Lifelong Learning and the Production of Neurotic Citizens
Ulpukka Isopahkala-Bouret author Heikki Kinnari author Hanna Laalo author Heikki Silvennoinen author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:7th Jan '27
£90.00
This title is due to be published on 7th January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Unpacks Finland’s education system and presents the Finnish system of lifelong learning in a new light.
In this open access book, the authors argue that the policies, practices and politics of lifelong learning result in a range of unintended – and often unwanted – consequences. It demonstrates that while the multiple promises of lifelong learning remain unfulfilled, the policy discourses of lifelong learning embody a particular view of the subject (the citizen), who is invariably the object of its attention. The book interrogates the kind of subject the policy discourses seek to cultivate and shows how this subject is aptly characterised as neurotic. Based on the analytical examination of a great deal of empirical data collected in Finland, which is often regarded as the poster child of educational reform towards a knowledge economy, the book offers novel insights into lifelong learning by analysing its unintended consequences, such as feelings of inadequacy, difficulties in coping, anxieties and unfulfilled promises generated by the political demands for continuous self-development. It addresses the structures and mechanisms as well as the cultural presuppositions that result in those unintended consequences. The book contains critical social and cultural analyses that examine the unintended consequences of lifelong learning from macro, meso and micro perspectives.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on Bloomsbury Collections. Open access was funded by the Research Council of Finland.
The idea of lifelong learning has been around for several decades. While policymakers tend to present it as a positive idea and a desirable future, the authors of this book do a splendid job in revealing the darker sides of lifelong learning, particularly by asking who benefits from lifelong learning and who carries the burden for it. The combination of detailed analysis and original theorising raises the important question whether the unintended consequences of lifelong learning policies are indeed as unintended as they are often presented. A major contribution to critical scholarship. -- Gert Biesta, Faculty Professor of Education, The University of Melbourne, Australia & Emeritus Professor of Public Education, Maynooth University, Ireland.
Taking up the thread of Foucauldian governmentally literature, Lifelong Learning and the Production of Neurotic Citizens examines historical and contemporary discourses on life long learning, combining a sophisticated theoretical sensibility with close empirical analysis. Through a nuanced treatment of the most contemporary manifestations of the discourse on lifelong learning, (the reader is treated to such enticing and illuminating concepts a “neuroliberalism” — a phrase which summarizes so much of the educational conversation of our times), this volume sidesteps a tendency within governmentality research to collapse all psychologizing perspectives into the problem of neoliberalism itself. Hence, the category of neurosis is rescued from the Freudian dustbin to which it was perhaps prematurely consigned, and put to work in the study of our own, neoliberal times. Lifelong Learning and the Production of Neurotic Citizens will be of interest not only to students of critical education studies, but to the widening scholarly conversation on the domain of government itself, and on the ways in which governmental practices shape the neurotic subjectivities of our present age. -- Sam Binkley, Professor, School of Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies, Emerson College, USA
This timely and important book illuminates how the politics of lifelong learning shapes us into particular kinds of citizens. By revealing how governing increasingly operates through our emotions, aspirations and sense of self, the authors show how we become both the objects and instruments of governance. An insightful and highly relevant contribution. -- Andreas Fejes, Professor of adult education research, Linköping University, Sweden
ISBN: 9781350476622
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
178 pages