Neoliberal Pressures Research Articles

The role of music in supporting young children’s holistic learning and wellbeing in the context of Froebel’s mother songs

Researchers have criticised the pragmatic focus on the value of music education for its contribution to the acquisition of children’s academic skills such as literacy and numeracy development in schools across the international contexts driven by neoliberalism. In the context of Froebel’s Mother Songs, this paper via documentary research focuses on a Froebelian approach to music education in early childhood context to counterpart the neoliberal pragmatism in educational landscapes. The Froebelian perspective brings in implications for early childhood practice, research and policy-making by addressing the important role of music in supporting young children’s holistic learning and wellbeing in responding to the neoliberal pressures on children and practitioners in the 21st century.

Subversive mythical figures and feminist resistance: On the rise of posthuman 'professionals'.

Within the context of neoliberal healthcare, nurses and other health professionals face working conditions that leave them perpetually feeling inadequate, as though they are not enough. They are consistently expected to achieve more with less resources. In such an environment, mere professionalism proves wholly insufficient, enforcing norms of altruism and kindness. Professionals must transcend this disciplinary tool and embody a 'more-than-professional' approach. This study, informed by critical posthumanism, employs three mythical archetypes-the Medusa, the Witch and the Siren-to illuminate potential avenues for resistance against prevailing trends in healthcare. Drawing on the perspectives of Hélène Cixous, Silvia Federici and Jacques Rancière, we introduce a process of resistance for healthcare professionals pushing back against the challenges of crumbling healthcare systems. Cixous' feminist reimagining of Medusa symbolizes intensified embodied sensory experiences, emphasizing the power of irony, laughter and writing in highlighting the daily struggles faced by healthcare workers. Federici's depiction of the Witch exposes clandestine alliances among healthcare workers and patients, akin to a pact with the devil, countering the individualistic, alienating approach to care provision and resisting neoliberal pressures. The Witch archetype embodies resistance grounded in creativity against the commodification of public healthcare. Finally, Rancière's 'politics of the Siren' offers a strategy for disrupting entrenched hierarchies from the underworld. Like Sirens, healthcare workers and patients can subversively transform their silence into songs of resistance, simultaneously operating from beneath the surface of accountability measures. Our intention is to showcase the emergence of posthuman 'professionals' who adapt by forging new modes of social relations in response to neoliberal constraints, straying from conventional, apolitical notions of 'professionalism'. Drawing lessons from mythical figures of resistance offers a fresh understanding of subversion as a catalyst for social and political transformation within the healthcare sector.

Time for slow care: Bringing slow pedagogy into conversation with ethics of care in the infant/toddler classroom

This research presents the findings of an 8-month ethnographic case study of one infant/toddler classroom in the southeastern United States. Participants included the classroom’s two (white, female) teachers and a racially diverse group of 12 children between one to 2 years of age. Grounded within an ethics of care theoretical framework, this research was guided by the following research questions: (1) What are teachers’ lived experiences of care in this early childhood classroom community? and (2) How do those teachers understand their lived experiences of care? During data revisiting with teachers (Tobin and Hsueh, 2014), the concept of time—and particularly, slowness—emerged as a central connecting theme. The emergence of this central theme led to an overarching theoretically guided analysis of the data, implementing a feminist interpretation of Clark’s (2022) articulation of Slow Pedagogy in ECE to understand how slowness—a feminized quality antithetical to the furious pace of neoliberal education—is central to care in this context. In addition, a thematic analysis (Saldaña, 2021) of ethnographic data, including field notes, video, and photos gathered during participant observations, and four semi-structured teacher interviews, produced two foundational themes in teachers’ understandings and practices of care: Care as Emotional Presence, and Care as Acknowledgment. Findings introduce the concept of Slow Care, a noveltheorizing of care practices that emphasizes the importance of slow, relationally-guided temporalities, serving to contest and counter the growing neoliberal pressures of efficiency and productivity in early childhood policy and practice.

Hong Kong anthropologists within global neoliberalism and national and local politics

There are global neoliberal pressures on the academy that are more or less faced by anthropologists around the world. To what extent are anthropologists required to publish in English in SSCI-ranked journals to keep their jobs and get promoted? But there are also distinctly national and local pressures to some extent counteracting or eclipsing these global pressures. In this article I explore these counteracting pressures in the context of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, my home society, neoliberalism has reigned supreme, with a remarkably short-term mentality. Yet despite this, anthropology has been flourishing, and has operated with great freedom and generous funding that is quite exceptional by global standards. However, this may be coming to an end. In China there is direct government control over anthropology. Hong Kong, following the protests of 2019 and the advent of the national security law in 2020, may be following suit, with many democratic political figures and some journalists now in jail. In light of this ongoing narrowing of room for freedom of inquiry, what will happen to Hong Kong academics and to anthropology?

Beyond a commitment of teaching critical reflection: a scoping review of social work education literature

ABSTRACT There has been a commitment to critical reflection research, theory, education, and practice development in social work in the last 15 years, yet less is known about how we effectively teach and assess critical reflection with students in a neo-liberal context. Following the Joanna Briggs framework for scoping reviews, 50 social work education articles from the last 15 years were identified and thematically analyzed, to explore the current knowledge on teaching and assessing critical reflection. This scoping review was co-designed and undertaken by two social work academics and two social work students. Diverse teaching strategies employed within the classroom, field education, and on-line learning spaces and individual written pieces dominated assessment were identified. The voice of social work educators, however, were centered. The results raise questions about the impact of power not only within the educator-student relationship, but also who is conducting the research. The findings point to the importance of social work educators’ role modeling critical reflection, tailoring teaching strategies to respond to students’ learning preferences, and ethical considerations regarding assessment. We consider challenges resulting from neo-liberal pressures within universities and present reflective questions for educators to consider the needs of students and do justice to critical reflection education.

Neoliberal Pressures and Democratic Aims: How Competing Logics of the Community College Influence Dual Enrollment Growth

ABSTRACT Dual enrollment coursework, also known as dual credit (DC), allows high school students to earn college credit through secondary-postsecondary partnerships. DC participation has been positively associated with college completion, though access to coursework is stratified by race and class. DC programs have scaled rapidly over the past decade, with particular implications for community colleges, which offer 70% of DC coursework. Yet, few studies in the DC literature have centered the perceptions of college stakeholders. Drawing on institutional logics, this qualitative study examines the benefits and challenges of DC expansion from the community college perspective. We focus on interviews with 28 administrators and faculty from a large, diverse community college district in Texas, where DC course-takers represent almost 25% of the population. Findings reveal that stakeholders framed DC as promoting college access, equity, and preparation (social-democratic logic), but the rapid pace of program growth (neoliberal logic) sometimes undermined their capacity to advance those aims. The study calls for investing in community colleges to maximize DC benefits.

Munus triplex: A pedagogical application of a theological concept

The authors considered the identity of Christian teachers to be an urgent matter because of rapid changes in society, and assumed that such a consideration could help to envision education in an authentic way. They recognised that the current understanding of Christian identity emphasises unity with Christ and, therefore, set out to demonstrate that this unity is not only a matter of private spiritual life, but must also be carefully considered in professional practice. This article is not a research paper per se, but rather an exploratory, constructive essay. The authors examined and elaborated on unity with Christ with the help of the so-called three offices of Christ: prophet, priest, and king. After interpreting the Heidelberg Catechism and bringing it into critical dialogue with contemporary voices, they identified the implications of the three offices for educational practice. The office of prophet was reflected in both the implicit and explicit messages of the teacher. The office of priest was observable in a teacher’s compassionate behaviour, while the office of king was seen in the teacher’s humble citizenship and struggle against evil, as well as in the ethical views that a teacher promotes in class. Three offices were found helpful in rethinking Christian teachers’ role. The implications of this research included the potential for counterbalancing dualistic practices (role of the prophet), placing an emphasis on care instead of neoliberal pressures (role of the priest), and envisioning subject content within the coming of the kingdom (role of the king).Contribution: Through its consideration of the teaching profession in terms of the three offices of Christ, this article’s research seeks to enhance the professional identity of faithful Christian teachers. While the focus is primarily on those employed in Christian schools and also intends to influence the identity of those working in secular settings. The authors argue that teachers are prophets in the messages they impart, priests when they act compassionately, and kings when they encourage dedicated and exemplary citizenship.

Sounding the alarm: an exploration of professionalization within the Ontario fire service focused on the issues, challenges, pressures, and opportunities for transforming a lauded public sector institution

ABSTRACT The fire service is highly regarded by the community and is routinely recognised as a highly trusted occupation. The demands placed on the fire service have grown substantially in recent years due to neoliberal pressures, growing fiscal costs, accountability pressures, an expanding emergency response mandate, and the acquisition of additional non-emergency roles. This thesis explores the extent to which these changes are resulting in the professionalisation of the Ontario fire service. It employs historical and sociological institutionalism to examine the Ontario fire service as an institution to understand factors influencing its behaviour and shaping its change mechanisms. It uses related theoretical concepts of institutional agency, path dependence, endogenous and exogenous variables, rule makers versus rule takers, and institutional isomorphism to provide insight on how institutional change occurs or does not occur. This study comprised 24 interviews with leaders from Ontario and international fire services, the Ontario police and paramedic services, senior municipal officials, labour relations experts and higher education professors. The findings of this study suggest that the Ontario fire service may be approaching a critical juncture whereby it is forced to adapt to neoliberal pressures and pressures for occupational change to remain effective and become more professionalised, despite its entrenched nature as a long-standing hierarchically structured but non-professionalised institution. These pressures combined with growing calls for change are challenging the ingrained status quo. This study contributes to the literature on institutionalism and the professions through its exploration of an understudied institution. While the focus is the Ontario fire service, the findings may have implications for other fire services and similar institutions. It finds tensions between pressures for professionalisation on the one hand, and neoliberal fiscal pressures on the other. These complexities contribute to firefighters embodying a quasi-professional status that gains legitimacy from the ‘heroic work’ it undertakes rather than by qualifications or credentials. Furthermore, the post-pandemic workplace and a newer generation of workers are producing institutional pressures that can potentially shift the entrenched fire service. This research sheds light on the Ontario fire service through an academic lens and reveals a complex institution facing a challenging trajectory.

RE/UN/DIScover Heuristic: Working with Clinical Practice Impingements in Dehumanizing Times.

Although clinical social work seeks to center the transformative potential of human relationships, practitioners are experiencing heightened systemic and organizational impingements from the dehumanizing pressures of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism and racism diminish the vitality and transformative potential of human relationships, disproportionately affecting Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Practitioners are also experiencing increased stress and burnout related to increased caseloads and decreased professional autonomy and organizational practitioner support. Holistic, culturally responsive, and anti-oppressive processes seek to counter these oppressive forces but need further development to synthesize antioppressive structural understandings with embodied relational interactions. Practitioners can potentially contribute to efforts that apply critical theories and antioppressive understandings within their practice and workplace. Through an iterative flow of three sets of practices, the RE/UN/DIScover heuristic supports practitioners' efforts to respond in those challenging everyday moments where oppressive forms of power are imposed and embedded within systemic processes. With themselves and other colleagues, practitioners engage in compassionate REcover practices; use curious, critical reflection to UNcover full understandings of power dynamics, impacts, and meanings; and draw on creative courage to DIScover and enact socially just and humanizing responses. This paper describes how practitioners can use the RE/UN/DIScover heuristic in two common challenging moments of clinical practice: systemic practice impingements and implementing a new training or practice model. The heuristic seeks to support practitioners' efforts to preserve and expand socially just, relational spaces for themselves and those with whom they work within the context of systemic dehumanizing neoliberal forces.

Performing Trauma in Central Africa: Shadows of Empire By Laura Edmondson

Reviewed by: Performing Trauma in Central Africa: Shadows of Empire by Laura Edmondson Sky Herington Performing Trauma in Central Africa: Shadows of Empire BY LAURA EDMONDSON Indiana UP, 2018. xii + 348 pp. ISBN 9780253032478 paper. In the context of an ever-expanding humanitarian sector, particularly active in Africa, scholarship interrogating the ethics and effects of arts-based therapeutic models in humanitarian interventions has increasingly turned to performance as both a fruitful object and an important tool of study. In Performing Trauma in Central Africa, Laura Edmondson develops this approach, drawing on performance theory in a compelling analysis of a variety of cultural responses to mass violence and trauma in the Great Lakes region over the last two decades. Borrowing from Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman, Edmondson uses an "empire of trauma" (5) as a lens that reveals the limiting master-narratives of suffering and healing that are regularly perpetuated by Western-sponsored arts interventions. Scrutinizing neoliberal solutions to managing the aftermath of conflict, she investigates how Central African trauma is packaged to "obscure rather than to illuminate empire's complicity in a world order that sustains mass death and systemic violence" (9) and is made to soothe and satiate empire's appetites. If local artistic expression is prone to manipulation and co-option by both INGOs and African states, however, empire's trauma market is not a straightforward vampirization of African suffering by the imperial consumer. Performance is a site through which local actors might legitimate such narratives but also, simultaneously, reappropriate them for their own ends: in contexts of scarcity, trauma narratives can serve as vital resources. The historical overview of the region in the first chapter immediately reveals the advantages of Edmondson's geographical focus, which allows room for a detailed presentation of the specificities of each country's history while also establishing, through a transnational approach, the interconnectedness of conflicts across the region. Mapping the "roots and routes" (38) of mass violence and genocide, Edmondson analyzes the concept of "competitive memory" (59) and considers how a single mass trauma might overshadow others in the public imagination, creating a hierarchy of suffering. The following four chapters offer a wide range of case studies of the cultural production that has emerged from these intersecting histories of violence in Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Fieldwork in 2004 at a US-sponsored rehabilitation center for former child soldiers in northern Uganda, for example, informs Edmondson's reflections on the constructed linear narratives of these children's experiences, performed as spectacle for the benefit of foreign visitors. The exploration of the Western consumption of spectacle is then expanded in an examination of the performative strategies of the post-genocide Rwandan state, while in the Congolese context interventions by American humanitarian organizations are seen to shrink spaces of suffering and eclipse the trauma of those excluded from victim groups recognized on the world stage. Finally, Edmondson returns to a post-conflict northern Uganda in 2010 and reflects on the role of INGOs and American celebrities in the complex dynamics of trauma branding. Such branding projects are however sidestepped by many [End Page 193] northern Ugandans in their use of memorialization and demands on the state for "living memorials" (252) that respond to their material needs. A different approach is taken in the book's final chapter in which, drawing on her own experience running theater workshops in northern Uganda and Rwanda, Edmondson searches for new models of theater activism detached from its "humanitarian baggage" (287). Since, she argues, "neoliberal pressures are more easily negotiated than opposed" (271), staying at home is not an option. Instead she seeks to offer Western theater activists a guide to avoiding those pitfalls of empire discussed in the preceding chapters and tentatively concludes, borrowing from Emmanuel Lévinas, that a stance of "radical passivity" (276)—involving shared vulnerability, open-ended collaboration, and the acceptation of inaction—might be a useful, if sometimes elusive, point of departure from which to develop a more ethical approach to intercultural performance outside of the influence of empire. This explicit identification of an imagined reader in the closing pages echoes the emphasis on the perspectives of Western agents found...

The institutionalization of shared rental housing and commercial co-living

In context of diminishing housing affordability, shared renting has acquired new salience in recent years, especially for single young-adults. Public discourses often pose shared renting as a potential solution to the ‘housing crisis’, with new regulation and investment stimulating conversions to multiple-occupancy and growth in co-living developments. This paper addresses how Amsterdam, a deeply regulated market, has approached affordability concerns through transformations in the shared rental sector. Drawing on secondary data and stakeholder interviews we analyze developments in the institutional features of shared housing, focusing on the regulatory context under neo-liberal pressures. We identify shifts from ‘traditional’, relatively informalized sharing arrangements towards a more complex and institutionalized sector featuring growth and diversification in co-living provision. Beyond illustrating interaction between changing real-estate investment practices and Amsterdam’s socioeconomic and regulatory context, our analysis innovates a rough typology of sharing and co-living and seeks to contribute to understanding of emerging forms of housing and precarity characteristic to the experiences of young urbanites.

The challenges of “Moving at the Speed of Trust”: how women navigate new public management dynamics in power-based community organizations

ABSTRACT The practice of professional community organizing aims to create a more equitable, inclusive society. However, power-based community organizing in the Alinsky tradition has historically been criticized for being unwelcoming to women, especially those who are caregivers at home. To better understand the paradox of working for social justice within an occupational context where one is not fully welcome, this exploratory interview-based study used an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis to explore how women organizers understand, experience, and navigate gendered features of new public management within power-based community organizations in Chicago. Our findings indicate that women community organizers experience significant tensions due to professional demands and a culture of overwork that is incompatible with caregiving responsibilities. Nonetheless, practices of building authentic relationships, engaging in trauma-informed practices, and taking time for rest and reflection–practices that are not always consistent with neoliberal pressures to “produce” – brought them hope and meaning. Though organizing can be plagued by a sense of urgency, slowing down can be a political act of inclusion.

The quest for gender equality in universities at the crossroads of neoliberal and anti-gender pressures: the case of Turkey

ABSTRACT In Turkey, the quest for gender equality in universities takes place under increasing anti-gender, authoritarian and neoliberal pressures. Based on interviews with academic change agents, this article explores gender equality efforts in different universities presented in the form of typology: project-led, collective and individual-led change. It suggests that change processes are context-bound, yet they face similar challenges in securing inclusivity, intersectionality and sustainability, which are better addressed by hybrid strategies. Differing from professionalised reform strategies in the global North, gender equality reform in Turkey’s universities provides insights transcending binaries such as that between the university and its outside, top-down and grassroots change, and formal and informal solidarities.

Investigating the Impact of K-12 International Recruitment Policyscapes through Neoliberal and Anti-Colonial Frames

While Canadian public schools do not charge students tuition the same way post-secondary institutions do, we are increasingly seeing neoliberal pressures contribute to a lucrative market for tuition-based international students in K-12 education similar to higher education. This study focuses on how neoliberalization is shaping and contributing to the international recruitment policyscape in Ontario’s K-12 education system. Theoretically informed by neoliberalism and anti-colonialism, this paper examines the case study of international student programming in Ontario (and Canada’s) largest school board, the Toronto District School Board. Using “What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” as a methodological approach, we conducted a policy analysis of various documents published by the board with respect to their international student program. Our analysis shows how overarching neoliberal pressures imposed by provincial governments contribute to the creation and maintenance of this particular policyscape, along with a discussion of how this impacts public education in Ontario.

Review of “Precarious Asia: Global Capitalism and Work in Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia”

Precarious Asia: Global Capitalism and Work in Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia, authored by Arne L. Kalleberg, Kevin Hewison, and Kwang-Yeong Shin, is a timely and ambitious book that examines increasing precarity in employment relations in three Asian economies. It is timely in the sense that it sheds light on the precarization of work, the central feature in the transformation of contemporary labor markets under neoliberal pressures. It is ambitious as it brings three economic powerhouses in Asia—Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia—into a comparative examination and in conversation with other advanced capitalist economies. The book traces how work has become increasingly uncertain, unstable, and insecure in three Asian economies in the last 20 years. To offer the comparative analysis, the authors provide the historical background of the developmental state, the shift in global capitalism, domestic institutional arrangements and social welfare regimes, and implications for inequality and poverty. In doing so, their overarching argument is centered on the changing balance of power among class actors. By looking into the political and economic dynamics behind the liberalization of employment and social protections, the book ultimately maintains that the shifting interests of global capitalism and the configurations of national institutions and class relations have shaped different degrees and forms of precarity in the three countries.

Curatorial reflections in North American university fashion collections: Challenging the canon

Once-embodied garments take on new life through curation, where they have the potential to reveal histories, pose questions, inspire creativity, and challenge oppressive systems by bringing attention to inequalities and injustices through the lens of fashion. While the garment does this work materially, it is the curator and their team who conceptualize an exhibition, conduct in-depth research, design the display and author interpretive text, all of which empowers artefacts to convey a narrative. However, the very ‘elevation’ of fashion within major museums has been tethered to an ideological fabrication of fashion as a Euromodern phenomenon, which has created, produced, performed and sensationalized an exclusionary narrative of fashion history. At the same time, this narrative is being challenged through curation, especially in smaller institutions like community archives, tribal museums and university fashion collections. The contributors to this Special Issue reflect on the latter within the context of the United States. They write about the challenges of producing curated displays while offering insights into, and evidence of, the possibilities that curatorial practice offers institutions of higher education and the communities they serve. University collections in the United States create a space of learning that offers possibility for rethinking, reimagining and critiquing fashion. Education is the premise of the university collection and therefore world-building becomes possible through curation. While the university fashion collection is not without colonial baggage, corporate and industry connections, ideological interests and neo-liberal pressures, it is ideally a space premised on scholarly pursuit. This Special Issue grapples with the complexities of curating fashion in North American universities, and the potential of this work to agitate, challenge and resist dominant narratives.

Feature: Developmental Education and the Teacher-Scholar-Activist: An Invitation

In response to growing neoliberal pressures and austerity measures, two-year English teacher-scholars have embraced Sullivan’s call to activism, but this work is made challenging as aspiring teacher-scholar-activists struggle to balance activism with the other heavy demands of their professional practice. After expanding teacher-scholar-activism as a theoretical framework, we explore activism through cross-case analysis of three developmental literacy professionals’ actions, mindsets, and training. We then provide a pragmatic how-to manual for aspiring teacher-scholar-activists.

Creating spaces of refusal in the neoliberal academy

Collective action has always been the heartbeat of social justice movements. However, existing systems pressure people to focus on hyper-competition and eradicate the ability to collectively resist systemic oppression. Unfortunately, education scholars rarely critically and theoretically analyze how they can and do collectively refuse neoliberal pressures in the context of higher education. In this article, we examine how neoliberal contexts induce individualistic hyper-competition, fragment community, and hinder collective action in academia. Building on this analysis, we draw from our own experiences to highlight some of the ways that scholars advocating social justice might create space and time to challenge these pressures and provide time to focus energies on local radical forms of refusal. Specifically, we highlight the value of creating spaces and time for radical care, radical dreams, and radical formations. We conclude with questions that invite readers to join us in grappling with how to envision these spaces.

Navigating and Negotiating Health and Social Services in the Context of Homelessness: Resistance and Resilience

In this article, we draw upon a case study exploring social inequality and homelessness in homeless-oriented services in a large health and social services centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. We take up professionals’ (working in homelessness services) and service users’ (people experiencing homelessness) (N=12) perspectives exploring slippery notions of empowerment/disempowerment using a stigma, resistance, and resilience lens. We mobilize the concepts of navigation and negotiation to better understand participants’ experiences of stigma and the dialogical tensions in empowerment/disempowerment constructs moving beyond simple worker/service user dichotomies of powerful/powerlessness. We explore the more nuanced ways professionals and people who experience homelessness (often described in passive terms) understand these tensions and the dynamics at play within professional relationships, systems, and structural constraints. We unpack professionals’ “silent practices” in their effort to “empower” service users and resist institutional forged by neoliberal pressures. We make the case that systemic and structural constraints manifested in institutional practices push people experiencing homelessness to adopt strategies of resilience.

Which UHC? Features for Equity and Universalism Comment on "Universal Health Coverage for Non-Communicable Diseases and Health Equity: Lessons From Australian Primary Healthcare".

Equity and universality are implicit in universal health coverage (UHC), although ambiguity has led to differing interpretations and policy emphases that limit their achievement. Diverse country experiences indicate a policy focus on differences in service availability and costs of care, and neoliberal policies that have focused UHC on segmented financing and disease-focused benefit packages, ignoring evidence on financing, service, rights-based and social features that enable equity, continuity of care and improved population health. Public policies that do not confront these neoliberal pressures limit equity-promoting features in UHC. In raising the impetus for UHC and widening public awareness of the need for public health systems, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) presents an opportunity for challenging market driven approaches to UHC, but also a need to make clear the features that are essential for ensuring equity in the progression towards universal health systems.