Session Information
23 SES 10 A, Market Ideas and Practices II
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper aims to analyse and discuss the potential implications and relevancies of recent student protests in different European countries. The presenters will deliberate about shared sentiments and experiences (e.g. problems in relation to the lack of choices in public education due to the imposition of the Bologna process, implications of increasing 'marketization' e.g. the 'logic of confidence' (Levin 2001: 29) as well as the importance given to 'image' (Ball 1994), performativity and fostered ‘entrepreneur-culture’, etc. ) and problematize the context of ‘marketization’ in its relation to public education, the moulding of ‘subjectivities’ and wider societal and cultural mores. This paper will contest the prescribed 'common sense' of the 'marketization of public education and critically explore the consequences of the commodification of education and ‘careers’ (e.g. institutional and personal commodification, branding and alienation).
Neoliberal global capitalism is presented as 'natural' - the only realistic means of attaining social wellbeing and prosperity for all. The parallel myth of inevitability further suggests that the nation state can no longer be expected to protect the wellbeing of its citizens, and individuals and families must now rely on the market of and civil society for their welfare and security. This presentation will contest and challenge the assumptions behind these claims and 'offer strategies against neoliberalism's "forced normality"' (McLaren; in: Hill 2009: xv). The parallel re-positioning of the educational-explorative realm to a vocational market-confinement that has already impacted quite heavily on the educational sector in England and Wales (Beckmann and Cooper 2005; Beckmann, Cooper and Hill, 2009) is now in danger of being imposed on a European wide scale, however, the strength and wide spread of the European students’ protests illustrated that resistance to this ideology is gathering pace and involves not only students and academics but reaches wider parts of our societies. The students and other groups in their support exerted their resistance actively and these events should seen as stimulators for cross-cultural debates, an urgent invitation to exchange ideas and experiences of the impact of neo-liberalism on educational 'life worlds' as well as for a radical democratization of all areas of life and a turn against a sole for-profit orientation (Educational Strike 2009) (http://www.emancipating-education-for-all.org/content/bildungsstreik)
This paper seeks to demonstrate the need for a process of public, intellectual and intercultural exchange of ideas of education and educational institutions away from merely rationalistic, one-dimensional and profit-orientated ambitions towards multicultural exchanges about meanings and purposes of such important socio-cultural and political institutions and processes that shape ‘subjectivities’ and inter-subjectivities. The presenters of this paper suggest that the experiences gained in England and Wales as well as in other neo-liberalised societies allow for an evaluation of how the ways in which ‘education’ and ‘educated subjects’ are constituted will have profound implications beyond the educational realm in terms of the future of a shared European socio-cultural and political realm.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Ball, S.J. (1994) “Education Reform” OUP, Buckingham Beckmann, A., Cooper, C., and Hill, D. (2009) Neoliberalization and managerialization of 'education' in England and Wales - a case for reconstructing education. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 7(2). Online at http://www.jceps.com/index.php?pageID=article&articleID=170 Education strike 2009 http://www.emancipating-education-for-all.org/content/bildungsstreik Edwards, G. (2008) ‘The ‘Lifeworld’ as a resource for Social Movement Participation and the Consequences of its Colonization’; in: “Sociology” (2008) Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 299- 316 Foucault, Michael (1977) “ Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison”, London: Allen Lane Foucault, Michael (1982). ‘Afterword: the subject and power’;in: Dreyfus, H.F. & Rainbow, P. (eds.)(1982) “Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics”, Brighton: Harvester Press. Foucault, Michael (1991). Governmentality’; in: Burchell, G., Gordon, C. & Miller, P. (eds.) (1991) “The Foucault Effect. Studies in Governmentality with Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault” London: Harverster Wheatsheaf. Giroux, H. A. (1992) “Border crossings: Cultural workers and the politics of education” New York: Routledge Hill, D. (2004) Books, Banks and Bullets: Controlling our minds- the global project of Imperialistic and militaristic neo-liberalism and its effect on education policy. Policy Futures in Education, 2, 3-4, pp. 504-522 (Theme: Marxist Futures in Education). http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=pfie&vol=2&issue=3&year=2004&article=6_Hill_PFIE_2_3-4_web&id=81.158.104.245 Hill, D. (ed.) (2009) Contesting Neoliberal Education: Public Resistance and Collective Advance. London: New York: Routledge Kincheloe, J. L. 'Issues of power, questions of purpose'; in: Kincheloe, J.L. (ed.)(2005) "Classroom Teaching: An Introduction" Peter Lang, New York Lair, D.J., Sullivan, K. and Cheney, G. (2005) ‘Marketization and the recasting of the Professional Self: The Rhetoric and Ethics of Personal Branding’; in: “Management Communication Quarterly” (2005), 18, pp. 307-343 McLaren, P. (ed.) 2006 “Rage + Hope”, Peter Lang, New York Rhoads, R.A. and Torres, C.A. (2006) The University, State, and Market, Stanford University Press, Stanford USA
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