Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-xxrs7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T09:06:36.368Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Securing Dangerous Children as Literate Subjects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2016

Stephen Kelly*
Affiliation:
Department of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
*
address for correspondence: Stephen Kelly. 8 Rowallan Road, Torrens Park, South Australia, 5062 E-mail: kelsj001@bigpond.com

Abstract

This paper examines how the education of children as literate subjects in schools and community settings is implicated in the politics of securing civil society. Foucault's concept of biopolitics is used to consider how young people are produced as securitised subjects. The emergence of the concept of human security as a technology for measuring human development is problematised using Bacchi's methodology. The analysis uses the Northern Territory intervention to question representations of young people as subjects of danger and as potentially dangerous subjects. This paper argues that the use of literacy by the apparatus of state and non-state governmentalities functions as a technology of risk mitigation and biopolitical government: a way of contingently positioning the freedoms of children as subjects to forms of rule. The paper concludes by suggesting that literacy has been deployed as a techne of an authoritarian form of liberalism in which the power to delimit entangles children in biopolitical strategies and sovereign intervention.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agamben, G., & Attell, K. (2010). State of exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Anaya, J. (2010). Situation of Indigenous peoples in Australia. Report by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people. Retrieved from http://unsr.jamesanaya.org/docs/countries/2010_report_australia_en.pdf.Google Scholar
Arendt, H. (2006). The crisis in education. In Between past and future (2006 ed., pp. 170193). New York, NY: Penguin.Google Scholar
Australian Government. (1986). Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986. Canberra, Australia: Australian Parliament. Retrieved from https://http://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2014C00684.Google Scholar
Australian Government. (2015). Radicalisation awareness kit. Canberra, Australia: Australian Government. Retrieved from http://www.livingsafetogether.gov.au/informationadvice/Pages/what-is-radicalisation/what-is-radicalisation.aspx.Google Scholar
Ayson, R. (2007). The “arc of instability” and Australia's strategic policy. Australian Journal of International Affairs, 61 (2), 215231. doi:10.1080/10357710701358360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bacchi, C. (2012a). Introducing the “Whats the problem represented to be?” approach. In Bletsas, A. & Beasley, C. (Eds.), Engaging with Carol Bacchi: Strategic interventions and exchanges (pp. 124). Adelaide, SA: University of Adelaide Press.Google Scholar
Bacchi, C. (2012b). Why study problematizations? Making politics visible. Open Journal of Political Science, 2 (1), 18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bacchi, C. (2014). Analysing policy: What's the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest, Australia: Pearson.Google Scholar
Bacchi, C., & Bonham, J. (2014). Reclaiming discursive practices as an analytical focus: Political implications. Foucault Studies, 17, 173192.Google Scholar
Baker, B. (2001). Moving on (part 2): Power and the child in curriculum history. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 33 (3), 277302. doi:10.1080/00220270117713.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, B. (2003). Plato's child and the limit-points of educational theories. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 22 (6), 439474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ball, S. (1997). Policy sociology and critical social research: A personal review of recent education policy and policy research. British Educational Research Journal, 23 (3), 257274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banks, G. (2005). Report on government services 2005. Canberra, Australia: Productivity Commission.Google Scholar
Banks, G. (2010). Advancing Australia's “human capital agenda”. Melbourne, Australia: Productivity Commission.Google Scholar
Biesta, G. (2013). The beautiful risk of education. London, England: Paradigm.Google Scholar
Bingham, C., & Biesta, G. (2010). Jacques Ranciere: Education, truth, emancipation. Chippenham, England: Continuum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brough, M. (2007). Tony Jones speaks with Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough. Lateline. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s1980139.htm.Google Scholar
Dean, M. (2008). Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society. London, England: SAGE.Google Scholar
Dillon, M. (2008). Underwriting security. Security Dialogue, 39, 309332. doi:10.1177/0967010608088780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dillon, M. C. (2007). National security and the failed state in remote Australia. APSNet Policy Forum. Retrieved from http://nautilus.org/apsnet/national-security-and-the-failed-state-in-remote-australia/?view=pdf.Google Scholar
Donald, J. (1992). Sentimental education: Schooling, popular culture and the regulation of liberty. London, England: Verso.Google Scholar
Duffield, M. (2005a). Getting savages to fight barbarians: Development, security and the colonial present. Conflict, Security & Development, 5, 141159. doi:10.1080/14678800500170068.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duffield, M. (2005b). Human security: Linking development and security in an age of terror. Paper presented at the 11th general conference of the EADI, Bonn.Google Scholar
Duffield, M. (2010). The liberal way of development and the development-security impasse: Exploring the global life-chance divide. Security Dialogue, 41 (53), 5376. doi:10.1177/0967010609357042.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duffield, M., & Waddell, N. (2006). Securing humans in a dangerous world. International Politics, 43 (1), 123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, A. (1767). An essay on the history of civil society. Indianapolis, IN: Online Library of Liberty.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8 (4), 777795. doi:10.2307/1343197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, M. (2000). Polemics, politics, and problematization. In Rabinow, P. (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Ethics, subjectivity and truth (pp. 111119). London, England: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the Collége de France, 1977–1978. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collége de France, 1978–79. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (2010). Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In Rabinow, P. (Ed.), Michel Foucault: The Foucault reader (pp. 76100). New York, NY: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Gray, B. (2007). Accelerating the literacy development of Indigeneous students: The national accelerated literacy program (NALP). Darwin, Australia: Charles Darwin University Press.Google Scholar
Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holm, C. (2015). Radicalisation awareness kit: Government's new booklet for schools links green activism, “alternative music” to terrorism. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-24/anti-radicalisation-kit.../6803024.Google Scholar
Kelly, S. (2015). Governing civil society: How literacy, education and security were brought together. PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove. Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/84680/.Google Scholar
Kral, I., & Schwab, R. G. (2003). The realities of Aboriginal adult literacy acquisition and practice: Implications for remote community capacity building. CAEPR Discussion Paper 257/2003. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Canberra.Google Scholar
Langton, M. (2008). Trapped in the Aboriginal areality show. Griffith Review, 19, 145162.Google Scholar
Luke, A. (2004). On the material consequences of literacy. Language and Education, 18 (4), 331335. doi:10.1080/09500780408666886.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macoun, A. (2011). Aboriginality and the northern territory intervention. Australian Journal of Political Science, 46 (3), 519534. doi:10.1080/10361146.2011.595700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Opitz, S. (2011). Government unlimited: The security dispositif of illiberal governmentality. In Brockling, U., Krasmann, S. & Lemke, T. (Eds.), Governmentality: Current issues and future challenges (pp. 93114). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Owen, D. (2002). Criticism and captivity: On genealogy and critical theory. European Journal of Philosophy, 10 (2), 216230. doi:10.1111/1468-0378.00158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plato. (1892a). The laws. In Jowett, B. (Ed.), The dialogues of Plato (Vol. 5, pp. 1361). London, England: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Plato. (1892b). The republic. In Jowett, B. (Ed.), The dialogues of Plato (Vol. 3, pp. 1307). London, England: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ranciere, J. (2007). The ignorant schoolmaster. In Ross, K. (Ed.) (pp. 1139). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, N. (2001). The politics of life itself. Theory, Culture & Society, 18 (6), 130. doi:10.1177/02632760122052020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shergold, P. (2004). Connecting government: Whole of government response to Australia's priority challenges. Canberra, Australia: Commonwealth of Australia.Google Scholar
Smith, A. (1763/1982). Lectures on jurisprudence (Vol. v). Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Smith, A. (1776/2005). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Snowden, W. (1999). Speech: Employment, education and training amendment bill: Second reading. Canberra, Australia: Australian Parliament. Retrieved from http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/genpdf/chamber/hansardr/1999-08-10/0045/hansard_frag.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf.Google Scholar
Street, B. (1984). Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
UNDP. (1994). Human development report. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wild, R., & Anderson, P. (2007). Ampe AkelyernemaneMeke Mekaele: Little children are sacred. Darwin, Australia: Government of the Northern Territory. Retrieved from http://www.inquirysaac.nt.gov.au/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf.Google Scholar