Schooling,Literacies and Biopolitics in the Global Age

This article examines how particular dynamics of globalization, including pressures to restructure economies for informational labor, shape and are shaped by processes of public schooling and the development of diverse literacies (understood here as the control of certain forms of life). More specifically, this article analyzes how, in an era of globalization and high-stakes “biopolitics”, both workplace and school-based literacies and the literacy sponsorship offered by employers and state-run schools change, compete, increase and decrease in value, and interact with differential power relations in society. Such analysis, it is argued, is a requisite part of the development of powerful literacies necessary both for securing productive, rewarding labor in global informational economies and for reshaping socio-economic orders in accordance with principles of justice and strong democracy.