Hegemony and Education Under Neoliberalism

Insights from Gramsci

Peter Mayo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781135085698
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: History of Education

Based in a holistic exposition and appraisal of Gramsci's writings that are of relevance to education in neoliberal times, this book--rather than simply applying Gramsci's theories to issues in education--argues that education constitutes the leitmotif of his entire oeuvre and lies at the heart of his conceptualization of the ancient Greek term hegemony that was used by other political theorists before him. Starting from this understanding, the book goes on to compare Gramsci's theories with those of later thinkers in the development of a critical pedagogy that can confront neoliberalism in all its forms.

1 Introduction

Hegemony and Neoliberalism: A Gramscian Antidote

Neoliberalism and the Intensification of Globalisation

In an interview with Roger Dale and Susan Robertson (2004), the Portuguese sociologist, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, stated that “Neoliberalism is the political form of globalization resulting from a U.S. type of capitalism, a type that bases competitiveness on technological innovation coupled with low levels of social protection” (p. 151). He goes on to state that “the aggressive imposition of this model by the international financial institutions worldwide not only forces abrupt changes in the role of the state and in the rules of the game between the exploiter and the exploited . . . but also changes the rules of the game among the other kinds of developed capitalism” (de Sousa Santos, in Dale & Robertson, 2004, p. 151).

Since the early eighties, Neoliberalism provided the dominant hegemonic discourse surrounding economic development and public policy (Burbules & Torres, 2000). Its birth pangs were bloody as it sought its trial run in what is generally regarded in Latin America as the ‘First September 11th’, that is to say the CIA and multinational backed military coup, led by the Commander of the Armed Forces, General Augusto Pinochet, against the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. That attack on the presidential palace, La Moneda, in Santiago, Chile, on Tuesday, 11 September 1973, brought an end to one of the longest parliamentary democracies in the region and paved the way for the policies and blueprints developed by the ‘Chicago Boys’, Chilean economists who were sold on Milton Friedman’s and Arnold Harberge’s principles, to start being implemented against a reign of fascist terror. This reign led to the execution of thousands of declared or suspected leftists. Among the victims were intellectuals such as the musician Victor Jara, a major exponent of ‘la nueva canción’, killed by death squads in a sports stadium that is now named after him.

Neoliberalism, though the term was hardly used at the time, was very much a feature of the Pinochet regime’s ideology in Chile. It has continued to remain the main ideology in the country until this present day when it has become the target of protests by students backed by trade unions and other organisations and movements against its current manifestation in such areas as education, from primary level to higher education (PoLin So, 2011), and health. Neoliberalism began to be rendered a global ideology through ‘Thatcherism’, the term coined by the recently deceased Stuart Hall to refer to this type of economic policy— deindustrialisation, financially driven from the ‘city’; ‘rolling back the frontiers’ of the state; turning public goods into objects of consumption (with an emphasis on market driven ‘positional goods’, as with the case of education at all levels in Chile including state education for which one has to pay); unbridled individualism (“there is no such thing as Society”—Margaret Thatcher); Reaganomics (Pannu, 1996); the IMF’s and World Bank’s structural adjustment programmes in much of the industrially underdeveloped world (Boron & Torres, 1996; Mulenga, 1996; Pannu, 1996); and the WTO’s polices that would also affect educational ‘services’ (Rikowski, 2002). Furthermore a ‘new managerialism’ (Lynch et al. , 2012) is making its presence strongly felt in education where schools and other educational institutions, including Higher Education institutions, are encouraged to run as corporate entities (Hill et al. , 2013) with their leaders conducting themselves more as though they were CEOs than actual education leaders.

Beyond the Economic

Public spaces began to shrink as a result of their being encroached upon by market forces (Giroux, 2001a) through privatisation. So did other outlets such as those associated with youth entertainment, also subject to commodification. The same applies to people who are conditioned to shape their identities as consumers in possession of positional goods and engaging in a lifestyle which, though characterised by economic precariousness, the traditional staple of working and peasant class lives, camouflages this reality, providing the illusion of a middle-class adherence. Many people are gaining more education and working longer hours for less, with the occupational group in question having become déclassé.

Neoliberalism therefore extends beyond the realm of economic policy making by encroaching into the domains of individual and social life. Panagiotis Sotiris articulates this well in the following lines:

One should never forget that Neoliberalism is not just an economic policy. It is also the attempt towards production of a particular subjectivity centred upon economic self-interest and competition, in sharp opposition to other, more critical forms of subjectivity, such as that of the active citizen or the conscious worker. (Sotiris, 2014, p. 319)

Neoliberalism's Bloody Birth Pangs Re-Enacted and Beyond

As with Chile, Neoliberalism was occasionally reinforced, in certain countries, not only through electoral means, generating support by appealing to ‘common sense’ (the sort of popular contradictory consciousness highlighted by Gramsci and which will be explained further on in this volume), but also through military coups. Turkey is a case in point with the coup remarkably staged on a September 12th, this time in 1980 (Mayo, 2014a; Ünlü, 2014). This once again represents a bold attempt, by a US satellite state in the Eastern-Mediterranean spanning from Europe into Asia, to set the conditions for the onset of neoliberal policies¹ in this largely populated nation. As with other countries such as the USA and Britain, Turkey has recently been seen as a country following the ‘New Right’ pattern.

Neoliberalism and the New Right

The New Right has often been defined as an amalgam of a commitment to US-driven neoliberal economics with conservative values. We saw this in England where Thatcherism took on the form of neoliberal economics, characterised by de- industrialisation and the all-pervasive rule of the market, and old Victorian conservative values. We had the same situation under Reagan in the USA and the two Bush presidents, the younger one foregrounding a specific form of bigoted Christian politics alongside the well-established neoliberal policies. Turkey seems to be providing another manifestation of this kind of alliance under Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP Party, where thousands have taken to the streets in various cities, squares and parks (notably Gezi Park—Gezgin et al., 2014) to oppose the current regime of old Islamic, anti-secularist values sitting comfortably with a large scale US-based neoliberal capitalism. In all cases, the violent nature of capitalism itself, and especially neoliberal capitalism, with its history of bloodshed, well known to Turkey not only with the 1980 coup but also with the 1977 May Day massacre at Taksim Square (unidentified gunmen opened fire on participants in the Labour Day manifestation, killing many and leading to a long ban on this manifestation), has made its presence felt (Mayo, 2014a, p. 308).

Neoliberalism is now also a feature of parties in government that have historically been socialist (see Hill, 2001; Ledwith, 2005 for a discussion of British labour politics on this). The presence of this ideology on either side of the traditional political spectrum in Western democracies, leading to an electoral choice around not ideological issues but simply such questions as ‘who is the country’s better manager?’ (Mayo, 2013 b), testifies to the hegemonic nature of Neoliberalism. This point is worth keeping in mind with respect to dominant discourses on education and their social-democratic trappings.

The presence of the neoliberal ideology in education, as well as in other spheres of activity, can easily lead one to think and operate within the logic of capitalist restructuring. As a result of this process, once-public goods (education among them) are converted into consumption goods as the ‘ideology of the marketplace’ takes hold. Neoliberal strategists advocate increasing privatisation and related cuts in public spending on social programmes, leading to the introduction of user charges and cost recovery policies. Popular access to health, education and other social services would therefore be curtailed. As indicated with Chile and the Pinochet regime, everything has to be paid for, including sending one’s child to a state primary school. Later Thatcherite mantras such as “there is no such thing as a free lunch” already had their material realisation in Neoliberalism’s Chilean ‘trial run’.

Neoliberal policies also lead to public financing of private needs. The onus for social and economic survival is placed on individuals and groups. The debate on rights and responsibilities is rationalised, with ‘self-help’ being advocated for those who end up as the victims of these policies.² These policies also lead to a decline in real incomes. The whole question of ‘choice’ becomes a farce as people who cannot afford to pay for educational and health services are fobbed off with an underfunded and therefore poor quality public service in these areas (Mayo, 1999), if any at all (once more, see the Chile case). Neoliberalism also entails a deregulation of commodity prices and the shift from direct to indirect taxation (Boron & Torres, 1996; McGinn, 1996; Pannu, 1996). Its orthodoxy also includes, as indicated by Mark Olssen (2004, p. 241), the opening of borders, floating exchange rates, abolition of capital controls, liberalisation of government policy, developing integrated private transnational systems of alliances and establishing, within countries, central banks that “adopt a market-independent monetary policy that is autonomous of political interference” (ibid.) With respect to the USA, Henry A. Giroux refers to the economist William Greider who argues that Neoliberalism proponents “want to ‘roll back the twentieth century literally’ by establishing the priority of private institutions and market identities, values and relationships as the organizing principles of public life” (Giroux, 2004, p. 107).

I would sum up (Mayo, 2009), therefore, by arguing that hegemonic globalisation, with its underlying neoliberal tenets, has traditionally been characterised by the following, each of which having ramifications for educational provision, though not to the same degree in all countries:

• A strong private sector bias—reduced growth of public spending on public education and the pursuit of other sources of funding.
• The transition of education and other formerly public goods to a consumption service (Hill & Associates, 2005), with the blurring of public and private divisions—including the blurring of private and public in education.
• An obsession with developing the countries’ ‘Human Resources’, a euphemism for the term ‘Human Capital’ (OECD, 2007), as part of re-mantling the state (Pannu, 1996) into a neoliberal or, possibly, as envisaged in certain contexts through a ‘Third Way’ politics, a Workfare state (Ball, 2007), to create the right infrastructure for investment and mobility.
• Vocationalising many sectors of lifelong learning, including education for older adults (non-sustainability of pension schemes) (Borg & Mayo, 2008).
• Public financing of private needs (Gentili, 2001) through, in certain cases, partly financing, directly or indirectly, a competitor market (Gentili, 2005, p. 143) or facilitating the presence of a business agenda in certain sectors of education, especially Higher Education.
• International quality comparisons—standardisation, league tables, equivalences, harmonisation and specific emphasis on ICT and Maths and Science. The EU, the OECD and even UNESCO have provided quality indicators in this regard, though each with different emphases (see Surian, 2006). Some have gone so far as to argue that what we have, in this context, is an ‘evaluator/ive state’ (Gentili 2005, p. 141; Neave, 2006).
• State intervention in specific sectors as manifest in recent years owing to the credit crunch and other economic setbacks.

Globalisation from Below

The foregoing are, in the main, features of one particular kind of globalisation (Carnoy, 1999), often referred to as hegemonic globalisation (Dale & Robertson, 2004, p. 148). This is not the only kind of globalisation in existence. There is also “counter-hegemonic” globalisation (de Sousa Santos, in Dale & Robertson, 2004, p. 150) or “globalization from below” (Marshall, 1997). I prefer the second term given the dynamic nature of hegemony, as the later chapters will indicate, which therefore renders any sort of clear-cut binary opposition between hegemonic and ‘counter-hegemonic’ problematic. No wonder Gramsci, to whom these terms are attributed, or more accurately, with whom the terms are associated (readers need no reminding that he was not the first to use the term ‘hegemony’), never used ‘counter-hegemony’ in his writings.

Globalisation from below “consists of resistance against hegemonic globalization organised (through local/global linkages) by movements, initiatives and NGO’s, on behalf of classes, social groups and regions victimised by the unequal exchanges produced on a global scale by neoliberal globalization” (de Sousa Santos in Dale & Robertson, 2004, p. 150). They include social movements from the South and North playing a major role in monitoring compliance of governments regarding such targets as, for instance, the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and advocating for more and better aid (in the early seventies, the wealthiest nations had committed themselves to 0.7% of their GDP to be reserved for international aid), ‘justice in trade’ (fair trade) and debt write-off as key to the attainment of the proposed and alternative goals. It also entails different movements, previously identified with a rather fragmentary identity and specific issue politics, coming together “on a scale previously unknown” (Rikowski, 2002, p. 16) to target global capitalism and the meetings of the institutions that support it, such as the IMF, World Bank and the WTO, thus invoking “an anti-capitalism of real substance and significant scale” (ibid.). The World Social Forum is a classic example of a space in which different progressive movements come together to search for common ground.

As Leona English and I (English & Mayo, 2012) argue, international networking, part and parcel of ‘globalisation from below,’ often involves the use of technology for progressive ends. It can well involve learning such skills as digital literacy, public speaking and project promotion—an important feature of learning within movements that incorporates the honing of advocacy skills as well as learning effective publicity approaches and how to follow up on issues, identifying the right spaces and persons. The acquisition of digital skills allows for ease of communication. Some activists challenge organisations such as NAFTA in North America by making radically progressive use of the Internet for progressive and social justice purposes; this would always have a learning, through consciousness raising, dimension. Some wage what they would call an ‘Internet war’. Clear examples are here provided by the Frente and Ejercito Zapatista in Chiapas or in the democracy uprising in Egypt and Tunisia in 2011 which sought to end decades of oppression from President Mubarak and President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali respectively, although whether they have brought about the desired political change remains a moot point, especially with regard to the Egyptian experience. This has led many, including the present author, to avoid the fashionable term ‘Arab Spring’, an over-claim in the circumstances.

The foregoing, however, would suggest that ‘globalisation from below’ consists in the contacts being established between different people and organisations immersed in the recent volume of uprisings, from some of the Arab uprisings, to the indignados in Spain and Greece, the student movements in Vienna, Santiago de Chile, London (not to forget the riots there [Mclean, 2011, p. 43] and elsewhere in the UK), the Occupy Movement (Fox Piven, 2012) and the revolts in Turkey (Sotiris, 2014), which are symptomatic of an almost universal dissatisfaction with Neoliberalism and the huge disparities in living conditions it has spawned. Despite the obvious role that the new social media, a feature of the intensification of globalisation, plays in bringing individuals, social movements and groups together and in raising collective awareness, people, in Sotiris’ (2014, pp. 316, 317) view, still attempt to own the squares and streets when giving vent to their anger and delivering their protests, turning them into global squares and streets because of the global media interest they attract. Each Saturday, women converge on Galatasaray Square in Istanbul, Turkey, just like the Madres of Plaza 25 de Mayo in Buenos Aires, Argentina (in this case, clamouring for information with regard to the remains of their children and whereabouts of their grandchildren, all victims of the ‘dirty war’), to protest and lament the loss of their loved ones during and after the years of the coup which cemented the ushering in of Neoliberal policies. They have been doing this for a number of years. Globalisation from below also involves the ‘reinvention’ of people’s action across frontiers and geographical spaces. People power makes its presence felt in Turkey and has been doing so for quite some time in a variety of sites. This time, though, this manifestation of people power has been ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Hegemony and Neoliberalism: A Gramscian Antidote
• 2 The 'Turn to Gramsci' in the English Language Education Literature: An Overview
• 3 The Centrality of the State in Neoliberal Times: Gramsci and Beyond
• 4 Gramsci: Adult Education and Learning
• 5 'In and against the State': Gramsci, a War of Position and Adult Education
• 6 Gramsci on Schooling: Adieu to a School That Was but Cannot Be Any Longer?
• 7 Gramsci, the Southern Question and the Mediterranean
• 8 Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire: Connections and Contrasts
• 9 Gramsci's Impact on Critical Pedagogy
• 10 In Sum: Some Concluding, Summarising Thoughts
• References
• Indexes