Neoliberalism and After?

The era that began with the election of the Thatcher and Reagan governments has been dominated by contemporary forms of neoliberalism based market fundamentalism, globalization as world economic integration and the ideology of 'free trade,' and an attack on 'big' government and social welfare. This book is a historical and theoretical investigation of contemporary neoliberalism in relation to education policy and its roll-back of the Keynesian welfare state. It argues that education is the basis of the open society and that education is a social welfare right in the merging knowledge economy. It draws on the theoretical lens of Michel Foucault's work on governmentality understood as a form of radical political economy to explore and critique neoliberalism as the ruling ideological consensus. It also questions whether and to what extent its influence will continue in the face of the destabilization of markets that followed the financial crisis and the global recession that began in 2008 in the advanced liberal economies of the USA and the EU.

Michael A. Peters is Professor of Education in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Adjunct Professor in the School of Art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia. He is the editor of three journals: Educational Philosophy and Theory, Policy Futures in Education, and E-Learning and Digital Media. His most recent books include: The Last Book of Postmodernism: Apocalyptic Thinking, Philosophy and Education in the Twenty-First Century (Peter Lang, 2011); Governmentality Studies in Education (2009); Creativity and the Global Knowledge Economy (with P. Murphy & S. Marginson) (Peter Lang, 2009); Global Knowledge Cultures (with C. Kapitzke) (2007); Subjectivity and Truth: Foucault, Education and the Culture of the Self (with Tina Besley) (Peter Lang, 2008); Building Knowledge Cultures: Educational and Development in the Age of Knowledge Capitalism (with Tina Besley) (2006); and Knowledge Economy, Development and the Future of the University (2007).