Philippine E-Journals

Agency and Governmentality: The Regulation and Resistance of Muslim Students in a Public High School

Gerry M. Lanuza

Discipline: Education, Social Science

 

Abstract:

This paper is an attempt to show how Michel Foucault’s notion of governmentality can be used to illustrate the regulation of Muslim students while engaging in self-making in the context of the disciplinary field of a public high school. Using ethnographic data, this paper argues that Muslim students are not just passive subjects; rather, they are active agents in constituting their identities while simultaneously subjected to the power relations in the school. Towards the end of the paper, I propose certain policy recommendations that could address the problems generated by current specific form of rationality of government that normalizes Muslim students in public schools.