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ERIC Number: EJ975054
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Sep
Pages: 25
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1857
EISSN: N/A
The Promissory Future(s) of Education: Rethinking Scientific Literacy in the Era of Biocapitalism
Pierce, Clayton
Educational Philosophy and Theory, v44 n7 p721-745 Sep 2012
This article investigates the biopolitical dimensions that have grown out of the union between biocapitalism and current science education reform in the US. Drawing on science and technology study theorists, I utilize the analytics of promissory valuation and salvationary discourses to understand how scientific literacy in the neo-Sputnik era has deeply involved educational life in biocapitalist circuits of exchange and production. I lay out this emerging terrain of "futuricity" through a biopolitical analysis of the National Academies highly influential policy recommendation on science education, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" as well as the Association of American Universities' "National Defense Education and Innovation Initiative." Here it is argued that the educational subject usually seen as a site of human capital investment can better be understood as a "biovalue" in at least two senses: the educational subject's body as a site of investment and as an extractable source of value directly related to the larger globally competitive regime of the rapidly growing bioeconomy. I conclude my analysis of the vital politics at play in the biocapitalist articulation of science education with an alternative model of scientific literacy that is based in what I call biodemocratic practices. I explore such a rereading of scientific literacy through the example of the GrowHaus--a sustainable urban farm situated in a marginalized community in a major US city. The GrowHaus offers a model of scientific literacy that rejects extractive ethics associated with biocapitalist production and instead promotes a sustainable and socially just practice of science. (Contains 14 notes.)
Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel: 781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Adult Education; Elementary Secondary Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Colorado; United States
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A