued with the concepts and value of cultural and pedagogical
action for freedom largely derived from Paulo Freire. Crucially, they brought with
them not merely theoretical frameworks and templates but lived experiences and
empirical verifications of this pedagogical approach.
Some of this energy was manifested in the founding of the Partners Training
for Transformation, a series of development education programmes which began in
1981. This initiative, instigated both by people working in Ireland and returned
development workers, set out to develop programmes for community education and
empowerment focused on drawing from people’s own experiences. It grounded its
approach specifically on the work of Freire. Apart from their direct involvement in
communities, the training manuals developed by the Partners further transmitted
Freirean ideas in Ireland.
2 This later became in 1995 Pavee Point.
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READING REALITY ‘FROM BELOW’
As a working sociologist in contemporary Ireland, teaching in a small rural campus in
the West of Ireland, Freire’s work continues to present me with a significant
challenge. Much current sociology and social theory, especially in its ‘post-modernist’
and ‘globalisation’ approaches, gives the appearance of theorising from on high.
Michael McCaughan, a correspondent of many years on Latin America for The Irish
Times, reminded me recently of the distinction drawn there between the ‘real world’
of the people and the ‘shadow world’ of the wealthy and ‘glamorous’. This latter
world – the realm of celebrity and media – can give the appearance of substantiality in
a culture where form dominates over substance such as is often the case in our own.
However, if we wish to correctly grasp the true reality of our interlinking
social worlds then we need to do sociology ‘from below’, i.e. a sociology from the
position of the poor. This involves a shift of perspective, moving from a new
epistemological and methodological platform. Thus, our new generating questions
become what does this society or world look like from the reality of the poor and how
do we judge this society from their perspective. The poor can then become a measure
of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ and can serve as the empirical judge of whether we
have truly achieved humanisation, freedom and justice for all. Their very reality (they
are, after all, the global majority) can puncture the illusory bubble within which is
contained our perceptions and errors about what is really going on in our world.
APPLICATION TO CORRIB GAS CONFLICT
Let me attempt to put this argument to the test by examining the conflict between a
small rural community in North Mayo on the one side and the Irish State and Shell Oil
on the other. Read ‘from above’ this is about a small group of recalcitrant malcontents
holding up progress and development for irrational and increasingly perverse reasons.
But seen ‘from below’ it is about a small community’s efforts to be the agent of its
own development, to be protected in the continuation of its indigenous forms of life
and not to be subjected to ‘cultural invasion’. While the community here has not
drawn explicitly on Freire’s work it is clear that for me, in attempting to understand
the dynamics of what is going on, Freire’s approach offers a crucial method by which
we might achieve understanding. Above all, examining this conflict through dialogue
with the community gives rise to the critical data from which to construct a sociology
‘from below’.
In addition, an examination of the conflict permits us to enquire whether his
pedagogical claims regarding the process of learning and liberation can be empirically
verified in a contemporary Irish campaign. Do ‘oppressed’ actors undergo the type of
developmental process suggested by Friere? If so, then Freire’s approach can still
serve as a potent resource for Irish social movement actors.
The conflict in North Mayo has arisen because of the proposal by a
consortium of oil and gas corporations, led by Shell, to situate a gas processing
refinery and associated high-pressure pipeline nine kilometres inland within a
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culturally and environmentally sensitive part of North Mayo. Initially, the proposal
was imbued with all of the most potent contemporary mythologies of progress,
development and wealth. Yet despite this, the local community soon mobilised to
resist the development. In understanding this process of resistance, I believe we can
utilise Freire’s key concepts of problematisation, conscientisation and dialogue to
analytically unravel what has occurred. In the spirit of Freire, and to avoid a deductive
theoretical analysis, I propose to largely rely on the direct words of local inhabitants
rather than my own commentary or analysis. This excavation and presentation of
people’s actual and articulated views breaches the culture of silence, restores people’s
voices to them and provides us with the empirical resources to construct a sociology
‘from below’. This serves to me as an important working methodology.
Problematisation of project
Initially, as a consequence of the twin perceptions that the area was economically
‘undeveloped’ but culturally and socially distinct, the community was uncertain and
ambivalent in its interpretation of the gas refinery development. On the one hand,
there was an immediate receptivity to the promise of development:
We need this here for our children and grandchildren. I want them to grow up around me.
We have nothing here. This is what we need. It will bring roads, jobs (Fieldnotes, Pollathomas,
Rossport, Ceathrú Taidgh, January to March, 2001).
On the other hand, there was a natural anxiety that the impact of the project
might change something fundamental and important about the area’s way of life –
social, economic and cultural. These opposed sets of concerns highlight an
ambivalence that ‘marginal’ societies may possess regarding ‘development’.
This results in the duality of the dependent society, its ambiguity, its being and not being itself,
and the ambivalence characteristic of its long experience of dependency, both attracted by and
rejecting the metropolitan society (Freire 1972: 59).
However, the key to local mobilisation against the project was the perception
that their locality was under threat from the company proposal.
Why I’m opposed? One – the people. Two – the scenery. I mean health, especially the children
(Interview, local resident, Ceathrú Taidgh, March 2001).
It’s the health issue really that has got people together. There are over 700 signatures in the area
gathered. People don’t realise how big this is (interview, local resident, Ceathrú Taidgh, March
2001).
We saw things [in the Environmental Impact Statement] like mercury and nitrogen oxide and
things like this until the sweat broke through (resident on Mid-West Radio, June 2001).
If the proposal to dump wastewater into the sea goes ahead it could sound the death knell for
inshore fishing (interview, Rossport, April 2001).
I cannot understand why anyone would want to spoil an area as beautiful as this (fieldnotes,
Glengad, June 2002).
In order to further trace the process of problematisation, the following citations
are drawn from the text The Rossport Five: Our Story. These are recorded interviews
with five local men and their wives. The five men were imprisoned for 94 days in
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2005 for breaching a court order which had forbidden them from preventing Shell
laying the high-pressure pipeline.
At first we were naïve. You wouldn’t take a lot of notice of those things. We heard that there
was gas found and it was coming in to Erris or Mayo somewhere. (Corduff, W in Garavan 2006:
19).
The parish priest in particular was the first to be talking about it. He announced it from the altar.
He gave the impression to the people that your poverty is over … They were used big time and
they were told that whatever was going to be needed in the area this was going to be the answer
to it. I’d say that’s what really happened. The people heard the parish priest announcing this
from the altar, that poverty was over. You just take it that if you were in poverty for thirty or
forty years, struggling to live, with hard work, and you have nothing, and to hear the parish
priest coming to the altar saying this is it, it’s over. The benefits that were going to be from it
were going to be unreal (Corduff, W ibid: 20).
What worried me all the time was that there was nobody asking questions. There were no
questions. ‘We were going to be rich. The schools will be full of kids’. But there were no
questions being asked about the project or the dangers or the chimneys. That worried me
(Seighin, C. ibid: 65).
I don’t know what got into us, to give us the confidence to stand up. It’s hard to pinpoint it. I
saw harm in it from the word go. I don’t know was it the fear of gas. I don’t know if it was
something like that that made us fear it. I think it was the One Voice for Erris3 that sparked us
off. We felt that these people were trying to downgrade us. They felt that we know nothing. You
looked at yourself and you’d say well I have to look at my end of the story. We figured where
are the benefits as such. We were being told that there was going to be good. But when you
asked the questions you wouldn’t be answered. You kind of know when there are people
beginning to pull the wool over your eyes. That’s one thing I cannot stand for. You have to be
straight and clean with somebody. You could see what was going on there. Also, it probably was
the love of the land and the love of the place. We loved the place so much and we were both
from the area (Corduff, W. ibid: 26-7).
Conscientisation
This extraordinary problematisation of the project was rapidly followed by a
deepening conscientisation of many within the local community. This occurred as a
direct result of their own ongoing experiences of interacting with Shell and various
organs of the State, and their engagement and exchanges with many outside actors
involved in similar disputes worldwide. A particularly close identification was made
with the Ogoni experience in the Niger Delta.
For Freire, the process of problematisation arises when human subjects no
longer perceive events or projects to be inevitable, certain or inherently ‘good’ (as part
of a ‘mythologisation of reality’), but rather begin to reframe them as issues
warranting critique and examination. Problematisation involves a form of
phenomenological enquiry.
That which had existed objectively but had not been perceived in its deeper implications (if
indeed it was perceived at all) begins to ‘stand out’, assuming the character of a problem and
therefore as challenge. Thus, men begin to single out elements from their ‘background
awarenesses’ and to reflect upon them. These elements are now objects of men’s consideration,
and, as such, objects of their action and cognition (Freire 1972: 56).
3 One Voice for Erris was a pro-project support group initially established by the local parish priest. It
disbanded in due course due to a loss of local support.
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It is possible to discern in this campaign a cognitive progression among the
protest actors from an initial reaction to the gas proposal, towards an affirmation of a
particular set of values, such as sustainability and solidarity, suggested to be
exemplified in the local community. The project came to be seen, to employ Freire’s
phrase once more, as a ‘cultural invasion’ and was resisted accordingly.
It was hard to accept that our government was willing to let this happen. You’d feel that the
government should be there to protect the citizens and they weren’t doing it. They were helping
out a multi-national oil and gas company above ordinary Irish citizens. It’s hard to accept that
kind of thing. You’d feel like you shouldn’t really have to put up a fight. We weren’t only
fighting the gas company we were fighting the government and even lower levels of the State
such as the county council. (Corduff, M. ibid: 31-2).
Many of the people here were not used to challenging authority. First, there were the teachers in
school. For the older generation you didn’t question such people. A lot of people here were
unemployed and depending on a social welfare officer. There was a fear of authority (McGrath,
M. ibid: 180).
It opened my eyes [being in prison]. I never will forget it. We didn’t know that that kind of thing
was happening. I mean we’d get up in the morning at home and do our jobs and you wouldn’t
think of anything like that. Ever since prison it never leaves my mind. I had family myself, I had
sons at the age of those lads in there, and I thought they belonged to some father and mother too.
Society had let them down. They had nothing to do but steal. Putting them in jail wasn’t going
to correct them. It was going to ruin them. That’s what I felt. If they were put somewhere where
they could do something and be given some training. The majority of them were okay, they just
needed someone to direct them (Corduff, W. ibid: 47).
It has made us aware of the wealth that’s out there off our coast. All that’s going to be done for
us is that we’re going to be used for access and then it will be sent off to benefit other countries.
Even Norway is getting a percentage of this. We can’t gain one cent from it. You just wonder
what kind of mind-frame would be on someone to give that kind of gift away. I know the Irish
were always classed as a generous people and friendly and easy going but there’s a limit to
friendship! You can’t give everything away for nothing (Corduff, M. ibid: 58).
I could say honestly that I regretted having wasted my time contributing all my life to this awful
system, to this denial, to this con democracy, this cod democracy, that was being administered
by cod civil servants, cod public servants. Because that is all I could call them. I mean
contributing both as a teacher and even in just living here. In a way I had wasted forty years
functioning in an environment that I found out didn’t exist (O’Seighin, M. ibid: 75).
I feel let down by the system, let down by our politicians, let down by our county councillors.
We were reared as children to obey the law and we did the same with our own children. And all
of a sudden you feel you’re out on your own, you’ve elected those people to look after us, and
all of a sudden they’re not looking after us (Seighin, C. ibid: 75).
Our attachment to place comes into it too. According as we were going on bit by bit and
learning more it was obvious that it was the end of the place as somewhere to which the next
generation could return whether visiting or otherwise. This was the end of it. It wasn’t just a
matter of new industry coming in – that alone is no problem – but that it would be the end of
millennia of culture. For us, the cultural aspect was very simple. When people talk about culture
it’s a page in the Times that no one reads or the Sunday newspaper. But for us it’s a different
thing, it’s all of living, everyday survival (O’Seighin, M. ibid: 78).
I think the conclusion is that it is it is a banana republic at the end of the day. You saw that
especially when the men were sent into prison. You don’t know the sinking feeling I’ve had for
the last six years about this country that had been fought and died for. It would leave you now
lifeless almost. I loved history when I was going to school and I was nearly out there fighting
the battles. And then to see what has happened! We were told for as long as I remember that
there’s nothing in Erris, there’s nothing in Mayo. But now there’s billions of euros worth of oil
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and gas just a couple of miles there off our shores here. And we’re not going to benefit one bit
except for a couple of jobs. They would take it and walk on us and take it through Erris and
through Mayo without gain for the country or Erris or Mayo except that they will destroy this
area. And whoever would live to see the day in thirty or forty years time there will be nobody
living along Sruhwaddoccon and that area. If this happens and the big pipe goes in and the
terminal in Ballinaboy, people will not be there. Number one, they won’t get planning
permission anyway for their house and two, they wouldn’t want to live there. As a parent I
wouldn’t want to see my children building a house along Sruhwaddoccon or Glengad. This is
not the country I thought it was. It’s an awful shock and shattering experience. Life is gone from
us (Seighin, C. ibid: 79).
What type of Ireland do we want? This is why people of so many different political ideologies
are very comfortable in this campaign. Because what it’s dealing with is the context – the
context is the big thing, the important thing, what should be the important thing, for everyone.
And the context is what kind of Ireland do we want? What kind of Ireland do we want for the
people after us, what kind of Ireland do we want to leave? Do we want to leave it to a new
landlord grouping that the next generation or the generation after that are going to have to get
rid of? Do we want to leave a legacy after us that can only be solved by violence? To me this is
all about context. The people realise that the politicians will have to come back and function
within a context that’s real. And the context is what kind of Ireland do we want and not what
kind of Ireland is most convenient for making money at a particular time. It’s not awfully
relevant whether it’s for multinationals or for Irish companies (O’Seighin, M. ibid: 95).
One result of our experience is that I look differently on people elsewhere who are fighting for
causes. Before I wouldn’t have taken any notice really. All we can do now though is offer our
support (McGrath, P. ibid: 131-2).
But in our case neither the Government nor the oil companies could buy our dignity nor could
they buy our freedom (McGrath, V. ibid: 208).
We don’t trust any of the authorities to monitor them on our behalf. The bottom line is we trust
ourselves to protect our environment and to protect ourselves. We are the people who live here.
It makes sense that we are the ones who have the interest of our environment at heart. This is
where we live and where we want to live and live safely. There is no chance now of Shell
coming in here at all. This whole experience has reinforced my belief that the Irish people have
a sense of justice and that they will stand up for what is right and that they will not be pushed
against their will. People aren’t going to go to jail lightly. People don’t just go to jail without
good reason. They do so only when they feel strongly and when the law and the authorities have
failed them. It’s up to the government and the State and the authorities to listen to those people
and to take their concerns into account. I think people will assert their dignity and their rights
more and more and I think the governments will have no choice but to listen. I think that’s the
big lesson. The rural community here has been radicalised, particularly those people who
always voted Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael and who are now saying that they will not vote for them
again. Another thing is that the women have been politicised. Women may be slow to get
involved in social and political campaigns but when they do they won’t let their bone go with
any dog. And maybe they’re slower to compromise as well (McGrath, V. ibid: 206-7).
Dialogue – Anti-dialogue
One of the most overwhelming characteristics of the Corrib gas conflict has been the
consistent refusal by Shell or the State to enter into meaningful dialogue with the local
community (Garavan 2008). Local concerns were stereotyped, misrepresented or
ignored. The refusal to dialogue, and the capacity to proceed in the absence of
dialogue, indicates the existence, and exercise, of power (cf. Haugaard 1997). The gas
project was to be determined through a series of ‘objective’ tests managed by various
administrative bodies and could proceed accordingly if judged appropriate by these
tests, irrespective of community consent. In this way, through the application of a
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series of procedural mechanisms, popular dissent and resistance to the project were
controlled and rendered, in appearance at least, unreasonable.
The capacity to establish the conventions under which communication
between citizens and decision-making bodies can occur is a key contemporary form of
power. It is conventions (often legislatively set) that determine the test of relevancy
adopted by decision-making or policy-making bodies. In the gas refinery conflict,
questions of health, for example, were strictly speaking irrelevant for all the
administrative bodies involved, and could not become relevant for any of them even
though it was of central concern to the local community. Therefore, by determining
that certain topics and concerns are irrelevant (i.e. outside the scope of consideration),
the actors raising them are rendered silent. In this way, the empirical plurality of
views on development projects, and dissenting views particularly, can, through the
application of a pre-determined method, be excluded from consideration (cf. Peace
1993, Taylor 2001).
In addition, the gas developer consciously chose not to engage in open, public
dialogue.
On the whole, we felt that the public meeting forum was not working as not everyone had the
opportunity to give their view in such a large forum. Therefore, we began a process of meeting
with smaller groups who shared similar concerns. In this way, it is possible to talk to everyone
and everyone has the chance to give their view. We feel this has worked much better and we are
still in discussion with locals in the area in this way (email to the author, 29.06.01)
These claims of widespread consultation were judged as farfetched and highly
implausible by local residents. However, this reply presents a rationale for limiting the
structure of consultation to small-scale, private encounters rather than open, public
meetings. Many local activists perceived this strategy to be one of ‘divide and
conquer’. Furthermore, by not engaging in public discussion, the true state of
collective public concern could not be brought to bear on the corporation.
When you see someone starting to bully you to get something that really gets to you. If
somebody wanted something off me and they go to bully me I’d just stick my heels in. You
don’t act that way. There’s something wrong then at that stage when you ask questions and no
answers but you get ‘we’re going to do it anyway.’ When we did start keeping them off the land,
the Shell man told me ‘look it, we’ll get it there anyway, regardless of what you’re going to do’.
That really gave you strength (Corduff, W. ibid: 31).
They never wanted to meet those who weren’t in favour (Seighin, C. ibid: 72).
Because the pipeline wasn’t going through our land Enterprise Energy Ireland (they sold to
Shell in 2002) didn’t require our consent. They had been speaking to other landowners but they
hadn’t come near us. It angered me though because we learned later how dangerous the gas was
and here we were the closest to the pipeline route and yet we were being completely ignored. As
far as they were concerned we didn’t matter. That still seems to be their position today. In their
public pronouncements they talk about engaging with the local community and consulting with
stakeholders but if they don’t have to deal with you they just ignore you. A stakeholder is
somebody affected by a project but the Company’s definition appears to be somebody who
helps them to get the project through. At least that’s how they have acted. But here we were, the
local residents, closest to the pipeline, the people who would be in most danger if an accident
happened and yet they ignored us. The only information we ever got directly was in February
2005 when they were about to start laying the pipeline in front of our house. They informed us
then by letter about the noise levels we would experience. That was it. Fait accompli. If you
don’t wish, they said, there will be no work on Sunday. Alleluia! … That was the whole
approach – a fait accompli. It’s coming in anyway. Everything they did came from this idea they
had planted in the public mind. Even Frank Fahey, the Minister for Marine and Natural
13

Resources and the man who gave the go-ahead to the Plan of Development, said in the Dáil that
the people of Erris were entitled to object but they couldn’t hold up the project. That was the
message that was going out, the psychological message. We’ll take on board your concerns but
the project is going ahead as planned. You cannot do anything about it. It’s too important. The
interests pushing it are too powerful. You’re only a little guy. That’s it (McGrath, V. ibid: 164-5).
We were never consulted about the route. There was not a word. It was as if we didn’t exist. On
one occasion their local rep visited the house but I realised later that it was probably to see how
near we were to the route. I remember during the 2002 election Fianna Fáil canvassers called
and remarked on how we had a lovely view. I said to them what about that Terminal. They said,
“oh, we won’t talk about that”. They said that it would be coming in anyway (McGrath, M. ibid:
164-5).
CONCLUSION
While community activists in North Mayo did not consciously deploy Freire’s ideas to
their campaign, nonetheless I think it evident that the Freirean framework does help
us to understand the process of consciousness-raising that can unfold within
oppressed communities thereby showing how Freire’s text remains a viable and
relevant resource for social movement activists and theorists. Their eight years of
meetings and internal dialogue amounted to an extraordinary exercise in
problematisation and conscientisation. While they may not have consciously deployed
these concepts to describe their experiences, or explicitly drawn on Freire’s work, it is
clear to me that the process undergone by the community activists exemplify in an
extraordinary manner the fundamental insights and concerns of Freire. Whether it be
travellers or vulnerable communities, it is in the awareness of oppression that a
pedagogy of the oppressed can be formed and practiced. In this specific sense at least,
Freire’s book retains a significance and vitality for progressive social movements. His
work serves both as a method to change awareness, as has been the case with Irish
travellers, and as a tool to analyse and illustrate the process of awareness itself.
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REFERENCES
Freire, Paulo (1972), Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Garavan, Mark (2008) Problems in Achieving Dialogue: Cultural Misunderstandings
in the Corrib Gas Dispute, pp. 65-92, in Ricca Edmondson and Henrike Rau
(eds) Environmental Argument and Cultural Difference – Locations, Fractures
and Deliberations. Bern: Peter Lang AG.
(2006) ed. The Rossport Five: Our Story. Dublin: Small World Media.
Haugaard, Mark (1997), The Constitution of Power – A theoretical analysis of power,
knowledge and structure. Manchester and New York: Manchester University
Press.
Peace, Adrian (1993), Environmental protest, bureaucratic closure – the politics of
discourse in rural Ireland, in Kay Milton (ed). Environmentalism – The View
from Anthropology. London and New York: Routledge.
Taylor, George (2001), Conserving the Emerald Tiger – The politics of environmental
regulation in Ireland. Galway: Arlen House.
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