Risk and the Neoliberal University: Exploring Ethical Principles and Platforms for International Education

• In Event: International Education and Risk

Abstract

Purpose: This paper explores the theoretical foundations of approaches to risk within universities and locates the discussion of risk on ethical principles of social justice and citizenship in order to shift perceptions and practices of “risk management”.
Theoretical framework: Institutional responses to risk and uncertainty within a neoliberal context take on particular relational and structural qualities .As Ravetz (2005) and Leach & Scoons (2005) argue, current risk discourses in universities shift responsibility from the social (for example, concern about safety and danger) to the individual ( concern about risk), suggesting a “shifting science – society relationship” (p. 15) . The neoliberal dystopia in this suggests that the harm and the cost of harm should be best treated as an individual’s choice and responsibility thereby limiting the public/ state or institutional responsibility to individuals as citizens rather than consumers. However, in higher education in general, and certainly international education in particular, risk management should be seen as inseparable from ethical decision-making and matters of global social justice (Turner & Robson, 2008). Viewed as a matter of recognition and responsibility (Young, 2011), a socially just risk management approach must be capable of integrating differing experiences of, and perceptions and feelings about risk, based upon gender, culture, race, economic status, and level of education, among other characteristics (Breakwell, 2007; Slovic, 2000; Slovic, 2010). Starrat’s (2012) ethics of justice, care and critique ,and Honneth’s (1995) social grammar of love, rights and solidarity offer alternative conceptual and analytic tools to ground a relational risk management approach that can counterbalance current prescriptive frameworks that dominate the field. The paper provides both theoretical discussion and practical recommendations that might shift how international education programs engage with risk.

Author

• Lynette Shultz, University of Alberta