Governmentality and benchmarking

The paper discusses the application of Foucault’s conception of «governmental» power to the technique of benchmarking. It uses an historical case study, analysing the Architects and Building Branch, a specialist unit within the Ministry of Education advising on school architecture. The paper shows that the Branch’s development and diffusion of «best practice» in school building could be seen as a deployment of «governmental» power. However, a crucial weakness in such a Foucauldian account is the failure to analyse the Treasury’s tendentious use of performance data from school building in the 1950s to erect the Branch as a benchmark in order to impose an «economic liberal» agenda on other government departments. The paper uses the case to question Foucault’s opposition between «extrinsic» and «intrinsic» forms of «liberalism»

Christian ministry · Governmentality · Software deployment · Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Global Educational Policies and Reforms