DEL DESPACHO ADUANERO DE LAS MERCANCÍAS

As can be seen from the above discussion, each theoretical perspective has its own strengths and weaknesses when striving to understand the connections between the structural context and individual experiences. Although the individualisation thesis offers a helpful lens to look at the greater insecurity and increased personal responsibility faced by young people, it is not so useful for explaining the driving forces behind the processes of individualisation. The Foucauldian perspective is useful for analysing the behaviours of the government and the individual, yet fails to address the root causes of the problems. Although Engels admitted that he and Marx ‘neglected…the ways and means by which [false consciousness came] about’ (Engels, 1893), the Marxist perspective could possibly address the deficiencies of other theories on some level by offering radical solutions and the possibility of informed action. Therefore, I have constructed a theoretical framework for this study using the above- mentioned three theoretical perspectives.

This section focuses on explaining in detail how these three theoretical perspectives relate to each other and their relevance to neoliberalism. However, for this theoretical framework, there is no intention to produce a synthesis of the three theories nor achieve a theoretical coherence. The table below summarises how each theoretical component relates to three of the four research questions and the main themes of the study. The theoretical framework is not intended to address Research Question 2, which concerns the actual practices within two colleges—How do young people experience attending vocational college? and What are their perspectives on the vocational programmes as preparation for the world of work? This two-part question will be considered using relevant literature on vocational education and skills formation (see Sections 2.2 and 2.3). It also demonstrates why each theoretical component works for this study. (All three theoretical perspectives are relevant to the primary research question as well as to Research Question 5—In what ways does social

theory help us explain the connection between the economic/social structure and the experiences of young people in vocational colleges?)

Table 2.1—Theoretical framework

Theoretical

perspective Research Question Main theme Why the perspective works

The individualis ation thesis

RQ1 What are students’ experiences of choosing a

vocational college and programme? RQ3 What are vocational students’ perspectives on their future career possibilities?

RQ4 How do vocational students compare themselves with those following academic routes?

Making a “choice” (educational and career choices) Agency and neoliberalism

The individualisation thesis provides the required descriptive and rhetorical power in terms of offering a lens through which to view the greater insecurity and increased personal responsibility faced by Chinese vocational youth.

The Foucauldian perspective

RQ4 How do vocational students compare themselves with those following academic routes?

The stereotypes The exam culture, agency and neoliberalism

The Foucauldian perspective provides a conceptual lens that helps us understand how individual young subjects are formed in the context of neoliberal economic reform and how they conform to the ‘disciplinary power’ (Foucault, 1977).

The Marxist

perspective RQ1 What are students’ experiences of choosing a

vocational college and programme? RQ3 What are vocational students’ perspectives on their future career possibilities?

RQ4 How do vocational students compare themselves with those following academic routes?

Making a “choice” (educational and career choices) The stereotypes Agency and neoliberalism

The Marxist perspective draws attention to the problem of the manufacture of consent in the creation of false consciousness and provides radical solutions. With its unique rhetorical

power, it contributes to the

conceptualisation of some important aspects (e.g. agency) in the thesis.

These three theoretical perspectives are understood and analysed within the context of the neoliberal economic transformation taking place in China since the end of the 1970s. The following section discusses the concept of neoliberalism, before presenting the details of the framework.

Neoliberalism is perceived as ‘a set of principles rules undivided across the globe’ and ‘the most successful ideology in world history’ (Anderson, 2000, p. 17). Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of ‘political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade’ (Harvey, 2005, p. 2). The role of the state is to create and preserve these tasks of privatisation, marketisation and lessening regulation (Harvey, 2005; Dawson, 2013). States must take such actions because, in a global economy, they are forced to compete for capital by developing an attractive market for investment (Strange, 1994). The fundamental mission

of neoliberal states is to ‘facilitate conditions for profitable capital accumulation on the part of both domestic and foreign capital’ (Harvey, 2005, p. 7). For Harvey (2005, p. 19), neoliberalisation is interpreted either as ‘a utopian project to realise a theoretical design for the reorganization of international capitalism’ or as ‘a political project to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of economic elites’. It is the ideology of neoliberalism that is of special concern for the theoretical framework of this study.

Figure 2.1 Theoretical Framework

Three different theoretical strains and their interplays are presented in Figure 2.1. As mentioned above, the persistent redistributive effects and increasing social inequality of neoliberalism indicates ‘the restoration of class power’ (Harvey, 2005, p. 16). It generates the economic structure of society, ‘the real foundation’, in Marxist terms, ‘on which arises superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness’ (Marx, 1859). This economic foundation requires certain governing techniques to maintain and secure the class power. Both the economic foundation and the governing techniques have contributed to the process of individualisation within the neoliberal context.

Within a historical-materialist perspective, Marx explained how the subordinate classes take exploitative relations of production for granted through ‘commodity fetishism’ (Marx, 1887). Based on Marx’s work, Gramsci observed the hegemonic power in capitalist society, which manages the population by securing ‘the consent of the governed’ (Gramsci, 1971). With hegemonic power, neoliberal ideas have permeated society and framed the ‘common-sense

Economic foundation Governmentality/disciplinary power Individualisation requires promotes generates

language’ (Gramsci, 1971). The broadly egalitarian and collectivist attitudes that underpinned the welfare state era are giving way to a more competitive, individualistic market-driven, entrepreneurial, profit-oriented outlook (Hall and O’ Shea, 2013).

Although Foucault’s work is characterised by some kind of ‘genuine struggle’ with Marx, (Balibar, 1992, p. 39), connections can be found between these two theoretical strains. When discussing the process of ‘the accumulation of men’ and ‘the accumulation of capital’, Foucault argues that ‘it would not have been possible to solve the problem of the accumulation of men without the growth of an apparatus of production capable of both sustaining them and using them; conversely, the techniques that made the cumulative multiplicity of men useful accelerated the accumulation of capital’ (Foucault, 1977, p. 220). Similar to Gramsci’s concept of hegemony in terms of managing the population, Foucault’s idea of governmentality, or ‘the conduct of conduct’, also uncovered the appropriate technique for securing and administering the larger population units or the ‘cumulative multiplicity of men’ (Gordon, 1991)

The individualisation thesis, with its focus on reflexivity, choice and self-responsibility, is considered to be ‘neoliberalism in action’ (Lazzarato, 2009). The neoliberal individualisation process is often linked to Foucault’s work on governmentality (Dawson, 2012), as it structures ‘the possible field of action of others’ (Foucault, 1982, p. 221), which helps to create the field of action by constituting individuals whose conduct will contribute towards the reproduction of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism-driven individualisation has produced a ‘technique of the self’ (Foucault, 1988, p. 45), which permits ‘individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state’ (Foucault, 1988, p. 18). The process of individualisation, as a way of life in late modern society, is a result of being subject to disciplinary power, and is the formation and control of individuals through various techniques of training and normalisation (Smart, 2010).

As to the relevance of the individualisation thesis to the Marxist political economy perspective, Zygmunt Bauman, one of the individualisation theorists, addresses this connection by focusing on embedded individualisation (Dawson, 2011, 2012). He states that late modern society continues to be a ‘class society’ (Bauman, 2012, p. 17), and that the inequalities that this produces are a ‘collateral causality of profit-driven, uncoordinated and uncontrolled globalisation’ (Bauman, 2011). Bauman points out that since ‘there is no

alternative’ (Bauman, 2007a), without forms of security, and ways of linking the individual to the collective, current forms of inequality will continue apace and become further embedded, and neoliberalism is reproduced through this embedding (Bauman, 1999, 2007a).

The above section explained in detail how the theoretical framework for this thesis was constructed. This theoretical framework will be frequently referred to in the following chapters. The next chapter will focus on how the research is designed and undertaken in order to answer the research questions.