ERIC Number: EJ942034
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2006-Aug
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1857
EISSN: N/A
Participation for Free. Exploring (Limits of) Participatory Government
Quaghebeur, Kerlijn
Educational Philosophy and Theory, v38 n4 p497-511 Aug 2006
Since the 1990s participation has become a buzzword in education as well as in development contexts. In those contexts, participation has more particularly been linked up with personal promises of self-fulfilment, ownership and self-determination as well as with democratic ideals such as justice, equivalence and freedom. In the paper, we focus on a dominant argument in the justification and also realisation of participation in those empirical contexts, namely the claim to freedom. In order to analyse this freedom, we explore a concrete case in which we show how participatory processes promote various possibilities for the subject to enact freedom. Via Foucault's perspective of governmentality we scrutinise this argument of freedom, indicating how the possibilities and opportunities for liberation and freedom are actually governing the subject in a very particular way, constituting a specific "participatory" norm.
Descriptors: Freedom, Democratic Values, Participation, Educational Philosophy, Educational Trends, Educational Environment, Politics of Education, Educational Policy, Government (Administrative Body)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
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