justifying narratives

yesterday i alluded to the arguments and narratives that justify the marketization (fairclough 1989, 1992, 1995) of the public services.

today i offer a couple of instances of anecdotal evidence that a particular narrative is circulating in the education 'networks of practice' (Fairclough and Chouliaraki 1999).

on one occasion (friday 19 mar 2010) i was present as a trade union representative in a meeting with managers at my college in the uk midlands, on another, the very next day, i was chatting informally over a coffee with a friend who is a manager in a uk high school.

on friday, in a rather heated 'consultation' on 'proposed' changes to part time contracts of employment, the changes - as relations of other changes in full time working conditions which had already been put into operation as part of a college wide restructuring - were justified by a narrative which took the form of:

'up until now, everything has been about the teacher...now everything must be about the student...'

not the exact words - but a representation from memory of the basic sequence of events which compose the narrative. it is of course already familiar to me - it can be found in both written and spoken modes - in documents, procedures, in staff meetings, in conversations between individuals - anywhere, at any level within educational organizations (and presumably anywhere in the public services).

then the next day, my friend explained that she had a difficult decision to make regarding a member of her staff - a decision which might well result in a serious change in conditions of work and personal circumstances for the teacher in question -and it was justified by the narrative of transition from a teacher-centred to a student-centred practice!

'up until now i've always tried to be kind to her and let her carry on as she is, but she's always been hopeless, and now she's taking the piss, and we've got to think of the kids...they only have one chance...'

different in its particulars but' structurally' more or less the same narrative.

at the time, i said nothing about the connection between this narrative and the narrative of the previous day - but i was somewhat taken aback by the clear correlation between 2 particular instances of the same generic mode of justification for a change in personal and institutional thinking, actions, and relations (change in management strategy and material and linguistic management action is a relation of change in the attitudes and values of particular managers).

2 separate particulars at the level of event - one generic justification at the level of practice (fairclough and chouliaraki 1999, fairclough 2003).

this is a particular recognition of work going on between the level of event and the level of practice, work which is done by the genres of governance (fairclough and chouliaraki 1999, fairclough 2003), which relay the arguments and narratives of justification throughout the networks of practice.

i will continue to be vigilant and report any further instances which bear witness to a justifying genre of governance.

its a difficult one though, isn't it? we all want the best for our kids - at school, at home, when they're sick - but we have to achieve this, not at the cost of reducing public service workers to hollowed out husks through the crippling workload increases caused by the 'need' for efficiency savings in accordance with the logic of the competitive market. classic market logic - benefits for one group are only available at the detriment of another; a struggle each with each over finite resources (hobbes' leviathan).

we all need to pay - whatever it takes - for an equal and fair distribution of social benefits - benefits for all groups involved in the public services - benefits for those who provide and for those who receive those services. from each according to their ability (to pay), to each according to their need.

what kind of world do we want for our children?

what kind of people are we? what kind of people are we becoming? what kind of people do we want to be? what kind of world do we want for our children? fundamental questions of identity, relationships, and social conditions i recall (as accurately as i can from this distance) from Gee, Hull, and Lankshear's (1996) new work order: behind the language of new capitalism.

i am wearied by the arguments and narratives which circulate as the genres of justification for market-driven public service governance. i am wearied by the practical and technical rationality which underpins and is maintained and reproduced by those genres. i am wearied by the smug, self-interested certainties (the raised eyebrows, the patronizing tones, and incredulous sighs) of the public service managers, and their steely refusal to recognize the lie of the totally practical response to market demands, whatever the human cost. i am wearied by the management discourses which not only reduce public need to a purely logistical problem with a practical and technical solution, which not only reduce public servants to unitized, commodified resources for cost effective distribution, which not only reduce socially connected human beings to hollowed out, atomic means to ends, but also seek to engage those human beings as the fully responsible agents of their own dehumanization.

i am wearied and i am angry.

i am angry that so many of us who work in the public services as teachers, nurses, social workers, and many, many more, suffer the effects of these management practices (routinized language uses and the actions they produce) - the ways our personal and professional identities, relationships, and activities are hollowed out and reduced to things, the ways the management arguments and narratives produce and distribute versions of our working world which we don't recognize and we don't value, and the bewildering mixture of formal and informal styles adopted by managers, who hoodwink us into engaging in our daily work with the people we care for, in accordance with rules, procedures, and schemes which are the products and producers of marketized, consumerist attitudes and values we don't share.

i am angry that 6 social workers have been sacked by the senior management of Birmingham Children's Services. I am angry that a Staffordshire hospital management was more concerned to meet its targets than care for sick people. i am angry that governments have been consciously developing the neo-liberal discourses and strategic management practices necessary for the justification of the development of marketized public services, designed to achieve value for public money rather than meet public need.

i am angry that even those who are suffering - and causing others to suffer as an effect of the necessity to work in these conditions - refuse to recognize the lie of the strategically managed, competitive, entrepreneurial society, which encourages the narrow pursuit of individual, private wealth over the public requirement to meet the real, concrete physical and social needs of our fellow human beings.

we need to challenge the linguistic, material, and economic logics which underpin our society. we need to talk a different talk, walk a different walk, and be prepared to pay for a realistic alternative. we can't have a low tax economy and a properly funded, genuinely 'public' public services. we need to make ourselves personally poorer to have a richer experience of own and others humanity.

what kind of people have we become? a people who have grown desperate to hang on to what is ours at any cost to our fellows. a people prepared to accept the lie that we can have personal wealth and a secure, fair, and compassionate society.

let's challenge the lie whenever we hear it repeated in any of its many and different forms. let's start living again, free from the fear of losing what is ours, by giving what is ours privately, and enjoying what is ours publicly.