Neoliberal Governmentality in Social Designing of Education Cover Image

Neoliberálna guvernmentalita v sociálnom projektovaní vzdelávania
Neoliberal Governmentality in Social Designing of Education

Author(s): Ondrej Kaščák, Branislav Pupala
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: AV ČR - Akademie věd České republiky - Sociologický ústav
Keywords: governmentality studies; neoliberalism; self-entrepreneur; enterprise curriculum; lifelong learning

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the application of ‘governmentality studies’ to the field of education and particularly to the formation of social representations of the goals and needs of contemporary education and current curriculum design. The field of governmentality studies is based on Michel Foucault’s analyses of social power and the technologies of power, which in later writings he applied to liberal government and liberal notions of social control. This perspective provides better insight into contemporary neoliberal technologies of social control and the related technology of social control in general, examples of which in various social sectors are then provided by the authors in the article. The education sector must also be understood in the context of neoliberal governmentality, which casts in a new light many educational strategies that are generally accepted without question. The strategy of lifelong education must then be released from its representation as a natural right and instead included among the strategies of social coercion and domination directed at the inter-institutionalisation of education. Equally, it is also possible to expose debunk the skills-based concept of ‘enterprise curriculum’ that blurs the difference between general and professional education as a neoliberal power strategy. The results of the failure to apply this perspective to the education sector are the unchallenged ideologisation of contemporary education discourse and the formation of educational strategies that generate many undesirable consequences.

  • Issue Year: 46/2010
  • Issue No: 05
  • Page Range: 771-799
  • Page Count: 29
  • Language: Slovak