Convener: Professor Yaacov Yadgar
Speaker: Dr Sari Alfi-Nissan
Over the past two decades, the entrepreneurial ethos has gained prominence in state education systems across many countries, aiming to construct an entrepreneurial identity among children and youth. The entrepreneurial ideal is frequently regarded in sociological literature as part of the neoliberal culture serving the global free market economy. The global entrepreneurial discourse promotes neoliberal values which include future orientation, personal autonomy and individualisation. Concurrently, state education systems strive to shape a national identity. In Israel, this objective is uniquely translated to promote an ethno-national, Zionist, Jewish-Israeli identity. The paradox between entrepreneurialism and ethno-nationalism raises an important question: How does the global entrepreneurial discourse, which advocates for a neoliberal, individualistic, and future-oriented identity, intersects with a state education system that seeks to establish a collectivist and ethno-national identity? The study followed the translation of the global entrepreneurial discourse into the local Israeli state education system (mamlakhti) among policymakers, educators, and within educational spaces through a multi-focal qualitative research. Findings reveal a hybrid entrepreneurial-nationalistic ideal emerging in Israeli education, merging neoliberalism and ethno-nationalism, and combining future orientation with Jewish-Israeli narratives and symbols. As neoliberal and ethno-national narratives are weaved together, the local discourse reclaims and reproduces social in/exclusion, marking social boundaries and perpetuating inequality. The research contributes to the understanding of how discourse (re)shapes the social, by showing how a global educational discourse is redesigned and translated within a socio-political context.
Dr. Sari R. Alfi-Nissan is a postdoctoral fellow at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA). She completed her PhD at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bar-Ilan University. Sari’s research focuses on discourses of entrepreneurialism, youth aspirations, and the formation of self and identity in the iGeneration era. She was granted the Presidential Doctoral Fellowship of Excellence, the Rector Award of Distinction and won the University Presidential Award for Article Publications four consecutive years. She was a visiting researcher at the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent, and is a member of Critical Sociology and Philosophy of Education (CRISP) research group at the University of Helsinki. Sari teaches various methodology courses, using qualitative and quantitative methods, and is also a novelist and a lecturer of Storytelling of Empirical Knowledge.
Website: www.sarialfi.com
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