Neoliberal technologies of subject formation: a case study of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme

Abstract

The hegemony of neoliberalism as an economic and Governmental rationality on a global scale is well documented. How it has come to be that way, and how its relevance is upheld is a complex theoretical and historical–empirical question. This article contributes to the discussion by examining the ways in which neoliberal discourse enters into the production of subjectivity and comes to operate at the level of desire. While subject formation takes place in multiple and contradictory ways, and within and across a multiplicity of social sites, the article focuses on the popular Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme as a technology of neoliberal subjectification. The article analyses how neoliberal discourse manifests itself in the Award's promotional material and programme and, drawing on qualitative semi‐structured interviews, how the Award scheme is taken up by students in a prestigious Australian private girls' school.

Keywords:

• Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme
• Neoliberalism
• Subject formation
• Technologies of the self

Notes

1. Of course it could be very interesting to trace the ways in which the Award scheme historically has promoted itself but here we merely focus on the current official websites.

2. Note here that the participant can choose which community service to undertake; like with philanthropy, which neoliberals celebrate and depend upon, the do‐gooder is bound by personal choice alone—rather than to a state sponsored collective commitment to sustained social welfare.

3. A fuller reading of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme as a ‘disciplining’ technology of youth would of course be possible. In such an analysis the desired citizen of the Award scheme would be the prudent, rational autonomous subject—a subject which compliments the neoliberal subject.

4. The interview data drawn on in this section of the paper has been sourced from a large study on the place and meaning of health and physical activity in the lives of young women (O'Flynn, 2004). Fourteen young women were recruited from two very different schools—a prestigious, independent, girls' school; and a department, co‐educational high school. Two personal development heath and physical education teachers, from both schools, were also interviewed.

5. Interestingly, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme enters into market discourses in other ways. As individuals schools are increasingly required to function as independently managed quasi‐enterprises in competition with other schools the Award scheme is paraded in the promotion of themselves as a more attractive choice; attracting students of ‘the right kind’ (Burchell, 1996, p. 28).