Why the Civic Engagement Movement Cannot Achieve Democratic and Justice Aims.

Abstract

Many institutions of higher education have embraced a commitment to civic engagement, usually through service-learning courses or faculty community-engaged scholarship (Sandmann, Thornton, & Jaeger, 2009). However, our communities still confront many of same injustices and inequalities that inspired contemporary civic engagement movement. This raises an interesting question for civic engagement scholars: Given degree to which civic engagement field has been institutionalized in higher education, why has field failed to achieve clearly defined democratic and justice aims? This article examines how neoliberal ideology structures our society and higher education institutions, thereby providing a theoretically-informed response to this question. The article highlights how commitments to neoliberal ideology structures context that limits civic engagement movement's efforts to achieve democratic and justice aims. The first section contextualizes problem neoliberalism poses for field of civic engagement and defines relevant key terms. The second section considers literature related to neoliberalism and community engagement. The third section uses example of competitive grants to explain how neoliberal ideology obstructs strategic aims of democracy and justice. The final section encourages civic education scholars and practitioners to be more conscious of way ideology impacts civic engagement efforts. The Problem of Neoliberalism for Civic Engagement Movement For purposes of this article, we use Carnegie Foundation's definition for community engagement: the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/ state, national, global) for mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity (Saltmarsh & Driscoll, 2012). In higher education, civic engagement represents an umbrella term capturing a range of public, community, democratic, social/economic, political, and moral engagements (Berger, 2011). Manifestations of higher education civic engagement movement are often expressed through forms of engaged scholarship. (e.g. engaged research methods, service-learning pedagogies, university-community engaged outreach partnerships, etc.). Neoliberalism is theoretical concept used to describe current ideological and economic structure of advanced capitalism. From a philosophical perspective, neoliberalism is an economic project spanning geo-political boundaries and emphasizing role of economic markets in supporting conceptions of liberty. From a policy and legal perspective, neoliberalism is associated with supply-side economics, deregulation and reregulation of markets, privatization of public sphere, imposition of market principles in all aspects of social life, and a general suspicion of social and political welfare-regulatory programs originating from state (Brown, 2006; Harvey, 2005; Vazquez-Arroyo, 2008). Neoliberalism provides ideological context that allows advanced capitalism to approach highest levels of sophistication and development. It is impossible to separate any aspect of today's human condition from ideological context of neoliberalism. The civic engagement movement struggles to gain traction because neoliberal ideology has changed relationship between market, civil society, and state. Contrasted with a market-based economy, a market-based society shapes social, political, and economic spheres using ideological logic of neoliberalism. Market-based societies make it difficult to determine where markets begin and end. Although neoliberal ideology has increased in scope and intensity, civic engagement field has failed to account for predominant structures of paradigm. In February 2008, a group of scholars, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners associated with study and practice of civic engagement convened in Dayton, Ohio for annual Kettering Colloquium. …

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