Revisions to rationality: the translation of ‘new knowledges’ into policy under the Coalition Government

Abstract

This article gives an account of the use of knowledges from emerging scientific fields in education and youth policy making under the Coalition government (2010–15) in the UK. We identify a common process of ‘translation’ and offer three illustrations of policy-making in the UK that utilise diverse knowledges produced in academic fields (neuroscience, network theory and well-being). This production of ‘new knowledges’ in policy contexts allows for the identification of sites of policy intervention. This process of translation underlies a series of diverse revisions of the rational subject of policy. Collectively, these revisions amount to a change in policy-making and the emergence of a different subject of neoliberal policy. This subject is not an excluded alterity to an included rational subject of neoliberalism, but a ‘plastic subject’ characterised by its multiplicity. The plastic subject does not contradict the rational subject as central to neoliberal policy-making, but diversifies it.

Keywords:

• Rationality
• networks
• neuroscience
• well-being
• neoliberalism

Notes

1. It is of course that case that we illustrate just one policy take-up of neuroscience here. Even within Early Years policy, there is evidence of the previous Labour administration undertaking similar articulations (for example DCSF 2010).

2. This metaphor of plasticity is, indeed, itself an emerging trope of interdisciplinary, flexible policy production. Taking up the language of ‘neuroplasticity’ as one of the most influential recent discoveries of neuroscience, the RSA’s report Transforming Behaviour Change: Beyond Nudge and Neuromania (Rowson 2011) synthesises research from across a wide range of disciplines, arguing that in contrast to classical economics and biological interpretations, we must understand that the productive effects of social contexts on cognition and consciousness are fundamental to ‘the emerging scientific view of human nature’ (Rowson 2011, 10).