(Un)veiling desire: re-defining relationships between gendered adult education subjects and adult education programmes

My underlying argument, in this paper, is that conceptualisations of power as a commodity, through which the 'disempowered-as-illiterate' subject moves towards becoming an 'empowered-as-literate' subject, forces constructs of identities into a powerful/powerless dichotomy which does not always do justice to diverse experiences. The claimed 'empowering' intentions of adult education programme and policy practice may, in reality, contribute to the dominance of restrictive disciplining and regulatory discursive practices. Moving away from emancipatory trajectories of adult education programmes that allege only liberation from domination, through 'literacy', can promise freedom points to another position of hope. Drawing on Foucauldian analysis, I explore sites of resistance as possibilities of transforming 'structures of understanding' at different levels. Officially validated and recognised transformations, in adult education programme as well as policy understandings, of the 'illiterate' subject may also hope to include choices in postures of autonomy (see Spivak 1996) made by programme participants in other 'fields' of socio-cultural practice linked to their material realities. Subsequently, 'empowerment' of the 'illiterate Indian village woman' cannot solely be imagined as a product of laws, policies and institutional discursive practices (see, for example, Gouws 2005; Rai 2003 on gender mainstreaming and Mosse 2005 on aid policy and practice). The 'illiterate Indian village woman' represented as a site of resistance, throughout this paper, displaces homogeneous representations of the 'illiterate' which situate her in the role of 'dependent' or 'victim', as failed attempts to rob her of her historical and political agency (Mohanty 1996). Through narrating other 'images' of refusal in my ethnographic vignettes, I hope to recognise different individuals' sense of agency, at all levels, as embedded in and evolving through forms of collective action that activate differences in order to develop possibilities and sustain hope for transforming historically rooted discursive practices of inequality. I provide ethnographic accounts of resisting 'literacy' programme participants, based in different villages in Bihar (Northern India), as accounts of resistance impacted on by notions of norms, translating and interpreting Others, networks and empowerment.

New public management of Higher education, Foucault and power

The theory of New Public Management (NPM) suggest that one of the features of advanced liberal rule is the tendency to define social, economic and political issues as problems to be solved through management. This paper argues that the restructuring of Higher Education (HE) in many Western countries since the 1980s has involved a shift from an emphasis on administration and policy to one of its efficient management. Utilising Foucault’s concept of governmentality rather than the liberal discourse of management as a politically neutral technology, managerialism can be seen as a newly emergent and increasingly rationalised disciplinary regime of governmentalising practices in advanced liberalism. As such the contemporary University as an institution governed by NPM can be demonstrated to have emerged not as the direct outcome of democratic policies that have rationalised its activities (so that the emancipatory aims of personal development, an educated workforce and of true research can be fully realised), nor can it be understood as the instrument through which individuals or self-realising classes are defeated through the calculations of the state acting on behalf of economic interests, rather it can be seen as the contingent and intractable outcome of the complex power/knowledge relations of advanced liberalism. I analyse the interlocking of the ‘tutor-subject’ and ‘student-subject’ as a local enacting of policy discourse informed by the NPM of HE that reshapes subjectivity and retunes the relationship between tutor and student. I put forward suggestions for how resistance to these new modes of disciplinary subjectification can be enacted.

In vitro drug release studies of polymeric freeze-dried wafers and solvent-cast films using paracetamol as a model soluble drug

Drug dissolution and release characteristics from freeze-dried wafers and solvent-cast films prepared from sodium carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) have been investigated to determine the mechanisms of drug release from the two systems. The formulations were prepared by freeze-drying (wafers) or drying in air (films), the hydrated gel of the polymer containing paracetamol as a model soluble drug. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to examine differences between the physical structure of the wafers and films. Dissolution studies were performed using an exchange cell and drug release was measured by UV spectroscopy at 242 nm. The effects of drug loading, polymer content and amount of glycerol (films) on the release characteristics of paracetamol were investigated. The release profiles of paracetamol from the wafers and films were also compared. A digital camera was used to observe the times to complete hydration and dissolution of the wafers containing different amounts of CMC and how that impacts on drug release rates. Both formulations showed sustained type drug release that was modelled by the Korsmeyer–Peppas equation. Changes in the concentration of drug and glycerol (films) did not significantly alter the rate of drug release while increasing polymer content significantly decreased the rate of drug release from both formulations. The results show that the rate of paracetamol release was faster from the wafers than the corresponding films due to differences in their physical structures. The wafers which formed a porous network, hydrated faster than the more dense and continuous, (non-porous) sheet-like structure of the films.