Volume 1.2 - Human Capital- Spring 1997

Title: Homo Commoditus: The Concept of Human Capital as a Strategy for Cultural Regeneration

Author: Dwight D. Allman

Abstract: This essay examines and evaluates the idea of human capital as a means of conceptualizing and politically managing the problem of education for contemporary liberal democracy. The discussion prompted by the idea of human capital invites us to believe that a program of education conceived in essentially vocational terms, that is, in terms of transmitting knowledge and engendering skills as demanded by the equation of high productivity, will best ensure our social well-being. Within this framework, public discussion over the ends and aims of education thus tends to be cast in terms of what knowledge and skills will give rational economic-actors the "capital" with which they are most likely to better their lot in life, pushing aside the issues of citizenship that traditionally supplied a vital organizing rationale for public education. I argue that high productivity levels do not ensure the political well-being of liberal democracy. We must therefore beware lest enthusiasm for a human capital conception of education lead us to neglect or to overlook the political priorities of education. In addition, I contend that high levels of scholastic achievement, on the level both of the individual and of American society as a whole, likely depend on a commitment to the project of education that transcends the narrowly utilitarian logic of human capital and that represents an even more significant, if intangible, "asset" than the competencies judged most valuable by that logic.

About the Author: Dwight D. Allman is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Baylor University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.

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