Prophets, saviours and saints: Symbolic governance and the rise of a transnational metrological field

Sotiria Grek

doi:10.1007/s11159-020-09844-z

Abstract

Through their collaborative practices of quantification and standardisation in large-scale comparative literacy and numeracy surveys, international organisations (IOs) are both constituting new realities and being reconstituted themselves. This article aims to substantiate how the dominance of global measurement regimes has had profound implications for the ways in which IOs such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank interact, and for the environments these new interrelationships generate. How is one to make sense of this emerging reality? The author of this article examines the interplay of large IOs in their effort to achieve the targets of the United Nations’ fourth Sustainable Development Goal (the education-focused SDG 4). She argues that the SDGs are not a stand-alone performance measurement exercise, but are rather organised under the rubric of a much larger monitoring programme with its own internal logic, structure and hierarchies. She demonstrates that SDG 4 represents a significant case of transnational governance of education, and more specifically of the infrastructures and interdependencies of IOs in the construction of education data within the SDGs. Her purpose is to offer insights into the labour and infrastructure involved in the joint production of metrics. Drawing on declarations, agreements and reports as well as empirical findings from a series of interviews she conducted with key actors from all the major IOs and civil society, the author uses Bourdieusian theory to suggest that quantification has facilitated symbolic governance of the education policy field. As a result, the joint effort towards achieving the targets of SDG 4 represents the rise, and to a large degree the dominance, of the influence of the transnational field of measurement in education.

Highlights

Building on the theoretical arsenal of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1986, 1990, 1993, 2000, 2014), as well as the sociology of quantification (Desrosieres 1998; Espeland and Stevens 2008), this article examines the symbolic governance of the transnational education policy field
I have used the Bourdieusian theoretical frame to analyse the construction of the machinery driving the 2030 Education Agenda (SDG 4), paying particular attention to the role of quantification as symbolic governance
I have made particular use of Bourdieu’s concepts of field and symbolic capital, with symbolic referring on the one hand to the accumulation of a range of capitals at the disposal of actors operating in the metrological field, and, on the other hand, to all those other, perhaps more material, manifestations of distinction and power, such as the use of evocative language, beautiful data, marathon sessions, and Global South participants flown around the world

Summary

Introduction

Building on the theoretical arsenal of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1986, 1990, 1993, 2000, 2014), as well as the sociology of quantification (Desrosieres 1998; Espeland and Stevens 2008), this article examines the symbolic governance of the transnational education policy field. Since the early 2000s, the rise and dominance of large-scale international comparative assessments of educationProphets, saviours and saints: Symbolic governance and the...performance have given international organisations (IOs) a central position in processes of standardisation, de-contextualisation and performance management through the quantification of education policy. Building on the theoretical arsenal of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1986, 1990, 1993, 2000, 2014), as well as the sociology of quantification (Desrosieres 1998; Espeland and Stevens 2008), this article examines the symbolic governance of the transnational education policy field.. Despite the burgeoning number of publications on the global phenomenon of “governing by numbers”, our understanding of the relationship between the politics of measurement and how transnational governance comes into being is less well examined. A central focus of this article is the examination of the politics of quantification through the prism of the political work of the actors (Lagroye 1997) involved in the collection and validation of country data as part of global education performance monitoring (Grek 2020b). By “political work” I mean actors’ practices undertaken in order to develop and manage the interdependencies between internal (upstream) and external (downstream) relationships, as well as personal ideas, values and interests; political work takes place through and across a range of configurations of actors who compete to construct alliances – political enterprises – that are capable of winning the negotiations they are involved in (Jullien and Smith 2008, p. 16; italics in original)

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion