Culture jamming the ‘corporate assault’ on schools and children

In contemporary times, organisations across all sectors of society have been encouraged to collaborate and be ‘part of the solution’ to childhood obesity. This has led to a proliferation of anti-obesity/healthy lifestyles programmes that are funded, devised and implemented by private sector players (e.g. McDonald’s, Nestlé) in schools across the globe. This corporate-friendly version of education attempts to erode the democratic purposes of public education, and at the same time, shape children as consumers. Drawing on the Foucauldian notion of the governmental assemblage, I argue that culture jamming techniques, such as pranking and détournement, may act as tactics within a broader critical pedagogy of consumption that both challenges and counter-exploits this new ‘brand’ of education and corporation. Culture jamming provides an opportunity to develop students and teachers as counter-political agents: those that contest anti-politics, create new truths, unmask corporate interests and ‘unsettle’ the corporatised education assemblage.