This article critically examines the impact of the neoliberal university upon social work education, research and practice relating to older people. The article appraises market-led pedagogical reforms, including of the training of social workers who go on to work with older adults, such as in support of policies including personalisation. Influence is drawn from the work of Nancy Fraser: specifically, her understanding of ‘progressive neoliberalism’, or the improbable fusion of free market ideals with the politics of recognition to create a rejuvenated hegemonic bloc. This theoretical framework is utilised to analyse the prevalence of emancipatory constructs such as empowerment, participation, anti-oppression, equality, choice and independence within the acutely underfunded, bureaucratic and risk-averse fields of social care and social work. While benefiting some older ‘service users’, it is argued that personalisation policy regularly disadvantages or excludes older people within fragmented adult social care sectors. Progressive neoliberalism has helped to promote supplyled training and policies which envisage participative and asset-based self-care whilst more often excluding or objectifying older adults, especially those with higher-level needs.

What does it mean to decolonize the literature classroom? This short paper is intended as a personal reflection on teaching as an engagement with the social forces that bring neocolonial relations into the classroom, drawing on my experience teaching literature and literary theory in South Africa and Canada. I explore the idea of decolonizing the classroom as the production of an “outside” that provides meaning for the classroom’s “inside.”