Teaching After the Market

This chapter is a philosophical and sociological reconsideration of the nature of teaching and work. It draws broadly from the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and materialist models of the economic subject. The chapter begins from a broad acknowledgement and review of the critique of neoliberal educational policy, arguing that one of its principal effects is the reconstruction of the teacher as commodity fetishist. It marks out a move from textualism and narrative analysis towards a materialist analysis focusing on classical Marxian concepts of deskilling and commodity fetishism. Teachers and teaching becoming the objects of scrutiny and critique right at key junctures of social, economic and cultural change. To rebuild teaching as a cosmopolitan form of work would require a major rethinking of teacher education. The chapter argues for a vision of teaching as cosmopolitan work and profession in critical and contingent relation to the flows, contexts and consequences of cultural and economic globalisation.