Order, Power, Space: an Integrative Lens for Studying the Transformation of School Education in Wartime

Abstract

This article presents an integrated theoretical framework for the sociological analysis of the transformation of the order of school education amid the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war, using the example of Kharkiv’s underground (metro)schools. It emphasizes that the sociology of education has theorized the school mainly under conditions of stability, whereas the order of education and its transformation have rarely become an object of analysis in their own right. The article addresses neither the humanitarian consequences of the war for schooling nor the scale of learning loss, but the question of what happens to the order of schooling when its participants, its location and its security regime all change. Answering that question, it is argued, requires a theoretical instrument of its own, which the article sets out to build. The author justifies the use of a modal rather than a substantive definition of order as the structured probability of establishing connections. The paper advocates the application of three theoretical perspectives to the analysis of the social order of an underground school: Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory (the question of «what» is transformed), Michel Foucault’s analysis of power (the question of «how» power operates), and Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space (the question of «where», in which space). The focus is on the principle of non-eclectic integration of these theoretical approaches, at the intersection of which the study of the social order of the underground (metro) school takes place. The ontological tension between N. Luhmann’s «communication without a subject» and M. Foucault’s «power that produces the subject» is examined. The central idea of the article is formulated: what appears to be a return to the prewar school is in fact the production of a new order «clothed in the old». The author presents his interpretation of the concept of «biopolitics of preservation», which emphasizes the protection of life in the context of a defensive war. Possible directions for further research on the selected problem are identified and hypotheses for these research are proposed.