‘Emergency!’ Or How to Learn to Live with Neoliberal Globalization

Abstract

The author explores the cultural politics of neoliberal globalization, its deformations of critical facets of public culture as it has returned home, and he explores the politics of emergency. Rather than seeing the politics of emergency as something indicative of an emerging 'emergency regime' attendant to the terror war, he argues that the current politics of emergency is rooted in neoliberal globalization more generally, especially in terms of the need for powerbrokers to institutionalize insecurity and anxiety as central facets of a 'new normal.' He then turns to the criminalization and militarization of schools as examples of how the process of institutionalizing insecurity has unfolded in the last decade, suggesting that public schools are an ostensible and crucial site (being the one of the last sites to be precaritized) because the types of subjects and agents required for neoliberal globalization must learn how to live (in fear) with neoliberal globalization. Without an understanding of how schools are being leveraged to produce a 'new normal,' strategies for engaging schools as democratic public spheres will be potentially under-developed or mis-directed.Much like the need to gradually increase the dosage of a heavily used medication in order to experience the same level of relief, so too with respect to emergency powers: the perception may be that new, more radical powers are needed to fight impending crises, particularly if the existing powers seem to have failed to prevent the events that give rise to the new emergency. (Gross, 2006, p. 82) Let me retell a public school event to which unsurprisingly scant critical attention has been devoted in both academic and popular circles and briefly outline related changes in school disciplinary practices from the past few years.[1] While this event might be seen as an example of the effects of the politics of emergency, a detailed examination of the domestic impacts of neoliberal globalization and a critique of the politics of emergency could demonstrate that this event (and others in public schools) exemplifies the emergence of a 'new normal' that is marked and constituted by conditions of mass anxiety and fear.On the morning of 5 November 2003, 17 plain-clothed and uniformed police officers took their posts to perform a drug-raid -at Goose Creek High School in Stratford, South Carolina. As 107 primarily African American students departed the buses and entered the school at 6.40 a.m., police officers jumped out of closets and from behind closed doors, brandishing guns and unleashing a search-and-sniff dog. Officers slammed and locked doors and, with the aid of school personnel, effectively blocked the school's internal thoroughfare. Students were forced frantically to the floor -some by the coercion of the barrel of a gun -and others were handcuffed, as the authorities performed their dubious search without seizure for 40 minutes. The event was so overwhelming, one student later claimed, 'I thought it was a terrorist attack or something' (student quoted in

School Surveillance, Control, and Resistance in the United Kingdom

“…This is not a dystopian fantasy: O'Connor's (2009) work on the Safer Schools Partnerships evidences a 'biased and didactic ' (136) police presence in schools, to the detriment of teaching staff ratios, teacher-student relationships, student voice, creative pedagogical materials and dialogic pedagogical expertise in teaching about drugs, alcohol and crime education. The U.K.'s experience here is in line with a global phenomenon: Robbins (2008) cites Giroux's description of the 'hard war' waged by neoliberalism on young people in the US, referring to 'the harshest elements, values, and dictates of a growing youth-crime complex that increasingly governs poor minority youth through a logic of punishment, surveillance, and control' (Giroux cited in Robbins 2012: 631). One of the key delivery modes for this schema in U.K. schools is the audit.…”

“…The permanent exclusion statistics described above demonstrate that the neoliberal contextcharacterised by audit culture-provides a fertile context for the implementation of strict disciplinary approaches in U.K. schools (Robbins 2008); especially in academies. Perhaps as a result, since 2012, right-wing government initiatives in England have led to millions of U.K. pounds in funding for 'boot camps' for children and young people excluded from school or deemed to be at risk of exclusion (Mills and Pini 2015).…”

“…As a result, children, young people and teachers in U.K. schools are becoming increasingly anxious. As Robbins (2008) puts it, 'teachers, subjected as they are to the persistent surveillance and random intrusion of administrators, fear disciplinary action for not following the given 'standard' for the day' (344). In response to this environment, in 2016 head teachers' unions made statements against the Education Secretary and parents held a 'children's strike' against government policies around the implementation of SATS tests for six-year-old children (Stewart 2016).…”

“…In the process, students have become commodified (Keddie 2014) and therefore subjected to market forces. This has resulted in an intense gatekeeping process which has been affected by assumptions about race, class and potential achievement (Robbins 2008): shadowy admissions protocols have transformed the demographics of many schools, with some academies changing their catchment area boundaries to exclude working class and black communities (Kulz 2014). This is linked to speculation about the potential achievement of specific student groups and links directly to exclusion practices.…”

“…As Robbins (2008) puts it, '(t)here are students who are competitive assets, and there are students who are fiscal liabilities or waste' (344).…”