Neoliberal Context Research Articles

Islamic Education: An Islamic “Wisdom-Based Cultural Environment” in a Western Context

As the number and types of Islamic schools in a Western context have increased, so too have the questions on their purpose and impact in pluralistic Western societies. Amid this increasingly complex environment, questions are raised, both internally and externally, to determine the nature of Islamic educational goals, schools’ knowledge and pedagogical practices. Analysis in this paper draws on multiple sources of data: classical and contemporary literature on education in Islam; the Department for Education (DfE) school census and the Office for Standards in Education; Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted); and empirical case-study data extracted from the author’s PhD thesis on diversity in Islamic schools in Britain conducted during 2008–2012 and subsequently revised during 2018–2019 by following up emergent themes. This paper argues for a need to develop an “Islamic wisdom-based culture” promoting action (‘amal) which nurtures the holistic growth of learners in ethical areas (akhlāq), aesthetics (dhawq/jamāl) and develops a sense of freedom (huriyyah). By doing so, the paper draws primarily on Bennabi’s analysis of the role of culture (thaqāfah) in the civilisation cycle, Ibn-Khaldūn’s analysis of freedom and dignity in educational practice embedded in his discussion of the meanings of humanity) Al-insāniyyah) and Gadamer’s analysis of “practical wisdom”. Firstly, it contextualises Islamic schooling in Britain into a neoliberal pluralistic context. The wisdom inherent in Islamic education is explored through critical dialogue during the process of learning and action. The discussion then considers three key elements of “wisdom-based cultural environment” for Islamic education.

The lonely legacy: loss and testimonial injustice in the narratives of people diagnosed with personality disorder

Purpose This study aims to explore the lived experience of loneliness among a group of people diagnosed with the contested diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD). In so doing, it contributes to works offering dimensional conceptualisations of personality disorders and contributes to loneliness study more broadly which has seen a rise in interest since the Covid-19 epidemic and the subsequent enforced isolation and the resultant new phenomenon of sudden loneliness. Design/methodology/approach Participants with diagnoses of BPD were recruited through a combination of calls through online fora and announcements at self-help groups. A total of 25 people made contact, with interviews eventually being carried out with 14 of these. They were invited to take part in unstructured, recorded one-to-one interviews. Thematic analysis was used in this study, which used a narrative phenomenological approach using an Arendtian lens. Findings Through attending to the interwoven themes in the narratives of trauma, loss and loneliness, it emerged that the enduring loneliness experienced was compounded by repeated instances of testimonial injustice. Research limitations/implications This study supports the need for a further deepening of our understanding of the complexity of experience at the interface of loneliness and mental ill health. Practical implications This study critiques the reductive assumptions behind websites, simplistic tool kits and training within the mental health arena dictating “what works” for loneliness. The paper argues for health professionals to develop a more nuanced listening to reported loneliness and that part of what may compound this complex experience among people diagnosed with personality disorder is epistemic injustice, rife within a climate of neoliberalism. Social implications Neoliberalism has been identified as a key driver of distinct shifts in mental health policy and the commodification of mental health. Its fixation with medicalisation and its drive to treat “mental illness” as a problem within the individual positions people as self-contained agents and downplays, or worse, ignores the social, cultural and economic dimensions that contribute to the person’s distress. Neoliberalism’s discourse of “responsibilization” for example, urges individuals that families, communities and workplaces rather than publicly funded services become the main resources to respond to in times of mental distress. This, however, assumes a concreteness to these institutions which may be illusory and leaves those in difficulty dependent on presumed immediate social circles. These circles, however, if they exist, may contain the very people who have failed individuals or subjected them to the testimonial injustices so often cited in the narratives of this research. Originality/value The Arendtian account of loneliness rests on the premise that the human being of contemporary society is afflicted with a sense of isolation and homelessness, further exacerbated in today’s neoliberal context. By drawing on this account, the enmeshed and complex nature of mental illness, loneliness and dislocation from society and the ways in which continued epistemic injustice negatively impact on mental well-being are laid bare. Phenomenology of loneliness goes some way to helping people without the devastating life experiences common to those diagnosed, rightly or not, with a personality disorder gain a sense of the experience, and this research argues for psychological practice to be more mindful of this literature and the value of closely heard first-person narratives.

Neoliberalism and global textbooks: a critical ethnography of English language classrooms in Serbia

ABSTRACT While there is a growing body of scholarship on the neoliberal content of global English textbooks, the ways in which these commercial materials come to life in teaching and learning practices are still under researched. Drawing on a critical ethnographic account of two English courses for unemployed students in a private language school in Serbia, this paper examines the beliefs and actions of teachers and students in regard to English language education and the global textbooks they use. The results suggest that many views about the English language courses and their textbooks in this case study are deeply shaped by the broader socioeconomic context of neoliberalism. Furthermore, the neoliberalism featured in the textbook motivates students to learn English and to transform themselves into suitable citizens and workers for the current economic order. In this way, the global textbook becomes one of the many tools that neoliberalism uses to reproduce itself. This paper argues that the present state of affairs is not an inevitable and desirable one and calls for implementing alternative approaches to the dominant neoliberal conception of English language education.

“Drawing the line” and other small-scale resistances: exploring agency and ambiguity in transnational feminist and queer NGOs

ABSTRACT This article explores the discourses, actors, and cross-border exchanges that shape the broader landscape of contemporary transnational feminist and queer non-governmental organizations (NGOs). While several studies have pointed to the co-opted role of NGOs, fewer have explored the potential for NGOs to influence the conditions under which they operate. That is what this article sets out to do, with the goal of highlighting the potential for feminist and queer NGOs to engage in oppositional politics within contexts of neoliberalism. Based on material collected during ethnographic fieldwork with transnational feminist and queer NGOs, this article examines how NGOs position themselves in relation to the political and financial structures that condition their work; how and to what effect the emerging professional class of NGO activists navigate the contradictory landscapes within which they are located; and the ambiguities of cross-border exchanges among NGOs. The article shows examples of agency and small-scale resistance, but also illuminates the palpable risks of existing neoliberal tendencies among funders and NGOs. I conclude that transnational feminist and queer NGOs have much to gain from intervening more decisively in such ambiguities as those examined in this article.

A pandemia de 2020: prelúdio de um neoliberalismo renovado?

O artigo aborda, a partir de uma perspectiva filosófica, a relação entre a pandemia gerada pela Covid-19 e a produção de subjetividades em um contexto global de neoliberalismo. O alastramento do coronavírus mundialmente, e a incapacidade dos sistemas de saúde em diversos países em atender a todos que necessitam, suscitou interpretações em que a presente crise de saúde mundial representaria um golpe fatal contra o modelo neoliberal vigente, de modo que tal episódio poderia significar um indício de enfraquecimento do capitalismo. Com base nos estudos sobre a governamentalidade neoliberal e a formação do saber médico realizados por Michel Foucault, pretende-se sustentar a hipótese de que, em verdade, a atual pandemia pode representar o surgimento de um neoliberalismo revigorado. Uma governamentalidade produtora de sujeitos docilizados, ao mesmo tempo, para a aceitação de mudanças bruscas em suas condições de vida e para a busca da produtividade sob a forma do empreendedor de si.

Internet for the debate from the notions of rationality and liberty of Amartya Sen and Michel Foucault

Internet has a great importance to organize our social and private lives. From this context, the text reflects on what margins the Internet leaves to exercise our rationality and freedom, considering fundamental rights of citizens, and based on the best principles of the ideal of the democratic model. It is based on what should be an ideal type of technology at the service of democratic values, which would be to use the Internet as a common good for citizens. In this sense, this text contains some interpretations of what would be a common space on the Internet; It would aim to strengthen a democracy circumscribed by the most basic principles of this political model. To make this analysis, the notions of rationality and freedom of Amartya Sen and Michel Foucault are used, from which one works to contrast two functions of democracy, one is more deliberative, is in line with the idea of the common good of Ostrom (2000), a democracy by discussion following Amartya Sen. The other is a democratic model with oligarchic touches, in a neoliberal economic context, more in a line of rationality linked to power relations, following Foucault. Freedom is important for both of them, based on the participation and critical behavior of the individual.

Emociones morales en educación: análisis del enfado en el contexto neoliberal

Desde la Antigua Grecia se ha generado un discurso que desprecia las emociones y las relega al ámbito personal. Pero, hace años, ese discurso se ha debilitado y el ámbito emocional está siendo reconocido como un aspecto relevante y, también, se ha posicionado en la vida pública. En este sentido, el presente ensayo analiza la emoción de enfado en el contexto neoliberal y algunas de sus implicancias en la educación. Para ello, se consideran diferentes aportes teóricos que exponen los beneficios culturales que suscita dicha emoción. Asimismo, se revisan algunas ideologías que favorecen la ignorancia o desvalorización del enfado en los procesos educativos. En suma, se concluye que una educación crítica debe clarificar el potencial del enfado para la transformación de la sociedad.

Policy framing and resistance: Gender mainstreaming in Horizon 2020

Scholarship on gender mainstreaming (GM) in the European Union (EU) consistently highlights the disappointing implementation of gender mainstreaming. This article contributes to that discussion through the analysis of the first policy frame on gender equality in the work programmes of the EU’s Framework Programme for Research and Development, Horizon 2020, from 2014 until 2016. This article analyses how GM as a transformative strategy is contextualised by advisory group experts, and what is being achieved within Horizon 2020 work programmes. In opposition to the Commission’s rhetorical commitment to GM, this article demonstrates that Horizon 2020 work programmes exemplify a failure of implementing GM, further depoliticising gender equality in the Commission’s neoliberal context.

Co-Creation as an agonistic practice in the favela of Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro

This article explores the potential of ‘Co-Creation’ to develop new understandings of neighbourhood disadvantage in collaboration with civil society partners. It argues that there is a growing need for collaborative knowledge production with communities carrying vernacular knowledges previously invalidated by dominant epistemologies. The first part of the article undertakes a reconceptualisation of ‘co-creation’, a term usually associated with citizen involvement in neoliberal contexts, redeveloping it as a ‘critical artistic practice’ (Mouffe, 2013) in which new ways of imagining the city can be articulated. The second part of the article examines the practice of Co-Creation as a participatory methodology involving artists, researchers and stakeholders in developing ‘agonistic spaces’ by scrutinising a five-day workshop conducted in the Rio de Janeiro favela of Santa Marta to explore multiple understandings and meanings of this neighbourhood. Through an analysis of creative workshop activities such as photovoice and mapping exercises, the authors explore the potential of the Co-Creation approach to construct new subjectivities that can help subvert existing configurations of power. The conclusion formulates some recommendations about future strategies to maximise Co-Creation’s potential to engage communities in collaborative knowledge production about their neighbourhoods and bring about positive change.

Promoting youth-directed social change: engaging transformational critical practice

ABSTRACT This article examines the influence of social workers’ critical practice on youth-directed social change among hard-to-reach young people in neoliberal new public management contexts. Young people are increasingly acknowledged as essential change agents in ameliorating their experiences of disadvantage or marginalisation. Yet, youth and community organisations supporting projects and strategies to engage with young people’s agency find change from these interventions is small, or non-sustained. In exploring what obstructs and what galvanises youth-directed social change, comparative analysis of three youth participatory action research projects nested in youth-facing agencies in New South Wales, Australia, was undertaken. Particular attention is drawn to the young people’s perspectives in order to provide insight into tackling challenges of youth disengagement and exclusion. The article predominantly draws on Nancy Fraser’s critical theory of social justice as a heuristic to illuminate dynamics of the young people’s projects. At the heart of all projects were transformative measures with potential to impact underlying structures which foster marginalisation, opening up prospects for sustained change. Despite a significant barrier being new management practices reinforcing adult asymmetrical relationships with youth, strategies informed by critical social work practice were able to support young people to progress their social change goals.

Shifting education reform towards anti-racist and intersectional visions of justice: A study of pedagogies of organizing by a teacher of Color

ABSTRACT Background: Social movement scholarship tends to focus on macro-level processes of movement emergence, overlooking the day-to-day groundwork of marginalized social movement actors who contribute to and sustain large-scale action. Contributing to this gap in literature, we develop the construct of “pedagogies of organizing” to illuminate the micro-level dimensions through which social movements for educational justice emerge. Methods: Drawing on audio/video recordings, field notes, and artifacts as data, we examine the micro-interactional processes through which a teacher of Color, as union organizer, facilitates common cause and identity among teachers, students, and working people as social movement actors in the 2019 Los Angeles teacher strike. Findings: Our analysis details how broad-based social movements and teacher union’s organizing strategies influenced his practices. Guided by ethnic studies and third world feminism, this teacher simultaneously engaged multiple contexts—sometimes at tension with one another—to (re)create organizing strategies that sustained collective action and (re)centered anti-racist intersectional visions of educational justice. Contribution: We argue that this teacher’s culminating practices concurrently re-shaped and re-imagined present and future education reform efforts, and discuss how expansive possibilities of educational justice within a neoliberal context are embodied by teacher-activists of Color who critically and innovatively enact everyday organizing practices.

Refugee ‘crisis’ and social services in Greece: social workers’ profile and working conditions

ABSTRACT Since 2015, social workers are in the ‘front-line’ of the so-called refugee ‘crisis’, facing a series of difficulties in helping effectively their users through a context of austerity, anti-immigration policies, racism and under-resourced social services. Whilst Greece is one of the ‘entrance’ countries in Europe, to the best of our knowledge, there is no current research in social work practice with refugees. This study was a self-funded, quantitative research project carried out from June to August 2018. The main research questions explored the professionals’ profile and working conditions, the social work practice with refugees and the connection between social work and the anti-racist movement. This paper will discuss part of the findings in relation to the profile of professionals, the organisations’ profile and their working conditions. The findings identify a series of difficulties for professionals in order to respond to the refugee population’ surgent and uncovered needs. Placing the findings within the wider neoliberal context of repressive European policies, this paper argues that both refugees and professionals are affected by the politics of welfare as well as anti-immigration policies. These policies systematically violate human rights, rendering the role of social work crucial in the struggle for social justice.

Who Needs Global Citizenship Education? A Review of the Literature on Teacher Education

Given the seemingly ever-increasing scholarly production about the ideas and ideals of global citizenship education (GCE), it is not surprising those discussions started to gain influence in teacher education (TE) debates. In this study, we examine the discourses that tacitly shape the meanings of GCE within the contemporary academic literature on TE. After analyzing the peer-reviewed scholarship published from 2003 to 2018, we identified patterns in how GCE for TE was described and defended, beyond the differences in their conceptual frameworks. The dominant trend found is to frame GCE as a redemptive educational solution to global problems. This framing requires teachers to embrace a redemptive narrative following a model of rationality based on altruistic, hyperrationalized and overly romanticized ideals. Ultimately, TE literature contributes to the configuration of an excessively naïve discourse that tends to ignore the neoliberal context in which both GCE and TE take place today.

Learning to Become Good Mothers: Immigrant Mothers as Adult Learners

Immigrant mothers, who are socially constructed as an isolated group of people, are often excluded from the studies of adult learners. In adult education, few studies focus on immigrant mothers’ ways of learning, mothering, and knowing. Based on a critical ethnographical study, this article sheds lights on immigrant mothers’ learning in a foreign land. It unveils how immigrant mothers learn mothering skills and how their lifelong learning practice interacts with the ideology of mothering in contemporary neoliberal contexts. The data come from a 2-year critical ethnographic study that included 30 in-depth interviews with Chinese immigrant mothers in a Vancouver-based immigration settlement organization in Canada. The following five types of immigrant mothers’ lifelong learning practices are examined and analyzed: (a) learning parenting skills, (b) learning to find a job, (c) learning language, (d) learning to drive, and (e) learning to live a healthy lifestyle. This article argues that immigrant mothers’ lifelong learning practice constitutes a mechanism, one in which the ideology of mothering and immigrant mothers’ everyday learning and mothering deeply interact to reproduce race, gender, and class relations. This article concludes that there is a need to study immigrant mothers, as adult learners, and to reexamine knowledge systems, ideologies, and people’s different ways of knowing and learning in adult education.

AUTOGESTÃO E DISCURSOS NEOLIBERAIS NA EDUCAÇÃO: O (CON)TEXTO PRÁXIS

Resumo: Este trabalho é parte de uma pesquisa desenvolvida ao longo do Curso de Especialização em Gestão Educacional, da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM). Além disso, se configura como uma tentativa de releitura da prática de autogestão, a partir do contexto neoliberal atual com o objetivo de compreender os discursos produzidos acerca de autogestão no contexto do Coletivo Práxis de Educação Popular. O Práxis é um coletivo vinculado à UFSM que atua como movimento social de educação popular e é autogerido pelos seus componentes. Para tanto, foi realizada uma análise discursiva tanto em documentos como o Projeto do Coletivo quanto nas práticas sócio-político-discursivas do coletivo, entendendo o discurso como uma prática construtiva de significação do mundo. Assim, o Práxis se apresenta como uma produção discursiva hibridizada em que a educação e a autogestão são re/significadas frente a uma negociação/disputa discursiva democrática/neoliberal..
 
 Palavras-chave: Autogestão; Educação; Neoliberalismo; Práxis.

Becoming-German: Integrationism, citizenship and territorialization of Germanness

Seeking to contribute to recent research on integrationism and its country-specific modalities, this article provides a spatial analysis of transformations of the institutional, legal and discursive landscape of state-migrant relations in Germany over the past few decades. Conceptually, it brings geographic focus on territory and the territorial into the analysis of state and population relations. Empirically, it traces a changing understanding of integration and Germanness, stressing in the first place how the ascendance of integrationism since the turn of the century superseded the previous regime of completely bifurcated policies for immigrants of German descent versus for those without it. This supersession has conceptually centered on the German state's acknowledgment of the foundational importance of one's actual experience of moving across the territorial border. The paper also examines the changing positionality and conception of integration policies and state-sanctioned discursive renditions of Germanness over time. Finally, bringing the transformation of formal citizenship legislation in Germany into the analysis, the paper stresses the recent centrality of the expansion of the principle of ius domicile and the emergence of the statutory right to naturalization. I argue that such transformations integral to the integrationist era signal first and foremost the territorialization of belonging and citizenship in Germany. The paper concludes by reflecting on the potentials and limits of such territorialization within the context of broader neoliberalization of citizenship as well as in relation to the assessments that integrationism has re-nationalized citizenship.

Individual development in a neoliberal context: Climbing to a ‘glass ceiling’? A plea for liberal pedagogy in upper secondary vocational education

This essay addresses the issue that a neoliberal focus might have an adverse effect on a secondary vocational education student’s personal development and opportunities in higher education. Originating from neoliberal conditions, in upper secondary vocational education there is a strong focus on marketable skills with limited space for acquiring critical thinking and analytical skills, resulting in impediments concerning admittance to higher education as well as low success rates of those admitted. Also, talent development and differentiation are contested under these neoliberal conditions. It is argued that liberal pedagogy is necessary as a means to scaffold especially critical thinking skills and to foster talent development in upper secondary vocational education to cope with this issue and to create more equal opportunities for vocational students from various levels. In the concluding thoughts those involved are encouraged to reconsider preparation for post-secondary education related to admittance and study success.

Heroines of enterprise: Post-recession media representations of women and entrepreneurship in a UK newspaper 2008–2016

This article analyses contemporary media representations of female entrepreneurs in the daily UK broadsheet ‘The Times’. While existing research shows how the media ignores or trivialises entrepreneurship of women, our focus is on the emergence of the successful female entrepreneur, an increasingly prominent, heroic media genre. We suggest that this is one response to the recession of 2008 and the broader neoliberal context in which women are positioned as central to economic recovery. We interrogate this recent expression of entrepreneurial femininity, adopting a critical perspective on postfeminism to reveal the values and ideals associated with this privileged form. We argue that this version of entrepreneurial femininity is the female equivalent of the mythologised male hero – accomplished, hard-working and successful at work and home. Implications are explored in terms of the expectations associated with entrepreneurship done by women, and the extent to which these challenge gendered norms; whom this ‘privileges’; who this excludes; and the negative impact such hegemonic femininities have on recognising and supporting ‘alternative’/heterogeneous forms of entrepreneurship done by both women and men.

Bad Inquiry: How Accountability, Power, and Deficit Thinking Hinder Pre-Service Practitioner Inquiry

This study of 30 pre-service teachers’ practitioner inquiry papers explores potential pitfalls of practicing inquiry with pre-service teachers. Focusing on the types of questions pre-service teachers ask about student learning, the challenges they face when engaging in inquiry, and the weaknesses of their inquiry products, this paper finds that accountability culture in education, pre-service teachers’ lack of power in the classroom, and deficit thinking left unchallenged by instructors led to weak inquiries. Implications include the need for teacher educators to work with mentor teachers across university and K-12 boundaries, and the need to teach explicitly about the power inquiry holds in neoliberal contexts.

“Bad Inquiry”: How Accountability, Power, and Deficit Thinking Hinder Pre-Service Practitioner Inquiry

This study of 30 pre-service teachers’ practitioner inquiry papers explores potential pitfalls of practicing inquiry with pre-service teachers. Focusing on the types of questions pre-service teachers ask about student learning, the challenges they face when engaging in inquiry, and the weaknesses of their inquiry products, this paper finds that accountability culture in education, pre-service teachers’ lack of power in the classroom, and deficit thinking left unchallenged by instructors led to weak inquiries. Implications include the need for teacher educators to work with mentor teachers across university and K-12 boundaries, and the need to teach explicitly about the power inquiry holds in neoliberal contexts.