EDM 6210
Education Policy and Society
Lecture 13
Education Policy and Globalization:
Globalization & the Debate on
the Death of Citizenship
Wing-kwong Tsang
1
The Death/End of Citizenship Thesis
• 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
– “Citizenship is built on rationality and solidarity.” (Wexler,
1990, 164)
• The Enlightenment: The rationality basis of citizenship
• The democratic nation-state: The solidarity basis of citizenship
– The erosion of the bases of citizenship
• The advent of the semiotic/informational society and the erosion
of the rationality basis of citizenship
• The advent of the global-informational polity and the erosion of
the solidarity of basis of citizenship
2
The Death/End of Citizenship Thesis
• 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)
– The social citizenship critique;
– Economic globalization and ensuing ‘mean and lean’
developments;
– Political globalization and supernational developments;
– Consequent sub-national reactions;
– The rise of ‘citizen consumers’.
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Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The
Rise of the Semiotic/Informational Society
• The semiotic society:
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)
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Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The
Rise of the Semiotic/Informational Society
• 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.
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Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The
Rise of the Semiotic/Informational Society
– The integration of mass production, mass consumption
and mass communication:
• Mass consumption has replaced mass production to be
the driving and sustaining forces of growth in post-WWII
capitalism.
• The mass communication has in turn replaced mass
consumption to be the core of wealth accumulation since
the 1970s.
• 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.
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Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The
Rise of the Semiotic/Informational Society
• The cultural logic of late capitalism: The
commodification of culture
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Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The
Rise of the Semiotic/Informational Society
• The cultural logic of late capitalism: The
commodification of culture
– The use value of cultural products: Communicative values
and meaningfulness
– The exchange value of cultural products: Marketability and
saleability of cultural products
– Reifying cultural meaningfulness embedded in cultural
products into cultural commodities and regressing culture
production and creation into cultural industries and cultural
mass-production
– Culture of signifiers of “referent depth” was replaced by selfreferencing and free-floating signifiers, information, data,
icon….
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Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The
Rise of the Semiotic/Informational Society
• The cultural logic of late capitalism: The
commodification of culture
– Empirically and objectively existing reality replaced by hyperreality and virtual reality
– The proliferation of simulacra and the coming of the culture of
simulacra
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Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The
Rise of the Semiotic/Informational Society
• The cultural logic of late capitalism: The
commodification of culture
– Empirically and objectively existing reality replaced by hyperreality and virtual reality
– The proliferation of simulacra and the coming of the culture of
simulacra
– The culture of heritage and tradition was replaced by culture
of pastiche and hybrid
– The culture of places was first commodified as propertydevelopment projects and then re-commodified as the culture
of flow, of global icon, theme park, etc.
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Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The
Rise of the Semiotic/Informational Society
• From semiotic society to attention economy
– 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.
– 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.
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Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The
Rise of the Semiotic/Informational Society
• From semiotic society to attention economy
– 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)
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Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The
Rise of the Semiotic/Informational Society
• The political consequences of the advent of the
semiotic society
– Timothy Luke’s thesis of informational politics
• Luke underlines that electoral politics has degraded into a
“spectacular” system and rational civil society has
relegated to "society based on sign-circulation.”
• “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 cap or tee shirt.” (Luke, 1986-87, p. 72 Quoted in
Wexler, 1990, p. 168)
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Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The
Rise of the Semiotic/Informational Society
• The political consequences of the advent of the
semiotic society
– Jean Baudrillard’s thesis of “The End of Social”
• 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)
• 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)
22
Erosion of Rationality of Citizenship: The
Rise of the Semiotic/Informational Society
• The political consequences of the advent of the
semiotic society
– Jurgen Habermas’ thesis degradation of the public
sphere (Habermas, 1989)
• 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
• The principle of “publicity” gave way to principle of
manufactured and staged publicity
• Political leaders has been relegated to become
commodified and packaged celebrities of politics by Spin
Doctors and image consultants
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship I:
The Advent of the Empire
• The rise of the Empire: A Historical Account
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship I:
The Advent of the Empire
• The rise of the Empire: A Historical Account
– The constitution of the United Nations in 1945
– The constitution of the bipolar world system between the “Free
World” and the “Communist Bloc” in the cold war era
• International Monetary and Financial Conference was held in
Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, July 1944
• International Monetary Fund (IMF) held its inaugural meeting in
1946
• World Bank formally began operations in 1946
• General Agreement for Trade and Tariff (GATT) was established in
1948. In 1995, it transformed to World Trade Organization (WTO)
• North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established in
1950
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship I:
The Advent of the Empire
• The rise of the Empire: A Historical Account
– The emergence of the “Third World” and the tri-polar world
system in the 1970s
– 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.
– The liberalization of the authoritarian regimes among socialist
states in the 1980s
– The rise of neo-liberalism in the US and UK in the 1980s
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship I:
The Advent of the Empire
• The rise of the Empire: A Historical Account
– The collapses of the soviet bloc in 1989
– The US’s “just wars” in the 1990s
• The first Gulf War in 1990-91
• The second Gulf War in 2003
– The constitution of the Capitalist Empire in the 21st century
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship I:
The Advent of the Empire
• The Nature of the Empire of the 21st century
– “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 Negri,
2003, p. 109)
– The constitution of the Empire has embodied three classic
forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy
• Monarchical constituents: the US Government and in particular
the Pentagon, the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF.
• Aristocratic constituents: the G8, the Security Council of the UN,
and major transnational corporations
• Democratic constituents: General Assembly of the UN and
various forms of Non-Government Organization (NGO)
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship II:
Challenges to the Cultural-Spatial Bases of
Nation-State
• 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)
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship II:
…
• 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)
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship II:
…
• The erosion of economic nationalism and the crisis of
external governance of the nation-state
– The dominance of international institutions, e.g. WTO, MIF,
World Bank, etc
– The constitution of the “Washington Consensus”
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•
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•
•
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Fiscal discipline
Public expenditure priority
Tax reform
Financial liberalization
Exchange rates
Trade liberalization
Foreign direct investment
Privatization
Deregulation
Property rights
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship II:
…
• The advent of the competition state
– Philip Cerny’s conception of competition state:
• “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)
• “Rather than attempt to take certain economic activities out of the
market, 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)
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship II:
…
– Bob Jessop’s conception of Schumpeterian Workfare
Postnational Regime (SWPR)
• 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.
• 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.
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship II:
…
– Bob Jessop’s conception of Schumpeterian Workfare
Postnational Regime (SWPR)
• 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.
• 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 nongovernmental or even private agencies in the sector of publicpolicy provisions. As a result, the cohesive and coercive
capitalist states have given way to the governance of policy
networks.
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship III:
The Rise of the Politics of the Internet
• Transformation of the nature of social movement: The
emergence of network social movement
– 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
– Replacement of vertically integrated organization, such as
political parties, trade unions, by horizontally connected,
loosely coalized, semi-spontaneously mobilized networks
– 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
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culture
The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship III:
The Rise of the Politics of the Internet
• The Transformation of civil society
– Formation of citizen networks: New forms of civil associations
have emerged in the Internet
– The emergence of cyber public-sphere and check-and-balance
mechanism operating through the Internet
– 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
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship III:
The Rise of the Politics of the Internet
• Changes in the political ecology through the Internet
– The constitutions of informational warfare and cyber-guerillawarfare: “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)
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship III:
The Rise of the Politics of the Internet
• Changes in the political ecology through the Internet
– 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.
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship III:
The Rise of the Politics of the Internet
• Changes in the political ecology through the Internet
– 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.
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship III:
The Rise of the Politics of the Internet
• Hardt and Negri’s proposal of democratic counterpower
of the multitude
– “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)
– The advent of the Empire spawns crisis to national insurrection
but opportunity to global counter-power movement of the
multitude
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship III:
The Rise of the Politics of the Internet
• Hardt and Negri’s proposal of …..the multitude …
– “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 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. ….
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The Erosion of Solidarity of Citizenship III:
The Rise of the Politics of the Internet
• Hardt and Negri’s proposal of …..the multitude …
– “…….. 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)
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Global-Informational Society & Its
Education Consequences
• Global education reform of post-national & competition
state
– 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
– 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
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Global-Informational Society & Its
Education Consequences
• Instrumental economicism: The underlying principle
– Dominance of instrumental rationality: Extrinsic and
instrumental value of competitiveness replaces intrinsic and
substantive value of education
– Economicism: Education is subject to the prescription of
economicism in all aspect
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Global-Informational Society & Its
Education Consequences
• Quasi-market mechanism: The institutional/operational
mechanism
– 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
– Cult of “Surveillance-Evaluationism”: Constituting of the
medium of exchange in quasi-market: of education
• Standardization: National Curriculum and Assessment, National
Standards, performance indicators, benchmarking
• Classification and hierarchization: School League Table, School
Report Card, Failing school list…
• Accountability and auditing: Establishment of Office for Standards
in Education in UK in 1992 and Implementation of school
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inspection
Global-Informational Society & Its
Education Consequences
• Quasi-market mechanism: The institutional/operational
mechanism
– Hegemony of “Discipline-Managerialism”: Constitution of the
Supply side of the quasi market of education
•
•
•
•
Devolution and de-regulation of public schools
From management by input and process to management by output
Hegemony of performativity
The constitution of entrepreneurial school and education by
publicity
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Global-Informational Society & Its
Education Consequences
• Quasi-market mechanism: The institutional/operational
mechanism
– The dominance of Parentocracy-Consumerism: Constitution of
the demand side of the quasi market of education
• Constitution of market information and signals for consumers:
Publicizing school performance information
• 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
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Standardization, Normalization, Commodification & Reification
TTRA,
TOC,
SVAIS
EMICapable
SVAIS Students
EMILanguage
SurveillanceTeacher
Capable Proficiency Competence
Teachers Asessment Framework
evaluationism
Principal
Professional
Development
Market signals
SSE
SSPA
Discretionary
Places
ParentocracyParental
DSS
Choice
consumerism
EMI Schools
Marketization
Demand
QAI
Supply
ERS
Standardization & Dismantliztion
Fragmentation & Stratification
Medium of Exchange
DisciplineSBM
managerialism
Audited
Schools
S-B Ordinance
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Citizenship and Nationality Education in
HKSAR
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5 May 2011
29 July 2011
30 April 2012
25 May 2012
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Citizenship and Nationality Education in
HKSAR
• The dialectic of the concept of One-Country-Two
System
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–
–
–
–
–
One sovereign state
One nationality
Two governmental-administrative systems
Two civil-legal systems
Two civil societies & public spheres
Two citizenships
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Citizenship and Nationality Education in
HKSAR in Global-Informational Context
國家 the state
（行使統一主權的權力機器）
(一国國兩制下制度的磨合)
香港特區政府
中央人民政府
（管治內部事務的權力機器）
（管治對外主權的權力機器）
(香港特區社會內部的團結)
(多元一体格局下中華民族的團結)
民族 the nation
（建基在團結感情的社群）
圖一： 香港特區國民教育的制度基礎
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Lecture 13
Education Policy and Globalization:
Globalization and the Debate on the Death of Citizenship
END
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