Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

Chapter 8
European Citizenship and Evidence-Based
Happiness
Naomi Hodgson
8.1 Introduction
Michel Foucault’s analysis of the development of modern forms of government in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and his account of governmentality opened
up a perspective through which to analyse the operation of power (Foucault, 1991a,
1991b, 2005). The emergence of statistics – “the science of the state” (Foucault,
1991a, p. 99) – and the objects of statistical knowledge were identified as part of the
complex of techniques for the production of a particular form of normalised individuality.
More recent analyses from this perspective have shown how the object of
government has shifted in advanced liberal modes of governmentality (e.g. Barry,
Osborne, & Rose, 1996) and thus how the citizen has been reconceptualised in the
context of the decline of the welfare state and the increasing privatisation of expertise,
“implanting in citizens the aspiration to pursue their own civility, wellbeing
and advancement” (Barry et al., 1996, p. 40; Biesta, 2009, p. 150). In this context,
education or learning has become central to the production of a particular form of
citizenship. Learning is no longer understood as taking place in particular institutions
or designated periods in our lives (Rose, 1999) but as being a lifelong and
life-wide process of self-improvement, requiring an attitude of willingness to adapt
to the constantly changing demands of the globalised, competitive, knowledge economy
(Simons & Masschelein, 2008). The role of statistics has also shifted: while
“statistics might once have been a governmental activity, since the middle of the
twentieth century it has become a business” (Rose, 2000, p. 230).
From this perspective, I draw attention here to the objects of statistical analysis
that provide a current focus for measurement and policy-making in Europe and
thereby constitute key indicators according to which states, institutions and individuals
become measurable, comparable and governable. I focus, in particular, here
on happiness and well-being and how this relates to the construction of ‘active
citizenship’ (Hoskins et al., 2006).
N. Hodgson (B)
Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK
P. Smeyers, M. Depaepe (eds.), Educational Research: The Ethics and Aesthetics
of Statistics, Educational Research 5, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9873-3_8,
C○ Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
115