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Some reflections on policy theory: a brief response to Hatcher and Troyna

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Some reflections on policy theory: a brief response

to Hatcher and Troyna

Stephen J. Ball

To cite this article: Stephen J. Ball (1994) Some reflections on policy theory: a brief
response to Hatcher and Troyna, Journal of Education Policy, 9:2, 171-182, DOI:
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 J. EDUCATION POLICY, 1994, VOL. 9, NO. 2, 171-182

Some reflections on policy theory:

a brief response to Hatcher and Troyna

Stephen J. Ball
Centre for Educational Studies
King's College London
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This paper takes up some theoretical issues raised in Hatcher and Troyna's critical discussion (in this issue) of
my work on education policy. I argue that many of their criticisms are misplaced and rest upon flaws and
limitations in their own theoretical work. I suggest that they employ a set of unhelpful conceptual binaries
in their discussion which, if they are allowed to stand, can serve only to stultify the further development of
policy sociology. In particular, I take issue with Hatcher and Troyna's presentation of the theoretical stances
of Althusser and Foucauk.

Reducing the complexity of an argument and limiting the terms which it can contain is a drastic intervention.
Showing less means someone seeing less. And seeing less means thinking less. (Kress 1979: 22)

Hatcher and Troyna's (H and T) sustained critique needs to be taken seriously and their
text and their arguments are interesting and challenging but in one important sense
ultimately unhelpful. Let me qualify that last comment immediately. I want to
acknowledge the pertinence and accept the thrust of at least some of the arguments put in
their text but I find it difficult to do that in other than a piecemeal fashion. The arguments
and the text rest upon a set of simple and dramatic binaries - either/ors, rights and
wrongs. This is what Derrida calls 'the play of opposites'. And, of course, as Cixous and
Clement (1986:63-4) argue, dualisms are always both oppositional and hierarchical, never
neutral. As a result, as the object of criticism I am placed in the position of either
accepting, and taking over root and branch, the theoretical stance which is advanced by H
and T or mounting an absolute defence of the stance(s) which they attribute to me.1
(Some of which I find it difficult to recognize.) In this way the text is unhelpful. It is
authoritative, closed and certain. It contains no sense of a problematic. My response to
their criticisms will be organized in terms of a rejection of the simple oppositions with
which I am confronted. But I also want to challenge some of the substance of the critique
and to raise questions about the writers' presentation of the work of Althusser and
Foucault. And I want to explore what seem to me to be some odd inconsistencies and
contradictions in the paper and in the relationship of the paper to some of the writers'
other work. I leave aside a whole set of other quibbles and concerns.
But what do I accept from these criticisms? I am certainly ready to confess to
contradiction. I continue to hold and want to juggle with and attempt to integrate a set of
disparate epistemological and theoretical positions. I see this as productive but not without
its problems. In this sense I am no purist. I am interested in an 'applied sociology' which
engages with 'real world' issues. I also regard my analytical work as continuing. I see
many things needing still to be done. I regard my sociology as an evolving practice and I
see sociology in general as having achieved limited effectivity in the analysis of high
modern social life. I am not ready for closure or certainty. In a social world where

0268-0939/94 $10·00 © 1994 Taylor & Francis Ltd.

 172 STEPHEN J. BALL

political, national, scientific and medical uncertainties seem to be defining characteristics an

absolute sociology seems anomalous, to say the least (Beck 1992).
I also accept the problematic of state/agency power which H and T place at the
centre of their critique, while rejecting their portrayal of how I 'resolve' this problematic.
That is to say, I recognize that some of my formulations of actors' relationships to policy
give the impression of considerable 'freedom'. The difficulty is that I both want to convey
that impression in some respects and do not want to convey it in others. I do not deny the
power of the state, or its forcefulness. But I am unhappy with the totalitarian vision of the
state and the disempowerment of 'ordinary' social actors which that involves. (I use
'ordinary' here in the sense that Hall [Hall 1988:92] refers to 'ordinary folks'.) I attempt
to explore my differences with them below. Part of the difficulty is, I think, that I want to
explore things, analyse things, that H and T want to take as read. And I think there is an
important sub-text to H and T's critique which contains powerful and potentially
crippling messages about theory-work and scholarly and academic practice.
I have also been made more aware by H and T's critque of the need to be more
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precise about the nature of policy (or policies) and to develop a differentiated
conceptualization of policy. I have not done this hitherto. But neither do my critics. We
all have conceptual and analytical problems as a consequence. Again I shall return to this
below.

The Marxist state

I want to start with one of the main binaries which informs and structures H and T's
critique: that is, their division of state analyses into Marxist and pluralist (or in their terms
'not-Marxist'). There are a number of problems with this kind of theoretical shorthand,
not the least of which is the opportunity that it creates, which is fully exploited in the
paper, of attributing a simple unity and uniformity to Marxist writing on the state. The
problematics and diversity of Marxist theories of the state (say Miliband or Althusser or
Poulantzas or Jameson, who draw on different strands within Marx's writing: i.e. it is
possible to read different theories of the state in different Marxian texts) is thus obscured
and the appearance of a false consensus is created. My comment that 'while I do not see
the state as a committee acting in the interests of the bourgoisie...' (Ball 1993a: 4); is
thus taken as intending (interesting word) to signal my rejection of any kind of Marxist
conception of the state - and a simple polarity is thus established. Well, it was not so
intended. The use of Althusser as a key source in my conceptualization of the state would
hardly suggest such an intention. (I will return to Althusser in a moment.) My intention
in the sentence quoted was to distance myself from mechanistic conceptualizations of the
state, which, I believe, Althusser was also keen to avoid. More specifically H and T are
concerned about my attempt to explore the relative autonomy of the state in relation to
the economy. And they clearly feel that I do not take economic materiality seriously
enough.2 Thus, they say, I argue that the 'level of the "economic" ' merely 'provides the
backdrop as a context, a set of constraints' (Ball 1990:14). Note the word 'merely', theirs
not mine, which is dropped casually in the middle of the short quotation. The tenor of my
comment is powerfully changed as a result. I am seen to be distancing myself from 'the
distinctively structuralist notion of the omnipotent state', and Dale, Ozga and Gewirtz
are co-defendants on this charge. And indeed this 'distancing', from a particular variant of
Marxist state theorizing, is a more accurate representation of the position I was trying to
establish in Politics and Polkymaking in Education (1990).
 A RESPONSE T O HATCHER AND TROYNA 173

The critique moves on to reassert the fine line between autonomy and determination
which is argued using the work of Miliband and Geras. There are some delicate but
important semantic differentiations in play here. The key points are, first, how relative is
relative autonomy, and second, to what extent does the economic 'constrain' or 'shape'
the state (and, I would add, civil society). And even here there is some interesting
linguistic slippage - the terms shaping and definition for example are used at one point,
the notion of 'limits and pressures' employed by Geras are used at another, but against
these H and T's terminology of 'active intervention' (p. 159) seems to be the toughest and
most unequivocal version of the relationship between economy and state. This is rendered
in the distinctly omnipotent structuralist formulation that the 'level of the economic does
not merely provide a context, a set of limits, it actually intervenes in and shapes the
political, the social and the cultural' (p. 159). The disposition and juxtaposition of these
various loosely used verbs leads to considerable imprecision and also allows the
maintenance of the false consensus. Can a 'level' intervene? Now I do not want to play
silly language games here, but I do want to raise some questions about the simple binary
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that H and T are seeking to work with. I realize that the key point that H and T are
trying to make here is about primacy, the primacy of the state. They are asserting that we
can ultimately cut through all of this stuff and nonsense about relative autonomy and see
the economic as decisive. To an extent and in very general terms, I agree. But I still see
relative autonomy as important, indeed in the analysis and development of the policies of
education it is crucial.
This takes us back to Althusser and my 'pluralist appropriation'. I would not want to
deny the general charge of appropriation because I do not want to take on board all aspects
of Althusser's ontological position, that is to say, I am certainly uneasy with his denial of
human agency.3 (However, simply to equate agency with pluralism is a serious category
mistake.) Interestingly, H and T, in their later dismissal of Foucault's work, do not
mention the relationships between Althusser and Foucault - as tutor and student - or that
they saw themselves as having a set of common analytical concerns (see Macey 1993 and
Althusser 1969: 257). There are clearly ontological and epistemological dangers involved in
the unreflexive (mis)appropriation of 'bits' and 'pieces' from the work of writers with
whom one has serious differences. But I think there is a difference between thoughtful
borrowing and thoughtless incoherence. In this respect at least I take heart from an
argument deployed in another recent paper by Troyna (Troyna 1994). He is arguing the
case for 'critical policy research' and suggests that 'critical social researchers are not
necessarily delimited by sociological concepts and theories'. He goes on to quote,
approvingly, Harvey's point that critical social research is 'not bounded by a single (grand)
theoretical perspective. It is not (a version of) Marxism, or feminism, or anything else for
that matter' (Harvey 1990:8). But my point here is different. My appropriation of
Althusser's conceptualization of the social formation is said to 'exclude precisely what is
distinctively Althusserian, and Marxist, about it' (p. 160). I am tempted to aim that
quotation back at H and T.
H and T choose a representation of Althusser's position by Geras. This concludes
with the oft quoted and essentially contested key phrase: that the economy for Althusser,
following Engels, is still determinant 'in the last instance' (p. 161). In For Marx (Althusser
1969), however, Althusser, quoting Engels, also uses a different formulation and offers
some significant codicils.
Production is the determinant factor, but only [emphasis added] 'in the last instance' [what became of that little
w o r d ] . . , 'More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted'. Anyone who 'twists this' so that it says that the
economic factor is the only determinant factor 'transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, empty phrase'.
(p. Ill)
 174 STEPHEN J. BALL

And to a great extent H and T ' s problem w i t h m y formulation of education policy is that
I do not treat t h e economic factor as ' t h e only' determinant factor. A n d let us see w h a t
Althusser has t o say about t h e key and difficult concept of 'overdetermination':
. . . we must admit that contradiction can no longer be univocal (categories can no longer have a role and meaning
fixed once and for all) since it reflects in itself, in its very essence, its relationship to the unevenness of the complex
w h o l e . . . it reveals itself as determined by the structured complexity that assigns it to its role, as - if you will
forgive the astonshing expression - complexly-structurally-unevenly-determined. I must admit, I preferred a short
term: overdetermined. (p. 209)

I find if difficult to reconcile this with H and T's very straightforward notions of
intervention and shaping. Indeed their position seems closer to what Althusser calls
'monism' or 'economism' than to that of Althusser himself.
It is 'economism' (mechanism) and not the true Marxist tradition that sets up their hierarchy of instances once and
for all, assigning each its essence and role and defines the universal meaning of their relations, it is economism that
identifies roles and actors externally, not realising that the necessity of the process lies in the exchange of roles
'according to circumstances*, (p. 211)
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H and T's argument clearly asserts a 'once and for all' hierarchy, it portrays social roles
and social actors as structurally determined and historically static, and is insensitive to
circumstances. I believe my explorations in and around the educational state - the attempt
to explore the limits as well as effects of state power within specific circumstances, to
investigate the interplay and counterplay of the economic and political, against a backdrop
of economic agenda setting - comes closer to Althusser's vision of the state and relative
autonomy than H and T are willing to acknowledge. I think there is also a significant
dimerence in spirit between what H and T are attempting to do and Althusser's vision of
analysis and theorizing. For example; 'It has to be said that the theory of the specific effectivity
of the superstructures and other "circumstances" largely remains to be elaborated' (p. 113, emphasis
in original); and he goes on to say that: 'this theory remains a realm sketched in outline,
with its great mountain chains and rivers, but often unknown in detail beyond a few well-
known regions' (p. 114). There is no absolute certainty and closure here. Again I see H
and T's position as incompatible with this enterprise. The position they take up seems to
assume that we know all that we need to know: the map simply needs to be coloured in
rather than researched. This is what Dale (Dale 1992) calls 'theory by numbers'. Indeed,
what we are left with is precisely what Althusser (1977) calls a 'descriptive theory', a
transitional phase in theory development, based on a 'special kind of obviousness' (p. 133).
Crucially, Althusser argues that 'the descriptive theory of the state represents a phase in
the constitution of the theory which itself demands the "supersession" of this phase'
(p. 133). He goes on: 'Every descriptive theory thus runs the risk of "blocking" the
development of the theory... '. I suggest that this is the case here.
None the less, I recognize that there is a real and important tension here between
premature reductionism or monism, leaping to a single explanation of the unity and social
totality, and thereby displacing complexity and contradiction as against the equal danger
of getting lost within the complexities and contradictions of specific cases and moments
and thus losing sight of the unity of ideological ensembles. H and T, I think, see me
wandering around in the latter. I have presented them engaged in the former. Perhaps this
is another unhelpful binary.
The defence of statism and economism and the attack on attempts to move beyond
statism and economism seems at points to be a kind of theoretical political correctness.
There is no room here for what Rorty calls 'continuing conversation'. The critique allows
only for capitulation or damnation. I want to respond differently. This kind of analysis is
not so much wrong as incomplete, as Althusser argues. The conceptualization is distorted
 A RESPONSE T O HATCHER AND TROYNA 175

by its absences. As Hall (Hall 1988:170) points out:

There can be no hegemony without the 'decisive nucleus of the economic'. On the other hand, do not fall into the
trap of the old mechanical economism and believe that if you can only get hold of the economy, you can move the
rest of life. The nature of power in the modern world is that it is also constructed in relation to political, moral,
intellectual, cultural, ideological and sexual questions.

There is certainly no evidence in H and T's position of what Wright (1993:21) describes as
Marxism 'moving towards a more loosely coupled conceptual framework that provides an
account of a range of specific causal mechanisms...' or more generally of what Wright
calls 'reconstruction'. What we have instead are theoretical anachronisms.

Discourse and power

I want to say something about H and T's comments on Foucault's influence on my work.
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I have noted elsewhere my equivocations about Foucault and there are some aspects of his
work that I have not fully come to terms with. Nevertheless, I am interested in his
powerful theoretical insights. I do not think that his analyses of modernism can be
dismissed with a few quick, deft phrases or a quote from Poulantzas. I want to rehearse
some of Foucault's ideas here, partly because I have difficulty with H and T's discussion of
Foucault and of discourse (pp. 160-164). Particularly towards the end of this section H and
T's characterization of the 'discursive level' is profoundly unFoucauldian and they present
a version of his ideas and my engagement with his ideas which I simply do not recognize.
They go on to argue that 'state policy is not only about the production of knowledge, it is
political action and at the level of the central apparatus of the state can override any
alternative responses which remain at the discursive level' (pp. 163-164). This misrepresen-
tation of Foucault is textually important in two ways. First, it dismembers and totally
neutralizes the essential aspect of Foucault's concept of discourse, its underpinning by the
symbiotic coupling of power/knowledge. Discourse is a matter of truths and practices and
of contestation. In H and T's version Foucault is rendered into 'un homme du papier' and
blown away. And, second, H and T are binarizing here again, to coin a phrase. There is
no clear and absolute dismissal of the state or state power in Foucault's work. None the
less he was interested, as I am, in that which lies outside the realm of the state and forms
of power in addition to the negative and coercive.
If one describes all these phenomena of power as dependent on the state apparatus, this means grasping them as
essentially repressive: the army as a power of death, police and justice as punitive instances, etc. I don't want to say
that the state isn't important; what I want to say is that the relations of power, and hence the analysis that must be
made of them, necessarily extend beyond the limits of state etc. (quoted in Rainbow 1987:64)

My point is that if our analyses remain concentrated entirely upon the coercive state-
centred emanations of power then we run the risk of neglecting other more subtle forms
of power which operate through subjectivity and consciousness, the calculated supervision
which Foucault calls governmentality; 'the ensemble formed by the institutions,
procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics, that allow the exercise of
this very specific albeit complex form of power' (Foucault 1979:20). The point here is not
to displace the state, but to begin an analysis of those forms of power that support the
state (and other forms of social domination) but which are rooted elsewhere and which are
not realized simply or solely in modes of coercion and repression. I admit that there is a
danger here that governmentality and discourse come to be conceptualized as a totalizing
system. But Foucault makes a positive link between his conception of power and the
activities of resistance.
 176 STEPHEN J. BALL

I'm not positing a substance of power. I'm simply saying: as soon as there's a relation of power there's a possibility
of resistance. We're never trapped by power: it's always possible to modify its hold, in determined conditions and
following a precise strategy. (Foucault 1980:13)

In this respect Foucault's vision is much less totalizing than H and T's. 4 But clearly
Foucault also set himself against the kind of essentialism of class struggle to which H and
T subscribe. As Sawicki (Sawicki 1991:26) points out, 'Depending on where one is and in
what role (for instance, mother, lover, teacher, anti-racist, anti-sexist) one's allegiances
and interests will shift. There are no privileged or fundamental coalitions in history, but
rather a series of unstable and shifting ones.' We may wish it otherwise but to my mind it
is Foucault and not H and T who comes closest to capturing the condition of politics in
high modern society.
It would also be naive for anyone familiar with Foucault's method of genealogy (or
his biography) to suggest that he has no interest in or anything to say about resistance.
Indeed, genealogy rests upon the use of history to give voice to the marginal and
submerged voices which lie 'a little beneath history' and facilitate an 'insurrection of
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subjugated knowledges'. (The ethnographies in Reforming Education and Changing Schools

[Bowe 1992:4] attempt something similar, if also simpler and less ambitious.)

Power and politics

Every discourse, including those of sociological theory, creates subjects as well as objects,
empowers as well as disempowers. The discourse exemplified in H and T's paper, it seems
to me, involves a systematic disempowerment of ordinary actors and submerged and
subjugated voices, and empowerment of the theorist, the analyst, the (P)olitical actor. In
their terms, that which is not (P)olitical, organized and classed is not resistance. The
interface between the immediate, the personal, the ordinary and policy is glossed over,
explained away (a position which is clearly directly hostile to important parts of feminist
practice). As Jameson (Jameson 1984:57) puts it:
. . . the more powerless the reader comes to feel. In so far as the theorist wins, therefore, by constucting an
increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very degree he [sic] loses, since the critical capacity of his work
is thereby paralyzed, and the impulses of negation and revolt, not to speak of those of social transformation, are
increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the mode! itself.5

H and T charge us with 'underplaying' state coercion. To 'underplay' here seems to be to

suggest that we recognize coercion but give too little emphasis to it. I accept that. I think
there is an important fault in my various discussions of the nature of policy, but a fault
which I believe H and T to be equally guilty of, and I will return to that in a moment.
Allow me to consider 'underplaying' a little longer. The use of the term would seem to
anticipate a position wherein a variety of types of state-education relationship are
recognized and theorized (p. 167). That is to say, force and coercion are evident in certain
policies and are evident at certain moments in time, but other types of relationship are
evident at other times, in other circumstances and in other places. But this is not what is
intended. Force and coercion are intended to be an adequate presentation of the
state-education relationship in all circumstances and instances. Policy is force and coercion
and nothing more. Resistance is thus delimited to (P)olitical action and the national
boycott of national testing is, H and T suggest, the 'acid test'. While not insignificant,
there is a terrible danger of burying the boycott under the theoretical and political weight
that is thus heaped upon it. This was a fragile and multifaceted response at the best of
times and to give it too much significance could possibly threaten rather than encourage its
 A RESPONSE TO HATCHER AND TROYNA 177

recurrence.6 But while the boycott is H and T's 'acid test' of 'radical challenge to policy
initiatives' it was and always will be doomed to failure according to their analysis. As they
argue, 'Power is not absolutely fixed, that is true, but neither is it just the outcome of
contestation. It is also present at its commencement. Struggles over policy take place on a
terrain already structured by power, and above all by the power of the state' (p. 167).
The theorist gives and the theorist takes away. This seems to me to be a restatement of the
'totalitarian determinism' which H and T 'find' in my Discourse paper.7 In Althusserian
fashion the struggles of teachers in localities and schools and classroom are dismissed as
mere fripperies, irrelevant 'fragments', the teachers are cultural and political dupes.
Everything is reduced to submission, the juggernaut of the state crushes the bodies and
minds of everyone in its path. There is no room even for Althusser's heroes. I find this not
only demeaning and unrealistic but also contrary to the sort of analysis employed by
Troyna in his work elsewhere. Not only does Troyna (Troyna 1994) mount a sustained
argument against class reductionism, not only does he argue for the need for policy
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analysts to draw on the perspectives and theories of anti-racists and feminists, notable for
their total abscence here, but he also points up the importance of local and institutional
struggles:
The understandings of policy discourse which we gleaned from the project figured prominently in the framing of
anti-racist struggles, especially in the local arena. This assumed particular importance in 'Eastshire' where one of us
was living at this t i m e . . . . The activities were structured around a campaign aimed at convincing members of
'Eastshire's' education working party that the specific forms of racial equality in education needed to be spelt out
in the policy (1994:6)

This sounds very much like the sort of local struggle (indeed this was a struggle over
discourse) which is represented theoretically in Foucault's vision of politics and in his own
political action - although that was often more direct and confrontational - for example in
his anti-racist activities and his work for prisoners and prison reform.
And behind all this there is another subversive binary at work - another totalization,
what Scheurich calls 'the dominance-resistance binary'. It is important theoretically not to
reduce the complexities or inequalities of social life to what can be conceptualized within
the binary. There is simply more to life than that. It cannot be reduced to such a spartan
dualism. We need to add a third 'open-ended space which I sometimes, with irony, call
chaos' (Scheurich 1994: 25), which 'might be better labelled as freedom. What I mean by
"chaos/freedom" is everything that occurs that is neither dominance nor resistance'. As
Scheurich goes on to argue, resistance is not freedom, it is caught within a reaction to
domination. 'Much of living, however, occurs outside the confines of the
dominance-resistance binary' (p. 26). This is the point I try to make in my Discourse paper
(Ball 1993a). The point is that, in simple terms, schooling and teachers' work cannot be
defined solely within the stultifying parameters of policy. Policies are not totalizing, they
do not address every eventuality, they do not specify every act, they do not speak
meaningfully to all settings. Sometimes it is the chaos/freedom of the ordinary that is
primary - in the disorderly classroom or the bilingual classroom or the classroom which is
otherwise engaged. We tend to be less interested theoretically in those aspects of social life
which fall outside the frameworks which our discourses conjure up. The field for study is
prescribed and fixed, to step outside the boundaries of the theoretical a priori is heresy -
hence the long-term marginalization of the struggles of women and ethnic minorities.
Even in a simple sense policy research focuses us upon policies, state research focuses us
upon the state. And yet questions concerning the effects of policy and the impact of the
state beg other questions about the arenas effected and impacted upon. As Dunleavy and
O'Leary (1987:320) argue, 'a concept of "the state" makes sense only when we can
 178 STEPHEN J. BALL
counterpose it against an antonym, and the idea of " t h e non-state" '. But while policy
theories and state theories are complex and sophisticated our theories of ' t h e non-state',
(what w e might call) civil society, are superficial and simplistic. H and T seem t o have
little interest in civil society except t o see it as a playground for state power and for
resistance. There is nothing else.
As I had originally conceived it, the project of Reforming Education was an attempt t o
relate together ' t h e state' and ' t h e non-state', not to obliterate the former with the latter,
but to begin to relate them together. If relative autonomy involves the play of the chain
before the bear is drawn back to the stake, then w e must understand the play as well as the
chain, understand freedom/chaos as well as dominance/resistance.

Politics and history

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I want to pick up another, different kind of binary embedded in H and T's text. They are
arguing in the first part of their critique that education and the state must be related to and
understood in terms of the requirements of capital and the economic crises of capitalism.
In effect, however, as their explication progresses, the relationship becomes less direct;
capital relates to the state and the state relates to education. Despite their commitment to
the complex unity of the social formation they actually have nothing to say about the
relationship, of whatever kind, of capital to education. Oddly, in practice, it seems that,
rather than orthodox-Marxism, what is being espoused at this point in their analysis is
state-centred theory - their object is 'Conservative education policy' (p. 166) and 'the
government' (p. 166) rather than the changing forces and relations of production (see Ball
1990: ch 4 and 5) (or indeed changes in the workings of the state or the differential impact
of global economic trends in particular settings). Furthermore, H and T's alternative
formulation for the analysis of state policy offers no evidence of a changing economic or
social context, capital is capital; in this peculiarly unMarxist Marxism, theory is frozen
within history. There certainly seems no place in this analysis to understand what Stuart
Hall calls 'repressive modernisation' or 'the pluralization of modern cultural identities'
(Hall 1988:170) or 'post Fordism' or the 'internationalization of economic and cultural
life'. Again this is made possible by the neglect of the relationship between ecomony and
state as an empirical question. And, as a result, there is a double flaw here; we are
confronted with a theoretical analysis which is rooted in a conception of economic forms
which have increasingly less relevance to the specifics of high-modernist, post-Fordist,
multicultural western societies and a set of backward-looking 'possibilities' arising from
the critique of those forms.

. . . to proceed more effectively requires a willingness to reconsider the present and its complex possibilities,
something more than a nostalgic retrieval of fast fading forms of life, a thoughtless endorsement of the prevailing
technicist paradigm of progress, or panic stricken response to the imminent prospect, and potentially problematic
impact of future forms of life. And something less than a resurrection of those grand designs which have served to
keep us in the dark. What is now necessary is 'neither a return to the alleged virtues of the past nor a simple revival
of the approaches of the present... but a change in perspective, in the frame of mind with which we approach
things' (Dahrendorf 1975:70). (Smart 1992:4-5)

Importantly, the kind of slippage from capital-talk to state-talk (as though the relationship
between the two was obvious and unimportant) is symptomatic, I suggest, of the short-
circuiting effects of H and T's reductionist analysis. In practice there are no conceptual
links in the theoretical chain which they stretch from capital to educational practice.
Because their a priori position eshews or trivializes mediation and interpretation they must
rest their case upon untheorized or invisible relations between capital and the state, the
 A RESPONSE TO HATCHER AND TROYNA 179

state and policy, and policy and practice. To the extent that they hold firm to the
orthodoxy of their position they are unable to theorize within these gaps and translations.
Again this is a form of theoretical practice very much at odds with Althusser's (1977) view
of the 'great theoretical advantage of the Marxist topography' (p. 130). The point of this,
Althusser argues, is that 'it obliges us to pose the theoretical problem of the types of
"derivatory" effectively peculiar to the superstructure, i.e. it obliges us to think what the
Marxist tradition calls conjointly the relative autonomy of the superstructure and the
reciprocal action of the superstructure on the base' (p. 130).
Thus, for example, H and T concede that:
It is true that there has been a distinct lack or correspondence between the Conservative government's education
policies and some of the demands made by the representatives of business and industry. It is also true that the
Conservatives, like all political parties, have specific electoral interests to observe.... But it doesn't follow at all
that the state is pursuing its own interests independent of those of capital. On the contrary, the distinguishing
feature of the Thatcher governments was the radical determinaiton with which they were prepared to overturn the
entire post-war settlement in order to construct a new hegemony, in conformity with what they [my emphasis
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added] saw as the general and strategic needs of capital, (p. 16)

Now that is all very well and good, and at this level of general abstraction I have little
argument with what is being asserted. But what happens to the 'distinct lack of
correspondence' in the first sentence? How is it to be explained? Perhaps we should not be
interested in it. If we take the position that whatever the Conservative Government does
is always, in some way, in the fullness of time, in the general and strategic interests of
capital then the empirical question is irrelevant, but the position is also undisprovable (we
just have to wait longer). Thus, the theory rolls inexorably over anything that does not fit
into its premises, defining them as irrelevant, ideological distractions, as it does so. In
effect some issues are taken to be merely epiphenomenal, theoretically uninteresting. I
cannot accept this. I am pushing for contingency rather than essence. There is a discursive
trick being played here. Theorization is used to exclude practices, incidents and
relationships which do not fit with and which may challenge the theory. As Hall (Hall
1988:170) argues 'Hegemony i s . . . not a formation which incorporates everybody'. It
seems to me that a coherent and incisive theory of the state, and of the social totality,
requires that we identify the limits and scope of state power: what it cannot do as well as
what it can. I get no sense whatever from H and T of what the state cannot do. It is all
powerful, except when it is not (back to the teachers' boycott). What is more, as noted
already, H and T argue that its power is primarily forceful and coercive. I agree that it is,
but it is a lot more than that. 'With the accumulation of administrative power, achieved
through an extension of surveillance capacity, the state has become less dependent "upon
control of the means of violence as a medium of rule of its subject population'' (Giddens
1985: 201)' (Smart 1992:4). (I have tried to analyse aspects of state surveillance in recent
work (Ball 1993).) And of course, again, these are not just sociological issues, they are
political ones. In the extract quoted above H and T refer to a new hegemony and yet, in
relation to the rest of their analysis, this appears no different analytically from previous
historical blocs. The tightly tied triumvirate capital, class and state is conceptualized in an
unchanged and unchanging fashion (cf. Wright 1993). The problem with such an analysis
is, as I have tried to indicate, what it misses out. H and T's analysis is susceptible to
exactly those criticisms which Stuart Hall (Hall 1988:170-171) aims at the 'labourist left':
It does not understand the necessarily contradictory nature of human subjects, of social identities. It does not
understand politics as a production. It does not see that it is possible to connect with the ordinary feelings and
experiences which people have in their everyday lives, and yet to articulate them progressively to a more advanced,
modern form of social consciousness. It is not actively looking for and working upon the enormous diversity of
social forces in our society. It doesn't see that it is in the very nature of modern capitalist civilization to proliferate
 180 STEPHEN J. BALL

the centre of power, and thus draws more and more areas of life into social antagonism. It does not recognize that
the identities which people carry in their heads - their subjectivities, their cultural life, their sexual life, their family
life and their ethnic identities, are always incomplete and have become massively politicized.

Let me finish in more prosaic fashion and go back to the point I made at the beginning
about the need for a differentiated conceptualization of policy. H and T make a number of
points about policies like Local Management of Schools or the National Curriculum
which, either legally or by administrative fiat, require things of people. What is suggested
is that I am arguing that the forcefulness of policy is always subordinate to the
interpretational responses of situated social actors. If that is what my analyses convey, and
I accept they might, then I am at fault. Clearly, some people are sometimes required to do
things or are positioned in such a way by policies that they have little alternative but to
comply. But I am still interested in cases where there is non-compliance. What happens to
those primary schools (I know of two) that refuse to do National Testing? What happens
to Local Education Authorities which refuse to return truancy figures? I am still interested
in teaching that is not the National Curriculum and problems of other sorts which
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confront teachers and with which they have to, or decide to, deal with at the level of
practice. I am still interested in the third-message system of schooling - pedagogy. H and
T note their own evidence of 'teachers using the openings within the national curriculum
to do work on class, "race" and gender issues within a radical perspective that is clearly
contrary to the intentions of the National Curriculum Council's sponsors' (p. 165). But
again these are irrelevant. Their analysis renders such acts of principled refusal as
meaningless; thus they go on: 'But the crucial question is, in the struggle over the
curriculum, which element is dominant? We would argue state control has the upper
hand' (p. 165). Story over, the 'closed and terrifying machine' rolls on. What is the point
of their aside? Theoretically, and politically, it would seem, there is none. But I digress;
the point I want to make is that policies differ in their form and their forcefulness. Some
have legal force, like National Testing and the National Curriculum, some create tighly
defined administrative frameworks like LMS, some are permissive and seductive like
'opting out' or parental choice, some are contradictory and vague like the SEN
responsibilities of LEAs. The point is that it is unhelpful to treat all policies analytically as
though they were the same. I do this, and so do H and T. I worry that, from their
theoretical position, this does not matter. This elision produces analytical crudities and does
injustice to those who struggle with and within policies. While H and T have made me
aware of some of the shortcomings of my work so far, I do not see them as having
anything better to offer.
Binaries may be limiting, they may confront us with false choices, but they
sometimes serve a useful indicative function. There is a theoretical and sociological binary
which may be deployed to divide off my work ontologically and epistemologically from
that of H and T (at least as expressed in their critique). On the other hand, there is a
sociology of parsimony, certainty and closure. If I can say so, this is also a hard-edged,
essentially male, logocentric sociology (Cixous and Clement 1986, Hekman 1990). On the
other, there is a sociology of complexity, uncertainty and doubt.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Richard Bowe, Alan Cribb, Sharon Gewirtz, Meg Maguire, Chris
Shilling and Geoff Whitty for their helpful and supportive comments on an earlier draft of
this response.
 A RESPONSE TO HATCHER AND TROYNA 181

Notes

1. In what follows the ' I ' refers to my single-authored work, 'our' or 'us' refers to work done with
Richard Bowe and Ann Gold.
2. One-third of my 1990 book is devoted to the relationships between education, the economy and the
state.
3. I find Althusser's conceptualization of social structure useful and insightful. I cannot accept, however,
his negation of agency. I want to work towards a sociology which takes structure and agency seriously,
without dissolving one into the other. If that leaves me, in the meantime, inhabiting a theoretical
contradiction, then so be it; but I would want to argue that contradiction does not necessarily lead to
conceptual incoherence or analytical ineffectiveness.
4. There are sometimes noticeable differences between Foucault's emphases in interviews compared with
written texts.
5. Of course, the same may be said of aspects of Althusser's and Foucault's work.
6. The opportunistic placement of the boycott is this argument serves to point up the lack of 'circumstance'
or history in H and T's analysis. The boycott is reduced here to a 'moment', an event. It appears to have
no social history. And yet to be understood properly it has to be related back to the small acts of refusal,
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personal and collective reinterpretations and myriad institutional struggles which were the background
to and seed bed for a more general response. But we also need to understand that that response linked
together a whole set of very different perspectives, interests and purposes. It was as much, maybe more,
about 'workload' as it was about an opposition to testing.
7. I am somewhat bemused by this 'discovery' of ambiguity on H and T's part. I state explicitly in the
paper that 'in a paper which begins like this one I would now offer my own definitive version of the
meaning of policy and with a few rhetorical flourishes and a bit of fancy theoretical footwork I would
solve all the problems that I have pointed up. But I cannot do that. Or at least I cannot do that very
simply. The reason is that I hold my own theoretical uncertainties about the meaning of policy and in
my recent writing on policy issues I actually inhabit two very different conceptualisations of policy'
(1993:10).

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