Culture in talk: neoliberalism, welfare and school education in Sweden, the UK and Russia

Descripción del proyecto

Descubrir el papel de la resistencia popular en la elaboración de políticas públicas

A la hora de investigar la expansión neoliberal en la educación, muchos estudios se centran en las perspectivas procedentes de las narrativas y los datos políticos oficiales. El proyecto financiado con fondos europeos Cultureintalk, alejándose de esta situación, estudiará las reformas educativas neoliberales en Rusia, Suecia y el Reino Unido mediante un planteamiento ascendente examinando las voces populares de la sociedad. El trabajo del proyecto reunirá la sociología cultural, la política pública y la educación comparativa, además de redefinir la relación entre cultura y política como un bucle de retroalimentación continua donde las interpretaciones políticas populares se abren camino hacia el discurso político. Esto favorecerá el desarrollo de un diálogo más eficaz entre los actores populares y los actores educativos a nivel nacional.

Objetivo

The study is the first to apply a cultural prism to comparatively examine the diverse and contradictory enactments of neoliberal education reforms in three welfare states - Sweden, the UK and Russia. In contrast to other studies that examine neoliberal expansion in education from the perspective of official policy narratives and numbers this study embraces a bottom-up approach by studying grassroots societal voices. Building bridges between cultural sociology, public policy and comparative education, the study will help redefine the relationship between culture and policy as a continuous feedback loop that enables grassroots policy interpretations to trickle up to policy discourse and inform policy action.

Empirically, the study will map contemporary meanings of education in the three case countries, highlight ongoing sources of tension between neoliberal and welfare educational values, and unpack similar and divergent cultural logics of resistance. Theoretically, the study will enrich our understanding of the widely recognised but under-explored cultural dimension of policy. The study will contribute to enabling more effective dialogue between grassroots and nation-level education actors by advancing the view of social policy as co-produced and co-owned by grassroots actors.

This ambitious multi-language project will bring the researcher to the forefront of the global conversation about the role of grassroots resistance in public policy-making. It will solidify the researcher’s transnational expertise that spans Russia, the UK, the US, Scandinavia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and catalyse her independence in comparative public policy research. It will also sharpen her unique methodological expertise in the interrogation of social meanings through computational and digital research. Finally, it will enhance the researcher’s profile and visibility in international policy consultancy, with a view to her going on to lead her own consulting practice.