The present paper looks at the intersection of juridical and biopower in the U.S. Supreme Court’s school desegregation cases. These cases generally deploy “equitable relief” as a relay between the juridicially-specified injury of segregation and the biopolitical mandates of integration, allowing broad-based biopolitical remedies for juridically identified problems. This strategy enabled the Courts to negotiate between these forms of power. The analysis here thus suggests the continued relevance of juridical power, and also the limits of Foucault’s own analysis, which suggested (...) that biopower tended to fully colonize juridical power by way of norms. (shrink)

Colleges and universities exist within a political arena where external demands for accountability materialize within a market-driven environment. As a result, government agencies pressure colleges and universities to rely on assessment and transparent reporting to become more market-driven assuming that the competition within the market, led by public choice and institutional selection, will drive improvements in learning and will also self-govern the institutions. This article explores how Foucault informs our conception of neoliberal governmentality through political rationality and technologies of self-governance (...) in order to inform our understanding of accountability in higher education and to challenge institutions to develop a counter dialogue which meets institutional obligations to the public and market. (shrink)

Chinese kindergartens’ over 110 years of adaptation of foreign models is a vivid example of how globalization comes into direct contact with Chinese culture and creates cultural hybridities. Learning Stories as a narrative assessment tool to children’s development from New Zealand, has swept China with the endorsement from the professional organizations and local authorities, especially attracting many followers in Beijing. Based on a two-year participatory action research in Beijing, the article examines Learning Stories as policy borrowing, redesigned as an innovative (...) reflection tool for professional learning community which results from processes of mutual influence between the global and the local. The article highlights the importance of culture and context in considering professional development and the ‘fluid’ and dynamic nature of ‘glocalization’ working towards integration of globalization and localization. Furthermore, borrowing or learning foreign policies in preprimary education can be... (shrink)