This important work critically investigates the use of rating and ranking systems in higher education to show how they govern the academic population through the creation of competition and antagonism.
From social media to PISA and Rotten Tomatoes, ratings and rankings exist everywhere in our daily lives. Seemingly benign in practice, they can structure and govern important parts of society, including social interaction, public health and economic rankings. In this essential critique, author Jonas Thiel sets out the case against these practices, using the UK’s higher education model to show how tools such as the National Student Surveys (NSS) instead divide the academic population to make it governable and controllable. Instead of achieving its intended aim of improving teaching by forcing competition over student satisfaction, Thiel shows that systems like the NSS have a profound and often negative impact upon how people and institutions understand themselves. Drawing on the new materialist theory of Karen Barad, Foucault’s governmentality and Laclau’s understanding of antagonism, the book raises an urgent need to respond to these boundary-drawing practices, especially in light of rising inequality and ecological collapse, and poses the question: can we even imagine a world without 'Top 10' rankings and 'out of 5' scores?
Engaging with current debates around ‘value’, tuition fees and the role of higher education in society, this is fascinating reading for advanced students and academics in psychology, education, sociology and philosophy.
Author(s): Jonas Thiel
Series: Concepts for Critical Psychology: Disciplinary Boundaries Re-thought
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 160
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
Series Preface for Jonas Thiel’s Ratings and Rankings in Higher Education: A New-Materialist Exploration of How They Control Society
1 Introduction
The NSS
Structure of This Book
Methodological Remarks
2 Conceptual Foundations: Karen Barad’s Agential Realism
Diffraction
Niels Bohr’s Quantum Physics
Social Theory
Michel Foucault
Judith Butler
Barad’s Critique of Butler and Foucault
Agential Realism
Intra-Action
The Agential Cut and Boundary Formation
Complementarity and Exclusions
Meaning and Matter
Cause and Effect
Discourse = Apparatus = Phenomenon
Connectivity, Enfolding and Topology
Agency and Structure
3 Ratings and Rankings as Apparatuses
A Brief Summary of Agential Realism
Micro Apparatuses
Anxiety as a ‘Threat’ from the Future
Enfolding, Entanglement and Topology
Macro Apparatuses
Differential Gears and Solidarity
4 The NSS as a Disciplinary and Neoliberal Hybrid
Disciplinary Governmentality
Foucault’s Disciplines
The NSS as a Disciplinary Technology
The NSS as Neoliberal Governmentality
Foucault’s Neo-Liberalism
The NSS as Neoliberal Governmentality
Competition – Everywhere!
Conclusion: The NSS as a Neoliberal-Disciplinary Amalgam
Charlie Brooker’s ‘Nosedive’
5 Divide and Rule: The NSS as an Antagonistic Governmentality
Ernesto Laclau’s Antagonism and Populism
The NSS as an Antagonistic Technology
Micro Populisms
Meso and Macro Populisms
A Historical Perspective on Higher Education Populisms
Current UK Situation
Alternative Antagonisms beyond the University
6 Governmental Apparatuses of Bodily Production
Foucault and Barad
Foucault and Laclau
Barad and Laclau
Discourse
Foucault, Barad and Laclau
7 Conclusion – Solidarity, Accelerationism and Utopia
Summary
The Future of Student Feedback
The NSS as Part of Global Issues
Some Final Remarks
References
Index
