Mathieu Hilgers

Embodying neoliberalism: thoughts and responses to critics

(an answer to Jamie Peck, Nick Theodore, Stephen Collier, Daniel Goldstein, Johanna Bockman, Don Kalb and Bob Jessop who contributed to the debate on neoliberalism in Social Anthropology vol. 20 (1,2,3), vol. 21 (1), cfr below)

The Field of Knowledge and the Policy Field in Education: PISA and the production of knowledge for policy

This article is about the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and its actors. It analyses the development and role of PISA as a ‘cultural product’ from the perspective of Bourdieus field theory. The authors attempt to answer the following questions: Of which field is PISA the product? In which field and by whom is PISA used and ‘consumed’? The authors argue that the development of PISA is part of a broader transformation of equilibria within the field of (education) knowledge — i.e. a move away from its autonomous pole towards its heteronomous pole. Such a move transforms the very form and shape of the field of knowledge: it has expanded and attracts a growing number of internal and external actors around its heteronomous pole. This (cor)responds to a transformation of the equilibrium within the general field of power, where the intellectual bourgeoisie (artists, professors, academics, writers) is increasingly subordinated to — indeed, sometimes working for — economic and political interests. The authors further argue that the incorporation of PISA at the level of education policy fields also transforms their form and shape in two main ways. Within policy fields, the diffusion and reception of PISA reinforces a heteronomous understanding of education which is defined mostly in terms of its contribution to external interests. The diffusion of PISA also extends and, in a sense, dissolves the very boundaries of (national) education policy fields. Specifically, the authors underline that such an internationalisation of the education policy fields progresses mainly at their heteronomous poles and through a heteronomous definition of education.

Childhood in Africa between Local Powers and Global Hierarchies

How do representations of childhood promoted and diffused by international institutions affect the social organisation of societies? Which type of schemata of practices and perceptions are disseminated through globalisation and the attempt to universalise a specific conception of childhood? What type of resistance do these discourses face? Do they reinforce a pre-existing system of social relations? Or do they shape a set of dispositions that leads individuals to behave differently? The theoretical apparatus developed by Bourdieu constitutes a powerful tool to approach these complex and decisive questions, to grasp childhood in the current neo-liberal era that contributes to reframing social dynamics of societies in the global South. Indeed, to tackle these questions, the main challenge consists of finding a way to analyse the transformative dialectic between institutionalised structures and embodied structures that shape the realm of childhood. Bourdieu theorised this dialectic through the relationship between two key concepts — field and habitus — at the heart of one of the most coherent and solid theoretical frameworks to engage in such an analysis.