Hyper-Modernity, Capitalism, and Education Futures

• In Event: Critical Pedagogy, the Body, and the Politics of Data

Abstract

While the collapse of neoliberal legitimacy has opened up a space for both post-neoliberal radical-progressive and neo-fascist alternatives, elite institutional responses have attempted to preserve the current technocratic, neoliberal administration of business-as-usual late capitalism. This paper examines the way education is mobilized as an elite strategy of adaptation and mitigation of potential threats to the underlying political economy of late capitalism. It does so through a case study of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The WEF is a transnational organization comprised of the world’s most powerful corporations, billionaires, industry and governmental leaders. Their work is in agenda setting for shaping elite policy and public opinion on how global problems are understood and should be addressed in accordance with member priorities. This paper draws on the traditions of political economy and Freirean critical pedagogy to analyze the construction of education within the research publications and media narratives of the WEF. It argues that education is conceived as a means of adaptation and mitigation, rather than a means to transform systems generating threats to global stability and future sustainability.

Author

• Alexander Means, University of Hawaii at Manoa