Lifeworlds of Leadership: Entrepreneurial Subjectivities in Indian Education

我的研究探讨了印度中产阶级毕业生，他们创办了社会企业，以改善印度城市贫困人口的教育。我关注的是自我发展的动力——尤其是自我意识、自律和自我管理——如何成为印度社会变革教育话语的核心。参加这场创业教育改革运动的毕业生和所谓的受益者都被教导要重视“领导力”，特别是“创业”形式的领导力。我的民族志研究记录了中产阶级毕业生通过与政府合作创办社会企业来寻求自我实现和教育民主化时所产生的主体性。“社会企业家”的角色似乎让毕业生既可以成为为国家提供甘地式“服务”的道德主体，也可以成为展示自我优化的新自由主义能力的现代企业家公民。问题在于，通过企业家领导来追求自我实现会产生一种非历史的自我，并掩盖了在印度继续再现不平等的历史和社会结构。通过运用情感理论，我认为对自我的过度关注会造成教育工作者的焦虑。更严重的是，教育学家告诉学生，（非历史的）自我反思可以培养领导“技能”，这些技能将确保他们的社会流动性（Irani 2019; Desai 2020）。这些教育体制将造就新一代焦虑不安的人，而他们没有保护老牌中产阶级的社会或金融资本。通过开发揭示情感体验的研究方法，我发现了一种主观的紧张和焦虑，这是印度教育发展行业的特征。我独特的理论框架融合了女权主义和非殖民本体论（Barad 2007; Todd 2016; Tuhiwai Smith 1998），情感理论（Ahmed 2015; Berlant 2011），以及作为焦点小组的参与式戏剧（Boal 1995; Makepeace 2021）。通过使用这一框架，我发展了一个新的民族志概念，以便对教育学家的“创业主体性”进行实证研究。情感强度（affective intensity）这个概念将人们的注意力吸引到试图通过单一的社会职业角色（在我的研究中是社会企业家的角色）来满足两条自我发展道路的复杂性上。为了宣传和传播这个新工具以及我在创业领导力方面的实证发现，我将利用博士后项目将我的论文出版成书：《领导力的生活世界：印度教育中的创业主体性》。这本书以印度企业家为例，研究如何通过关注影响来研究主体化。手稿的准备工作将由SOAS的Sanjay Srivastava教授密切监督，他是研究印度自由化如何塑造主体性和社会不平等的专家，以确保这本书可以被本科生、知名学者和印度教育发展行业的成员使用。我在印度学习和工作的非政府组织网络影响了全国3亿多来自低收入家庭的儿童，并与政府建立了公私伙伴关系，以制定教育政策（例如德里的幸福课程）。为了确保我的研究对这些非政府组织产生直接影响，我将与迈纳克·罗伊（Mainak Roy）共同制作一个关于企业家领导力的播客，他是德里快速发展的初创企业Simple Education Foundation的首席执行官。该播客将主持对教育社会企业家的采访，将他们的领导生活经验与我的人类学见解联系起来，并改变教育发展计划和教学法的政策。我还将在UBEL网络中为ecr主持培训，分享我的新概念情感强度如何在社会科学中塑造创造性的研究方法。

My research explores Indian middle-class graduates who have launched social enterprises to improve schooling for India's urban poor. I focus on how the drive for self-development - especially self-awareness, self-discipline, self-management - have become central to the education for social change discourse in India. Both graduates joining this entrepreneurial education reform movement and the supposed beneficiaries are taught to value 'leadership' and specifically an 'entrepreneurial' form of leadership. My ethnographic research documents the subjectivities produced when middle-class graduates seek both their own self-actualisation and the democratisation of education through launching social enterprises that partner with the government. The role of 'social entrepreneur' seemingly allows graduates to become both ethical subjects, who offer Gandhian 'service' to the nation, and modern, entrepreneurial citizens who display the neoliberal capacity to self-optimise. The problem is that chasing self-actualisation via entrepreneurial leadership produces an ahistorical self and obscures the historical and social structures which continue to reproduce inequality in India. By using affect theory, I argue that over attention to self creates anxiety in educationalists. Graver still, educationalists teach school children that (ahistorical) self-reflection build leadership 'skills' and these skills will ensure their social mobility (Irani 2019; Desai 2020). These education regimes are poised to a create new generation of anxious subjects without the social or financial capital that protects the established middle-class. By developing research methods that reveal affective experience I identify a subjective tension and anxiety that characterises the education development industry in India.My unique theoretical framework blends feminist and decolonial ontologies (Barad 2007; Todd 2016; Tuhiwai Smith 1998), affect theory (Ahmed 2015; Berlant 2011), and participatory theatre as focus group (Boal 1995; Makepeace 2021). By using this framework, I have developed a new ethnographic concept so that the 'entrepreneurial subjectivity' of educationalists can be studied empirically. The concept, affective intensity, draws focus to the complexity of attempting to meet two paths of self-development through a single socio-professional role - in the case of my research: the role of social entrepreneur.To publicise and disseminate this new tool and my empirical findings on entrepreneurial leadership, I will use the postdoc project to publish my thesis as a book: Lifeworlds of Leadership: Entrepreneurial Subjectivities in Indian Education. The book uses Indian entrepreneurs as a case study for how subjectification can be studied via attention to affect. Manuscript preparation will be closely supervised by SOAS's Professor Sanjay Srivastava, an expert in researching how India's liberalisation is shaping subjectivities and social inequality, to ensure the book can be used by undergraduates, established academics, and members of India's education development industry.The network of NGOs I study and work with in India have influence over 300 million children from low-income families across the country, and have forged public-private-partnerships with the government to shape educational policy (e.g. Happiness Curriculum in Delhi). To ensure my research has a direct impact on these NGOs, I will co-produce a podcast on entrepreneurial leadership with Mainak Roy, CEO of fast-growing Delhi-based start-up Simple Education Foundation. The podcast will host interviews with social entrepreneurs of education to link their lived experience of leadership with my anthropological insights - and shift policy in education development programs and pedagogies.I will also host trainings for ECRs in the UBEL network to share how my novel concept affective intensity can shape creative research methodologies in the social sciences.