April 2019

Apr 1

Two fascinating stories related to China

Apr 30

  • So….April wasn’t a great month for sticking to keeping up posting here. It’s certainly a lot easier to maintain a social media presence than it is to regularly update a blog/website. I spent most of the month working from home and working on personal upkeep. I’ll endeavor to make a better effort in May. 
  • On that note, a couple of inspirational quotes that hit me during the month
    • Self-discipline is self-caring. – M. Scott Peck
    • Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk. – Doug Larson
  • Also, I gave a presentation in my History, Theories, and Practices of Alternative Education class on April 2; my (lengthy) notes are below As an intro to the topic, check out this link: Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world.

The Neoliberal Self

Most of my work for this course stemmed from my reading of this NYT article. In it, the “teacher influencer” Kayla Delzer is introduced and her success at integrating new classroom technology to her teaching is described. The article was a sort of exposé of the emergence of the “teacher influencer”, how their trialing and adoption of classroom technology highlights a growing area of conflict of interest around how teachers are being incentivized to introduce new products into their classrooms, and how this relates to the ongoing commercialization in education. There is a parallel drawn between how, in the past, doctors were similarly incentivized by pharmaceutical companies to promote particular drugs in their practice. While there are now clearer guidelines and codes of conduct for those in the medical profession, the rapid development of educational technology means that there is a dearth of similar guidelines with regard to teachers.

        Initially, I was somewhat torn between the need for teachers to take advantage of the benefits of this and the conflict of interest that this can cause. Delzer herself is a celebrated teacher in her school and has a large social media following praising her innovative methods and engagement in developing the twenty-first-century classroom.  At first, I felt I wanted to look at the issue of the “branded teacher”. However, later I realized that is was two of the things Delzer mentioned in the article that were what really caught my attention.

        Firstly, when speaking of the student portfolio platform Seesaw, Delzer states that “I will embed it in my brand every day”. Delzer and her students are given free access to the app and, in exchange, Delzer uses the product, gives the company feedback, and recommends the app to her followers on social media where she acts as a “teacher influencer”. This seems like a win-win situation; her class gets free tech, and the company gets to trial and improve their product with the help of these teachers who function as, essentially, band ambassadors for the product. However, it was the statement that Delzer would “embed it in [her] brand every day” that caught my attention.

        Secondly, at the end of the article, we are told that there is a sign on the classroom wall that states: “I am building my digital footprint every day.” This is the first of the seven “Digital Citizenship Rules” promoted by Top Dog Teaching, Delzer’s company. While the other six rules appear unquestionably appropriate and correspond with the concepts of best practice in digital citizenship expressed, for example, in the BC curriculum for Digital Citizenship, the idea, or rather, the imperative that her third-graders work on building their digital footprint every day seems out of place.

        Relating these two, the idea of Delzer working on her brand “every day” and the encouragement that her students work toward developing their online presence “every day”, it seems that there is a parallel in the objectives of each exercise. Why do these third graders need to build their digital footprint every day? It is that there is a parallel between Delzer’s daily brand development and the implicit suggestion that these young students also need to daily grow their own nascent brand as they build their own online presence and identity?

       This idea self-branding and the current imperative toward online self-promotion brought me to readings in anthropology, marketing, psychology, and social science which have led me to explore the idea of the branded self and how this is a construct of our neoliberal framework.

[In the coming half hour, I will sketch out some ideas around self-branding relating this to the emergence of the neoliberal self.]

       When looking at the concept of self-branding, a 1997 article entitled “The Brand Called You” is credited with “pushing the idea of self-branding from the margins of marketing literature to the forefront of mainstream media” (Khamis, 2016, p. 192). In this article, Peters explains that, given the crowded marketplace that is today’s workforce, it is imperative for people to begin to see themselves as CEOs of “Me Inc.” and that our “most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You” (Peters, 1997). In essence, Peters is calling for everyone to shift their perception of themselves as an individual towards a view that we are actually a product in the marketplace and, in order to gain attention and traction in that market, we need to dedicate ourselves to self-promotion and explicitly engage in what is a conscious commercialization of the self.

       A definition of commercialization here is useful to explain what this entails and how this effects how we view ourselves in relation to others. Molnar et al (2014) define commercialism as “a value system that promotes profit above all other concerns and that seeks to transform all relationships into commodities that can be exchanged for money” (p. i). This monetization of relationships is at the crux of the issue for, if we are to view ourselves as a corporate entity, it means that we must view all others similarly and so the relationships that we form are merely a convenient partnering made solely with the view toward self-advancement and self-promotion; this, Davis (2003) notes, “requires a carefully controlled and utilitarian way of relating to others. They too must be objectified in the interest of the bottom line” (p. 49). Peters’ description of the branded self pre-dates social media and he couldn’t have foreseen how the platforms that were soon to arrive would provide the perfect vehicle for billions around the world to develop their own brand. In the decades since, self-branding and online image crafting have become ubiquitous as by now “private individuals have internalized ideas that were designed for the marketing of commodities [which] represents a seminal turning point in how subjectivity itself is understood and articulated” (Khamis, 2016, p.200).

       Another definition of commercialism (Twitchell, 1999) sees it involving two processes: “commodification, or stripping an object of all other values except its value for sale to someone else, and marketing, the insertion of the object into a network of exchanges only some of which involve money” (p. 30).  Again, the advent of social media has seen this dual process of commodification and marketing entering the lives of billions, whereby the commercialization of the self has become the major focus of many around the globe with billions engaged in metrification and marketing to promote our brand.

       This preoccupation with self-branding, as well as the promotion and maintenance of that brand, has normalized the commodification of selfhood, whereby we no longer “own” ourselves. To explain what I mean by this, I will introduce Gershon (2014) who explains how the concept of self has changed under neoliberal capitalism, resulting in what she terms the neoliberal self.

       Gershon explains that, under earlier forms of capitalism, a person viewed their bodies and talents as property to be rented. That is, people could lease their bodies and skills to an employer for a certain time each day and, at the end of the day, ownership of that property, the self, would revert to the individual. In this way, ownership of the self remained with the individual though it was temporarily rented for the purpose of extracting reward.

       However, under neoliberal capitalism, rather than property, the self is viewed as a business: “a collection of skills, assets, and alliances that must be continually maintained and advanced”. The worker is then in a corporate alliance with the employer which means that each has “an obligation to tend to their self-representations in such a way that they are mutually compatible and reinforcing”. (Gershon 2014, p.288)

       The contrast here is made clear in that, in the past, there was a separation between the private self and the “employed self”. People had a relatively clear distinction between being on and off the clock so to speak. Under the current ideology, the private self is done away with and the notion of self is subsumed to that of an entity constantly jockeying for position within the market, viewing “Me Inc” as a corporate vehicle to compete and seek dominance in the market. In order to compete within the market, to gain currency, and to stay relevant, it is imperative to engage in constant self-promotion and maintain a carefully curated digital presence.

       It is largely through our online presence, this curated self-representation that our brand is presented for public consumption. Bandinelli & Arvidsson. (2012) explain that: “self-branding is a central tool of what critical social scientists call neoliberal governance. It is a way in which the neoliberal regime ensures the social production of the market and by empowering its subjects to conceive of themselves as entrepreneurial subjects” (p.68).

       I’d like to relate this idea of commodification to something we have looked at in class. The privatization of “The Commons” under the neoliberal context helps us to understand how resources that belong to everyone have been commodified and repurposed toward the extraction of monetary value. Essentially, we have become disenfranchised from the collective ownership of the wealth that exists within our communities, from local to global, and are being given increasingly narrower access to public resources that have moved into private control.

        Similarly, ownership of ourselves as private individuals has become increasingly more challenging when we are forced to view ourselves as merely one more commodity to be added to the market where notions of success and purpose are reduced to our ability to perform as individual entities within a hyper-competitive market place. Here, our relative success can be determined by the metrics embedded within our online identities. Hearn (2008) explains that, on sites where curated profiles of the self are presented, users are encouraged “to see themselves and others as commodity-signs to be collected and consumed in the social marketplace” (p. 211). This view of how we see the relationship between ourselves and others has shifted our idea of the responsibilities we have as private citizens.

       [on responsibilities] Thatcher’s claim that “there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families” was an encouragement for people to take responsibility for themselves and to resist the idea that governments can or should take responsibility for those who did not make full use of their own ability to make their way in the world. This view mirrors the idea that we, as individuals (or families), have little obligation to others and that our sole purpose is to harness our ability to engage with market forces, viewing ourselves a micro-corporate entity, in competition with other individuals which in turn erodes people’s sense of community. Monibot (2016)explains that “Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations” and “In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers” – perhaps this is a cause of the increased rates of depression, loneliness, and self-harm. [The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve]

       Hearn (2008) explains that “flexible corporate capital has subsumed all areas of human life, including the very concept of a private self” (p. 214). Thus, the private self has been repurposed to meet the needs of the neoliberal framework and commodified into the branded self whereby individuals, put in constant competition with each other, can be harnessed toward creating monetary value. [We are the product]

       In conclusion, my interest in this area stemmed from my concerns around the encouragement for children to build their own brand and to build their digital footprint every day. In this regard Kuhen (2017) explains that, in particular, “Education technology has developed in ways that reinforce individualization within a competitive environment, responding to and reinforcing neo-liberal patterns, creating the neo-liberal person”. Stressing the need for self-promotion, individualism, and competition locates the focus of accomplishment and notions of success increasingly outside the individual and inside the neoliberal framework.

       In Verhaeghe (2014) – What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society, the author states that:

       The ultimate goal of present-day education is ‘self-management’ and ‘entrepreneurship’. Young people must regard themselves as                      enterprises, and see knowledge and skills above all in economic terms — that is, as something they can use to increase their market value.

This commodification of the self-instills in us, from an increasingly early age, a “bottom line” approach to education, relationships, and              online interaction whereby the instrumentalization of ourselves as resources is internalized.

       In addition, Boninger (2017) explains that “This individualistic understanding of accomplishment does not explicitly point children away from participating in civil society; rather, it subverts the social commitment on which civil society depends by focusing children on their own individual achievement and consumption to the exclusion or diminishment of everything else.” This narrowing of the focus of our lived experience recasts us as being locked in a constant “survival of the fittest” attitude which leads to a diminishing of the qualities of compassion, empathy, and humility.

       Finally, the recurrent theme throughout has been this idea of competition being promoted as “the only legitimate organizing principle for human activity” (Metcalf, 2017). Unfortunately, this competitive environment means that “those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.” (Monibot, 2016). To avoid being seen as such, the “fake it till you make it” approach sees the never-ending production of a sufficiently marketable self which, if we just try hard enough, will gain enough traction and likes to validate us on our journey. The neoliberal self isolates us from that sense of community and support that can sustain us through periods of doubt and struggle; your “brand” can’t afford to show weakness.  Depression, loneliness, anxiety, and self-harm abound as young people feel increasingly isolated. Perhaps now there is no such thing as society. It has been transmuted into collections of social networks within which we compete and continually craft an image of ourselves in the search for a sense of belonging and community.

REFERENCES

Bandinelli, C., & Arvidsson, A. (2013). Brand Yourself a Changemaker! Journal of Macromarketing, 33(1), 67–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/0276146712465186

Boninger, F. Molnar, A., & Murray, K. (2017). Asleep at the Switch: Schoolhouse Commercialism, Student Privacy, and the Failure of Policymaking. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved from http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/ schoolhouse-commercialism-2017

Davis, J. E. (2003). The commodification of self. Hedgehog Review, 5(2), 41-49. Retrieved from https://docplayer.net/44640530-Joseph-e-davis-the-commodification-of-self.html

Gershon, I. (2014, November). Selling Your Self in the United States. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 37(2), 281-295. doi:10.1111/plar.12075

Hearn, A. (2008). `Meat, Mask, Burden`: Probing the contours of the branded `self`. Journal of Consumer Culture, 8(2), 197–217. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540508090086

Khamis, S., Ang, L., & Welling, R. (2016). Self-branding, ‘micro-celebrity’ and the rise of social media influencers. Celebrity Studies, 8:2, 191-208. doi:10.1080/19392397.2016.1218292

Kuehn, L. (2017, October 24). The Many Faces of Privatization. The Institute for Public Education BC. Retrieved from http://instituteforpubliceducation.org/education-technology-the-trojan-horse-of-privatization/

Metcalf, S. (2017, August 18). Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world

Molnar, A., Boninger, F., Libby, K.M., & Fogarty, J. (2014). Schoolhouse Commercialism Leaves Policymakers Behind—The Sixteenth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercializing Trends: 2012-2013. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved from http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/schoolhouse-commercialism-2013.

Monibot, G. (2016, April 15). Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

Peters, T. (1997). The brand called you. Fast Company. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/28905/brand-called-you

Singer, N. (2017, May 13). How Google Took Over the Classroom. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/technology/google-education-chromebooks-schools.html

Twitchell, J.B. (1999).  Lead us into temptation. New York: Columbia University Press.

Verhaeghe, P. (2014). What about me?: The Struggle for identity in a market-based society. Victoria, Australia: Scribe Publications.

(not cited in the presentation)

Brody, E. W. (2001). The “Attention” Economy. Public Relations Quarterly, 46(3), 18–21. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=5316912&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Cavanagh, S. (2017, May 8). Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft Battle for K-12 Market, and Loyalties of Educators. EdWeek Market Brief. Retrieved from https://marketbrief.edweek.org/special-report/amazon-apple-google-and-microsoft-battle-for-k-12-market-and-loyalties-of-educators/

DeWitt, P. (2015). Making Your Voice Heard: The Power of the Teacher Brand. Education Week. Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/finding_common_ground/2015/03/making_your_voice_heard_the_power_of_the_teacher_brand.html

Gershon, I. (2011). “Neoliberal Agency”. Current Anthropology, 52(4), 537-555. doi:10.1086/660866

Saldaña, C.M., Welner, K.G., Macolm, S. & Tisch, E. (2018). Examining the New Phenomenon of Teachers as Brand Ambassadors. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved January 25, 2019 from http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/brand-ambassador.

Shepherd, I. D. H. (2005). From Cattle and Coke to Charlie: Meeting the Challenge of Self Marketing and Personal Branding. Journal of Marketing Management, 21(5–6), 589–606. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/10.1362/0267257054307381

Singer, N. (2017, September 17). Silicon Valley Courts Brand-Name Teachers, Raising Ethics Issues. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/02/technology/silicon-valley-teachers-tech.html

Waters, Audrey. (2017, September 6). Inequality, ‘Brand Ambassadors,’ and the Business of Selling (to) Classrooms. Hackeducation. Retrieved from http://hackeducation.com/2017/09/06/inequality-ethics-ed-tech