Audit cultures, labour, and conservative movements in the global university

Abstract

I want to use this essay – basically a commentary – as a context for some political reflections on what is happening to the governance and the labour processes at universities internationally. In the process, in addition to my critical reflections on the neoliberal impulses affecting universities, I want to do two other things. First, I shall expand the range of work and workers that need to be considered if our analyses are to be true to the range and depth of these transformations. And second, I also want to complicate the usual critical analyses of what is happening in higher education by broadening the discussion to include movements that include but go beyond the class-based models that are often employed. Thus, in a later part of this essay, I urge us to pay closer attention to conservative religious movements and institutions that are having an increasing impact on the politics of knowledge at universities in a number of countries.

Keywords:

• audit cultures
• managerialism
• higher education
• home schooling

Notes

The term ‘conservative modernization’ was first introduced by Roger Dale. See Dale (1989–1990).

This mirrors as well the growing spread of ‘evidence-based practices’ in social and educational policy in general. It is deeply problematic both epistemologically and in terms of its effects. For a detailed examination of evidence-based practices, see Sandler and Apple (2010).

It is important to note here that liberalism, and I would argue crucial parts of neo-liberalism as well, is also based on a racial contract. As Charles Mills reminds us, the rational individual that lies at the heart of liberalism requires a constitutive outside, an Other, who does not possess inherent rationality. The ‘polluting Other’ historically maps onto the construction of the racial subject. See Mills (1997).

See also my discussion of the international linkages between conservative religious institutions of education and neoliberal corporate entities and foundations in Apple (2013).