Once upon a time, the U.S. college experience was simply what a student experienced when attendin... more Once upon a time, the U.S. college experience was simply what a student experienced when attending college, and was heavily associated with elite institutions and liberal arts education. That notion certainly lingers. But in contemporary higher education, the idea of experience has also become a property of specifi cally defi ned and administratively structured activities that students do: fi rst-year experience, study abroad, internship, and service-learning, much of it under the rubric of experiential learning. All these experiences are assigned value comparable and complementary to academics, and are treated as assess-able in parallel ways, perhaps even on extracurricular " transcripts. " Administrative structures and even ancillary industries have arisen to manage them, and they have become an important element of college marketing. The idea that education could be grounded in an organic, subjectively distinct experience and at the same time reifi ed and marketed as a product has its origins in two distinct developments in the history of U.S. higher education: the philosophy of educational experience proposed by John Dewey, and the relation between educational administrations and business interests critiqued by Thorstein Veblen. These developments emerged in the very early twentieth century and remain intertwined; indeed, since the 1990s, the second has taken on new life, enfolding the fi rst into an education product. Strong (this volume) lays out Dewey's belief in a mutually integrative and informative relation between education and experience, with practical activity leading to re-fl ection and enhanced understanding. Contemporaneously, as Handler (this volume) points out, Veblen warned about the emergence of, as he put it, " captains of erudition " heading universities while working in tandem with the profi t-oriented businessmen (and they were in fact all men) who dominated boards of trustees, undercutting what Veblen saw
For students at elite US liberal arts colleges, symbolic capital accrues to their association wit... more For students at elite US liberal arts colleges, symbolic capital accrues to their association with the institution itself, and for racially unmarked (white) students, symbolic capital can also accrue to other, informal associations with such institutions, such as friend and family ties or social fraternities. For racially marked students at elite schools, sources of symbolic capital are more limited to institutional venues such as the classroom and official school organizations. They are under pressure to act as good campus citizens, to " bring diversity " as " campus leaders, " enacting a combination of institutional pride and neoliberal values as key aspects of their " diversity. " This is particularly the case for students whose educations are provided through the Posse Foundation, which recruits and promotes " diverse " students explicitly as " leaders " and " change agents. " Such students are subject to neoliberal interpellation (hailed to enact a specific subjectivity) in ways that unmarked students are not because their options for an acceptable racial subjectivity is limited to a narrow range of social performance. In this way, neoliberal subjectivity can exacerbate racial markedness.
When languages or ethnic/racial identities are imagined as neoliberal objects in corporate, gover... more When languages or ethnic/racial identities are imagined as neoliberal objects in corporate, government, and educational discourses, their worth is imagined in terms of 'added value.' Yet they emerge from social formations embedded in inequalities, reflecting the interplay of markedness and unmarkedness. People experience them chronotopically, meaningful relative to specific times, places, and relationships. But once language and identity become quantifiable units of diversity, they become subject to rhetorical packaging that eliminates any experiential specificity. Disconnected from context, language and social identity become available for use in institutional promotion and branding. Yet, though marketed in relation to neoliberalized personal properties like skills, the marketing potential of linguistic or social diversity is always subject to compromise by the echo of lived experience.
What people perceive as " a language " – a named entity – is abstracted from practices and notion... more What people perceive as " a language " – a named entity – is abstracted from practices and notions about those practices. People take for granted that language is somehow a " thing, " an objectively distinct and bounded entity. How languages come to be thus imagined indexes the conditions under which they are imagined. The articles in this issue illustrate various relations of language-imagining to the ongoing production of neoliberal subjectivity under conditions inflected by the pride-profit polarities, especially profit (Duchêne and Heller 2012). The themes that link these articles show the relation of the language under discussion to its languaged workers, how the language indexes the conditions of its deployment, and how the language is imagined. Entrepreneurialized language is fundamentally promotional, whether on a loose entrepreneur-network basis or following scripted policy or as a manifestation of cultural property. Thus imagined, language and language difference are subject to the same metasemiotic regime as are corporate-friendly interpretations of the national, ethnic, and racial differences represented by language difference. In other words, all forms of difference are " supposed " to be understood in terms of desirable contemporary business-friendly outcomes.
Once upon a time, the U.S. college experience was simply what a student experienced when attendin... more Once upon a time, the U.S. college experience was simply what a student experienced when attending college, and was heavily associated with elite institutions and liberal arts education. That notion certainly lingers. But in contemporary higher education, the idea of experience has also become a property of specifi cally defi ned and administratively structured activities that students do: fi rst-year experience, study abroad, internship, and service-learning, much of it under the rubric of experiential learning. All these experiences are assigned value comparable and complementary to academics, and are treated as assess-able in parallel ways, perhaps even on extracurricular " transcripts. " Administrative structures and even ancillary industries have arisen to manage them, and they have become an important element of college marketing. The idea that education could be grounded in an organic, subjectively distinct experience and at the same time reifi ed and marketed as a product has its origins in two distinct developments in the history of U.S. higher education: the philosophy of educational experience proposed by John Dewey, and the relation between educational administrations and business interests critiqued by Thorstein Veblen. These developments emerged in the very early twentieth century and remain intertwined; indeed, since the 1990s, the second has taken on new life, enfolding the fi rst into an education product. Strong (this volume) lays out Dewey's belief in a mutually integrative and informative relation between education and experience, with practical activity leading to re-fl ection and enhanced understanding. Contemporaneously, as Handler (this volume) points out, Veblen warned about the emergence of, as he put it, " captains of erudition " heading universities while working in tandem with the profi t-oriented businessmen (and they were in fact all men) who dominated boards of trustees, undercutting what Veblen saw
For students at elite US liberal arts colleges, symbolic capital accrues to their association wit... more For students at elite US liberal arts colleges, symbolic capital accrues to their association with the institution itself, and for racially unmarked (white) students, symbolic capital can also accrue to other, informal associations with such institutions, such as friend and family ties or social fraternities. For racially marked students at elite schools, sources of symbolic capital are more limited to institutional venues such as the classroom and official school organizations. They are under pressure to act as good campus citizens, to " bring diversity " as " campus leaders, " enacting a combination of institutional pride and neoliberal values as key aspects of their " diversity. " This is particularly the case for students whose educations are provided through the Posse Foundation, which recruits and promotes " diverse " students explicitly as " leaders " and " change agents. " Such students are subject to neoliberal interpellation (hailed to enact a specific subjectivity) in ways that unmarked students are not because their options for an acceptable racial subjectivity is limited to a narrow range of social performance. In this way, neoliberal subjectivity can exacerbate racial markedness.
When languages or ethnic/racial identities are imagined as neoliberal objects in corporate, gover... more When languages or ethnic/racial identities are imagined as neoliberal objects in corporate, government, and educational discourses, their worth is imagined in terms of 'added value.' Yet they emerge from social formations embedded in inequalities, reflecting the interplay of markedness and unmarkedness. People experience them chronotopically, meaningful relative to specific times, places, and relationships. But once language and identity become quantifiable units of diversity, they become subject to rhetorical packaging that eliminates any experiential specificity. Disconnected from context, language and social identity become available for use in institutional promotion and branding. Yet, though marketed in relation to neoliberalized personal properties like skills, the marketing potential of linguistic or social diversity is always subject to compromise by the echo of lived experience.
What people perceive as " a language " – a named entity – is abstracted from practices and notion... more What people perceive as " a language " – a named entity – is abstracted from practices and notions about those practices. People take for granted that language is somehow a " thing, " an objectively distinct and bounded entity. How languages come to be thus imagined indexes the conditions under which they are imagined. The articles in this issue illustrate various relations of language-imagining to the ongoing production of neoliberal subjectivity under conditions inflected by the pride-profit polarities, especially profit (Duchêne and Heller 2012). The themes that link these articles show the relation of the language under discussion to its languaged workers, how the language indexes the conditions of its deployment, and how the language is imagined. Entrepreneurialized language is fundamentally promotional, whether on a loose entrepreneur-network basis or following scripted policy or as a manifestation of cultural property. Thus imagined, language and language difference are subject to the same metasemiotic regime as are corporate-friendly interpretations of the national, ethnic, and racial differences represented by language difference. In other words, all forms of difference are " supposed " to be understood in terms of desirable contemporary business-friendly outcomes.
Neoliberalizing Diversity in Liberal Arts College Life, 2022
As neoliberalism has expanded from corporations to higher education, the notion of "diversity" is... more As neoliberalism has expanded from corporations to higher education, the notion of "diversity" is increasingly seen as the contribution of individuals to an organization. By focusing on one liberal arts college, author Bonnie Urciuoli shows how schools market themselves as "diverse" communities to which all members contribute. She explores how students of color are recruited, how their lives are institutionally organized, and how they provide the faces, numbers, and stories that represent schools as diverse. In doing so, she finds that unlike students' routine experiences of race or other social differences, neoliberal diversity is mainly about improving schools' images.
The Spanish Language in the United States: Racialization, Rootedness, and Resistance (co-edited volume), 2022
The Spanish Language in the United States addresses the rootedness of Spanish in the US, its raci... more The Spanish Language in the United States addresses the rootedness of Spanish in the US, its racialization, and Spanish-speakers' resistance against racialization. This novel approach challenges the "foreigner" status of Spanish and shows that racialization victims do not take their oppression meekly. It traces the rootedness of Spanish since the 1500's, when the Spanish empire began the settlement of the new land, to today where 39 million U.S. Latinos speak Spanish at home. Authors show how whites categorize Spanish speaking in ways that denigrate the nonstandard language habits of Spanish speakers-including in schools-highlighting ways of overcoming racism.
The Experience of Neoliberal Education (edited volume), 2018
The college experience is increasingly positioned to demonstrate its value as a worthwhile return... more The college experience is increasingly positioned to demonstrate its value as a worthwhile return on investment. Specific, definable activities, such as research experience, first-year experience, and experiential learning, are marketed as delivering precise skill sets in the form of an individual educational package. Through ethnography-based analysis, the contributors to this volume explore how these commodified "experiences" have turned students into consumers and given them the illusion that they are in control of their investment. They further reveal how the pressure to plan every move with a constant eye on a demonstrable return has supplanted traditional approaches to classroom education and profoundly altered the student experience.
How do language and the social construction of race, class, and ethnicity shape the lives of work... more How do language and the social construction of race, class, and ethnicity shape the lives of working-class Puerto Ricans living in New York City? This reflexive ethnographic study combines analyses of language and power relations based on key principles in semiotic and linguistic anthropology with voices of individuals who share their lived experiences of speaking Spanish and English. The subjects’ conversations, interview responses, and anecdotes are saturated with ideas about what “correct” English means to them. Through these extended transcripts readers gain insight about language’s role in cultural dynamics that tangle minority populations in challenges, such as limiting where individuals and families live and work.
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Papers by Bonnie Urciuoli