The Biopolitics of Educational Investment: A Foucauldian Examination of Venture Philanthropy

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2

Abstract

When venture philanthropy invests in the education field, it operates within and reproduces a neo-liberal governmentality and episteme which crafts the interpretations, defines the limits of action, and structures the causal understanding of education as a system, a network of institutions, and as practice. This interpretation and the technologies education investors use to discipline their investments serves the production of student as “homo economicus,” a biopolitics in which personal and public health is tied to investment in human capital. This ethnographic research study into the investment practices of a venture philanthropy firm in urban education will synthesize Foucault’s theoretical work on episteme, governmentality, and disciplinary examination to examine the biopolitics of a human capital centered education.

Author

• Samuel E. Conver, Temple University