an article by Michelle Peterie and Greg Marston (University of Queensland, Australia), Gaby Ramia (University of Sydney, Australia) and Roger Patulny (University of Wollongong, Australia) published in Work, Employment and Society Volume 33 Issue 5 (October 2019)
Abstract
Contemporary governments employ a range of policy tools to ‘activate’ the unemployed to look for work.
Framing unemployment as a consequence of personal shortcoming, these policies incentivise the unemployed to become ‘productive’ members of society. While Foucault’s governmentality framework has been used to foreground the operation of power within these policies, ‘job-seeker’ resistance has received less attention. In particular, forms of emotional resistance have rarely been studied.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with 80 unemployed welfare recipients in Australia, this article shows that many unemployed people internalise activation’s discourses of personal failure, experiencing shame and worthlessness as a result.
It also reveals, however, that a significant minority reject this framing and the ‘feeling rules’ it implies, expressing not shame but anger regarding their circumstances. Bringing together insights from resistance studies and the sociology of emotions, this article argues that ‘job-seeker’ anger should be recognised as an important form of ‘everyday resistance’.
Showing posts with label governmentality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label governmentality. Show all posts
Saturday, 12 October 2019
Saturday, 17 March 2018
Constituting neoliberal subjects? ‘Aspiration’ as technology of government in UK policy discourse
an article by Konstanze Spohrer (Liverpool Hope University, UK), Garth Stahl (University of South Australia, Adelaide) and Tamsin Bowers-Brown (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) published in Journal of Education Policy Volume 33 Issue 3 (2018)
Abstract
Since the 2000s, successive governments in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have embraced the idea of ‘raising aspiration’ among young people as a solution to persisting educational and socio-economic inequalities.
Previous analyses have argued that these policies tend to individualise structural disadvantage and promote a ‘deficit’ view of working-class youth.
This paper adopts a novel approach to analysing aspiration discourses combining Michel Foucault’s four dimensions of ‘ethics’ and Mitchell Dean’s notion of ‘formation of identities’. Applying Foucault’s and Dean’s work in this way provides a new lens that enables an examination of how policy encourages particular forms of subjectivation, and, therefore, seeks to govern individuals.
The findings presented in the paper complicate previous research by showing that raising aspiration strategies portray disadvantaged youth both in terms of ‘deficit’ and ‘potential’, resulting in a requirement for inner transformation and mobility through attitudinal change.
The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for the identity formation of young people and for conceptualising contemporary forms of governmentality.
Abstract
Since the 2000s, successive governments in the United Kingdom and elsewhere have embraced the idea of ‘raising aspiration’ among young people as a solution to persisting educational and socio-economic inequalities.
Previous analyses have argued that these policies tend to individualise structural disadvantage and promote a ‘deficit’ view of working-class youth.
This paper adopts a novel approach to analysing aspiration discourses combining Michel Foucault’s four dimensions of ‘ethics’ and Mitchell Dean’s notion of ‘formation of identities’. Applying Foucault’s and Dean’s work in this way provides a new lens that enables an examination of how policy encourages particular forms of subjectivation, and, therefore, seeks to govern individuals.
The findings presented in the paper complicate previous research by showing that raising aspiration strategies portray disadvantaged youth both in terms of ‘deficit’ and ‘potential’, resulting in a requirement for inner transformation and mobility through attitudinal change.
The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for the identity formation of young people and for conceptualising contemporary forms of governmentality.
Monday, 20 March 2017
The moral frontiers of English education policy: governmentality and ethics within an alternative provision free school
an article by Francis Farrell, Vicky Duckworth, Monika Reece and Philip Rigby (Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK) published in Educational Review Volume 69 Issue 3 (2017)
Abstract
This article is a critical poststructuralist analysis of Conservative led free school policy in England focusing on claims made by the New Schools Network and in the 2010 White Paper that free school provision promotes social justice.
The article presents an empirical study of an alternative provision free school as a lens through which these claims can be interrogated. Drawing from Foucault’s concept of governmentality the article analyses the narratives of teachers working in the school in order to gain insights into the microphysics of the policy rationalities mobilised within the discursive site of the free school and claims that such provision promotes social justice.
The teachers interviewed demonstrate a strong alignment to free school policy discourse, but also a blurring of pastoral and disciplinary rationalities expressed in terms of the rehabilitation of students on the educational boundaries of the “normal”.
The article concludes that the school is a tactical move within neoliberal education policy in which the state responsibilises a new polity of actors, including teachers, sponsors and communities contracting out its interventions in order to govern the ungovernable.
The article calls for further empirical research of free school provision in order to contest neoliberal discourses which obfuscate complex systemic failure and the social reality of intergenerational unemployment and disadvantage.
Abstract
This article is a critical poststructuralist analysis of Conservative led free school policy in England focusing on claims made by the New Schools Network and in the 2010 White Paper that free school provision promotes social justice.
The article presents an empirical study of an alternative provision free school as a lens through which these claims can be interrogated. Drawing from Foucault’s concept of governmentality the article analyses the narratives of teachers working in the school in order to gain insights into the microphysics of the policy rationalities mobilised within the discursive site of the free school and claims that such provision promotes social justice.
The teachers interviewed demonstrate a strong alignment to free school policy discourse, but also a blurring of pastoral and disciplinary rationalities expressed in terms of the rehabilitation of students on the educational boundaries of the “normal”.
The article concludes that the school is a tactical move within neoliberal education policy in which the state responsibilises a new polity of actors, including teachers, sponsors and communities contracting out its interventions in order to govern the ungovernable.
The article calls for further empirical research of free school provision in order to contest neoliberal discourses which obfuscate complex systemic failure and the social reality of intergenerational unemployment and disadvantage.
Wednesday, 10 April 2013
Becoming ‘culturpreneur’: How the ‘neoliberal regime of truth’ affects and redefines artistic subject positions
an article by Bernadette Loacker (Lund University, Sweden) published in Culture and Organization Volume 19 Issue 2 (March 2013)
Abstract
In relating to the politico-economic concept of ‘creative industries’, the paper explores in what way the art field and its actors are discursively repositioned within ‘flexible cultural capitalism’.
Through empirical material from the independent Austrian theatre scene, the paper, moreover, illustrates how the ‘culturpreneurial’ transformation of the field affects the specific artistic practices, forms of organising and conduct.
In this regard, it will be shown that the artists’ modes of conduct are, at least to some extent, precarious: due to their ascetic and disciplined self-concept, artists seem to contribute, in parts, to their own marginalisation as well as to the strengthening of certain ‘neoliberal orders’ and ‘culturpreneurial subject ideals’ of flexible capitalism – even though they are actually keen to resist current governmental technologies like the promotion of competition and market-determined assessment.
Abstract
In relating to the politico-economic concept of ‘creative industries’, the paper explores in what way the art field and its actors are discursively repositioned within ‘flexible cultural capitalism’.
Through empirical material from the independent Austrian theatre scene, the paper, moreover, illustrates how the ‘culturpreneurial’ transformation of the field affects the specific artistic practices, forms of organising and conduct.
In this regard, it will be shown that the artists’ modes of conduct are, at least to some extent, precarious: due to their ascetic and disciplined self-concept, artists seem to contribute, in parts, to their own marginalisation as well as to the strengthening of certain ‘neoliberal orders’ and ‘culturpreneurial subject ideals’ of flexible capitalism – even though they are actually keen to resist current governmental technologies like the promotion of competition and market-determined assessment.
Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Against disengagement: non-participation as an object of governance
an article by Ross Fergusson (Open University, Milton Keynes, UK) published in Research in Post-Compulsory Education Volume 18 Issue 1-2 (2013)
Abstract
The discourse of disengagement has achieved ascendancy just as young people’s employment prospects have declined – in many countries to crisis levels.
Conceptualising and interpreting young people’s non-participation in dominant modes of education, training and employment has been a preoccupation of academics, policy-makers and journalists.
This paper offers a critical analysis of the discourse of disengagement.
It queries the primacy of participation as the dominant policy response to mass youth unemployment, identifies some paradoxes of this policy priority, and locates them within a political-economic analysis of youth unemployment.
It proposes a view of prevailing policy responses as a mode of governance of problematised populations of young ‘non-participants’.
By juxtaposing two ostensibly incompatible analytical frameworks, the paper draws attention to some potentially illuminating tensions between materialist and governmentalist analyses of dominant policy responses to ‘disengagement’, and considers how these might be exploited in researching and reconceptualising non-participation.
Abstract
The discourse of disengagement has achieved ascendancy just as young people’s employment prospects have declined – in many countries to crisis levels.
Conceptualising and interpreting young people’s non-participation in dominant modes of education, training and employment has been a preoccupation of academics, policy-makers and journalists.
This paper offers a critical analysis of the discourse of disengagement.
It queries the primacy of participation as the dominant policy response to mass youth unemployment, identifies some paradoxes of this policy priority, and locates them within a political-economic analysis of youth unemployment.
It proposes a view of prevailing policy responses as a mode of governance of problematised populations of young ‘non-participants’.
By juxtaposing two ostensibly incompatible analytical frameworks, the paper draws attention to some potentially illuminating tensions between materialist and governmentalist analyses of dominant policy responses to ‘disengagement’, and considers how these might be exploited in researching and reconceptualising non-participation.
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