Irrational bodies and corporate culture: further education in the 1990s

Abstract

The further education sector in England and Wales has been marketized. Colleges are now corporations, business practices have been adopted wholesale and a new managerialism is clearly evident. Economic rationalist discourse, a new cult of the individual and a growing emphasis on the promises of new technology are all major features of the further education sector today. In this paper, I want to argue that these changes are not simply the result of the global restructuring of the economy and New Right politics, but can be seen as a direct descendant of deeply patriarchal philosophical trends in the history of Western thought. The Cartesian mind/body dichotomy, with its gendered, racialized and classed implications, is replayed within the discourses and practices of economic rationality, masculinist managerialism and the mythologies of the new technology. I will argue that far from being neutral and rational, newly marketized colleges embody those irrational and dangerous elements usually reserved for ‘Others’.

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Carole Leathwood

Her main research interests are within the field of gender and post‐compulsory education, including student learning, organization and management issues and new technological developments. She is currently working towardes a PhD in gender and the discourses and practices of marketization in further education colleges.