Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2010, 46(5): 771-800 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2010.46.5.04

Neoliberal Governmentality in Social Designing of Education

Ondrej Kaščák, Branislav Pupala
Pedagogická fakulta Trnavskej univerzity v Trnave

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.

Keywords: governmentality studies, neoliberalism, self-entrepreneur, enterprise curriculum, lifelong learning.

Published: October 1, 2010Show citation

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Kaščák, O., & Pupala, B. (2010). Neoliberal Governmentality in Social Designing of Education. Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review, 46(5), 771-800. doi: 10.13060/00380288.2010.46.5.04.
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