Creating and Commodifying the Neoliberal Self: A Weberian Analysis of an International Education Course

• In Event: International and Comparative Perspectives on Schooling

Abstract

Using one undergraduate course in International Education as an example, this paper examines how the seemingly rational organization of existing education structures preclude alternative understandings/practices of student learning. We position these education structures within existing neoliberal reform trends that promote the privatization of public institutions to achieve the perceived advantages of the private sector. We analyze this phenomenon through the lens of Weber’s (2002) conceptions of the Protestant ethic and “shell as hard as steel,” wherein individuals reconstitute their lives as a function of wealth, and so validate a capitalist mission that constrains them (Baeher, 2001). We contend that the ultimate outcome of this process is the objectification and subsequent commodification of students in pursuit of the neoliberal mission.

Authors

• Ashlee Anderson, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville

• Andrea Arce-Trigatti, Tallahassee Community College