Individual Autonomy or Social Engagement? Adult Learners in Neoliberal Times

Introduction: Adult Education in Neoliberal Times

From far and wide, scholars of adult education have decried the increasing dominance of neoliberal policies and rationalities in our world. Neoliberal policies are seen to be constraining the practice of adult education in countries as diverse as Australia (Golding, 2011; Wyn, 2012), Bolivia (Tarifa, 2012), Botswana (Maruatona, 2010), Canada (Gibb, 2008; Gouthro, 2009; Ng & Shan, 2010), China (Liu, 2008), England (Bowl, 2010), Ireland (Grummell, 2007), Japan (Ogawa, 2013), New Zealand (Bowl, 2010; Bowl & Tobias, 2012; Zepke, 2009), South Africa (Zeelen, Rampedi, & van der Linden, 2014), and the United States (Holst, 2010; Kreber, 2010). Neoliberal rationalities are seen to be making it more difficult to think clearly about processes such as adult learning (Carpenter, 2012), training (Holst, 2009), needs assessment (Ayers, 2011), occupational competency (Boreham, 2004), social care and social justice (Taber, 2011), and the role of the state (English & Mayo, 2012). While authors have used the term neoliberal to describe a wide variety of phenomena, processes, and experiences, common elements in the conceptualization of neoliberal times include a focus on individuals rather than collectivities, reliance on market forces rather than government intervention, the promotion of deregulation and privatization, the erosion of unions, reductions in taxation and public spending, and strong ideological support for capitalism and globalization.

For adult educators working in such times, understanding the evolving nature of adult learners has become an important and challenging task. Prominent social theorists have argued that neoliberal forms of subjectivity are distinct from those of past eras. Giddens (1991) claimed that human identities have become increasingly reflexive in the late modern age. Beck (1992) asserted that personal autonomy and responsibility have become hallmarks of Western cultures. Rose (1999) argued that neoliberal rationalities of government depend on the construction and regulation of subjects who see themselves as individuals with the responsibility to shape their lives through their own actions and choices. In short, a high level of individual autonomy, in contrast to a high level of social engagement, is seen to characterize the ideal–typical, neoliberal citizen. The widespread existence of such forms of subjectivity would substantially constrain the forms of practice in which adult educators could engage.

However, it is not certain, despite the contemporary preponderance of neoliberal discourses, that human beings around the world have actually internalized neoliberal forms of subjectivity. The nature of learners under neoliberal regimes is an empirical question—a question of tremendous importance to adult educators. In this article, we explore the nature of contemporary learners through presenting the results of qualitative interviews with adults engaged in what would seem to be one of the most neoliberal of all forms of learning: reading self-help books. We first introduce key theoretical and empirical work regarding the historicity and cultural-specificity of human subjectivities, and then review scholarly work that interprets self-help books as technologies for the production of highly individualized and autonomous forms of subjectivity. We find that such work develops an interesting hypothesis about the relationships between self-help reading and the governance of neoliberal subjects, but does not provide adequate empirical evidence to substantiate that hypothesis. We then describe the innovative research methods we used with a substantial number of self-help readers, to explore those readers’ sense of themselves as individually autonomous and socially engaged. We find, in contrast to the expectations of those who have previously analyzed the structure of self-help texts, that readers of such texts have complex patterns of subjectivity that cannot be easily reconciled with assumptions about neoliberal individuality and autonomy. We conclude that there is a complex relationship between neoliberal discourses present in self-help books, and patterns of subjectivity among those exposed to such discourses. From this case study of self-help reading as one contemporary domain of adult learning, we argue that living in neoliberal times does not necessarily lead to a lack of social engagement. This conclusion has important implications for the politics and practice of adult education in other domains.

Literature Review and Conceptual Framework

Adult educational practices both presuppose and (re)produce particular forms of human subjectivity (McLean, 1997; McLean & Rollwagen, 2008). Practices of teaching, evaluating, and administering adult learners are linked to historically and culturally specific ways of being human. Anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers have recognized the historicity and cultural specificity of particular forms of human subjectivity—and in particular the ways in which human beings recognize the individuality of themselves and others. In the field of psychological anthropology, comparative ethnographers have asserted that forms of individuality vary substantially between cultures. Geertz argues,

the Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against a social and natural background is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures. (as cited in Shweder & Bourne, 1984, p. 167)

In the field of historical sociology, accounts of European subjectivity suggest that contemporary forms of individuality contrast sharply with those prominent in feudal times. Foucault (1986) highlights the socially constructed nature of individual autonomy:

the individual is not to be conceived as a sort of elementary nucleus, a primitive atom, a multiple and inert material on which power comes to fasten or against which it happens to strike, and in so doing subdues or crushes individuals. In fact, it is already one of the prime effects of power that certain bodies, certain gestures, certain discourses, certain desires, come to be identified and constituted as individuals. (p. 234)

In the field of postmodern philosophy, the existence of rational, unitary, and stable forms of individuality is considered to be an ideological fiction specific to the modern era. Jameson (1985) argues,

not only is the bourgeois individual a thing of the past, it is also a myth; it never really existed in the first place; there have never been autonomous subjects of that type. Rather, this construct is merely a philosophical and cultural mystification which sought to persuade people that they “had” individual subjects and possessed this unique personal identity. (p. 115)

While human beings in all places and times likely have had some concept of personal identity, and some means of distinguishing between themselves and others, scholars in comparative ethnography, historical sociology, and postmodern philosophy have argued convincingly that the ways in which human subjectivity is conceptualized, and particularly the ways in which individual subjects are connected with, and separated from, other such subjects, vary tremendously.

For scholars and practitioners of adult education in places referred to as liberal democracies, it is particularly important to understand the historical construction and contemporary reproduction of patterns of subjectivity commonly associated with capitalist and neoliberal societies. Here, the work of Norbert Elias is particularly useful. Elias profoundly challenges orthodox assumptions about the individuality and autonomy of human subjects. His studies in historical sociology demonstrate that contemporary patterns of subjectivity, far from being natural or universal, emerged and are reproduced through the experience of certain forms of social relations and discourses. Elias (1991) rejects the universality of the individual human subject: “qualities of human beings referred to by terms such as ‘individuality’ are not simply given by nature, but are something that has developed from the biological raw material in the course of a social process” (p. 140). He argues that the individualization of subjectivity

is an aspect of a social transformation which is quite beyond the control of the individual. The product of this increasing individuality, the greater diversity of individual people with regard to behavior, experience and make-up, is not simply given by nature in the same sense as is the diversity of human bodies. Nor is the separateness of individuals that is sometimes talked about a phenomenon given by nature in the same sense as the separateness of individual people in space. Considered as bodies, the individuals embedded for life in tightly knit kinship communities were and are no less separate from each other than the members of complex state societies. What emerges far more in the latter is the separateness and encapsulation of individuals in their relations to each other. (Elias, 1991, p. 121)

Contemporary patterns of individuality evolved during long-term processes in which forms of subjectivity, social organization, and material production were gradually transformed.

Elias underlines the historicity of contemporary forms of subjectivity and individuality. He argues that European personality structures evolved over the centuries in concert with long-term social change. In his work on “the civilizing process,” Elias (1978, p. 257) uses research on manners, aggression, and state formation to argue that since the late Middle Ages there has been a shift from “interpersonal external compulsion” to “individual internal compulsion.” In Elias’s history of European personality structures, internalized forms of self-constraint increasingly replace external and violent forms of social control as the primary form of governance. The development of self-constraint presupposes the emergence of particular forms of individuality. Indeed, Elias (1991, pp. 196-197) locates the individualization of subjectivity as an integral component of the civilizing process in Europe since the Renaissance. He uses the term homo clausus to refer to people in “a recent stage of civilization” in which “people see themselves broadly as fundamentally independent beings, as windowless monads, as isolated ‘subjects’” (Elias, 1985, p. 52).

Elias’s observations about evolving patterns of human subjectivity have been extended in numerous accounts of “neoliberal subjects.” Alloway and Dalley-Trim (2009) argue:

Imperative to the neoliberal agenda then, is the heightened focus on the individual, and the increased acceptance of personal responsibility . . . neoliberalism (re)casts and prioritises the modern subject, the individual, as a rational, autonomous, responsible and active “Subject”—a subject identifiable as the entrepreneurial self. (p. 51)

Beck and Beck-Gernsheim claim that the

ethic of individual self-fulfilment and achievement is the most powerful current in modern society. The choosing, deciding, shaping human being who aspires to be the author of his or her own life, the creator of an individual identity, is the central character of our time. (as cited in Alloway & Dalley-Trim, 2009, p. 51)

In a similar manner, scholars of adult education have identified the following characteristics of ideal–typical neoliberal subjects: individualism, competitiveness, and marketplace-orientation (Boreham, 2004; Gouthro, 2009; Grummell, 2007); the privatization of responsibility for educational and economic success (Bowl, 2010; Bowl & Tobias, 2012; Gibb, 2008; Holst, 2010; Ng & Shan, 2010; Wyn, 2012); flexibility (Holst, 2009; Wyn, 2012); and individual autonomy (Liu, 2008; Ogawa, 2013). In short, neoliberal subjects are seen to be characterized by hyperindividuality, flexibility, and a strong sense of personal autonomy and responsibility.

In the context of this broad characterization of neoliberal forms of subjectivity, this article explores patterns of subjectivity among adults engaged in one particular domain of informal learning: the reading of self-help books. This domain was chosen as the focus for our case study of learner subjectivities both for reasons of methodological convenience (to be explained in the “Research Method and Participants” section), and because self-help reading is widely viewed as one of the most neoliberal forms of adult learning. Reading self-help books has become a prominent component of popular culture in many countries characterized as experiencing neoliberal pressures. Thousands of books have been written with the explicit intent of helping readers change some aspect of their personal or professional lives. Millions of readers have turned to such books for advice regarding career success, interpersonal relationships, and health and well-being. While scholarly writing about self-help books has been diverse, one key claim has been that self-help books are structured to inculcate neoliberal forms of subjectivity among readers. Hochschild’s (1994) analysis of advice books for women provides an eloquent expression of this claim. Hochschild argues that self-help books represent “a shift in the cultural premises about human attachment” (p. 3). She uses the image of the “postmodern cowgirl” (p. 10) to illustrate the characteristics represented as virtuous by most authors of self-help books for women: possessing few emotional needs; being self-reliant, and independent from other human beings; investing in oneself rather than one’s relationships; distrusting others; and following stereotypically male emotional rules with respect to intimate relationships. Hochschild writes, “The postmodern cowgirl has sculpted herself to adjust to a paradigm of distrust. She devotes herself to the ascetic practices of emotional control, and expects to give and receive surprisingly little love from other human beings” (1994, p. 11).

While Hochschild characterizes self-help books as promoting the alienation of human beings from one another, Rimke (2000) links such books with “political rationalities” of contemporary liberal democracies: “Self-help literature aids in the production, organization, dissemination and implementation of particular liberal modes of truth about the social world” (p. 62). She argues,

Based upon notions such as choice, autonomy and freedom, self-help relies upon the principle of individuality and entails self-modification and “improvement.” These preoccupations with self-liberation and self-enlightenment are the social and political results of a hyper-individuality promoted by an extensive essentialist psychologization of the self in everyday life. Rather than viewing individuals and individualism as the historical product of intersecting social processes and cultural discourses, proponents of the principle of individuality, which is crucial in self-help rhetoric, assume the social world to be the sum aggregation of atomized, autonomous and self-governing individual persons. (Rimke, 2000, p. 62)

Self-help books not only reflect the alienation of human subjects from one another; they actively promote it. Rimke (2000) claims:

The sociopolitical mandates of self-help texts are clear: to be a responsible citizen means to be responsible for oneself, not others. Concerned citizens are thus urged to develop a new form of social responsibility, one that is not socially oriented at all but, rather, is one that produces a hyper-individuality for which an inherent, responsible relationality with others is actively discouraged and pathologized. (p. 67)

Rimke reinforces, in Foucauldian terms, the message that Hochschild delivered some years earlier with a feminist vocabulary: self-help books are an important means through which human beings come to understand themselves as autonomous monads, detached from emotional and social bonds with other human beings.

Hochschild’s postmodern cowgirl and Rimke’s hyperindividualized subject are reflected in a number of other scholarly works. Hazleden (2003, 2004) claims that “relationship manuals” encourage readers to detach themselves from intimate relationships, and seek fulfilment through self-sufficiency. She (Hazleden, 2003) summarizes the “ethical telos” of the books in terms of the “kind of selves” they encourage their readers to become: “we are to aspire to be effective, fulfilled and autonomous selves, on an individual, progressive and linear journey through life, with the sole responsibility for the direction that this journey takes” (p. 421). Hazleden (2004) characterizes advice from self-help books as prescribing relationships which lack strong emotional bonds or efforts to “help” one’s partner, and which could be terminated at any time if the self-sufficiency of either partner is compromised. She claims,

A society in which such relationships were the norm would be one composed of “effective” citizens who were each able to take care of themselves and understand their ultimate responsibility for their own behaviour, for their own happiness or unhappiness, while detaching themselves from the happiness or unhappiness of others. (Hazleden, 2003, p. 425)

Hazleden (2004) asserts that self-help books about relationships are really about one’s relationship with oneself: “The books assume a self that has been ‘lost’ or ‘damaged’ and they prescribe a programme of examining, interrogating, nurturing and loving the self in order to develop a self-sufficient and autonomous self that is ‘whole’ and ‘healthy’” (p. 211).

While Hazleden finds that relationship manuals promote autonomous ideals of self-hood, Redden (2002) and Philip (2009) argue that books focused on health and well-being likewise encourage readers to view themselves as individuals detached from relationships with others. Redden (2002) reviews New Age novels and self-help books, and concludes,

Individuals are encouraged to recover responsibility for their own lives by realizing their inner cognitive potential. This optimistic message is imbricated with the ideologies of self-enhancement and appeals to sovereign consumer choice which characterize contemporary promotional discourse. It is also a countercultural message which promises the end of the subject’s dependence upon external knowledge, social norms and institutional resources. (p. 49)

Philip (2009) analyzes a popular self-help book on depression, and argues that the book encourages its readers to “experience the joy of self-reliance” (p. 159) and promotes “an image of the healthy individual as one who is rational, autonomous, productive, energetic, and self-disciplined” (p. 160). While Redden attributes an ethos of “radical privatization” to New Age self-help, Philip argues that self-help books relating to mental health issues are part of “a general shift away from state-run institutional services towards more individualized health choices” (p. 165). In a similar manner, Youll and Meekosha (2013) argue that “positive thinking” messages in self-help discourses reproduce subjects striving towards “virtues” that are “strongly aligned with the ideal liberal citizen” (p. 34).

Existing studies of self-help reading share two important features. First, authors claim that self-help books encourage readers to view themselves as autonomous beings, detached from others and, at least potentially, self-sufficient. Second, authors do not introduce substantial empirical evidence, drawn from research with actual readers of self-help books, to support their claims. Overall, despite considerable scholarly and professional attention given to self-help literature, there has been a lack of empirical research about the experience of self-help reading. As we have documented in previous publications, researchers have tended to be speculative when it comes to describing the impacts of self-help reading on readers: Few studies have been published that assess learning processes and outcomes among those who read self-help literature (McLean, 2013, in press). Existing studies tend to interpret the meaning of self-help books, and then impute the supposed impact of those books on those who read them. While there are a few exceptions to this pattern, we found no empirical research that examines whether or not self-help readers internalize messages of individualization and autonomy claimed to structure self-help texts.

The prevailing interpretation of self-help books links such books with the neoliberal individualization and governance of human subjectivities. This interpretation is a fascinating one, but it has not been substantiated by significant empirical research with actual readers. In the next section of this article, we describe the innovative methods we used to bridge the gap between interpreting the structure of neoliberal discourses, and exploring the subjectivities of adult learners exposed to such discourses. In conceptual terms, our work endeavors to explore the themes of “individual autonomy” and “social engagement” in the self-characterizations expressed by participants in a study of self-help reading. We are not claiming that self-help reading caused these people to view themselves as either more autonomous or more engaged. Furthermore, we recognize that individual autonomy and social engagement are not mutually exclusive attributes; it would be entirely feasible for highly autonomous individuals to also be heavily engaged in social relationships.

What we explore in this article is whether or not the ideal–typical characteristics of the “neoliberal subject,” as hypothesized to exist by social theorists, scholars of adult education, and textual analysts of self-help discourses, actually reflect the subjective identities as expressed by readers of self-help books as a subset of the broader population of adult learners. For this purpose, we have conceptualized “individual autonomy” to represent attributes such as independence, resilience, striving for success, and a range of other characteristics that would differentiate one human subject from others based on the qualities or experiences of that subject. We have conceptualized “social engagement” to represent attributes such as being or feeling connected with other human subjects, caring for others, and a range of other characteristics that would link one human subject to others based on either direct interpersonal interaction or an emotional or philosophical bond. It is important to note that “social engagement” is not the same as engagement with social movements, communitarian philosophies, or collective forms of political action. Social engagement can comprise such things, but it can also be found in more personal and direct forms of relating to other human subjects. These conceptualizations of autonomy and engagement reflect Elias’s claims about the historicity of the “the separateness and encapsulation of individuals in their relations to each other,” and the work of more recent scholars in their analysis of discourse found in popular self-help texts. We argue that “neoliberal times” have often been associated with discourses valuing high levels of individual autonomy, and low levels of social engagement, but that the subjectivities of people living in such times may not consistently reflect such discourses.

Research Method and Participants

Data for this article are drawn from research conducted in 2012 to explore the learning experiences and outcomes involved in reading self-help books relating to career success, interpersonal relationships, or health and well-being. That research has led to a series of publications examining self-help reading as a form of public pedagogy, with implications for a range of topics of interest to adult educators: self-directed learning, life course transitions, generational differences, mental health, and the reproduction of gender identities and inequities (Kapell & McLean, 2014; McLean 2013, 2014, in press; McLean & Kapell, in press; McLean & Vermeylen, 2014; Vermeylen & McLean, 2014). For purposes of the current article, the interviewees from this broader study of self-help reading constitute a sample of adults engaged in forms of learning closely associated with “neoliberal times.” It is important to note that we are not arguing that the experience of self-help reading has caused these research participants to form subjectivities that are relatively more individually autonomous or socially engaged; rather, we are exploring the subjectivities of adult learners who had read at least one self-help book in the year prior to our interviewing them. As such, our interviewees represent a “sample of convenience” of adult learners; a sample that enables rich insights into the self-understandings of some adult learners, but does not allow probabilistic generalizations to be made about the broader population of adult learners. Our choice of self-help readers as a “case study” for the broader population of adult learners is justified by the widespread characterization of self-help reading as one of the most neoliberal forms of adult learning. As such, if one expects to find neoliberal subjectivities among adult learners, one would certainly expect to find such subjectivities among readers of self-help books.

For our research into the experience and outcomes of self-help reading, we interviewed 134 adults, recruited primarily through online advertisements placed in the “books” sections of Kijiji websites for Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg. We stopped at 134 interviewees because we believed that we had achieved a point of saturation in our data, and that additional interviews would not have yielded adequate insights to justify undertaking such interviews. Most participants were Canadian, while 14 were American and 3 were British. Qualitative interviews were conducted via online chat software, telephone calls, and the exchange of e-mail messages. The interviews were organized in five main sections: motivation, learning goals, learning strategies, learning outcomes, and impact. Questions were open-ended, encouraging participants to share their experience of self-help reading in their own words and with minimal direction. Participants completing interviews received a $25 honorarium, and are identified in this article by pseudonyms assigned by our research team.

Two thirds of our interviewees were women. Each interview focused on the experience of reading one specific self-help book. Of our 134 participants, 49% read books relating primarily to health and well-being, while 26% read books dealing with interpersonal relationships, and 25% read books on topics relating to career and financial success. There were distinct gender differences in readership of different types of books. Women were more likely to read books pertaining to health and well-being (54%) and relationships (29%), as opposed to those pertaining to careers (17%). In contrast, men were more likely to read books pertaining to careers (40%) and health (40%), as opposed to those pertaining to relationships (20%). The average age of participants was 34 years for women, and 30 years for men. Females had slightly higher rates of postsecondary education: 67% of the women and 53% of the men had completed at least an undergraduate degree or postsecondary diploma.

Overall data analysis was undertaken by cutting and pasting pertinent passages from all 134 transcripts into an Excel database structured so that each row represented a single case and each column represented a single variable of analytical interest. Initial analysis involved the coding of each variable to enable the summary and comparison of the predominantly qualitative data. The focus of our early analysis was on the description of the experience and outcomes of self-help reading and the comparison of patterns of experience and outcomes according to variables such as gender, age, and type of book. For purposes of this article, however, our focus was not on the experience and outcomes of self-help reading, but rather on the nature of the subjectivities of our interviewees. In order to gain insight into such subjectivities, we focused on responses to one specific section of our interview protocol.

If adult learners in neoliberal times actually view themselves as atomized individuals, detached from meaningful relationships with other people, then one would expect the readers of self-help books we interviewed to express images of themselves as relatively autonomous subjects. To explore whether the readers in our study characterized themselves as relatively autonomous or as socially engaged human beings, we asked a two-part question. The first part of the question asked,

Please tell me a story about an experience from your life. The experience should represent something important about whom you are as a person. The experience should be an actual event, which you can describe in enough detail so that someone who was not there could understand what happened.

The second part of the question was: “What is it about yourself that is represented by the experience you described? Why is this important to you?” This approach to exploring human subjectivity is related to the “true self method” developed by Turner and Schutte (1981), and as the following sections of this article demonstrate, it provides significant insight into how people understand themselves.

It is important to note both the innovativeness and the limitations of the “key narrative method” through which we explored the self-characterizations of our interviewees, and linked those self-characterizations to contemporary discourses concerning neoliberal forms of human subjectivity. The “true self method” was developed by Turner and Schutte (1981, pp. 3-6) to overcome the limitations of existing social–psychological methods for exploring people’s self-concepts: ethnographic observations of people in social context, as used in dramaturgical or phenomenological research; self-ratings from checklists of personality traits, as used in psychological research; and the “Twenty Statements Test,” (TST) developed by Manford Kuhn. The TST asks respondents to give 20 different statements in answer to the question, “Who am I?” In contrast to ethnographic observations, the key narrative method we used enabled us to gather data from a large number of participants in a short period of time. In contrast to personality trait checklists and the TST method, our key narrative method enabled us to allow our interviewees to both create a narrative of personal importance to them, and to explain why that narrative was important to them, in their own words. Our approach differs from the true self method in that we did not ask interviewees to speak about “the person that I really am,” or their “true self,” but rather to describe and explain an experience that represented something important to them.

Our key narrative approach to exploring the subjectivities of adult learners is thus less time-consuming and resource-intensive than ethnographic or life-history methods, and more likely to elicit meaningful and authentic data than personality trait or TST methods. Although this approach enabled us to gather interesting data from a large number of respondents in a reasonable timeframe, it had certain drawbacks. First, we asked for just one narrative from each of our participants, and for their reflection about one aspect of themselves that was highlighted by that narrative. Clearly, a comprehensive understanding of the subjectivities of our interviewees would require more in-depth engagement with them. Second, the narratives that emerged from our interviews frequently contained references to individual autonomy and social engagement in ways that blended the two themes. Clearly, a mutually exclusive characterization of individual autonomy and social engagement would require something like an index-based approach whereby interviewees’ responses to a range of standardized questions were tabulated into a scale or continuum on which the two themes would be at opposite poles. Despite the lack of comprehensiveness and mutual exclusivity in our approach to understanding the themes of individual autonomy and social engagement in our interviewees’ self-characterizations, we believe that our key narrative approach has led to qualitative data allowing meaningful insight into how adult learners understand themselves.

Readers’ Self-Characterizations

A minority of the readers we interviewed expressed images of themselves quite consistent with the common portrayal of the individualized and autonomous neoliberal subject. Nine readers shared experiences which directly claimed that being independent was important to them. Karlie, a 56-year-old schoolteacher, described traveling in Australia in a very independent and carefree manner. She explained the importance of this experience as representing

the freedom to be myself, not to be beholden, not to be doing something because I have a history and a future and social obligations and fear but just because I am alive and free to be me in this moment in time.

Gwen, a 27-year-old entrepreneur shared her experience of dropping out of college. She reflected, “This experience represents my deep desire to create my own path in life, and my disregard for societal norms and expectations.” Such narratives indicate that some of our interviewees do fit the portrayal of the self-help reader as someone consistent with neoliberal virtues of independence and autonomy.

More often than making a direct claim to being independent, our readers identified themselves as being resilient, or able to solve problems and overcome obstacles. Clive, a 28-year-old unemployed man, shared his experience of going rock climbing for the first time, and, despite being afraid of heights, performing very well and feeling great as a result. He explained the importance of this experience:

I was filled with confidence, happiness and I felt more alive than I have ever felt. From that point on I’ve tried to continually remind myself of that evening and how I felt as a result of challenging myself and doing my absolute best. I’ve tried to remind myself how being courageous in the face of fear can equate to confidence.

Estella, a 31-year-old information technology worker, explained that she dropped out of high school, worked service-sector jobs, and later returned to graduate with a high school diploma. She told us that this narrative “represents my determination to complete something when I really want it.” Narratives highlighting personal resilience and problem-solving abilities were offered by 14 interviewees, and reinforce the image of self-help readers as emphasizing individual autonomy over social engagement as integral to their sense of themselves.

In a manner likewise consistent with stereotypical understandings of self-help readers, seven of our interviewees shared experiences that demonstrated how striving for success was important to them. Ella, a 27-year-old municipal by-law enforcement officer, described how she had single-handedly defeated three men in a heroic ending to a paintball game. Ella reflected, “This experience represents my desire to succeed through the use of past experience and other people’s wisdom, even if the odds are not in my favor.” Elliot, a 32-year-old unemployed man, described being soaked with rain during a solo, cross-Canada bicycle trip. Elliot said, “I have a work ethic that I feel is raw, and when I focus my desire to achieve overrides everything else.”

In addition to valuing independence, resilience, and personal success, a total of 20 of our readers shared stories that identified a variety of other individual characteristics as being important to them. Four readers identified religious faith as being important to them, and four other readers shared stories that indicated how much they appreciated life, or valued their experience of life. Twelve other readers reported the following individual traits as being integral to them: adventurousness, short-temperedness, creativity, open-mindedness, curiosity, happiness, confidence, flexibility, calmness, responsibility, a tendency to panic, and a need to control situations. Overall, 50 readers responded to our request to share an important experience with stories that identified individual traits that were more related to personal autonomy than to social engagement.

In contrast, and in a manner not predicted by existing scholarly accounts of self-help books, 60 interviewees shared experiences that had various forms of social engagement as their primary focus—in themes ranging from the centrality and difficulty of interpersonal relationships, to helping and empathizing with other people. The centrality of relationships to readers’ lives was actually the most common theme in responses to our request for readers to share an important experience from their lives. Hailey, a 37-year-old insurance broker, explained how she had closed down an insurance agency she owned, to have more time and energy for family, friends, and her own well-being. She said, “This represents that I value my family and friends more than earning a big income. My happiness is not tied to how much money I make.” Liana, a 23-year-old landscaper, told the story of how she and her brother were raised by her grandmother, under challenging circumstances. Liana explained the importance of this experience: “I know that love, relationships, and happiness are the most important things to living a good life.” In contrast to the image of the self-help reader as an isolated subject, 24 of our interviewees identified family, friends, and loving relationships as notable aspects of their sense of themselves. As a subset of these readers, three interviewees shared the experience of giving birth to children, and indicated that having children was an important experience in their lives.

While the centrality of relationships to life was the most common theme in our readers’ narratives, 17 interviewees shared experiences that underlined the challenges presented by interpersonal relationships. Lana, a 29-year-old homemaker, explained that after the birth of her first child, she argued regularly with her husband, whom she eventually accused of not understanding the changes that childrearing had brought to her life. Lana said,

This story represents that I have always felt as if I was the only one making sacrifices in our marriage. In retrospect I have realized that he does sacrifice things for me and our family and that while I often feel unappreciated I’m sure that he does too.

Delilah, a 24-year-old fire and flood restoration technician, told us about being betrayed and then dumped by her fiancé. She underlined the importance of this experience: “I am a very trusting person, I trust too easily and far too quickly. I trusted this person with everything and was let down terribly.”

While a total of 41 readers spoke to us about the importance and challenges of interpersonal relationships to their lives, 14 others described themselves as people who were committed to helping others. Kioko, a 38-year-old homemaker and former physician, shared an experience of a time when she took great care in treating a patient, and the patient expressed profound gratitude in response. In relating the importance of this experience to her, Kioko said, “I care for people, especially people who have been written off by others or marginalized. I would like to always be in a position to help others.” Victoria, a 49-year-old flight attendant, organized a major act of kindness for children who had lost a parent in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She reflected, “That’s who I am, and that’s who I have taught my kids to be: kind, compassionate and passionate.”

In addition to the readers whose narratives focused on helping others, five readers shared experiences which highlighted their empathy for other people. Nicole, a 47-year-old flight attendant, once suffered a miscarriage just before Christmas, and had to deal with difficult friends and members of her extended family. Nicole said,

I have a different level of understanding for people going through profound loss. I don’t think one can relate to that level of loss without having gone through it. I am very open to others going through similar instances, and try to reach out to them.

Elle, a 23-year-old student, grew up in a poor household, and was once hungry enough to steal lunch from her schoolteacher. Elle told us: “Because of my experience with poverty as a child, I can be more compassionate and understanding towards others in similar situations.”

While most responses to our request to share an important experience could clearly be interpreted as reflecting either personal autonomy or social engagement, 19 of them blended these two themes in a manner which prohibited coding them as primarily one or the other. Elodie, a 20-year-old university student, described receiving feedback regarding her negative attitude and habit of complaining all the time. She reflected on the importance of this experience: “Most definitely my attitude. It’s important to me because I do want to have good relationships with people and I do want to become successful. I can’t get anywhere if all I do is complain about everything all day.” Matthew, a 42-year-old manager, experienced chest pains and was subsequently misdiagnosed with cancer. He told us: “It taught me that life is short and my job on this earth is to show others how to accomplish their goals and dreams.”

In summary, of the 134 self-help readers in our study, 129 responded to our request to provide a self-characterizing narrative. Sixty readers (47%) responded in ways that presented an image of themselves as being profoundly engaged in social relationships. Fifty readers (39%) provided answers that presented an image of themselves as autonomous individuals, whose key traits included independence, resilience, and a striving for success. Nineteen readers (15%) presented complex images of themselves as both engaged in social relationships and possessing key traits that characterized them as individuals. There were important gender differences in the likelihood of readers to share experiences which primarily reflected social engagement or personal autonomy. Narratives primarily reflecting personal autonomy were shared by 62% of male readers, and 28% of female readers. Narratives primarily reflecting social engagement were shared by 55% of female readers, and 29% of male readers.

Conclusions

In this article, we have made four basic contributions to the scholarship of adult education. First, we have placed the widespread concern of adult educators with neoliberalism in the context of important social theories regarding the variability and historical evolution of human subjectivities. With particular focus on the work of Norbert Elias, we have asserted that all forms of human subjectivity are socially constructed, and we have traced the broad evolution of patterns of subjectivity in places now considered as neoliberal in character. Second, we have presented a fascinating case study of the interplay between discourse and subjectivity in adult learning, by focusing on readers of self-help books as a subpopulation of adult learners engaged with discourses that are widely characterized as neoliberal. This case study demonstrated that the existence of neoliberalism in textual discourse does not correspond readily to the subjectivities of those exposed to such discourse.

Self-help readers participating in our study demonstrated diverse and complex patterns of subjectivity. Only a minority of readers projected an image of themselves consistent with the prevailing interpretation of neoliberal subjects as emphasizing individual autonomy over social engagement. Readers were more likely to express themes relating to the centrality and importance of relationships, or their commitments to helping or empathizing with others, than they were to express themes pertaining to independence, resilience, striving for success, or other characteristics that would distinguish them as autonomous individuals. Men were more likely than women to express narratives prioritizing individual autonomy over social engagement. While our case study approach and nonrepresentative sampling techniques prevent us from generalizing these findings to broader populations, we can say that the portrayal of self-help books as pathways for the neoliberal individualization of subjects and the detachment of readers from other human beings is not supported by the empirical evidence gathered through our research.

Third, we used innovative conceptual and methodological approaches to understanding the subjectivities of adult learners in neoliberal times. Rooted in existing literature from social theory, adult education, and the analysis of self-help texts, we conceptualized “individual autonomy” and “social engagement” as indicators for the presence and absence of neoliberal forms of subjectivity. We looked for these indicators by asking interviewees an innovative question that required them to provide us with a narrative of an experience that was important to them, and then to explain the importance of that experience. We interpreted self-characterizations involving statements about concepts such as independence, resilience, and competitiveness as representing forms of subjectivity consistent with contemporary depictions of neoliberalism. We interpreted self-characterizations involving statements about concepts such as the importance and difficulty of relationships, caring for others, and empathizing with others, as representing forms of subjectivity inconsistent with contemporary depictions of neoliberalism. We found that a significant proportion of interviewees’ self-characterizations blended statements about individual autonomy and social engagement. Rather than a methodological flaw, we see this finding as representing the realities of human subjectivity—while concepts such as autonomy and engagement might seem neat and tidy in a conceptual framework, they are actually interrelated in the thoughts and actions of real people.

While innovative and productive, our research methods had important limitations that could be overcome by future researchers. Our key narrative approach only elicited a glimpse of how people understand themselves. We assume that the narratives offered by our interviewees did indeed represent something important about their self-understanding, but we cannot pretend to have fully understood our interviewees’ subjectivities. Our use of a case study approach means that we only gathered data about the subjectivities of a particular subset of adult learners. Our conceptualization of individual autonomy and social engagement offers only a partial view of the complex characteristics that could be argued to represent neoliberal forms of subjectivity. We encourage future researchers to build on our approach and overcome the shortcomings of that approach to more fully engage with a broad spectrum of adult learners to construct an in-depth understanding of their self-understandings and the ways in which those self-understandings relate to policies and discourses associated with neoliberal times.

Fourth, our research with self-help readers should inspire reflection about broader populations of adult learners in neoliberal times. It is clear that our interviewees did not see themselves as autonomous monads, disengaged from interpersonal relationships and apathetic about the lives of others. A significant minority of our interviewees—and a small majority of our male interviewees—expressed narratives in which their individuality was marked by traits such as autonomy, resilience, ambition, and other markers commonly associated with neoliberal times. However, most of our interviewees expressed narratives in which their individuality was fundamentally linked to social relationships through caring, sharing, belonging, struggling, helping, and other processes not typically associated with neoliberal times. It is very likely that broader populations of adult learners, like our sample of self-help readers, possess complex and diverse forms of subjectivity that cannot be adequately characterized through simplistic descriptions of neoliberal individuality or autonomy. These may be neoliberal times, but that does not mean that adult learners have become neoliberal subjects.

Our research with self-help readers should also inspire reflection about more general processes linking discourse and subjectivity. Existing scholarship about the nature of self-help texts has characterized such texts as, much of the time, enacting discourses consistent with neoliberal values, assumptions, and ideologies. This is likely a fair characterization. However, one must be careful to avoid assuming that self-help readers merely incorporate such discourses into their being. Rather, it is important to see the process of reading (along with all other processes of adult learning) as involving active processes of reception. Readers actively interpret and construct meaning based not solely on the structure of the texts to which they are exposed but also on the basis of their preexisting patterns of thought, feeling, and belief. Exposure to neoliberal discourse does not imply that human beings become constituted as neoliberal subjects. Rather, the construction and reproduction of such forms of subjectivity depend on longer term patterns of material experience through which people come to see themselves in particular ways. Discourse and subjectivity, then, are related in more complex and multidirectional ways than implied by the linear assumption that discourse produces subjects with characteristics aligned with the structure of such discourse.

For adult educators, these findings have important political and practical implications. Politically, it is important to reflect on whether the times in which we are living are as neoliberal as some have argued. While neoliberalism appears firmly established as an ideology, and while neoliberal forms of public policy and institutional management are certainly being advocated and implemented by some politicians and institutional leaders, perhaps members of the general public have not really internalized neoliberal forms of subjectivity. This possibility would open up room for ideological contestation of neoliberal discourses, and practical resistance to institutional demands for forms of educational practice that rely too much on individual autonomy, and offer too little opportunity for social engagement.