Positioning students as consumers and entrepreneurs: Student service materials on a Hong Kong university campus

Positioning students as consumers and entrepreneurs: Student service materials on a Hong Kong university campus

• Huang, Fanglei Corey The University of Hong Kong

Critical Discourse Studies, 2021

Routledge

2021

• N Students & Student Services
  • NK Other Student Services

Neoliberalism Higher Education Student Service Multimodality Hong Kong

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Post-Secondary Education

Favoring individual entrepreneurial freedom and free-market competition, neoliberalism has reshaped the social and discursive practices of higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world. In this paper, I draw on methods from critical multimodal discourse studies and an analytic concept from linguistic anthropology to examine several sets of student service materials circulating on the campus of a Hong Kong university between 2016 and 2017. While these materials are purportedly designed with student welfare in mind, I demonstrate how they effectively position students as (1) consumers of tailored services or experiences provided by the university; and (2) entrepreneurial selves, that is, socio-economically competitive and self-managed young individuals. I conclude by arguing that these service materials are shaped by and espouse a neoliberal governmentality that (re)orients HEIs and their students towards an all-pervasive marketization, competitiveness, and assertion of class privilege in a globalizing, particularly Westernized late capitalist society in Asia. Copyright © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

• English

Journal Articles

• 17405904

• 10.1080/17405904.2021.1945471

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/ea50ac22

2023-03-06