Constituting neoliberal subjects? ‘Aspiration’ as technology of the self in UK policy discourse

Author(s):

Konstanze Spohrer(presenting / submitting)Garth Stahl Tamsin Bowers-Brown

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

28. Sociologies of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

28 SES 07, Constituting Subjectivities in Contemporary Worlds of Education

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-24

17:15-18:45

Room:

NM-B101

Chair:

Eric Mangez

Contribution

In UK policy discourse, there has been much debate regarding the formation and representation of young people’s educational and occupational ‘aspirations’. Since the 2000s, successive governments have mobilised the idea of ‘raising’ aspiration as a simple and straight-forward solution to growing economic and social inequality - a phenomenon that has been criticised by social theorists for responsibilising individuals and concealing structural inequalities. The tendency to render the individual the sole author of their life chances can be observed in other European countries, manifest in strategies of ‘activation’ and ‘employability’ (Spohrer, 2011)

Based on an analysis of UK policy documents between 2003 and 2012, this paper examines to what extent strategies of ‘raising aspiration’ can be seen as indicative of a neoliberal mode of governance, with a particular focus on young people’s subjectivities. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Nicholas Rose, the paper starts from the assumption that the ideal neo-liberal subject is an “entrepreneur of the self’ who considers herself or himself and her/his future as a project that requires work and investment – a subject that is ‘active and docile’ (Fejes & Nicoll, 2015, p. 14). Neo-liberal governance is thus characterised by a shift towards governing individuals ‘from within’ (Cruikshank, 1996) through their choices, hopes and aspirations (Rose, 1996).

In this paper, we seek to further illuminate how ‘aspiration’ can be understood as a “site of neoliberal governmentality” (Sellar, 2013). For this purpose, we mobilise Foucault’s work on ‘governmentality’ and ‘ethics’ in order to analyse how the call for ‘self-governance’ plays out in political strategies to raise young people’s aspirations, taking the UK context as an example. Seeking to go beyond Foucault, we analyse how these strategies are imbued with classed – as well as gendered and racialised – notions of the ideal citizen-subject. In particular, we show how young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds are enticed to apply particular ‘technologies of the self’ in order to transform themselves into successful and worthy subjects.

Method

The data used in this paper were collected in the context of a project which examined the construction of ‘aspiration’ in UK policy documents between 1997 and 2012. For this paper, the data was re-analysed drawing on Michel Foucault’s work on ‘ethics’ (Foucault, 2000). The following four dimensions of ‘ethics’ distinguished by Foucault were used as ‘sensitising concepts’: 1) ‘ethical substance’, ‘the part of ourselves or our behaviour, which is relevant for ethical judgement’; 2) the ‘mode of subjectivation’, ‘the way in which people are invited or incited to recognize their moral obligations’; 3) ‘technologies of the self’, ‘the means by which we can change ourselves in order to become ethical subjects’ or the ‘self-forming activity’ and 4) ‘telos’, ‘the kind of being to which we aspire’ aims at which the self-work is directed towards (ibid., p. 263-265). Applying these lenses, the analysis sought to draw out how young people are portrayed in policy documents, what aspects of themselves they are expected to work upon by what means and towards what kinds of goals.

Expected Outcomes

The policy documents portray young people form socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds as both ‘deficient’ and as having ‘potential’. In doing so, they position young people both in passive terms as ‘products’ of their social environments and as active agents who have the possibility, or, more precisely, the duty to transform themselves into ‘successful’ subjects. Resonating with the neo-liberal figure of the ‘entrepreneur of the self’, young people are expected to work on their ‘inner selves’, most notably by developing their attitudinal and motivational dispositions. As the analysis shows, this is expressed more prominently through an incitement to ‘mobility’: being geographically, socially and intellectually mobile is presented as both a means (a ‘technology’) and an end (‘telos’). This call for mobility not only reflects the neo-liberal call for self-management and -improvement, but is tied up with a particular middle-class notion of the ideal citizen subject and can thus be seen as normalising certain ‘ways of being’ and ‘doing’ and limiting young people’s possibilities to understand themselves as valuable subjects. It is argued that by promoting individualistic notions of self-advancement, success and material reward, ‘raising aspiration’ strategies as enacted in UK policy proliferate a narrow conception of human ‘aspiration’. Furthermore, they risk perpetuating the ‘cruel optimism’ (Berlant, 2011) of keeping people in their place by promoting an unachievable fantasy of the ‘good life’ (Stahl, 2012).

References

Berlant, L.G. (2011). Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke University Press. Cruikshank, B. (1996). Revolutions from within: self-government and self-esteem. In A. Barry, T. Osborne & N. Rose (Eds.), Foucault and political reason (pp. 231-251). London: Routledge Fejes, A. and Nicolls, K (2015) An emergence of confession in education. In Fejes, A. and Nicolls (Eds.) Foucault and a politics of confession in education. London: Routledge (pp. 3-18). Foucault, M. (2000). On the genealogy of ethics. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Michel Focault. Ethics (pp. 253-280). London: Penguin. Foucault, M., Martin, L. H., Gutman, H., & Hutton, P. H. (1988). Technologies of the self : A seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Rose, N. S. 1996. Inventing Our Selves. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Sellar, S. (2013) Equity, markets and the politics of aspiration in Australian higher education, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34:2, 245-258 Spohrer, K. (2011). Deconstructing ‘aspiration’: UK policy debates and European policy trends. European Educational Research Journal, 10(1), 53–63. doi:10.2304/eerj.2011.10.1.53 Stahl, G., 2012. "Aspiration and a Good Life among White Working-Class Boys in London." Journal of Qualitative and Ethnographic Research 7(1): 8-19.

Author Information

Konstanze Spohrer (presenting / submitting)

Liverpool Hope University

Education Studies

Liverpool

Garth Stahl

University of South Australia, Australia

Tamsin Bowers-Brown

Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom

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