Neoliberal Context Research Articles

Charter School Authorizations as Disputes: How School Board Members Justify Their Votes in a Neoliberal Context1

For charter schools to open they must gain the approval of an authorizing body, most commonly a local school board. When deciding whether or not to authorize a particular charter, school board members often engage in public disputes that entail clashes between multiple and conflicting conceptualizations of the goals of education. Drawing on insights from pragmatic sociology and institutional theory, this paper examines videos of 119 public meetings to document how members of a large, urban school board drew on competing ways of conceptualizing the common good to justify their votes on charter school authorizations. Moreover, it also shows how the neoliberal context of contemporary education limited the range of justifications used. Even school board members who argued against charter school authorizations did with justifications draped in neoliberal language. Neoliberalism thus impacted decisions not by becoming cognitively taken‐for‐granted but rather by shaping the range of arguments made for or against the choice to authorize particular schools.

Alternative lenses for viewing how China has built its accounting and auditing profession

PurposeThe paper reviews some theoretical approaches that have been adopted for understanding the drivers and achievements of the Chinese professional project and the challenges it faces for the future, as a complement and a contrast to previous histories of China and to studies of other developing economies.Design/methodology/approachBased mainly on evaluating the information as obtained from the interviews in mainland China, in Hong Kong and in London reported by Macve (2020), complemented by other published histories.FindingsChina remains a paradox. Since the “reform and open” policy began in 1978 it has been transformed from one of the poorest countries to one of the economically most powerful in just some 40 years. However it remains (per capita) a “developing country”/”emerging economy” and ideologically a Communist country. While the accounting profession in the USA and UK has developed “from the bottom up” over more than a century and a half, the Chinese profession has effectively been created “from the top down” in under 25 years. The paper outlines alternative theorizations of the major stages in this achievement, in the context of the continuing rapid growth of China's economy and its stock markets, and of the overseas expansion of its manufacturing and increasingly service-oriented base.Research limitations/implicationsSpace has restricted the analysis here to a general overview. Application of Gramsci's hegemony theory is argued to be inappropriate in the context of understanding China's professional project. Instead, this study is framed within the neo-institutional theory of “linked ecologies” originally developed to examine “Western” developments and extended to the emergence of glocalization, while offering a comparison with related theorization of Russia's post-Communist development. Further theoretical development outside the Western neo-liberal context is called for.Originality/valueThe paper demonstrates how accounting and auditing's development in this globally significant context has differed from that in other developing and transitional economies, reflecting in particular the proactive agency of the state. Given China's economic power, fuller understanding of the interrelated factors shaping its development is important for understanding the likely future shaping of the worldwide profession.

Institutional logic meets global imagining: Kazakhstan\u2019s engagement with China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative

Theoretical ideas about globalization and internationalization of higher education emphasize the tension among different ideologies of higher education. According to literature, a competition among states, economy, knowledge, and status generates this tension to drive higher education development. This theoretical understanding not only shapes our global imaginations but also permeates the organizational behavior of universities. In this paper, we focus on the institutional logics that motivate universities in Kazakhstan to engage with China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). We investigate the ways that Kazakhstani higher education interprets and responds to China’s vision of a global order. Based on interviews conducted at 10 higher education institutions (HEIs) in Kazakhstan, we argue that Kazakhstan’s engagement with the BRI circumvents the cultural connectivity and global cooperation that are embraced by Chinese policy discourse and perpetuated by academic literature. Rather, institutional leaders in Kazakhstan operate with a utilitarian logic that seeks revenue generation, links with industry, and opportunities for students in employment and further education. The pursuit of these strategic outcomes demonstrates a bilateral engagement with China rather than the multilateral cooperation envisioned by policymakers. In a higher education system dominated by the state, the institutions in our study exhibit partial agency to accrue pragmatic benefits rather than concede to isomorphic pressures or mimic internationalization from neoliberal contexts. The discrepancy between policy discourse from China and policy reception in Kazakhstan raises questions about the rhetoric of a multipolar global order and the realities of international cooperation in higher education.

Climate Change under the Context of Neoliberalism: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Political Leaders’ Speeches on the Paris Agreement

The aims of the Paris Agreement are against the threat of climate change. On 1st June 2017, American President Donald Trump made a speech show his stance on the Paris Agreement. On 4th November, America officially announced the process of withdrawal from the agreement had begun. It raised attentions globally. Political leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Former- Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Former- British Prime Minister Theresa May, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron responded to the actions of the withdrawal action of the United States. This research examines the political leaders’ speeches to explore the embedded ideology and rationality towards the Paris Agreement under the context of neoliberalism.

Precarious Creativity: Production of Digital Video in China

ABSTRACT Alongside the development of a creative economy, a growing body of research has examined the resonances of creative production with the concept of precarity. However, the production of creative video—one of the most popular online activities and creative industries in China—is still not adequately studied in academia, especially its precarious status in the Neoliberal era. This article proposes to study creative video production, especially the professionalisation of amateur video production, in China’s neoliberal context from the perspective of the contested convergence of creativity and precarity. Utilising ethnographic participant observation and in-depth interviews, this study shows how exhausting production activities and unrealised dreams of workers have become essential to creative production in China. The study concludes that precarious creativity is very much internal to China’s strategic project of developing creative industries to serve the new neoliberal governing rationality.

Programa Solução Educacional: uma formação para a resiliência em tempos de agudas contradições

Este artigo analisa o programa Solução Educacional para o Ensino Médio (SEEM), fruto da parceria entre o Instituto Ayrton Senna (IAS) e a Secretaria de Estado de Educação do Rio de Janeiro (SEEDUC/RJ). O objetivo é compreender a essência da proposta educacional, para além do que se manifesta na imediaticidade, que enfatiza a introdução de competências socioemocionais no currículo e se apresenta como uma tecnologia social de caráter técnico e sem mediações ideológicas. Para obter tal propósito, a metodologia de trabalho consistiu no estudo de caso sobre o SEEM, a partir do levantamento de informações dos sites oficiais dos parceiros que elaboraram e executaram o programa (IAS e SEEDUC/RJ), acrescida de revisão bibliográfica que versa sobre teoria de Estado moderno e fundamentos educacionais. Concluímos que o SEEM se constitui num projeto de formação escolar classista no contexto neoliberal, mas que não se materializa de forma automática, pois é atravessado por contradições e precárias condições infraestruturais da rede.

Educator identity in a neoliberal context: recognising and supporting early childhood education and care educators

ABSTRACT In most majority countries, early childhood educators’ work occurs in a context increasingly dominated by neoliberal logic. A large body of literature emphasises that neoliberalism flourishes in society by fuelling mutual distrust and competition among people to pursue individual performance and material gain. This system has crept into education systems which were set up with very different philosophies, becoming an intrinsic part of educators’ work, negatively affecting the educators and their image of themselves. Utilising a variety of qualitative methodologies, this paper reports on research projects undertaken in three countries that highlight some of the neoliberal barriers to quality early childhood education and care (ECEC). It also offers ways forward to support educators within this context.

‘Post-crisis masculinities’ in Sierra Leone: revisiting masculinity theory

Hegemonic representations of African men have focused on the male breadwinner ideal. In today’s neoliberal context, characterized by economic insecurity and social inequality, African men are said to be experiencing a ‘crisis of masculinity,’ demonstrated by displays of violence, dominance, and denial of responsibility. This article builds upon research highlighting emergent masculinities that challenge stereotypical depictions of African men within this framework. Based upon ethnographic research with young, urban fathers in Sierra Leone, it demonstrates that masculinities are shifting in light of disruptions brought about by war and the recent Ebola epidemic. Despite tensions with existing patriarchal norms, emerging are masculine ideals tied to love and care. I argue that masculinities in Sierra Leone, rather than being in crisis, reflect post-crisis social realities, and that more studies should attend to ‘post-crisis masculinities’—the notion that gender norms change in response to major societal disruptions. Such a focus will make space for more positive accounts of men’s lives.

An Emotive Operation of Neoliberalism in Higher Education: Seeking a Second Chance in Hong Kong

Objective: Educational expansion as a policy is believed to address the issue of the youth’s blocked social mobility. But, the argument that the transition to university is emotionally straining in a deindustrialized neoliberal context suggests an emotive aspect of neoliberalism in higher education. This article seeks to offer an illustration of such an emotive operation of neoliberalism through examining the emotional struggles of community-college students in Hong Kong. Method: This study draws on two qualitative analyses based on data collected from 83 community-college students in Hong Kong pursuing a bachelor’s degree through a newly available transfer function of an associate degree. Results: Given an emphasis of neoliberalism on individualism and competition, the respondents showed the following negative emotions: perverse feelings of inferiority about the new option, stress about the competitiveness of this pursuit and strategic/calculating in organizing their learning and dealing with their classmates, and anxiety of being seen as inadequate despite their successful transferals. Contributions: The emotional struggles of the respondents suggest that in view of a lack of well-paid prestigious professional or managerial jobs in a deindustrialized capitalist context, educational expansion as a policy—expanding the sector of community college in particular—wrapped up in a neoliberal discourse is not merely giving the youth a false hope but inflicting on them unnecessarily strained emotions. This suggestion urges policy makers to rethink the effectiveness of adopting an educational policy with a neoliberal approach to address an economic issue.

Research ethics: Examining the tension between principlism and rational self-interest in a neoliberal university context

Background: The reconfiguration of the contemporary university as a consequence of the (re)ascendency of neoliberal politics has not escaped South African universities. The higher education landscape in the country is characterised by performativity regimes – discourses on quality assurance, efficiency and accountability abound and so too modes of regulation based on rewards, sanctions and censorship. Aim: The article explores the extent to which these two conflicting ethical discourses (principlism and rational self-interest) have a bearing on a South African case that resulted in an investigation into research misconduct at a South African university. Setting: The broader setting is the neoliberal university. The specific setting is Stellenbosch University. As is the case with many western(ised) universities, this higher education institution has not escaped neoliberal influences. Methods: The methods used combine conceptual exploration supported by a case study. The usage of case in this study does not refer to how it is typically used in qualitative research. The focus is not on a bounded system but on the narrative essence of the case, more akin to the usage of ‘case’ in law and medicine. Results: The philosophical tensions between the two discourses on ethics might be overcome by refocusing the university on the public good, instead of valorising the individual. Conclusion: Overcoming the philosophical tensions between the two discourses might only be possible through recognising the value of an immanent rather than a transcendent ethics.

Threat, drive, and soothe: learning self-compassion in an academic writing retreat

ABSTRACT As an experienced participant in academic writing retreats, I became aware of conflicting feelings during retreats between ideas of restorative practice and the pressure to produce outputs. Through autoethnographic inquiry, I examined this conflict. I wrote a reflective journal to describe my lived experience of a recent retreat and analysed the text using a self-compassion framework of Gilbert’s emotional regulation systems: drive, threat and soothe. Using these three systems as three characters within myself, I explored the influences of the neoliberal university context on my lived experience and sense of my academic identity and well-being. I used these insights to develop a transformed writing identity and practice. I moved from uncritical awareness of my internalisation of neoliberal values of isolation and output, to a more self-nurturing and connected practice. This research offers encouragement to other educators seeking transformative potential through examining their experiences, contexts, identity, and well-being.

Being an academic: how junior female academics in Korea survive in the neoliberal context of a patriarchal society

This study aims to analyze the experiences and challenges of Korea’s junior female academics (JFAs), whose work environments align closely with the cultural context of a patriarchal society that follows neoliberal principles. It also explores how they overcome these challenges while maintaining the status quo. Thirteen JFAs working in the fields of the humanities and social sciences were interviewed to examine their experiences and challenges. The interview data were analyzed within the neoliberal context of a patriarchal society using the concept of academic growth put forward by O’Meara, Terosky, and Neumann (2008) within the sociocultural and external environment. This study illustrates JFAs’ struggle to survive in their academic career in a neoliberal context and a situation infused with patriarchal culture. JFAs endeavor to produce high research performance to find opportunities for stable positions. However, it is difficult for JFAs who have children to achieve enormous research output without family support. Otherwise, they work with robust self-regulation and endurance. Also, JFAs encounter various obstacles, including patriarchal networks, limited job opportunities, gender-based division of labor, and harassment. The findings show that the problems JFAs face are perceived as personal issues, leading to low self-esteem and promoting a sense of failure in them. Therefore, social compromise and understanding of JFAs based on institutional support are needed to nurture female academics who are facing various challenges.

Picturing precarity through occupational mapping: Making the (im)mobilities of long-term unemployment visible

ABSTRACT The 2008 recession had long-lasting economic effects that made everyday experiences of precarity more prevalent in many countries. Within a broader neoliberal context, however, the prevalence of precarity and its social production tends to be obscured, leading to a need for actions aimed at enhancing social awareness and informing social change. In this article, we illustrate how the precarity associated with long-term unemployment, which persisted at historically high levels through 2018, can be made visible by analyzing the mobilities of occupational engagement. Our illustrations derive from a larger four-phase collaborative ethnography conducted in the United States and Canada between 2014 and 2018. Informed by a critical occupational science perspective, the study utilized multiple methods to generate data with participants who self-identified as being long-term unemployed. One of those methods, occupational mapping, explored how participants negotiated daily routines and occupations at the local scale during their unemployment. Analysis of four exemplar cases, as informed by the mobilities paradigm, illuminates the lived impacts and geospatial effects of precarity on everyday occupations in situations of long-term unemployment. Findings contribute to the wider examination of how precarity is spatially experienced within the situation of long-term unemployment as reflected in people’s (im)mobilities and occupational engagement.

Non-site welfare landscapes on-site: curated displays of transformed social housing estates

ABSTRACT Exhibitions are anything but a neutral; they may affect the ‘reality’ they mirror. As such the exhibition is an ongoing, open product of research that is always researching research itself, but that is also affected by and affecting politicised agendas. This article focus on the large open spaces—the welfare landscapes—of the Danish 1970s social housing estate, Gellerup and Toveshøj, currently subject to ‘radical’ transformation and displayed in its most crucial location, i.e. the site itself. I reflect on the culture of display when an exhibition is interacting with what it displays providing a theoretical framework drawing on concepts such as Smithson’s site/non-site, the Gesamtkunstwerk—played out in a neoliberal context—and international fairs like the IBA. Moreover, the built and displayed transformations spur reflections on the sliding changes of the welfare concept itself and how that is mirrored in the conducts and ethics of display.

Democratising Goals in a Neoliberal Context—The Multiple Temporalities in Finnish Cultural Policy Discourses

ABSTRACT The changes in the focus of cultural policy have been usually presented through periodisation. In the Nordic countries, during the late twentieth century, cultural policy moved from the welfare state era to a competition state era where “instrumental cultural policy” has been claimed to be hegemonic. As the periodisation does not encompass the possible continuity between these periods, this article focuses on the multiple historical forces manifested in the discourses of the Finnish cultural policy of the 2010s. Hence, this critical discourse analysis on two specific cultural policy projects focuses not only on the hegemonic instrumental emphasis but on its relations with other temporalities in the present. The theoretical concepts of conjuncture and articulation strengthen the contextual approach of the analysis, which is necessary for studying the contradictory forces and temporalities that constitute the discourses. The results suggest that the discourses embody both the concepts of welfare state cultural policy and the rhetoric of a “competition state.” The values essential to a welfare state cultural policy, such as democratisation of culture and cultural democracy, are rearticulated in the research material in a manner that constructs them as a medium for neoliberal governance.

A critical discourse analysis of health in Swedish integration policies

Abstract Background Previous research has indicated that migrants risk facing inequities both internationally and in Sweden; integration policies are therefore important to study. How health is described in policies affects how health interventions are approached. A discourse analysis offers a way of understanding how health is framed within the integration policies of the Establishment Program. The aim was to critically analyse the health discourses used in Swedish and European Union (EU) integration policies. Methods A critical discourse analysis, inspired by Fairclough, was performed on integration policies related to Sweden, on local, regional, national and the EU level. The policies of the Establishment Program, which focuses on newly arrived migrants (refugees, persons of subsidiary protection and their relatives who arrived through family reunification), were chosen for the analysis, and 17 documents were analysed in total. Results The analysis of the documents showed that although no definition of health was presented, health discourses were expressed in the form of the medicalization of health and the individualization of health. This not only by the terminology used, but also in how the healthcare sector was considered responsible for any health related issue and how individual health behaviours were of focus in interventions to promote health. Conclusions A pathogenic approach to health was visible in the policies and individual disease prevention was the main health focus. The results showed similarities to previous research highlighting how a particular understanding of health in a neoliberal context is formed. Key messages Health as a resource is missing in the integration policy documents. Viewing health as an individual quality puts the responsibility of promoting health on the individual.

The Costs, Benefits and Challenges of Contingency Work in Human Service Agencies

Increasingly, professionally trained human service workers are employed on a contingency basis. This article reports findings from an exploratory qualitative study in which contingent direct service staff and permanent agency administrators were interviewed to ascertain their views on contingency work arrangements in the human services. Two broad research questions guided this inquiry: (1) what are the rationales for contingency employment from the perspectives of the staff who obtain it and the agencies that utilize it; and (2) what are the effects of contingency employment on the contingent workers and the agency? Findings are placed in the broader context of neoliberalism and its impact on the human service sector with focus on the fiscal factors that drive contingency arrangements and the fragmenting of human service work environments as a result.

‘Publish or perish’: implications for novice African university scholars in the neoliberal era

ABSTRACT This theoretical paper uses content analysis by drawing from the literature on the implications of the varied conceptions of ‘Publish or perish’ maxim to novice African academics in the neoliberal context. Neoliberal politics has defined education and research in particular as a commodity to be bought and sold as controlled by the profit motive and related market forces. As a result, novice African academics have been marginalised in the production and dissemination of knowledge on a global scale due to weapons such as cultural imperialism, linguicide, epistemicide and poor funding. We recommend that African academics should be independent of the private economic and political interests and serve the public interest in promoting their language, culture, and knowledge through their journals.

A Māori concept in a Pākehā world: biculturalism in health and physical education in the New Zealand curriculum

ABSTRACT This paper provides insights into political battles associated with the attempted introduction of a postcolonial bicultural dimension to the ‘Health Physical Education in the New Zealand Curriculum' (NZHPE). Limited attention has been given to the gestation period of four years between the submission, release of the draft and the final publication of the NZHPE (Ministry of Education, 1999). This paper offers an analysis of the process of producing the curriculum from a postcolonial bicultural perspective. It brings to light the impact of neoliberal forces on the NZHPE and thus, on critical elements within the New Zealand (NZ) education system. Furthermore, it investigates the extent to which Māori (indigenous people in NZ) knowledge is accepted within a NZ neoliberal context. The paper concludes that through the introduction of the Māori concept Hauora into the NZHPE, Māori culture has gotten ‘caught in the crossfire’ between numerous scholars and advocates of neoliberalism. This has entailed the risk of reducing Māori culture to a means to an end – i.e. it being appropriated by Pākehā (people of European descent) for political and ideological interests. This could eventually cause considerable damage to the culture and thus, the relationship between Māori and Pākehā.

Cognitive enhancing drug use by students in the context of neoliberalism: cheating? Or, a legitimate expression of competitive entrepreneurialism?

A recurrent theme regarding drug policy and the use of cognitive enhancing drugs (CEDs) by students in higher education (HE), concerns the potential introduction of policy to prohibit the use of CEDs. One of the arguments put forward to support a prohibitive policy framework, is that the use of CEDs by students in HE is a form of academic misconduct; that the use of CEDs constitutes cheating. Now, given that it is widely documented that the use of CEDs by students in HE has been growing steadily over the past decade or more, there is surprisingly, a dearth of in-depth discussion on the topic of whether their use represents academic misconduct and is a form of cheating. Therefore, this commentary will summarise some examples of literature dedicated to the topic, before discussing whether the use of CEDs by students in HE constitutes cheating, when framed contextually, around neoliberalism and the key characteristics of competition and entrepreneurialism. The commentary will propose a potentially useful argument that, given the neoliberal context and those key characteristics, (HE) students could in theory, legitimise their use of CEDs. Consequently, students using CEDs for the purpose of hypothetically increasing academic excellence, would not consider their use of CEDs as a form of academic misconduct, of cheating. Thus, this paper, would in principle, support and endorse a legal, regulatory approach to CED policy and in addition, recommends that individual HE institutions do not prohibit the use of CEDs by students on the grounds of academic misconduct, but instead, advance harm reduction initiatives around their use.