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‘Fast’, associated with speed, is used to theorise ‘fast knowledge’ as part of ‘fast capitalism’ in the new knowledge economy. ‘Fast capitalism’ is an emergent, generic form of capitalism based increasingly on forms of symbolic capital associated with the rise of global finance, and new information and communication technologies. ‘Knowledge capitalism’ is the digitalization of knowledge production processes and the way in which all phases of knowledge production—its creation or generation, its storage and retrieval, its formal and informal acquisition and transmission, and its distribution or circulation—have been speeded up, with significant consequences not only for knowledge production but also, for learning, education and culture (Peters & Besley, 2006). In The McDonaldization of Society, Ritzer (2001) critiques the ‘irrationality of rationality’ and outlines four principles of McDonaldization - efficiency, calculability, predictability and control through technology. The paper elaborates on how these apply to education. Economic, technical and cultural types of performative power intersect in Higher Education, especially when framed by knowledge economy policies based on the transformation of ideas and symbolic resources by means of intellectual, human and social capital. Performance management (PM) measurement systems were first developed by the performance indicator movement and later under New Public Management that drew on principal-agency theory and transactional cost analysis. PM utilizes – ‘soft’ psychotherapeutic technologies alongside traditional peer review mechanisms and collegial exchange, and in combination with simple counts, computer and/or accounting methodologies (including the weighting and the arithmeticization of soft variables like ‘reputation’) to produce departmental, faculty, and institutional performance ‘profiles’, institutional, national & international league tables. Performance needs an audience (a presentation, lecture, seminar, conference paper, book etc). Performance has become the dominant model of social evaluation in knowledge capitalism, where fast capitalism demands us to ‘publish or perish’, to ‘perform or else’!

References
Peters, M. A. & Besley, Tina (A.C.) (2006) Building Knowledge Cultures: Education and Development in the Age of Knowledge Capitalism. Lanham & Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.
Ritzer, G. (2000) The McDonaldization of Society, New Century Edition, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Stream: Information Society, and Print and Electronic Texts

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

-Dr Tina (A.C.) Besley, currently Professor of Counseling in the Educational Psychology and Counseling Department, California State University San Bernardino, USA. Previously, Visiting Research Associate in Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA, Tina spent five years as a Research Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Tina is a New Zealander with degrees in counselling and education, has been a secondary school teacher and school counsellor. Tina’s research interests include: youth issues, in particular notions of self and identity and contemporary problems; school counseling; educational policy; educational philosophy; and the work of Michel Foucault and poststructuralism. She is on the editorial boards of six academic journals and has published in many reputable journals. Her international profile includes invited seminars and lecture courses in several countries including: Mexico, South Africa, Canada, China, Sweden, Poland, Italy, Taiwan, U.K, New Zealand, and Cyprus. Tina’s book, Counseling Youth: Foucault, power and the ethics of subjectivity (Praeger, 2002) is now in a paperback edition (Sense Publishers). With Michael A. Peters, she has written Building Knowledge Cultures: Education and Development in the Age of Knowledge Capitalism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), Subjectivity and Truth: Foucault, Education and the Culture of the Self (Peter Lang, 2007, in print) and is co-editor of Why Foucault? New Directions in Educational Research (Peter Lang, 2007).