Conduct3: Policy, Spectacle, and Governmentuity
Author(s):
Donald Gillies (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2012
Network:
23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

23 SES 05 C, Discourse and Regulation

Parallel Paper Session

Time:
2012-09-19
11:00-12:30
Room:
FFL - Aula 31
Chair:
Karen Andreasen

Contribution

This is a conceptual paper which draws on the work of Michel Foucault and of Murray Edelman as a means of understanding the modern governmental management of education policy, including such aspects as its uses of, and engagement with, research evidence, narrative, number, media, and presentation.

The paper seeks to explore the way in which education policy is typically packaged nowadays in respect of several key features:

·         the ways in which research evidence is adduced

·         the ways in which narrative is constructed

·         the ways in which number is utilised

·         the attention to media requirements

·         the management of policy and policy promotion

 

The paper fuses the work of Michel Foucault on governmentality with the work of Murray Edelman on policy as spectacle. The paper thus explores the extent to which a focus on policy management and policy perception can be seen to represent a rationality of rule in itself, where symbolic political advantage is seen to outweigh issues around policy content and policy purposes.

Method

Foucault presents a number of definitions of government in his work: ‘the right disposition of things, arranged so as to lead to a convenient end’(1991); ‘techniques and procedures for directing human behaviour’ (2000a); the ‘conduct of conduct…to structure the possible field of action of others’ (2002). Edelman (1985, 1988) stresses the importance of politics as a spectacle and the centrality of language as constituting political reality. In this paper, the key political issue of perception management is highlighted, fusing Edelman’s and Foucault’s positions, so that the management of policy, the conduct of the conduct of conduct - hence, conduct3 (Gillies, 2008) - becomes the political priority. Elsewhere, Foucault, in discussing governmentality – mentalities of rule – states that ‘any rationalisation of the exercise of government aims at maximising its effects while diminishing, as far as possible, its cost (understood in the political as well as the economic sense)’ (2000b, 74). In unpicking conduct3, therefore, one can see that its preoccupation is with the presentation of policy and government action in such a way as to publicise its (reputed) effects while burying its costs.

Expected Outcomes

Foucault's framework and Edelman's focus can be linked together in this form of policy analysis to explore how policy effects are presented so as to be made politically visible, while costs are made politically invisible. One of the purposes of such perception management is the continued presentation of policy and government activity in a positive light, so as to retain and increase its democratic support, and so secure continued power: governmentuity (government in continuity or, indeed, in perpetuity). By focusing on conduct3 as means and governmentuity as ends, these different aspects of government can be seen to be operationalized in a specific way, but all of this is within the context of liberal governmentality, because of the focus on popular suffrage and democratic support, although the actual processes can be seen to be illiberal and manipulative (with clear links to Machiavelli’s sovereignty). The paper suggests that this represents one perspective from which to analyse policy and policy management but that other insights from different perspectives need also be acknowledged to avoid a purely cynical and nihilistic analysis of policy and its ends.

References

Edelman,M. (1985). The symbolic uses of politics. Urbana/Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Edelman, M. (1988). Constructing the political spectacle. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1991) Governmentality. In G.Burchell, C.Gordon, & P.Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect (pp. 87–104). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (2000a). On the government of the living. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Michel Foucault, Ethics (pp. 81–85). London: Penguin Books. Foucault, M. (2000b). The birth of bio-politics. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Michel Foucault, Ethics (pp. 73–79). London: Penguin Books. Foucault, M. (2002). Omnes et singulatim: toward a critique of political reason. In J. Faubion (Ed.), Michel Foucault, Power (pp. 298–325). London: Penguin Books. Gillies, D. (2008). Developing governmentality: conduct3 and education policy. Journal of Education Policy, 23(4), 415-427.

Author Information

Donald Gillies (presenting / submitting)
York St John University, United Kingdom

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