Antonio Olmedo

Care of the self, resistance and subjectivity under neoliberal governmentalities

Resistance is normally thought of as a collective exercise of public political activity. In this article, Ball and Olmedo approach the question of resistance in a different way, through Foucaults notion of ‘the care of the self’. Neoliberal reforms in education are producing new kinds of teaching subjects, new forms of subjectivity. It makes sense then that subjectivity should be the terrain of struggle, the terrain of resistance. A set of e-mail exchanges with teachers, based around Balls work on performativity, enable the authors to access the work of power relations through the uncertainties, discomforts and refusals that these teachers bring to their everyday practice. By acting ‘irresponsibly’, these teachers take ‘responsibility’ for the care of their selves and in doing so make clear that social reality is not as inevitable as it may seem. This is not strategic action in the normal political sense. Rather it is a process of struggle against mundane, quotidian neoliberalisations, that creates the possibility of thinking about education and ourselves differently.

From England with love… ARK, heterarchies and global ‘philanthropic governance’

The recent emergence of new venture philanthropists, social entrepreneurs and neoliberal policy advocates and the new ways in which they configure and perform their political agendas have brought important changes in the way in which education policy is enacted. This study takes some of the ideas sketched in previous work further and develops what was termed there as ‘philanthropic governance’. The first section analyses the transition to a new political framework characterised by new forms of coordination or ‘heterarchies’. These transformations represent new forms of governmentality and power regimes and are deeply rooted within the political economy and political philosophy of neoliberalism. The second section of the study focuses on a set of new policy actors, the ‘new’ philanthropists and explores the organisational model of a group of these philanthropic individuals and enterprises, their discourses, connections, ideological influences and agendas on the ground. Finally, the study reflects on the new ways through which philanthropic activity has gained an increasingly important political dimension, becoming a central explanatory variable to understand the recent changes and directions of national and international political agendas in different parts of the world.

Policy-makers, market advocates and edu-businesses: new and renewed players in the Spanish education policy arena

This paper discusses issues concerning the implementation of quasi-market dynamics, the introduction of private interests and market rules in the provision of formal education at compulsory levels in the Spanish educational system. It aims to discuss current neoliberal discourses and practices in Spain, suggesting new spaces to be considered in future education policy studies. In the paper, I discuss first the ideological sources on which the political action rests and sketch some basic principles developed by the market advocates in the Spanish case. Secondly, I analyse specific mechanisms implemented to guarantee a fertile ground for the establishment of market dynamics in the education system, which has facilitated a significant growth in the private provision in compulsory education levels throughout the last 30 years. The examples presented in this section refer to two specific regions, the autonomous communities of Andalusia and Madrid, traditionally governed by the socialist and conservative party, respectively. I finally offer some data of the changing nature of the private sector in Spain and present a preliminary analysis of a rising set of new for-profit ventures in education.

To Infinity and beyond …: Heterarchical Governance, the Teach for All Network in Europe and the Making of Profits and Minds

This article explores the increasing commercialisation of education through the empirical case of Teach For All, a network of social enterprises which is spreading a new model of teacher training across Europe and around the world. This model, which is supported and funded by a heterogeneous mix of public institutions and private sector organisations, is not only opening up public education to private involvement and influence, but it is also reshaping what it means to be a teacher. The substantive argument that we present here is that commercialisation is not only about making money (which is certainly being achieved through this kind of heterarchical network), but also about making people up as commercial and enterprising subjects. Drawing on the idea of neoliberalism as both a material process of economisation, and a form of governmentality, we weave together an analysis which considers the interrelations between profit, the subjectivities of the Teach For All teacher, and the governance of teacher education in Europe.

Neoliberalism, policy advocacy networks and think tanks in the Spanish educational arena: The case of FAES

The way in which societies around the globe are governed is changing towards more flexible and networked forms where the government is not the sole and main responsible actor in the organisation, funding, delivery and evaluation of public services. Analysing the new roles of philanthropic organisations, think tanks and business organisations is a key task in order to understand the expansion of neoliberal ideas and solutions in the field of education policy. Taking as a starting point the set of ideological pillars and discursive practices of the Spanish neoliberal think tank Foundation for Social Studies and Analysis (Fundación para el Análisis y los Estudios Sociales, FAES) and its networks of academics and experts, this article aims to offer a deeper understanding of the processes through which new models of public management and market-based solutions are being promoted and enacted in the Spanish educational arena. To do this, we will experiment with tools derived from what is known as ‘network ethnography’, a new methodological approach that combines aspects of Social Network Analysis with more traditional ethnographic methods.

Something old, not much new, and a lot borrowed: philanthropy, business, and the changing roles of government in global education policy networks

Abstract This paper focuses on the role of governments in contemporary networked political configurations. Such networks constitute policy communities, usually based upon shared conceptions of social problems and their solutions. By enabling social, political, and economic connections at local, regional, national, and international levels, such networks become key policy players as well as a policy technology in different spaces. More specifically, the paper is organised around three policy frameworks in the field of education. Each framework is based on a ‘network-case’. In the first framework, governments represent the main driver for political change in legislating a landscape that creates the conditions for networks to develop around different aspects within the public sphere (e.g. organisation, co-funding, delivery, etc.). The second policy framework focuses on the activities of an already organised network in order to engage with existing political configurations as a ‘political actor’ in its own right, what could be called ‘governing with/alongside networks’. The third policy framework focuses on instances where the network operates directly as a ‘state-maker’.

Governing through parents: a genealogical enquiry of education policy and the construction of neoliberal subjectivities in England

ABSTRACT In this paper we explore the various spaces and sites through which the figure of the parent is summoned to inhabit and perform market norms and practices in the field of education in England. Since the late 1970s successive governments have called on parents to enact certain duties and obligations in relation to the state. These duties include adopting and internalizing responsibility for all kinds of risks, liabilities and inequities formerly managed by the Keynesian welfare state. In this paper we examine how English parents are compelled to embody certain market norms and practices as they navigate the field of education. Adopting genealogical enquiry and policy discourse analysis as our methodology, we explore how parents across three policy sites or spaces are constructed as objects and purveyors of utility and ancillaries to marketization. This includes a focus on how parents are summoned as (1) consumers or choosers of education services; (2) governors and overseers of schools and (3) producers and founders of schools.

Competition, governance and global education policy

The adoption of neoliberal rationalities is changing the way in which social relations and institutional practices are conceived and organized. Working together, these changes here are part of a global shift, with local idiosyncratic variations, from disciplinary societies (Foucault, 1979) to societies of control (Deleuze, 1992, p. 174), which ‘no longer operate by confining people but through continuous control and instant communication’. This involves a redefinition in the form and modalities of the state and the deployment of new or recycled policy technologies, which are new ‘forms of discipline that constitute a new regime of public sector regulation’ (Ball, 2007, p. 24). At the level of personal experience, then, neoliberalism should be understood not simply/only as a new pervasive ideology or a political programme but more broadly as a new form of life or a ‘new anthropology’ (Foucault, 2010a), which would be at the foundations but also resulting from what Cerni calls ‘embedded neoliberalism’: Embedded neoliberalism involves first of all an acceptance that we live in a multi-level, more open and market-like globalizing world in which informal and negotiated policy processes do not merely complement relations among nation-states but constitute a complex, fungible, pluralized political game that is drawing in ever more actors. Furthermore, globalization has generated a range of multi-level, interlocking playing fields on which actors have increasing scope to experiment and innovate policy approaches in practical situations… Neoliberalism, with its mixture of free-market liberalism, arms-length regulation, institutional flexibility and international openness, has proven to be a relatively manipulable and fungible platform for actors to use to reconstitute their strategies and tactics. (Cerni, 2008, p. 38)