1.3 FORMULACIÓN DEL PROBLEMA
4.1.1 Inocuidad y calidad de los alimentos y protección al consumidor
I have used an adapted version of Neil Thompson’s (2006) ‘PCS’ process and diagram as a
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privilege and oppression. Following Thompson’s use of the interrelated concentric circles
reminded me when interacting with the different types of data, to move between the different levels of analysis, informant talk, what the talk and texts indicated was happening at the organisational and institutional levels, and how the ideological codes, organisational and institutional discourses, and meta-ideologies might be brought into being by certain sequences of words in the activation of policies and procedures. The arrows indicate
motion, alerting me to remain aware of the changes, continuities, specificities and universal elements in the historical, social, economic, political, cultural processes across time and location.
In the next section, I draw from the critical literature to examine how the meta- ideological discourses of neoliberalism, colonialism, whiteness and patriarchies identified by critical scholars and activists as influencing Australian higher education and social work, are discussed and explained. Drawing from this literature, I explain these discourses and what is said to be important in researching them.
META-LEVEL IDEOLOGICAL DISCOURSES
Neoliberalism
Like other concepts discussed in this thesis, neoliberalism is often explained differently according to perspective of the writer or speaker. Those writing from a more critical perspective include Garrett, Jensen & Voela ( 2016, p.x) who describe neoliberalism as
involving ‘the expansion of economic thinking in all spheres of human activity, including the
family, with emphasis on individualism and practices of extending and disseminating market
policies to all institutions and forms of social action’. Similarly, Letizia (2015, p.5) describes
neoliberal theory as comprising many facets, ‘predicated on a belief that competition-based
market mechanisms are the most efficient and effective allocator of goods and services
(including education and welfare) for people who are assumed to be ‘rational, profit
maximising, self-interested, choice making individuals’. Referring specifically to public
Chapter 2 Page 44 of 332 (as a consumer) is incompatible with the core undertaking of public education as a form of social organisation of society.
Neoliberalism is said to happen in ‘capitalist states’ which, as explained by feminist
political economists, Frances Hutchinson and Mary Mellor (2004, p.7) involve systems
‘…based on commodity production for profitable exchange in which the majority of people
are obliged to take part as waged labour if they want to survive’. The capitalist economy is
described as ‘driven by market led wants rather than public needs’ (Hutchinson & Mellor,
2004, p.15). The core ideology, policies and practices of neoliberalism, as the latest stage of capitalism (Duménil & Lévy, 2011) are summarised as including some or all of the following: competition; creation and expansion of markets; marketisation (where an industry or service, like education, is exposed to market forces); commodification (making something like education and welfare an exchange where student and service user as customer
purchases an education or welfare product); commercialisation; privatisation; accumulation, profit maximisation, and increasing labor productivity (Marginson & Considine, 2000;
Hutchinson & Mellor, 2004; Saunders, 2010).
The ideology and practices of neoliberalism are identified as key influences on higher education, including the education of social workers in Australia (Bay, 2011; Wallace & Pease, 2011; Testa & Egan, 2013). The institutional contexts of the RU and the AASW include the policy, funding and regulatory settings of the Australian federal and state governments.
Australian education scholar, Julie Rowlands (2016, p.93), argues a ‘new global policy
accord’ accompanied the conversion of the welfare state to the ‘regulatory state’ from the 1970’s. This was a response to the shift to the right in global politics associated with neoliberalism and managerialism that located the cause of economic difficulties with ‘big’ government and promoted free-market solutions (Rowlands, 2016). Neoliberalism is facilitated by globalisation where supranational bodies such as the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the OECD have ‘pressed governments to shift public policy
from social good to deregulation, competition and privatisation’ (Rowlands, 2016, p.97).
Chapter 2 Page 45 of 332 Public Management (NPM) into education, welfare, Indigenous Affairs, income support, unemployment, penal, immigration, utilities and transport sectors by introducing
contestability and the incorporation of private agencies and business management practices into the delivery of services (Lea, 2008; Considine, O'Sullivan, & Nguyen, 2014). The
neoliberal process of corporatisation, in reference to Australian universities, is said to involve ‘transforming universities into a business by mobilizing processes, discourses, and
practices of marketization, managerialism, and privatization’ (Blackmore, 2015, p.285).
The phrase ‘neoliberal imaginary’ (Rizvi & Lingard, 2011, p.6) is an example of how
invoking a concept can provide the reader with an image containing a pre-determined set of explanatory ideas without the authors having to provide the accompanying detail.
Complementing, and in contrast to, the convenience of invoking a pre-packaged concept, American-based academics, Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore (2002) argue the necessity for researchers to document the detail and explanation of how neoliberalism happens. This is similar to how Smith (2005) calls for researchers to investige and explicate the actual social relations, the coordinated activities of people as they create neoliberalism.They suggest there are often differences between the rhetoric of neoliberal ideas in particular contexts, and their material practice. These scholars critique and extend the dominant explanations of the practices of neoliberalism that focus on the ideology of free markets and small
governments with their critical geographical perspective of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’
(Brenner & Theodore, 2002, p.349). I find Brenner and Theodore’s (2002) emphasis on
documenting the actual particularities and inter-relationships between the local, regional, national and global contexts of neoliberalism to be consistent with the located and
embodied focus of institutional ethnography. As they explain, in understanding neoliberalism it is important to explore for the:
contextual embeddedness of neoliberal restructuring projects … produced within national, regional and local contexts defined by the legacies of inherited institutional frameworks, policy regimes, regulatory practices, and political struggles (Brenner & Theodore, 2002, p.349).
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Australian-based scholar, Matthew Ryan (2015, p.80), expands the ‘actually existing
neoliberalism’ approach from its focus on discovering local practices of neoliberalism to also
considering neoliberal theory itself as ‘complex, heterogeneous and contradictory’. Ryan
(2015) argues that awareness of the nature of neoliberalism as ‘heterogeneous’ in theory
and ‘uneven in material realties of practice’ creates a more robust conceptual tool. American-based social work academic, Anne Deepak (2012) also develops Brenner and
Theodore’s (2002) idea of embedded and contextualised neoliberal implementation
practices in ways suited for the Australian settler colonial context. Deepak (2012, p.786)
describes neoliberal implementation practices as being ‘enforced on top of an historically
unequal global playing field that started with colonialism, overlaid on pre-existing inequalities based on gender, class, ethnicity, religion and caste’.
Neoliberal practices are said to be identifiable through a unifying set of principles and strategies (Hutchinson & Mellor, 2004). However, Deepak (2012) and other scholars also identify that neoliberalism and its associated practices are deployed in context specific combinations, and experienced in different ways and locations, as established through historical and ongoing social relations (Moreton-Robinson, 2000; Brenner & Theodore, 2002; Sewpaul, 2006; Zubrzycki & Crawford, 2013). In the child protection context,
Australian researchers, Phillip Gillingham and Timothy Graham (2016) have shown how the logics of audit and NPM that emphasise accountability, efficiency and effectiveness as per the ‘business model’ are embodied in the policies and procedures contained in electronic information systems (IS). Further, they demonstrate how these NPM imbued IS systems reflect the needs of managers rather than front-line workers to re-orient priorities within organisations away from the front-line workers. This guides me to look for the context specific ways that neoliberalism is practiced in the organisational and institutional contexts of social work education. An important influence in the institutional context of Australian higher education is the political party, or parties, that hold power in the Commonwealth Government, examined in the next section for alignment with neoliberalism.
Neoliberal ideology and practice in the institutional context of the Australian Commonwealth Government
The Commonwealth Government in Australia provides the majority of public funding for higher education. The Commonwealth Government regulates the ‘Higher Education Support
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Act 2003’ that defines the standards that must be met for an entity to be registered as a
university, a requirement to receive the federal education funding (Rowlands, 2016). The ideology, principles and policy platform of the political party elected to power in the federal government is a key influence on the construction and enactment of laws and policies that affect the funding and regulation of all ministerial portfolios, including the higher education and welfare sectors.
Governments, like the conservative Liberal Party of Australia (LP) in coalition with the National Party currently in power in Australia, self-report and are analysed by others, in regards to their stated commitment to reducing the size and scope of their direct delivery of public services such as education (Aspromourgos, 2015; Conifer, 2016). Here, I draw on the work of Ryan (2015) to focus attention on how the actual work of the Federal Government often differs from what the Liberal Party describes as its key beliefs. The statement of key beliefs of the Liberal Party in their Federal Platform (2015) reveal a pragmatic blending of
different ideologies united in being ‘non-labour’, opposed to socialism (LP, 2016) and critical
of the perceived inefficiencies of the post-war Keynesian welfare state (Cahill, 2004). Politicians in the different ideological groupings, or factions, within the Liberal Party appear to be able to negotiate and agree on some ideological strands and policies, at other times there is obvious conflict and dispute, for example in relation to same-sex marriage (Neilson, 2015b; Warhurst, 2015, 2016). The ideology of classic liberalism is evident in the stated key belief in ‘the innate worth of the individual, in the right to be independent, to own property
and to achieve, and in the need to encourage initiative and personal responsibility’. Classic
liberalism is also apparent in the claim that ‘…Liberalism, with its emphasis on the individual
and enterprise, [is] … the political philosophy best able to meet the demands and challenges
of the 21st century’ (LP, 2015, p.5). Conservative ideology is contained in the belief in ‘the
family as the primary institution for fostering the values on which a cohesive society is built’
and neoliberal ideology is evident in statements of belief in ‘the creation of wealth and in
competitive enterprise, consumer choice and reward for effort as the proven means of
providing prosperity for all Australians’ (LP, 2015, p.5) and in the statement advocating
commitment to a ‘limited government – the idea that governments should do only those
things the private sector cannot and should only provide financial assistance to the private
Chapter 2 Page 48 of 332 The statements present a position of neoliberal commitment to the role of
government as being limited, yet the practice of the Liberal Party (and the Labor Party) in government has involved significant federal government social spending on a redistributive model while inequality has grown (Spies-Butcher, 2014). In addition to substantial federal government spending on income transfers, such as pensions and benefits, they also facilitate the redistribution of income and wealth from lower to higher income households through subsidising private education and taxation concessions such as superannuation and investment housing concessions (ACOSS, 2015).
The supply and demand principles of the market, rather than government policy, are said to be the most efficient allocator of resources, and life opportunities such as education
and welfare, for their populations. This is illustrated in the Liberal Party’s (2015, p.5)
statement of fundamental belief in ‘…the creation of wealth and in competitive enterprise, consumer choice and reward for effort as the proven means of providing prosperity for all
Australians’. This belief in constant economic growth as a requirement to deliver human
progress is identified as a general and shared understanding in neoliberal ideology and
economics (Soederberg, 2014). Canadian, global political economist, Susanne Soederberg’s
(2014, p.1) draws attention to the use of disciplinary measures within neoliberal ideology and practices, in her explanation of neoliberalism as a:
contested, contradictory and complex process carried out at various scales (global, national, local) by capitalist states through rhetorical and regulative means. These neoliberal processes are not only guided by the preference for market-led, but also entail disciplinary and ideological dimensions.
The nature of the power of national and international organisations, and the AASW and RU to discipline through policy setting, funding, accreditation and reaccreditation powers, and performance appraisals and workload allocations is explored in in Chapters 5-8 of this thesis. This exploration reveals the power of texts to standardise, regulate, coordinate and discipline the work of the three informants.
Chapter 2 Page 49 of 332 Colonialism
Chapter 1 provided a sketch of the historical context of Australian social work, arguing the enduring implications of colonialism in the current social relations of the AASW, the university and the study, teaching and practice of social work. This reinforces the need in this current study for the investigation to be alert to how the work of informants is organised by textual hierarchies likely to reflect organisational and institutional histories built on racialised, gendered and classed colonial practices and relations. I argue this approach is congruent with the sociology of institutional ethnography that entails
investigation of where and how work is organised in specific ways in organisations as they interact with their institutional contexts. This involves the work to find what ideologies are influential, and where and how this influence is present.
Unlike neoliberalism, it is often more difficult to identify the ideology of colonialism in the strategic plans, annual reports or in the statements of key beliefs of mainstream Australian organisations, as it is not generally overt. Australian scholar, Carol Bacchi (2009),
developed an approach called ‘What’s the problem represented to be’ (WPR) to critically
interrogate public policies, also useful for locating the ideological underpinnings of policies or other texts. The work of Bacchi (2009), in combination with other scholars mentioned in this chapter, alerted me to look for the assumptions underpinning how issues are discussed, the silences in terms of whose voices are missing from the presentation and analysis of issues, and to pay attention to where and how the representation of the issue or text has been constructed.
Using this method, I continue the analysis of the Australian Liberal Party Federal Platform (2015) commenced in the previous section that focused on identifying the neoliberal ideology it contained, to discuss in this section how it also contains colonialist
ideology. Following Bacchi’s (2009) ‘WPR approach’, I found colonialism was evident in the
silences, by the absence of any statement regarding the conflictual basis of settler-colonial relations in Australia in the Liberal Party Federal Platform (2015). In the only reference to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the sixteen-page Party Platform document (LP, 2015), the ongoing use of force and violence by colonisers to achieve colonisation, and
Chapter 2 Page 50 of 332 ongoing resistance from the original inhabitants to being colonised, is not mentioned. Rather, in making history invisible (Moreton-Robinson, 2003; Little & McMillan, 2016), the preferred coloniser fictional narrative of a bloodless and uncontested occupation is invoked and maintained in the Liberal Party Platform document, as illustrated in the following quote:
The Europeans who began to settle Australia more than two hundred years ago did not come to an empty land. For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had lived on this continent. Their contribution to Australia’s identity has been, and will continue to be, a vital and enriching one (LP, 2015, p.6). The only other reference to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in the Platform document is where the Liberal Party (2015, p.12) states in relation to education they will ‘provide for the needs of special groups in the community including the disabled,
the aged, indigenous Australians and remote communities’. There is no recognition in the
document of any causal relationship between colonialism, privilege, discrimination and disadvantage. Rather, the document reproduces a dominant coloniser narrative of
‘indigenous Australians’ as a special group whose situation is likened by association with
disability as an unfortunate accident, and with ageing as an inevitable progressive human frailty, all similarly requiring the action, in this case, of the Liberal Party to provide
benevolent and paternalistic care. There is no mention in the document of reconciliation, constitutional reform, treaties or any other way of acknowledging contested past, and ongoing, settler-colonial relations.
Whiteness
An additional lens to use in studying the structure of organisations are the concepts of whiteness as an ideology, as an organising principle of organisations (Gusa, 2010; Shore, 2010) and as epistemology (for example, Dwyer & Jones, 2000; Moreton-Robinson, 2004a). Writing about higher education in America, Diane Gusa (2010, p.464) introduced the term ‘White insitutional presence (WIP)’ to describe the ‘embedded White cultural ideology in the cultural practices, traditions and perceptions of knowlede that are taken for granted as
the norm at institutions of higher education’. Scholars have identified that ‘education [and
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p.567) where it is important to bear in mind that ‘universities [and other organisations]
often mirror the nature of race and gender relations in the wider society’ (Sue, 2004, p.
766).
RU and the AASW are dialectically interlinked with the context of Australia,
described by Anne Hickling-Hudson (2003) as a predominantly ‘white’ society of the
European diaspora shaped by, and practising, colonialism. The culturally diverse population consists of a minority indigenous population and the majority population of descendants of the British who displaced and dispossessed indigenous peoples in the colonisation. The population of Australia is also increased by diverse migrant peoples (Hickling-Hudson, 2003). By the 1970s, the Australian Federal Government had largely replaced the ‘White Australia Policy’ with a ‘multicultural policy’ (Aquino, 2016). Within multiculturalism, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples work hard to be recognised ‘not just as one of the many minority cultures, but as the only group to be developed within the Australian continent’ (Hickling-Hudson, 2003, p.384) having lived in Australia for over 50 000 years (Bergström, et al., 2016). Numerous studies have reported racism as a problem at Australian universities (Graycar, 2010; AHRC, 2012; Lawson, 2014; Gair, Miles, Savage, & Zuchowski, 2015); in the construction and delivery of welfare services and organsiatons (for example, Green & Baldry, 2008; Bennet, 2015; Young, 2004) and for minority cultural backgorund social work students (Gair, et al., 2015).
It is suggested that Euro-white social work reserachers, educators and practitioners need to increase their understanding of, and interrogate, whiteness (Young, 2004; Walter, et al., 2011). Understanding and interogating whiteness is necessary to challenge the paternalistic tendencies of professional Australian social work, and to contribute to the decolonisation of social work (Baltra-Ulloa, 2013). The works of indigenous, whiteness and decolonisation scholars such as those identified in this chapter, alert me to be aware of and