EDM 62106
Education Policy and Society
Lecture 12
Education Policy and Globalization:
Globalization and the Debate on the Death of Citizenship
A. The Death/End of Citizenship Thesis
1. Philip Wexler proposes in an article entitled Citizenship in the Semiotic Society
that “I set out, in true postmodernist fashion, to underline this death of citizenship.”
(Wexler, 1990, p. 165) He argues that
a. “Citizenship is built on rationality and solidarity.” (Wexler, 1990, 164)
i. The Enlightenment: The rationality basis of citizenship
ii. The democratic nation-state: The solidarity basis of citizenship
b. The erosion of the bases of citizenship
i. The advent of the semiotic/informational society and the erosion of the
rationality basis of citizenship
ii. The advent of the global-informational polity and the erosion of the
solidarity of basis of citizenship
2. Mike Bottery in an article entitled The End of Citizenship? The Nation State,
Threats to Legitimacy, and Citizenship in the Twenty-first Century underlines that
the centuries-long political construct of citizenship is under threats to become
deconstructed. These threats include (2003, p. 101)
a. The social citizenship critique;
b. Economic globalization and ensuing ‘mean and lean’ developments;
c. Political globalization and supernational developments;
d. Consequent sub-national reactions;
e. The rise of ‘citizen consumers’.
B. Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The Semiotic/Informational Society and Its
Political Consequences
1. The semiotic society and the attention economy:
a. A society is called “a semiotic society because both the social organization of
life and its representation are emerging together. …The change in social
organization is what we know as postindustrialism or, more recently,
informationalism. ..It is a change in organizational forms, in mode of
communication as well as in distribution and production. …The product and
artifact is quickly coded as a sign or image that gives it distributional value.
This value is what energizes the investment of resources for re-production.
Signs and symbols are the necessary value added to any traditional
production process.” (Wexler, 1990, p. 166)
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign
processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols,
both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how
meaning is constructed and understood.
b. The integration of mass production, mass consumption and mass
communication:
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i.
Mass consumption has replaced mass production to be the driving and
sustaining forces of growth in post-WWII capitalism.
ii. The mass communication has in turn replaced mass consumption to be the
core of wealth accumulation since the 1970s.
iii. As a result, the process of commodification has integrated with the process
of signification, in other words, the exchange value have emerged with the
value of sign, to be the motor of growth in late capitalism.
2. The cultural logic of late capitalism: The commodification of culture
a. The use value of cultural products: Communicative values and meaningfulness
b. The exchange value of cultural products: Marketability and saleability of
cultural products
c. Reifying cultural meaningfulness embedded in cultural products into cultural
commodities and regressing culture production and creation into cultural
industries and cultural mass-production
c. Culture of signifiers of “referent depth” was replaced by self-referencing and
free-floating signifiers, information, data, icon….
d. Empirically and objectively existing reality replaced by hyper-reality and virtual
reality
e. The proliferation of simulacra and the coming of the culture of simulacra
f. The culture of heritage and tradition was replaced by culture of pastiche and
hybrid
g. The culture of places was first commodified as property-development projects
and then re-commodified as the culture of flow, of global icon, theme park, etc.
3. From semiotic society to attention economy
a. As computer mediated communication has replace television to become the
dominant tools in the informational age, the process of signification has
practically surpassed the process of production to become the most vital stage
in the commodification process in late capitalism.
b. To gain the attentions of consumers in the “information-rich world” has become
the vital strategy in the commodification process. Moreover, attention has
become the most valuable and scarce resources in the attention economy.
c. Herbert Simon, Noble laureate in economics (1978) underlined in 1970 that
“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of
something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What
information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its
recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a
need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of
information sources that might consume it.” (Simon, 1971, Pp. 40-41)
4. The political consequences of the advent of the semiotic society and attention
economy
a. Timothy Luke’s thesis of informational politics
i. Luke underlines that electoral politics has degraded into a “spectacular”
system and rational civil society has relegated to ‘” society based on
sign-circulation.”
ii. “Election, in fact…are now commodified and packaged modes of
democracy; the exclusive signifier of democratic practice. …Citizenship is
now like being a fan, who votes favorably for media products by purchasing
them, extolling their virtues, or wearing their iconic packaging on one’s bill
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cap or tee shirt.” (Luke, 1986-87, p. 72 Quoted in Wexler, 1990, p. 168)
b. Jean Baudrillard’s thesis of “The End of Social”
i. Under the proliferation of mass communication and mass media, society
becomes “a random gravitational field, magnetised by the constant
circulation and the thousands of tactical combinations which electrify them.”
(Baudrillard, 1983, p. 83; quoted in Wexler, 1990, p. 169)
ii. As a result, “‘the rational sociality of the contract…gives way to the sociality
of contact.’ Culture absorbs society. The medium is the message. The
simularcrum──signs and images, culture commodified──takes over social
life (Baudrillard, 1983, p. 84; quoted in Wexler, 1990, p. 169)
c. Jurgen Habermas’ thesis degradation of the public sphere (Habermas, 1989)
i. The commerialization of mass media and the emergence of the trade of
public relation gave rise to the business of public-opinion engineering and
public-consent manufacturing
ii The principle of “publicity” gave way to principle of manufactured and
staged publicity
iii. Political leaders has been relegated to become commodified and packaged
celebrities of politics by Spin Doctors and image consultants
C. The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship I: The Advent of the Empire
1. The rise of the Empire: A Historical Account
a. The constitution of the United Nations in 1945
b. The constitution of the bipolar world system between the “Free World” and the
“Communist Bloc” in the cold war era
i. International Monetary and Financial Conference was held in Bretton
Woods, New Hampshire, July 1944
ii. International Monetary Fund (IMF) held its inaugural meeting in 1946
iii. World Bank formally began operations in 1946
iv. General Agreement for Trade and Tariff (GATT) was established in 1948. In
1995, it transformed to World Trade Organization (WTO)
v. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established in 1950
c. The emergence of the “Third World” and the tri-polar world system in the
1970s
d. The first meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) was held in 1960. The oil crisis in the 1970s triggered by the Arab oil
embargo in 1973 and the outbreak of the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
e. The liberalization of the authoritarian regimes among socialist states in the
1980s
f. The rise of neo-liberalism in the US and UK in the 1980s
f. The collapses of the soviet bloc in 1989
g. The US’s “just wars” in the 1990s
i. The first Gulf War in 1990-91
ii. The second Gulf War in 2003
h. The constitution of the Capitalist Empire in the 21st century
2. The Nature of the Empire of the 21st century
a. “Empire refers to a new form of sovereignty that has succeeded the
sovereignty of the nation-state, an unlimited form of sovereignty that knows no
boundaries or, rather, knows only flexible, mobile boundaries.” (Hardt and
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Negri, 2003, p. 109)
b. The constitution of the Empire has embodied three classic forms of
government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy
i. Monarchical constituents: the US Government and in particular the
Pentagon, the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF.
ii. Aristocratic constituents: the G8, the Security Council of the UN, and major
transnational corporations
iii. Democratic constituents: General Assembly of the UN and various forms of
Non-Government Organization (NGO)
D. The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship II: Challenges to the Cultural-Spatial Bases of
Nation-State
1. Spatial based communities confined within borders of nation-state have been
replaced by communities of global-mobile capitalists, employees in multinational
corporations, internationally organized professional associations, and even flows
of migrant workers (both legal and illegal)
2. Compression of time and space by global-informational paradigm has asserted
growing pressure on the legitimation basis of historical-cultural based national
community. It has also given rise to what Anthony Giddens called post-traditional
society.
“A post-tradition social order…is not one in which tradition disappears - far from it.
It is one in which tradition changes its status. Traditions have to explain
themselves, to become open to interrogation or discourse. … In a globalizing,
culturally cosmopolitan society, traditions become forced into open view: reasons
or justifications have to be offered for them.” (Giddens, 1994, p.23)
3. The erosion of economic nationalism and the crisis of external governance of the
nation-state
a. The dominance of international institutions, e.g. WTO, MIF, World Bank, etc
b. The constitution of the “Washington Consensus”
i. Fiscal discipline
ii. Public expenditure priority
iii. Tax reform
iv. Financial liberalization
v. Exchange rates
vi. Trade liberalization
vii. Foreign direct investment
viii. Privatization
ix. Deregulation
x. Property rights
4 The advent of the competition state
a. Philip Cerny’s conception of competition state:
i. “Globalization as a political phenomenon basically means that the shaping
of the playing field of politics is increasing determined not within insulated
units, i.e. relatively autonomous and hierarchically organized structures
called states; rather, it derives from a complex congeries of multilevel
games played on multi-layered institutional playing field, above and across,
as well as within, state boundaries.” (Cerny, 1997, p.253)
ii. “Rather than attempt to take certain economic activities out of the market,
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to ‘decommodifiy’ them as the welfare state in particular was organized to
do, the competition state has pursued increased marketization in order to
make economic activities located within the national territory, or which
otherwise contribute to national wealth, more competitive in international
and transnational terms.” (2000, p. 122-23)
b. Policy features of competition state
i. Erosion of economic nationalism
ii. Retreat of the welfare state
iii. Collapse of societal corporatism between labor and capital
iv. The advent of fragmented state and the process of hallowing out the state
by means of privatization, corporationization and marketization
v. Compliance to the imperatives of global competitions, multinational
corporations and transnational agencies of governance
c. Bob Jessop’s conception of Schumpeterian Workfare Postnational Regime
(SWPR)
i. Schumpeterian: It signifies the replacement of Keynesian orientation in
economic policy by the Schumpeterian orientation, which aims “to promote
permanent innovation and flexibility in relative open economies by
intervening on the supply-side and to strengthen as far as possible their
structural and/or systemic competitiveness.” (Jessop, 1999, 355) In other
words, the goal of securing full employment in economic policy has been
overshadowed if not completely replaced by the objective of promoting
competitiveness.
ii. Workfare: It indicates that the welfare orientation in social policy has been
superseded by the policy orientation, which focuses on subordinating the
logic of social policies to that of economic policies, submitting the demand
of social welfare to the demands of labour market flexibility, the imperative
of workplace, and the strive for structural or systemic competitiveness.
iii. Postnational: It signifies the withering of the sovereignty of nation-state
over economic and social policies within its national territory. It also
indicates the prominence of international agencies, such as the IMF, World
Bank, OECD etc, in determining economic and social policies at national
level.
iv. Regime: It indicates that phenomenon of “hollowing out” of the state, which
has been undertaken in capitalist states in the past three decades. It also
implies the proliferation of non-governmental or even private agencies in
the sector of public-policy provisions. As a result, the cohesive and coercive
capitalist states have given way to the governance of policy networks.
E. The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship III: The Rise of the Politics of the Internet
1. Transformation of the nature of social movement: The emergence of network
social movement
a. Replacement of material-based or even class-based social movement of the
Cold-War era by post-material social movement or movement mobilized by
cultural values. Replacement of struggles of space of place, e.g. class struggle,
“position war” by struggle of space of flow, e.g. struggle for cultural ideas
b. Replacement of vertically integrated organization, such as political parties,
trade unions, by horizontally connected, loosely coalized, semi-spontaneously
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mobilized networks
c. Social movement are elevating from local political arena to global context by
means of the technological infrastructure of the Internet and the symbolic
superstructure of the global culture
2. The Transformation of civil society
a. Formation of citizen networks: New forms of civil associations have emerged in
the Internet
b. The emergence of cyber public-sphere and check-and-balance mechanism
operating through the Internet
c. Paradoxically, the Internet also brings about the “prevalence of ‘scandal
politics’” (Castells, 2001, p. 157) and the degradation of the “public” from a
group of rational and critical deliberators of public issues to a bunch of
spectators on public shows
3. Changes in the political ecology through the Internet
a. The constitutions of informational warfare and cyber-guerilla-warfare: “The
more a government and a society depend on their advanced communications
network, the more likely they become exposed to (informational) attacks.
Furthermore, unlike conventional or nuclear warfare, these attacks could be
launched by individual hackers, or by small, able groups, who could escape
detection or retaliation.” (Castells, 2001, p. 158-9)
b. The rise of “noopolitik”: The concept of noopolitik generates from the Greek
word noos for ‘the mind’ (Ronfeldt and Arquilla, , 1997). It “refers to the political
issues and the political activities arising from the formation of a ‘noosphere’, or
global information environment, which includes cyberspace and all other
information systems. Noopolitik can be contrast with realpolitik (and its
underlying military power). …In a world characterized by global
interdependence and shaped by information and communication, the ability to
act on information flows and on media messages, become an essential tool for
fostering a political agenda.” (Castells, 2001, p. 160) As a result, public
diplomacy has become a new department in international diplomacy.
c. Swarming operation and the flash mobs: “‘Swarming’ represents a sharp
departure from military concepts based on massive build-ups of fire power,
armored hardware, and large concentrations of troops. It calls for small,
autonomous units, provided with high fire power, good training, and real-time
information. These ‘pods’ would form ‘clusters’ able to concentrate on an
enemy target for a small fraction of time, inflicting major damage, and
dispersing.” (Castells, 2001, 161) Analogues to this ‘network-centric warfare’ at
the grassroots level is the flash mob.
4. Hardt and Negri’s proposal of democratic counterpower of the multitude
a. “The multitude is an active social agent – a multiplicity that acts. The multitude
is not a unity, as is the people, but in contrast to the masses and the mob we
can see that it is organized. It is an active, self-organizing agent.” (Hardt and
Negri, 2003, p.114)
b. The advent of the Empire spawns crisis to national insurrection but opportunity
to global counter-power movement of the multitude
c. “Political action aimed at transformation and liberation today can only be
conducted on the basis of the multitude. …To understand the concept of the
multitude in its most general and abstract form, let us contrast it first with that
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of the people. The people is one. The population, of course, is composed of
numerous different individuals and classes, the people synthesizes or reduces
these social differences into one identity. …The multitude is composed of a
set of singularities —— and by singularity here we mean a social subject
whose difference cannot be reduced to sameness, a difference that remains
different. …The multitude, however, although it remains multiple, is not
fragmented, anarchical, or incoherent. The concept of the multitude should
thus also be contrast to concepts,… such as the crowd, the mass, and the
mob. …The crowd or the mob or the rabble can have social effects —— often
horribly destructive effects —— but cannot act of their own accord. The
multitude, designates an active social subjects, which acts on the basis of what
the singularities share in common. The multitude is an internally different,
multiple social subject whose constitution and action is based not on identity or
unity … but on what it has in common.” (Hardt and Negri, 2004; Pp. 99-100)
D. Global-Informational Society and Its Education Consequences
1. Global education reform of post-national & competition state
a. Education reform as neo-liberal economic project of competition state to solve
the economic crisis elicited by the erosion of the economic nationalism and to
enhance nation competitiveness in global-informational economy and to elevate
the employability of the national labor force
b. Education reform as part of the neo-liberal administrative project of competition
state for reforming the public sectors of the welfare state, in which public
schooling system is the major sector
c. Education reform as part of the neo-liberal identity-construction project of
post-national regime, in which the project of identity-building of nationality and
citizenship has been replaced by that of consumer-rights (rights to choose),
user pay, and partocracy.
2. Instrumental economicism: The underlying principle
a. Dominance of instrumental rationality: Extrinsic and instrumental value of
competitiveness replaces intrinsic and substantive value of education
b. Economicism: Education is subject to the prescription of economicism in all
aspect
3. Quasi-market mechanism: The institutional/operational mechanism
a. The quasi-market restructuring: Restructuring project of education system by
transforming state controlled and professional-led schooling structure into
consumer-led schooling system which resembles as much as possible the
neo-liberal free market
b. Cult of “Surveillance-Evaluationism”: Constituting of the medium of exchange in
quasi-market: of education
i. Standardization: National Curriculum and Assessment, National Standards,
performance indicators, benchmarking
ii. Classification and hierarchization: School League Table, School Report Card,
Failing school list…
iii. Accountability and auditing: Establishment of Office for Standards in
Education in UK in 1992 and Implementation of school inspection
c. Hegemony of “Discipline-Managerialism”: Constitution of the Supply side of the
quasi market of education
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i. Devolution and de-regulation of public schools
ii. From management by input and process to management by output
iii. Hegemony of performativity
iv. The constitution of entrepreneurial school and education by publicity
d. The dominance of Parentocracy-Consumerism: Constitution of the demand side
of the quasi market of education
i. Constitution of market information and signals for consumers: Publicizing
school performance information
ii. Constitution of consumer choice
- Amalgamation of public and private school-sectors, e.g. voucher system
- Privatizing public schools: e.g. opting-out or charter schools
Additional References
Bottery, Mike (2003). “The End of Citizenship? The Nation State, Threats to Legitimacy,
and Citizenship in the Twenty-first Century.” Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol.
33, No. 1, Pp. 101-122.
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