COVID-19 and Higher Education: Outline I. II. III. IV. V. Introduction to COVID-19 a. Thesis: The economic downturn, limitation on travel, and changes in intersectionality within higher education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted international students within the United States. Economics of COVID-19 and higher education a. Domestic unemployment is linked to immigration restrictions i. Potential suspension of the Optional Practical Training program which gives H-1B visas to many international students, including from India and China b. Student financial constraints make it challenging to pay for international studies i. International students do not qualify for financial aid Travel limitations a. Economics has a role to play in limiting student mobility (transition from previous section) b. The US is the global epicenter of the pandemic Intersectionality a. Preexisting institutional racism and inequalities i. Critical race theory discusses the centrality of racism ii. U.S. share of international students had already been declining from the start of the century b. Anti-China sentiment from COVID-19 Conclusion a. Online learning an option for many schools i. Difficulty with internet access and censorship in other countries b. Recommendation to focus on inclusivity and development of intersectional spaces Interesting links to consider: Student Mobility: https://wenr.wes.org/2020/05/perfect-storm-the-impact-of-the-coronavirus-crisis-oninternational-student-mobility-to-the-united-states Anti-China sentiment: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/10/06/unfavorable-views-of-china-reach-historichighs-in-many-countries/ The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education This collection brings together many of the world’s leading sociologists of education to explore and address key issues and concerns within the discipline. The chapters draw upon theory and research to provide new accounts of contemporary educational processes, global trends, and changing and enduring forms of social conflict and social inequality. The research, conducted by leading international scholars in the field, indicates that two complexly interrelated agendas are discernible in the heat and noise of educational change over the past 25 years. The first rests on a clear articulation by the state of its requirements of education. The second promotes at least the appearance of greater autonomy on the part of educational institutions in the delivery of those requirements. The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education examines the ways in which the sociology of education has responded to these two political agendas, addressing a range of issues which cover three key areas: • • • perspectives and theories; social processes and practices; inequalities and resistances. The book strongly communicates the vibrancy and diversity of the sociology of education and the nature of ‘sociological work’ in this field. It will be a primary resource for teachers, as well as a title of major interest to practising sociologists of education. Michael W. Apple is John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Stephen J. Ball is Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK. Luis Armando Gandin is a Professor of Sociology of Education in the School of Education at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The Routledge International Handbook Series The Routledge International Handbook of English, Language and Literacy Teaching Edited by Dominic Wyse, Richard Andrews and James Hoffman The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education Edited by Michael W. Apple, Stephen J. Ball and Luis Armand Gandin The Routledge International Handbook of Higher Education Edited by Malcolm Tight, Ka Ho Mok, Jeroen Huisman and Christopher C. Morpew The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education Edited by James A. Banks The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education Edited by Michael W. Apple, Wayne Au, and Luis Armando Gandin The Routledge International Handbook of Lifelong Learning Edited by Peter Jarvis The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education Edited by Michael W. Apple, Stephen J. Ball and Luis Armando Gandin First published 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon., OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2010 Selection and editorial matter, Michael W. Apple, Stephen J. Ball and Luis Armando Gandin; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise the publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent editions. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The Routledge international handbook of the sociology of education/ edited by Michael W. Apple, Stephen J. Ball and Luis Armando Gandin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Educational sociology – Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Apple, Michael W. II. Ball, Stephen J. III. Gandin, Luis Armando, 1967–. LC191.R684 2010 306.43 – dc22 2009023567 ISBN 0-203-86370-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0–415–48663–7 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–203–86370–4 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–48663–7 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–86370–1 (ebk) Contents Notes on contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction Mapping the sociology of education: social context, power and knowledge Michael W. Apple, Stephen J. Ball and Luis Armando Gandin Part 1: Perspectives and theories 1 ‘Spatializing’ the sociology of education: stand-points, entry-points and vantage-points Susan L. Robertson ix xv xvi 1 13 15 2 Foucault and education Inés Dussel 27 3 Education and critical race theory David Gillborn and Gloria Ladson-Billings 37 4 The ethics of national hospitality and globally mobile researchers Johannah Fahey and Jane Kenway 48 5 Towards a sociology of the global teacher Meg Maguire 58 6 Codes, pedagogy and knowledge: advances in Bernsteinian sociology of education Ursula Hoadley and Johan Muller 69 7 Social democracy, complexity and education: sociological perspectives from welfare liberalism Mark Olssen 8 The ‘new’ connectivities of digital education Neil Selwyn 79 90 v CONTENTS 9 A cheese-slicer by any other name? Shredding the sociology of inclusion Roger Slee 10 The sociology of mothering Carol Vincent 11 Rationalisation, disenchantment and re-enchantment: engaging with Weber’s sociology of modernity Philip A. Woods 99 109 121 12 Recognizing the subjects of education: engagements with Judith Butler Deborah Youdell 132 Part 2: Social processes and practices 143 13 Doing the work of God: home schooling and gendered labor Michael W. Apple 145 14 New states, new governance and new education policy Stephen J. Ball 155 15 Towards a sociology of pedagogies Bob Lingard 167 16 Families, values, and class relations: the politics of alternative certification Andrew Brantlinger, Laurel Cooley and Ellen Brantlinger 179 17 Popular culture and the sociology of education Greg Dimitriadis 190 18 Schooling the body in a performative culture John Evans, Brian Davies and Emma Rich 200 19 Tracking and inequality: new directions for research and practice Adam Gamoran 213 20 Economic globalisation, skill formation and the consequences for higher education Phillip Brown and Hugh Lauder 229 21 Education and the right to the city: the intersection of urban policies, education, and poverty Pauline Lipman 241 22 A revisited theme – middle classes and the school Maria Alice Nogueira 253 23 Governing without governing: the formation of a European educational space António Nóvoa 264 24 The university in the twenty-first century: toward a democratic and emancipatory university reform Boaventura de Sousa Santos vi 274 CONTENTS Part 3: Inequalities and resistances 283 25 The Indian middle classes and educational advantage: family strategies and practices Geetha B. Nambissan 285 26 Equality and social justice: the university as a site of struggle Kathleen Lynch, Margaret Crean and Marie Moran 296 27 Educational organizations and gender in times of uncertainty Jill Blackmore 306 28 Bringing Bourdieu to ‘widening participation’ policies in higher education: a UK case analysis Pat Thomson 318 29 The sociology of elite education Agnès van Zanten 329 30 The dialogic sociology of the learning communities Ramón Flecha 340 31 The democratization of governance in the Citizen School project: building a new notion of accountability in education Luis Armando Gandin 349 32 Syncretism and hybridity: schooling, language, and race and students from non-dominant communities Kris D. Gutiérrez, Arshad Ali and Cecilia Henríquez 358 33 Dilemmas of race-rememory buried alive: popular education, nation, and diaspora in critical education Grace Livingston 370 34 Momentum and melancholia: women in higher education internationally Louise Morley 384 35 Sociology, social class and education Diane Reay 396 36 Interfaces between the sociology of education and the studies about youth in Brazil Marília Pontes Sposito 37 Social class and schooling Lois Weis 405 414 vii Contributors Editors Michael W. Apple is the John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Among his most recent books are Educating the ‘right’ way: markets, standards, God, and inequality, The subaltern speak: curriculum, power, and educational struggles, Democratic schools: lessons in powerful education, and The Routledge international handbook of critical education. Stephen J. Ball is Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, and Fellow of the British Academy. His work uses sociology in the analysis of education policy. Recent books include Education plc (Routledge, 2007) and The education debate (Policy Press, 2008). Luis Armando Gandin is Professor of Sociology of Education at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. He is one of the editors of Currículo sem Fronteiras and Editor-in-Chief of Educação & Realidade. Professor Gandin has published several books in Brazil and Portugal and is one of the editors of The Routledge international handbook of critical education. Contributors Arshad Ali is a doctoral candidate at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. His current research explores the construction of the label ‘Muslim’ as an emerging racial and political marker in the United States. Arshad earned a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from UCLA, graduating cum laude with College Honors, and a Master’s degree in Education from Harvard University, with a focus on pedagogy and educational policy. He has served as the founding director of MAPS, a UCLA-based outreach program working with students in south and west Los Angeles. ix CONTRIBUTORS Jill Blackmore is a Professor of Education in the Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, and Director of the Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation. Recent publications include Performing and reforming leaders: gender, educational restructuring and organizational change (2007, SUNY Press). Andrew Brantlinger is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research interests are at the intersection of mathematics education, urban education and critical theory. He has trained and researched alternatively certified mathematics teachers in three urban school districts. Ellen Brantlinger is Professor Emeritus from Indiana University-Bloomington. Her books include: Politics of social class in secondary schools (1993) and Dividing classes: how the middle class negotiates and rationalizes school advantage (2003). She directed the Undergraduate Special Education Teacher Education Programs at Indiana University for two decades and the Graduate Program in Curriculum Studies for five years. Phillip Brown is Research Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. His forthcoming and recent books include: Brown, P., Lauder, H. and Ashton, D. (2009) The global auction: the broken promises of opportunities, jobs and rewards; Lauder, H., Brown, P., Dillabough J.-A. and Halsey, A.H. (eds) (2006) Education, globalization and social change, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Currently being translated into Japanese at Tokyo University: Brown, P. and Hesketh, A. (2004) The mismanagement of talent, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Brown, P., Green, A. and Lauder, H. (2001) High skills: globalisation, competitiveness and skill formation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, P. and Lauder, H. (2001) Capitalism and social progress: the future of society in a global economy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Press. Laurel Cooley is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Brooklyn College and studies urban mathematics education. She serves as co-PI for MetroMath – mathematics for America’s cities. She teaches linear algebra to undergraduates and math content courses to secondary teachers. Margaret Crean is a research assistant in Equality Studies in the UCD School of Social Justice, University College Dublin, and a community activist. Brian Davies is Emeritus Professor of Education in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Wales, UK. Since his Social control and education (Methuen, 1976), he has taught and written widely on social theory and research, educational policy and pedagogic practice. Greg Dimitriadis is Professor of Sociology of Education at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Inés Dussel is a Researcher at the Latin American School for the Social Sciences (FLACSO)/ Argentina, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her interests include the history and theory of pedagogy and schooling, and more recently the relationships between education and visual culture. John Evans is Professor of Sociology of Education and Physical Education in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Loughborough University, UK. He has written widely on the body, identity and equity in education, and is founding editor of the international journal Sport, Education and Society. x CONTRIBUTORS Johannah Fahey is a Research Fellow at Monash University, Australia. She has a Ph.D. in cultural studies from Macquarie University, Australia. Her latest co-edited book is called Globalizing the research imagination. Her latest co-authored book is Haunting the knowledge economy. Her earlier book is David Noonan: before and now. Ramón Flecha is Professor of Sociology at the University of Barcelona and Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Timisoara. He has made theoretical contributions in the fields of critical pedagogy, sociology and cultural studies: dialogic learning, dialogic societies, communicative methodology of research. Adam Gamoran is Professor of Sociology and Educational Policy Studies and Director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He recently edited, with Yossi Shavit and Richard Arum, Stratification in higher education: a comparative study (Stanford University Press, 2007). David Gillborn is Professor of Education and Critical Race Studies in Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. Kris D. Gutiérrez is Professor of Social Research Methodology, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work examines the relationship between language/literacy, culture and learning. Specifically, her work focuses on the processes by which people negotiate meaning in culturally organized contexts, using language and literacies that are embedded within sociohistorical traditions. Issues of equity are central to her work. Cecilia Henríquez is a doctoral student in the Division of Social Research Methodology at the University of California, Los Angeles Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. She received her B.S. degree in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her M.A. degree in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include studying the everyday mathematical practices of non-dominant communities, including informal learning spaces, and the implication on educational practice. Ursula Hoadley is a senior lecturer in curriculum theory in the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. She works in the areas of sociology of pedagogy, curriculum and teacher’s work. Jane Kenway is Professor of global education studies at Monash University and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Among her many books are Consuming children (with Bullen), Masculinity beyond the metropolis (with Kraack and Hickey-Moody) and Haunting the knowledge economy (with Bullen, Fahey and Robb). Gloria Ladson-Billings is Kellner Family Professor in Urban Education, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies and H.I. Romnes Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Hugh Lauder is Professor of Education and Political Economy at the University of Bath His books include: Brown, P., Lauder, H. and Ashton, D. (2009) The global auction: the broken promises of opportunities, jobs and rewards; Lauder, H., Brown, P., Dillabough, J.-A. and Halsey, A.H. (eds) (2006) Education, globalization and social change, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Currently xi CONTRIBUTORS being translated into Japanese at Tokyo University: Brown, P., Green, A. and Lauder, H. (2001) High skills: globalisation, competitiveness and skill formation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, P. and Lauder, H. (2001) Capitalism and social progress: the future of society in a global economy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Press. He is the editor of the Journal of Education and Work. Bob Lingard works in the School of Education at The University of Queensland. His research interests include school reform and education policy. He is the co-editor, with Jenny Ozga, of The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Education Policy and Politics (2007) and co-author with Fazal Rizvi (2009) of Globalizing Education Policy (Routledge). He is an Editor of the journal Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education and a former President of the Australian Association for Research in Education. Pauline Lipman is Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Her research focuses on race and class inequality in schools, globalization and the political economy of urban education, particularly in relation to neoliberal urban development. Grace Livingston is Associate Professor and Director (2008–2009) of African American Studies at the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington, where she also works in its Race and Pedagogy Initiative. Her research investigates the structure of knowledge production relationships and the foundations of social theory, particularly in relation to matters of race and social class. Kathleen Lynch is Professor of Equality Studies in the UCD School of Social Justice, University College Dublin. Meg Maguire teaches and researches issues of policy and practice, teachers’ lives and social justice in urban contexts. She is Professor of Sociology of Education in the Centre for Public Policy Studies at King’s College London. Marie Moran is assistant lecturer and doctoral candidate in Equality Studies, University College Dublin. Louise Morley is a Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER) (www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer) at the University of Sussex, UK. She has a strong international profile in the field of sociology of higher education studies. Her research and publication interests focus on gender, equity, quality and power in higher education. She is currently directing an ESRC/DFID funded research project on Widening Participation in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania (www.sussex.ac.uk/ education/wideningparticipation). Johan Muller is Professor of Curriculum and Director of the Graduate School in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Cape Town. He works and publishes in the area of the sociology of knowledge. Geetha B. Nambissan is Professor of Sociology of Education at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Her research has focussed on exclusion and inclusion in education, with a focus on marginal groups in India. Her xii CONTRIBUTORS publications include Child Labour and the Right to Education in South Asia: Needs versus Rights? (co-ed.) (Sage, 2003). She is on the advisory board of the Journal of Education Policy. Maria Alice Nogueira is Professor of Sociology of Education at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. Her research has focused on the family–school relationships and social advantage in education. She has published many articles in Brazil and abroad. She has co-edited two books: Família & Escola – trajetórias de escolarização em camadas médias e populares (Vozes, 2000) and A escolarização das elites – um panorama internacional da pesquisa (Vozes, 2002). António Nóvoa is Professor of Education. He earned a Ph.D. in History at Sorbonne University (Paris) and a Ph.D. in Educational Sciences at Geneva University (Switzerland). Since 2006, he has been the President of the University of Lisbon (Portugal). Mark Olssen is Professor of Political Theory and Education Policy in the Department of Political, International and Policy Studies, University of Surrey. His most recent books are Toward a global thin community: Nietzsche, Foucault, and the cosmopolitan commitment, Paradigm Press, Boulder and London, published 2009; and Michel Foucault: materialism and education, Paradigm Press, Boulder and London, published in May 2006. He has published extensively in leading academic journals in Britain, America and in Australasia. Diane Reay is a Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, with particular interests in social justice issues in education, Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory, and cultural analyses of social class. Her book on higher education choice and access degrees of choice (with Miriam David and Stephen Ball) was published in 2005 by Trentham Press. Emma Rich is Senior Lecturer in ‘The Body and Physical Culture’ in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Loughborough University, UK. She is co-author of The medicalization of cyberspace (2008) and Education, disordered eating, and obesity discourse: fat fabrications (2008), and the forthcoming edited text ‘Expanding the obesity debate’. She is also founder of the Gender, Sport and Society Forum. Susan L. Robertson is Professor of Sociology of Education and is located in the Centre for Globalisation, Societies and Education, University of Bristol. Her current research interests include understanding the dynamic relationship between knowledge production, circulation and consumption as it is mediated by scales of political and social action. Susan has been working particularly on developing a spatial analytic in the social analysis of education. Neil Selwyn is a senior lecturer at the London Knowledge Lab, where his research and teaching address the sociology of technology use in educational settings. Roger Slee holds a Chair in Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. He is the Founding Editor of the International Journal of Inclusive Education. Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Professor of Sociology at the School of Economics, University of Coimbra (Portugal), Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of WisconsinMadison Law School and Global Legal Scholar at the University of Warwick. He is Director of the Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra and Director of the Center of xiii CONTRIBUTORS Documentation on the Revolution of 1974, at the same University. He has published widely on globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology, democracy and human rights, in Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, French and German. Marília Pontes Sposito is full Professor in the area of Sociology of Education in the School of Education at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Her research is in the fields of sociology of the youth, sociology of education and sociology of collective action. Pat Thomson is Professor of Education and Director of Research in the School of Education, The University of Nottingham. Her recent publications include three Routledge books, School leadership – heads on the block?, Doing visual research with children and young people and Helping doctoral students write: pedagogies for supervision. Agnès van Zanten is a sociologist and Senior Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. She works at the Observatoire Sociologique du Changement, a research centre of Sciences-Po in Paris. She is also the Director of an international network on educational policy. Carol Vincent is a Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. Her research interests include families’ relationships with the education and childcare systems, social class, mothering and education policy. She is currently directing an ESRC-funded project exploring the educational strategies of the Black middle classes. Lois Weis is State University of New York Distinguished Professor of Sociology of Education at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She is the author and/or editor of numerous books and articles relating to race, class, gender, education and the economy. Philip A. Woods holds a Chair in Educational Leadership and Policy, University of Gloucestershire, UK. He has written and researched extensively on educational policy, leadership and governance, drawing on his sociological background, with a particular interest in democracy, alternative education, and entrepreneurialism and public values. He is co-editor of Alternative education for the 21st century: philosophies, approaches, visions, published by Palgrave in 2009. Deborah Youdell is Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. Her work is located in the sociology of education and is concerned with educational inequalities and the way these are connected to student subjectivities and everyday life in schools. xiv Acknowledgements Editing a Handbook is never easy. It seems like a good idea in theory but actually involves lots and lots of hard work and many frustrations and setbacks along the way. We were lucky to have Carolina Junemann, who acted as the book administrator and did a lot of that hard work and sorted out most of the frustrations and set backs – for which we are very, very grateful. We also wish to thank our contributors for keeping to time and to their word lengths; we were sorry to lose a couple of people along the way, through no fault of their own. And we are also grateful to Anna Clarkson for her encouragement and for making sure we crossed the road safely. xv Abbreviations AC ACU BITU CBOs CCC CCS CEC CEU CLS CREATE CRT EQUIP EWI FPR GPA HE HEC HESA HLTA IAS IME IMF INSA IT JWL LSCs NCLB NGOs NWU NYCTF xvi Alternative certification Association of Commonwealth Universities Bustamante Industrial Trade Union Community Based Organizations Commercial Club of Chicago Centre for Civil Society Commission of the European Communities Council of the European Union Critical legal studies Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise Critical Race Theory Enabling Quality Improvement Programmes in Schools Egalitarian World Initiative Framework Programs of Research Grade Point Average Higher education Hautes Etudes Commerciales Higher Education Statistics Agency Higher Level Teaching Assistant Indian Administrative Service Intensive Mothering Expectations International Monetary Fund Institut National des Sciences Appliquées Information technology Jamaica Welfare Limited local school councils No Child Left Behind Non-Government Organizations National Workers Union New York City Teaching Fellows ABBREVIATIONS OP PAP PNP PR PVOs QSRLS SAT SMED STEM TA TFA TNC TNTP TPS UCD UWI Participatory Budget People’s Action Party People’s National Party Permanent Resident Private Voluntary Organizations Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study Scholastic Aptitude Tests Municipal Secretariat of Education Science, technology, engineering and mathematics Teaching Assistant Teach for America Transnational Company The New Teachers Project totally pedagogized societies University College Dublin University of the West Indies xvii Introduction Mapping the sociology of education: social context, power and knowledge Michael W. Apple, Stephen J. Ball and Luis Armando Gandin The sociology of education is a diverse, messy, dynamic, somewhat elusive and invariably disputatious field of work. Reflecting this Lather (1988) suggests that the names that sociologists use to represent themselves are best referred to in the plural – feminisms, phenomenologies, Marxisms, postmodernisms. The sociology of education is produced by a disparate and varied group of researchers, writers and teachers, who are variously invested in national traditions of study with different histories – although there is a marked convergence of topics, methods and perspectives in relation and in response to globalization (see below). The ‘communications heavy, travel-based, market dependent’ (Marginson and Considine, 2000: 48) world of higher education and the increased extent of co-mingling of scholars, as well as the global reach of multinational publishing houses, have established the conditions for ideas and theories to flow easily between sites of academic work, in the same way as in other fields – but also to flow in particular directions. Nonetheless, the sociology of education continues to be marked by theoretical fissures, discontinuities and sometimes-acrimonious paradigm disputes. As one of us (Apple, 1996b: 125) put it in a review of sociology of education in the United States: ‘what actually counts as the sociology of education is a construction’. That construction is an outcome of ideological and very practical struggles and is marked by differences in power and in resources. This collection is itself inevitably an act of construction: a drawing-up of boundaries, a marking-off of divisions, oppositions and positions, a ‘carving up and carving out’ (Edwards, 1996). It is not a ‘policing action’ (Apple 1996b), but, on the other hand, it is by no means an ‘innocent’ text. We did not set out deliberately to fashion a purist or definitive version of the field, quite the opposite, but the inclusions and exclusions and neglects announced by the collection will have something of that effect, and we discuss these later. We can use sociological tools to think about the field of sociological practice. In Bernstein’s terms, sociology, in common with other social sciences, has a ‘horizontal knowledge structure’, which consists of ‘a series of specialized languages with specialized modes of interrogation and criteria for the construction and circulation of texts’ (Bernstein, 1999: 162) which have no principles of integration. These specialized languages and their theoretical idiolects are ‘not translatable’ (p. 163) he argues, their speakers are exclusive, and their relations are serial. Thus, 1 MICHAEL W. APPLE, STEPHEN J. BALL AND LUIS ARMANDO GANDIN academic and social capital within the practice of sociology is bound up, as he sees it, with the ‘defence of and the challenge of other languages’ (p. 163). Development in such a ‘horizontal discourse’, as he termed it, is not greater generality or abstraction or integration but the development of a new language that ‘offers the possibility of fresh perspective, a new set of questions, a new set of connections, and an apparently new problematic, and most importantly, a new set of speakers’ (p. 163). His point is that the discreteness of these languages and the competition between the narcissism of their dedicated speakers are fundamental barriers to incorporation. Within such a discursive regime, he suggests that the primary motivation lies in the ‘marketing’ of new languages. He goes on to describe what he calls the implicit ‘conceptual syntax’, or ‘weak grammars’ of horizontal knowledge structures, such as those of sociology of education, which present particular problems to acquirers, in terms of knowing whether they are ‘really speaking or writing sociology’ (p. 164). Acquisition is tacit and depends upon acquiring the appropriate ‘gaze’; ‘a particular mode of recognizing and realizing what counts as an “authentic” sociological reality’ (p. 165). This gives rise then to ‘segmental competences’ and ‘segmental literacies’ that rest upon an ‘obsession with language’, but also, inasmuch that these knowledge structures are retrospective, they are also ‘characterized by inherent obsolescence’ (p. 167). This collection offers some practical insights into what ‘really speaking or writing sociology’ means and to contribute to the development of sociological literacy. Bernstein goes on to say that the segmentalizing structures of sociology also ‘shatters any sense of an underlying unity’ (p. 170). Thus, in the past thirty years in particular, the sociology of education has been defined and redefined by a set of theoretical and methodological disputes, that is contending idiolects, and has also been subject to various breakaways and splits that have created new sub-fields, even distinct, new disciplines. These contending ‘discourse communities’ ‘produce knowledge and establish the conditions for who speaks and who gets heard’ (Brantlinger, 2000). In all of this, sets of ‘interests’ are at stake. These are: the personal – related to the satisfactions, reputations and status of those in positions of power and patronage, and expressions of identity; those more conventionally referred to as ‘vested’ – including the material rewards from career, position and publication; and the ideological – matters of value, personal philosophy and political commitment. Such interests are at stake in the everyday life of academic practices. That is, in the decisions, appointments and influences that shape and change the field of sociology of education and its rewards. They have been reflected in the efforts of scholars of colour, women, gay and lesbian and disabled scholars to rework the boundaries, the analytic tools and theoretical bases of the sociology of education and, in doing so, get positions and grants, get published, assert control of key journals and/or create new ones. Struggles over interests take place, in an intellectual register, on the floor of conferences and in the pages of journals, but they are also played out, micro-politically, in editors’ offices, in department meetings and in appointing committees. Such struggles are also embedded in ‘the hidden curriculum in graduate sociology departments’ (Margolis and Romero, 2000), taking two forms. A ‘weak’ version defines and attempts to control what it means ‘to be a sociologist’ as part of a professionalization process within which certain methods, topics, concerns and dispositions are validated as ‘good sociology’. This is described by Bourdieu (1988: 56) as the ‘corporeal hexis’, ‘the visceral form of recognition of everything which constitutes the existence of the group, its identity, its truth, and which the group must reproduce in order to reproduce itself ’. The ‘strong’ form works to reproduce stratified and unequal social relations, reinforcing, in particular, the control and influence of white, male scholars (see Bagilhole, 1993). In these terms, the sociology of education 2 INTRODUCTION has its own sociology; its own ‘collective scientific unconscious’, in Bourdieu’s words; and its own particular conditions of production, which at different points in time have set different limits upon thought through the deployment of specific sets of theories, problems and categories. In its recent history, the boundaries between sociology and philosophy, political science, geography and social psychology have become fuzzy and loose. Consequently, it is sometimes difficult to say who is a sociologist of education and who is not, and where the field begins and ends. In particular, postmodernism ‘has spread like a virus through the disciplines of the social sciences and humanities eating away at the boundaries between them’ (MacLure, 2003: 4). The postmodern or linguistic turn can be seen, in typical paradoxical fashion, both as an invigoration of, and threat to, the sociology of education, or rather to modernist social science generally. It is ‘the end’ of social science and a new beginning. As Bloom (1987: 379) gloomily describes it, this is ‘the last, predictable stage in the suppression of reason and the denial of the possibility of truth in the name of philosophy’. Postmodern theory does present a challenge to a whole raft of fundamental, often dearly cherished but sometimes un-examined, assumptions in sociological practice, most obviously and profoundly the deployment of totalizing ‘grand narratives’. Large, all-encompassing and systemic ‘explanations’ of ‘the social’ are disrupted and eschewed by postmodernism, and indeed Lyotard defines the postmodern as an ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives’. As Lather (1988: 7) explains: ‘What is destroyed by the post-structuralist suspicion of the lust for authoritative accounts is not meaning, but claims to the unequivocal dominance of any one meaning’. As a result: ‘Over the last two decades “postmodernism” has become a concept to be wrestled with, and such a battleground of conflicting opinions and political forces that it can no longer be ignored’ (Harvey, 1989: 39). Various epistemological positions within this debate are taken up in the collection with both the deployment of grand narratives and some incredulity. Of course, many sociologists do not take postmodernism seriously, in part perhaps because they regard postmodernism itself as lacking seriousness and condemn it as ironic, nihilistic and narcissistic and apolitical. Indeed, for some feminists, postmodernism is ‘a problem’, even just ‘boys games’, particularly in as much that postmodernism critiques the ‘oppressions’ embedded within the humanist tradition upon which ‘women’s liberation’ draws. For others, postmodernism offers an extension to, and new possibilities for, critique and situated struggle. Kenway (1997: 132) goes as far as to argue that: ‘In many senses feminist postmodernism has become “The New Way” to approach feminist research, pedagogy and politics’; but goes on to warn that: ‘when one takes this new way, one confronts many confusions, difficulties, dilemmas and dangers’. This collection reflects the inroads of the postmodern, or perhaps more accurately the post-structural, into theorizing and research, but it also takes account of the continuing significance of various forms of modernist theory and modernist sociological research practice. In placing these multiple traditions side by side so to speak, we wish to argue that it is at the intersection of the varying positions within the sociology of education – each of which has its own overlapping critical impulses – that progress can be made in understanding the complex relations that connect education with the larger realities of our societies. Bernstein’s fundamental criticism of the sociology of education was that it is organized around commitments to ‘languages of dedication’ rather than to ‘a problem and its vicissitudes’ (1999: 170). This is true, to some extent, although Bernstein’s account may be said to be unduly pessimistic and one-sided in terms of the overall balance between dedication and analytic rigour across contemporary sociology of education as a whole. But certainly, in different ways, the sociology of education rests on dedication and social commitment and is a redemptive practice. The papers in this collection share a commitment to social critique and social justice, and we 3 MICHAEL W. APPLE, STEPHEN J. BALL AND LUIS ARMANDO GANDIN elaborate on this ‘role’ for the sociology of education below, but they also share and display a commitment to intellectual rigour – theoretical and/or empirical. Despite its segmentalization and disputation, there is another version of the ‘story’ of the sociology of education, a set of continuities within difference. Rhoads (2000: 7), for example, notes that ‘The work of postmodernists, feminists and critical theorists has been particularly attentive to issues of positionality and representation . . .’ The recent history of the sociology of education demonstrates a set of common concerns, elisions and linkages. A good deal of contemporary work is eclectic (in the best sense) and integrationist – conciliatory even. Not that this is easily achieved in sociological work, Apple (1996b: 141) writes of ‘the difficult problem of simultaneously thinking about both the specificity of different practices, and the forms of articulated unity they constitute . . .’. He goes on to argue, however, that: it is exactly this issue of simultaneity, of thinking neo [marxism] and post [modernism] together, of actively enabling the tensions within and among them to help form our research, that will solidify previous understandings, avoid the loss of collective memory of the gains that have been made, and generate new insights and new actions. To a great extent, the vitality and purposefulness of the project of the sociology of education, and its attraction for students and practitioners, are underpinned by the continuing cross-play of tensions and disputes, not the least those tensions between, to borrow Moore’s (1996: 159) formulation, critical research ‘of ’ education and research ‘for’ education. However, this crossplay of positions, currents and influences is also a source of confusion and a major challenge for any newcomer seeking a sensible grasp of the field. This collection is aimed at making that grasp just a little easier. In addition to its internecine struggles, the developments and discontinuities within sociology and the sociology of education both reflect and respond to changes in societies – national and global. However, there are neither inevitable nor simple relationships between social and political contexts and the preoccupations and dispositions of the academy. Over and against this, we must not forget that the social sciences act back on and in society through the recontextualization of the ‘human sciences’ within professional education or the work of government, although perhaps less directly now than in the past. ‘Human science’ knowledge functions politically and is intimately implicated in the practical management of social and political problems. The idea that human sciences such as sociology stand outside or above the political agenda concerning the management of the population or somehow have a neutral status embodied in a free-floating, progressive rationalism is a dangerous and debilitating conceit. ‘Scientific’ or theoretical vocabularies may distance researchers from the subjects of their activity but, at the same time, they also construct a ‘gaze’ that renders the ‘landscape of the social’ ever more visible and produce or contribute to discourses that create particular sorts of ‘subject positions’ for people to occupy. However, governments are no longer content to wait for the harvest of research ideas that academics produce; they seek to engineer the crop through tenders and the funding of increasingly tightly focused research programmes. Policy desire increasingly shapes research offerings, and concomitantly increasing amounts of significant and sensitive research for ‘government’ is out-sourced to the commercial sector (see Ball, 2007) rather than entrusted to the university sector. University-based research is itself also increasingly subject to the ‘authority and apparent objectivity of disciplines such as accountancy, economics and management’ (MacKinnon, 2000: 297), through the incentives of academic capitalism and the operationaliza4 INTRODUCTION tion of concepts such as ‘quality’ and ‘policy-relevance’ – a disciplining of the disciplines. The tension between ‘making’ and ‘taking’ problems in social research, noted by Young (1971), is being played out in new ways in the contemporary politics of research and university funding. In taking seriously the issues surrounding the ‘making’ and ‘taking’ of social problems, in this Handbook we have chosen material that has a critical edge. A considerable number of the chapters included here are ‘engaged’, and one of the three sections has this as a particular focus. Many of the authors take a position that is similar to what Michael Burawoy has called ‘organic public sociology’. In his words, but partly echoing Gramsci as well, the critical sociologist is an organic intellectual who: works in close connection with a visible, thick, active, local, and often counter-public. [She or he works] with a labor movement, neighborhood association, communities of faith, immigrant rights groups, human rights organizations. Between the public sociologist and a public is a dialogue, a process of mutual education . . . The project of such [organic] public sociologies is to make visible the invisible, to make the private public, to validate these organic connections as part of our sociological life. (Burawoy, 2005: 265) This act of becoming (and this is a project, for one is never finished, always becoming) a critical scholar/activist is a complex one. Because of this, let us extend our earlier remarks about the role of critical research in education. Our points here are tentative and certainly not exhaustive. But they are meant to begin a dialogue over just what it is that ‘we’ should do. In general, there are seven tasks in which critical analysis (and the critical analyst) in education must engage (Apple, 2006b). 1 2 3 4 It must ‘bear witness to negativity’. That is, one of its primary functions is to illuminate the ways in which educational institutions, policies and practices are connected to the relations of exploitation and domination – and to struggles against such relations – in the larger society. We use the words exploitation and domination technically. They point to structures and processes that Nancy Fraser (1997) refers to as a politics of redistribution and a politics of recognition. In engaging in such critical analysis, whenever possible it also must point to contradictions and to spaces of possible action. Thus, its aim is to critically examine current realities with a conceptual/political framework that also emphasizes the spaces in which counterhegemonic actions can be or are now going on. At times, this also requires an expansion of what counts as ‘research’. Here, we mean acting as critical ‘secretaries’ to those groups of people and social movements who are now engaged in challenging existing relations of unequal power or in what elsewhere has been called ‘non-reformist reforms’. This is exactly the task that was taken on in the thick descriptions of critically democratic school practices in Democratic schools (Apple and Beane, 2007) and in the critically supportive descriptions of the transformative reforms such as the Citizen School and participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil (Gandin, 2006). The ideal of the organic intellectual has particular salience in the sociology of curriculum, an area that has grown markedly within the sociology of education and in critical curriculum studies. When Gramsci (1971) argued that one of the tasks of a truly counterhegemonic education was not to throw out ‘elite knowledge’ but to reconstruct its form and content so that it served genuinely progressive social needs, he provided a key to another 5 MICHAEL W. APPLE, STEPHEN J. BALL AND LUIS ARMANDO GANDIN 5 6 7 6 role ‘organic intellectuals’ might play (see also Gutstein, 2006; Apple, 1996a). Thus, we should not be engaged in a process of what might be called ‘intellectual suicide’. That is, there are serious intellectual (and pedagogic) skills in dealing with the histories and debates surrounding the epistemological, political and educational issues involved in justifying what counts as important knowledge. These are not simple and inconsequential issues, and the practical and intellectual/political skills of dealing with them have been well developed. However, they can atrophy if they are not used. We can give back these skills by employing them to assist communities in thinking about this, learning from them and engaging in the mutually pedagogic dialogues that enable decisions to be made in terms of both the short-term and long-term interests of oppressed peoples. In the process, critical work has the task of keeping traditions of radical work alive. In the face of organized attacks on the ‘collective memories’ of difference and struggle, attacks that make it increasingly difficult to retain academic and social legitimacy for multiple critical approaches that have proven so valuable in countering dominant narratives and relations, it is absolutely crucial that these traditions be kept alive, renewed, that new traditions be created and when necessary criticized for their conceptual, empirical, historical and political silences or limitations. This involves being cautious of reductionism and essentialism and asks us to pay attention to what we mentioned above, what Fraser has called both the politics of redistribution and the politics of recognition (Fraser, 1997). This includes not only keeping theoretical, empirical, historical and political traditions alive but also, very importantly, extending and (supportively) criticizing them. And it also involves keeping alive the dreams, utopian visions and ‘non-reformist reforms’ that are so much a part of these radical traditions (Jacoby, 2005; Apple, 1995; Teitelbaum, 1993). Keeping traditions alive and also supportively criticizing them when they are not adequate to deal with current realities cannot be done unless we ask ‘For whom are we keeping them alive?’ and ‘How and in what form are they to be made available?’ All of the things we have mentioned before in this tentative taxonomy of tasks require the relearning or development and use of varied or new skills of working at many levels with multiple groups. Thus, journalistic and media skills, academic and popular skills, and the ability to speak to very different audiences are increasingly crucial. It also requires that we relearn and mobilize the technical skills of the most elegant statistical models available. For too long, such skills have been rejected by many critical sociologists as simply ‘positivist’. This had meant that, in the public debates over policy means, ends and outcomes, statistics generated out of deeply problematic assumptions and ideologies dominate the discursive space and the media. Thus, as we engage in the spirited debates over what education does and should do, we need to be very cautious of not marginalizing valuable ‘technical’ skills and also need to find ways of making the data generated by such approaches visible and understandable to a wider public than those within the field of sociology of education (see Apple, 2006a). Finally, critical sociologists of education must act in concert with the progressive social movements their work supports or in movements against the assumptions and policies they critically analyze (Gramsci, 1971). The role of the organic intellectual implies that one must participate in and give one’s expertise to movements surrounding struggles over a politics of redistribution and a politics of recognition. It also implies learning from these social movements. This means that the role of the ‘unattached intelligentsia’ (Mannheim, 1936), someone who ‘lives on the balcony’ (Bakhtin, 1968), is not an appropriate model. As Bourdieu (2003: 11) reminds us, for example, our intellectual efforts are crucial, but INTRODUCTION they ‘cannot stand aside, neutral and indifferent, from the struggles in which the future of the world is at stake’. The chapters included in this volume provide instances of authors taking up one or more of each of these tasks. These seven tasks are demanding, and no one person can engage equally well in all of them simultaneously. What we can do is honestly continue our attempt to come to grips with the complex intellectual, personal and political tensions and activities that respond to the demands of this role. Actually, although at times problematic, ‘identity’ may be a more useful concept here. It is a better way to conceptualize the interplay among these tensions and positions, since it speaks to the possible multiple positionings one may have and the contradictory ideological forms that may be at work both within oneself and in any specific context (see Youdell, in progress). And this requires a searching critical examination of one’s own structural location, one’s own overt and tacit political commitments, and one’s own embodied actions. Of course, not everyone who sees herself or himself as a critical sociologist of education will agree with all of what we have said above. This is to be expected. We outline the points above to document one of the major sets of goals – and the tensions that arise out of them – to establish a partial set of decision rules for judging the multiple senses of efficacy that might cohere with the chapters included here. Even so, despite our best efforts, any selection of papers from the vast output of the sociology of education is bound to be both idiosyncratic and unsatisfactory. The point is, does it work, does it do a useful job for the intended readership, and is it the ‘best’ work for the purposes at hand? This is not a representative selection in any sense, whatever that might mean in terms of the sociology of education. But even now, as we write this, we can see ways in which we might have put the book together differently, made different choices, given space and emphases to different things. Clearly, not every sub-specialism, theoretical position or important figure is included. That would be impossible. Further, there is no systematic attempt directly to represent the founding ‘fathers’ of sociology, nor of the sociology of education. That sort of approach to the field is adequately dealt with in existing textbooks. This is not a collection of ‘classic’ papers; these can be accessed easily in other ways. Rather, the work included here is ‘state of the art’; a set of newly written and previously unpublished papers by some of the leading scholars in the field. The emphasis is on theoretically informed and transposable work, work of international relevance and coverage that has a critical relevance. On the whole, the papers operate at a level of generality and with a conceptual richness that make them readable in, and applicable to, a wide variety of national locations. They draw on literatures from a variety of different national settings and in many instances, of necessity, they take into account the overbearing and inescapable realities of globalizations, in all their forms, but not crudely or simplistically. Education itself is increasingly a traded good within international education service markets and global labour markets. The international trade in students has grown massively in the past ten years. It is already worth $400 billion worldwide; 2.7 million students are now studying outside their home countries, a 50 per cent increase since 2000, and this is estimated to rise to 8 million by 2025. Nonetheless, struggles over what it means to be educated, and against the commodification of education, and for and in defence of democratic and critical forms of education, involving students and teachers, occur in many locations. Thus, some of the papers address what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls the ‘sociology of absences’ (Santos, 2004). That is, they aim to explain that what does not exist is, in fact, actively produced as non-existent, and thus to transform impossible into possible objects. 7 MICHAEL W. APPLE, STEPHEN J. BALL AND LUIS ARMANDO GANDIN To be made present, these absences need to be constructed as alternatives to hegemonic experience, to have their credibility discussed and argued for and their relations taken as object of political dispute. The sociology of absences therefore creates the conditions to enlarge the field of credible experiences. (The world social forum: toward a counter-hegemonic globalisation (part 1): 239 www.choike.org/documentos/wsf_s318_sousa.pdf) While localities and national systems inflect the processes of globalization differently and struggles ensue, convergences and homogenization of educational forms and modalities, driven by what Santos (2003) calls ‘monocultural logics’, are very clearly evident within and between settings. These logics are very evident in current education policies that privilege choice, competition, performance management and individual responsibility and risk management. As editors, the three of us are more than a little aware of the necessity of avoiding such monocultural logics. Indeed, in trying to make this volume an international one, we are conscious of the power of a number of the arguments that have come out of the literature on both post-colonialism and globalization. We are taken with the fact that post-colonial experience(s) (and the plural is important) and the theories of globalization that have been dialectically related to them are powerful ways of critically engaging with the politics of empire and with the ways in which culture, economy and politics all interact, globally and locally, in complex and overdetermined ways. Indeed, the very notions of post-colonialism and globalization ‘can be thought of as a site of dialogic encounter that pushes us to examine center/periphery relations and conditions with specificity, wherever we may find them’ (Dimitriadis and McCarthy, 2001: 10). As they have influenced critical sociology of education, some of the core politics behind postcolonial positions are summarized well by Dimitriadis and McCarthy (2001) when they state that, ‘The work of the postcolonial imagination subverts extant power relations, questions authority, and destabilizes received traditions of identity’ (p. 10; see also Bhabha, 1994; Spivak, 1988). Sociologists of education interested in globalization, in neo-liberal depredations and in postcolonial positions have largely taken them to mean the following. They imply a conscious process of repositioning, of ‘turning the world upside down’ (Young, 2003: 2). They mean that the world is seen relationally – as being made up of relations of dominance and subordination and of movements, cultures and identities that seek to interrupt these relations. They also mean that, if you are someone who has been excluded by the ‘West’s’ dominant voices geographically, economically, politically and/or culturally, or you are inside the West but not really part of it, then ‘postcolonialism offers you a way of seeing things differently, a language and a politics in which your interests come first, not last’ (p. 2). Some of the best work in the field of sociology of education mirrors Robert Young’s more general claim that post-colonialism and the global sensitivities that accompany it speak to a politics and a ‘philosophy of activism’ that involve contesting these disparities. It extends the anti-colonial struggles that have such a long history and asserts ways of acting that challenge ‘Western’ ways of interpreting the world (p. 4). This is best stated by Young (2003) in the following two quotes: Above all, postcolonialism seeks to intervene, to force its alternative knowledges into the power structures of the west as well as the non-west. It seeks to change the way people think, the way they behave, to produce a more just and equitable relation between different people of the world. (Young, 2003: 7) 8 INTRODUCTION and Postcolonialism . . . is a general name for those insurgent knowledges that come from the subaltern, the dispossessed, and seek to change the terms under which we all live. (Young, 2003: 20) What Young says about post-colonialism is equally true about theories of globalization and about the entire tradition of critical sociological scholarship and activism in education. These reminders about insurgent knowledges, of course, have clear connections to the points we made earlier about the complex and multiple roles that critical sociologists of education in general need to consider. One of the important issues with which we will have to deal, a function implied in our listing of the tasks of the critical sociologist of education earlier, is to help to restore the collective memories of insurgent knowledges so that they can be used as resources, not only for critical research, but for people who seek to interrupt the relations of dominance and subordination that so deeply characterize so many nations and regions of this world. As you will see, this concern with the social production of, and conditions for, memory and forgetting will be brought up in this book. Having said this, again we need to be aware of our own positioning within knowledge power structures. Given length limitations and the diversity of current tendencies and emerging traditions within the critical sociology of education, despite the international scope and range of the papers in the collection, there is a clear Western, Northern and Anglo-Saxon bias. Hence, another volume is necessary, one that would chart the progress, tensions and debates in a considerably larger range of nations and would counter the epistemological and ideological assumptions that may still underpin parts of this Handbook, even when we ourselves have tried to be conscious and critical of them. This would be an exceptionally worthwhile project, and we urge that it be taken up so that the debates within sociology of education can become even more international than they are now. In editing this volume, we have tried to pay attention to the quality of the writing. While there is a wide variety of styles and forms of expression, again important in themselves, all the writers communicate their ideas effectively, although some papers are more ‘difficult’ than others. Some are more pedagogical, and some more writerly. Some report on research; others discuss and deploy theoretical analyses. Some are more influenced by cultural analysis; others by more structural concerns. In different ways, they show something of the social practices of sociology, that is, how sociological analysis is done and how sociological sensibilities are brought to bear upon significant contemporary issues. The make-up of the collection also reflects, to a degree, our own interests and prejudices, our own biographies in the sociology of education and our own sense of excitement about educational possibilities, or our frustrations with, anger at, and engagement with, injustices. The papers are organized into three general but very porous sections: ‘Perspectives and theories’, where the emphasis is on the application of theoretical ideas (e.g. psycho-social, feminism, Critical Race Theory) or the use of the work of particular writers (e.g. Foucault, Bernstein, Bourdieu, Butler) and the deployment of particular key concepts such as space, connectivity, pedagogy, globalization, governmentality, equality and disability; ‘Social processes and practices’, where the focus is on various contemporary educational phenomena, which are subject to critical interrogation (families, home schooling, skills, tracking, integration, the middle class, university reform etc.); ‘Inequalities and resistances’, where issues of class, race and gender and ‘colonial mentalities’ are critically addressed, and forms of social and political struggle and community 9 MICHAEL W. APPLE, STEPHEN J. BALL AND LUIS ARMANDO GANDIN involvement in education are examined and documented – what Santos calls the ‘sociology of emergences’ – ‘to know better the conditions of the possibility of hope’ (2004: 241). The handbook is an odd, over-used and rather unwieldy literary form. We accept that; but nonetheless we hope you enjoy the book and find it useful, and we would like to know what you think about it – what you like and do not like, how you think it could be improved. With this in mind, we include here our email addresses so that the critical conversation can continue. We can be reached at: apple@education.wisc.edu (Michael W. Apple); s.ball@ioe.ac.uk (Stephen J. Ball); and gandin@edu.ufrgs.br (Luis Armando Gandin). References Apple, M.W. (1995) Education and power, 2nd edn, New York: Routledge. Apple, M.W. (1996a) Cultural politics and education, New York: Teachers College Press. Apple, M.W. (1996b) ‘Power, meaning and identity: critical sociology of education in the United States’, British Journal of Sociology of Education 17: 125–144. Apple, M.W. (2006a) Educating the ‘right’ way: markets, standards, God, and inequality, 2nd edn, New York: Routledge. Apple, M.W. (2006b) ‘Rhetoric and reality in critical educational studies in the United States’, British Journal of Sociology of Education 27: 679–687. Apple, M.W. and Beane, J.A. (eds) (2007) Democratic schools: lessons in powerful education, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Bagilhole, B. (1993) ‘How to keep a good woman down: an investigation of the role of institutional factors in the process of discrimination against women academics’, British Journal of Sociology of Education 14: 261–274. Bakhtin, M.M. (1968) Rabelais and his world (trans. H. Iswolsky), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ball, S.J. (2007) Education plc: understanding private sector participation in public sector education, London: Routledge. Bernstein, B. (1999) ‘Vertical and horizontal discourse: an essay’, British Journal of Sociology of Education 20: 157–173. Bhabha, H. (1994) The location of culture, New York: Routledge. Bloom, A. (1987) The closing of the American mind: how higher education has failed democracy and improverished the souls of today’s students, New York: Simon & Schuster. Bourdieu, P. (1988) Homo Academicus, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (2003) Firing back: against the tyranny of the market 2, New York: New Press. Brantlinger, E. (2000) ‘Using ideology: case of non-recognition of the politics of research and practice in special education’, in S.J. Ball (ed.) Sociology of education: major themes, London: Routledge. Burawoy, M. (2005) ‘For public sociology’, British Journal of Sociology of Education 56: 259–294. Dimitriadis, G. and McCarthy, C. (2001) Reading and teaching the postcolonial, New York: Teachers College Press. Edwards, D. (1996) Discourse and recognition, London: Sage. Fraser, N. (1997) Justice Interruptus, New York: Routledge. Gandin, L.A. (2006) ‘Creating real alternatives to neoliberal policies in education: the citizen school project’, in M.W. Apple and K.L. Buras (eds) The subaltern speak: curriculum, power, and educational struggles, New York: Routledge, pp. 217–241. Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the prison notebooks (trans. Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith), New York: International Publishers. Gutstein, E. (2006) Reading and writing the world with mathematics, New York: Routledge. Harvey, D. (1989) The condition of postmodernity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Jacoby, R. (2005) Picture imperfect: Utopian thought for an anti-Utopian age, New York: Columbia University Press. 10 INTRODUCTION Kenway, J. (1997) ‘Having a postmodern turn or postmodernist angst: a disorder experienced by an author who is not yet dead or even close to it’, in A.H. Halsey, H. Lauder, P. Brown and A. Stuart Wells (eds) Education: culture, economy, society, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lather, P. (1988) ‘Ideology and methodological attitude’, in American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans. MacKinnon, D. (2000) ‘Managerialism, governmentality and the state: a neo-Foucauldian approach to local economic governance’, Political Geography 19: 293–314. MacLure, M. (2003) Discourse in educational and social research, Buckingham: Open University Press. Mannheim, K. (1936) Ideology and Utopia, New York: Harvest Books. Marginson, S. and Considine, M. (2000) The enterprise university, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Margolis, E. and Romero, M. (2000) ‘“The department is very male, very white, very old, and very conservative”: the functioning of the hidden curriculum in graduate sociology departments’, in S.J. Ball (ed.) Sociology of education: major themes, London: Routledge. Moore, R. (1996) ‘Back to the future: the problems of change and possibilities of advance in the sociology of education’, British Journal of Sociology of Education 17: 145–162. Rhoads, R. (2000) ‘Crossing sexual orientation borders: collaborative strategies for dealing with issues of positionality and representation, in S.J. Ball (ed.) Sociology of education: major themes, vol. 1, London: RoutledgeFalmer. Santos, Boaventura S. (2003) ‘Towards a counter-hegemonic globalisation’, Paper presented at the XXIV International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Dallas, USA, March. Santos, Boaventura S. (2004) ‘The world social forum: toward a counter-hegemonic globalisation’, in J. Sen, A. Anand, A. Escobar and P. Waterman (eds) World social forum: challenging empires, New Delhi: The Viveka Foundation, pp. 235–245. Available online at www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/ informes/1557.html (accessed 20 April 2009). Spivak, G. (1988) ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds) Marxism and the interpretation of culture, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271–313. Teitelbaum, K. (1993) Schooling for good rebels, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Youdell, D. (in progress) After identity: power and politics in education, London: Routledge. Young, M.F.D. (ed.) (1971) Knowledge and control, London: Collier-Macmillan. Young, R. (2003) Postcolonialism, New York: Oxford University Press. 11 Part 1 Perspectives and theories 1 ‘Spatializing’ the sociology of education Stand-points, entry-points, vantage-points1 Susan L. Robertson Introduction This chapter explores the implications of an absence of a critical spatial lens in the conceptual grammar of the field of the sociology of education. I argue that it is not sufficient to simply bring a spatial lexicon to our conceptual sentences (as in ‘geographies’ of classroom emotions; the school as a ‘place’; communities of practice). This is to fetishize space, leaving a particular medium of power, projects and politics – space – to go unnoticed. Rather, to apply a critical spatial lens to the sociology of education means seeing the difference that space, along with time and sociality – the two privileged angles of view in modernity – makes to our understanding of contemporary knowledge formation, social reproduction and the constitution of subjectivities (Massey, 2005: 62; Soja, 1996: 71). By tracing out the ways in which space is deeply implicated in power, production and social relations, I hope to reveal the complex processes at work in constituting the social relations of ‘education space’ as a crucial site, object, instrument and outcome in this process. A ‘critical’ spatial lens in the sociology of education involves three moves: one, an outline of the ontological and epistemological premises of a critical theory of space; two, the specification of the central objects for enquiry to education and society; and three, bringing these theoretical and conceptual approaches together to open up an entry point for investigation, a vantage point from which to see education–society phenomena anew, and a standpoint from which to see how education space is produced and how it might be changed. Move 1: a critical theory of space Space is a highly contested concept in social science. Here, I will introduce the core vocabulary for a critical socio-spatial theory drawn from the leading theorists on space, including Lefebvre (1991), Soja (1996), Harvey (2006), Massey (1994), Smith (1992), Brenner (2003) and Jessop et al. (2008). This vocabulary, which has been developed over time and as a result of a series of spatial turns, offers us a set of theoretical and empirical concepts with which to work. The following assumptions are key: that, ontologically, space is social and real; that spaces are social relations stretched out; and that space is socially produced. 15 SUSAN L. ROBERTSON Epistemologically, space can be known through particular categories of ideas, as ‘perceived’, ‘conceived’ and ‘lived’ (Lefebvre, 1991), or as ‘absolute’, ‘relative’ and ‘relational’ (Harvey, 2006). These two framings will be developed in this chapter. Spaces are dynamic, overlapping and changing, in a shifting geometry of power (Massey, 1994). The organization of socio-spatial relations can take multiple forms and dimensions. This is reflected in a rich spatial lexicon that has been developed to make sense of the changing nature of production, (nation)state power, labour, knowledge, development and difference. Key concepts in this lexicon are ‘territory’, ‘place’, ‘scale’, ‘network’ and ‘positionality’. These concepts are pertinent for the sociology of education, which has, as its central point of enquiry, on the one hand, the role of education in (re)producing modern societies, and on the other hand, an examination of transformations within contemporary societies and their consequences for education systems, education experiences, opportunities and outcomes. An ontology of space French philosopher Henri Lefebvre and British-born geographer David Harvey are both viewed as having transformed our understanding of space, from a largely geometrical/mathematical term denoting an empty area, to seeing space in more critical ways: as social, real, produced and socially constitutive. Lefebvre’s intellectual project explicitly works with and beyond the binary of materialism and idealism. What marks out Lefebvre’s meta-philosophical project is his concern with the possibilities for change by identifying ‘third space’ (Soja, 1996: 31), a space of radical openness. In other words, Lefebvre’s approach is concerned, not only with the forces of production and the social relations that are organized around them, but also moving beyond to new, an-Other, unanticipated possibilities. The introductory essay, ‘The plan’, in The production of space (1991) is regarded as containing Lefebvre’s key ideas. Lefebvre begins by arguing that, through much of modernity, our understanding of space was profoundly shaped by mathematicians, who invented all kinds of space that could be represented through calculations and techniques (Lefebvre, 1991: 2), To Lefebvre, what was not clear was the relationship between these representations (mental space) and ‘real space’ – ‘. . . the space of people who deal with material things’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 4). However, Lefebvre was unhappy with pursuing an analytics of space centred on either continental philosophy or Marxism. He regarded this binary pairing as part of a conceptual dualism (conceived/idealism versus lived/materialism), closed to new, unanticipated outcomes. Lefebvre was particularly critical of the way continental philosophers, such as Foucault and Derrida, fetishized space, so that the mental realm, of ideas, representations, discourses and signs, enveloped and occluded social and physical spaces. To Lefebvre, semiology could not stand as a complete body of knowledge because it could not say much about space other than it was a text; a message to be read. Such thinking, he argued, was both political and ideological in that its science of space concealed the social relations of (capitalist) production and the role of that state in it (Lefebvre, 1991). This did not mean Lefebvre embraced Marxism unproblematically. Though Lefebvre’s project aimed to reveal the way the social relations of production projected themselves onto space (Lefebvre, 1991: 129), he was critical of the way Marxist theorists on the one hand fetishized temporality, and on the other hand reduced ‘lived space’ to labour and products, ignoring the complexities of all spheres of life (such as art, politics, the judiciary) and their attendant social relations. A more expansive idea of production was embraced to take account 16 ‘SPATIALIZING’ THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION of the multiplicity of ways in which ideas are produced, humans are created and labour, histories are constructed and minds are made (Lefebvre, 1991: 70–72). For Lefebvre, social space subsumes things produced; and encompasses their relationships in their coexistence and simultaneity – their (relative) order and their/or their relative disorder. It is the outcome of a sequence or set of operations, and thus cannot be reduced to the rank of a simple object. (Lefebvre, 1991: 73) Similarly mindful of the need to avoid fetishizing space over time and vice versa, theorists such as Harvey (1989) and Massey (1994: 2) refer to ‘space–time’ to emphasize the integral nature of space and time, while Massey (1994) and Rose (1993) have advanced theoretical projects around gender as a social relation that is also profoundly spatially organized. The twin ideas of ‘space’ and ‘production’ are central to Lefebvre’s analysis. Using an approach he calls ‘analysis followed by exposition’, Lefebvre’s project is to make space’s transparency and claim to innocence opaque, and therefore visible and interested. A ‘truth of space’, he argued, would enable us to see that capital and capitalism influence space in practical (buildings, investment and so on) and political ways (classes, hegemony via culture and knowledge). It is thus possible to demonstrate the role of space – as knowledge and action – in the existing capitalist mode of production (including its contradictions), to reveal the ways in which spaces are ‘produced’, and to show that each society had its own mode of production and produces its own space. Furthermore, if – as he argued was the case – the transition from one mode of production to another over time entailed the production of new spaces, then our analyses must also be directed by both the need to account for its temporality and also its spatiality. Harvey, in an essay entitled ‘Space as a keyword’ (2006), draws upon a Marxist ontology of historical materialism and, like Lefebvre, seeks to understand processes of development under capitalism. However, Harvey’s central focus has centred upon capitalist temporalities and spatialities, specifically the contradiction between capital’s concern to annihilate space/time in the circuit of capital, and capital’s dependence on embedded social relations to stabilize the conditions of production and reproduction (Harvey, 1982, 1989). Nevertheless, for both writers, the production of space, the making of history and the composition of social relations or society are welded together in a complex linkage of space, time and sociality, or what Soja has called the trialectics of spatiality (1996). Epistemologies of space If epistemology is concerned with how we know, then the question of how to know space is also complicated by the multiple ways in which we imagine, sense and experience space. We travel through space, albeit aided by different means. We also attach ourselves to particular spaces, such as places of belonging, giving such places psycho-social meaning. Lefebvre’s theoretical approach is to unite these different epistemologies of space. In other words, in order to ‘. . . expose the actual production of space . . .’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 16) ‘. . . we are concerned with logico-epistemological space, the space of social practice, the space occupied by sensory phenomena, including products of the imagination such as projects and projections, symbols and utopias’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 11–12). These claims led Lefebvre to identify and develop three conceptualizations of space at work all of the time in relation to any event or social practice: spatial practice (the material, or perceived space); representations of space (or conceptualized 17 SUSAN L. ROBERTSON space, or conceived space); and representational spaces (it overlays physical space and is directly lived through its associated images and symbols; or lived space) (Lefebvre, 1991: 38–39). Like his meta-philosophical embrace of idealism and materialism, Lefebvre’s epistemology is never to privilege one spatial dimension over another, for instance conceived space over lived space. Rather, the three dimensions are part of a totality, a ‘trialectics of being’ (Soja, 1996: 71). Harvey’s epistemology of space is somewhat different. Though both agree upon the materiality of space, which Harvey calls ‘absolute space’, while Lefebvre refers to it as ‘perceived space’, Harvey offers two alternative concepts to make up a somewhat different tripartite division: that of ‘relative space’ and ‘relational space’. Applied to social space, space is relative in the sense that there are multiple geometries from which to choose (or not), and that the spatial frame is dependent upon what is being relativized and by whom (Harvey, 2006: 272). So, for instance, we can create very different maps of relative locations depending on topological relations, the various frictions enabling movements through space are different, the different spatio-temporal logics at work, and so on. The idea of ‘relational space’ is intended to capture the notion that there are no such things as time and space outside the processes that define them. This leads to a very important and powerful claim by Harvey, of internal relations. In other words, ‘an event or a thing at a point in space cannot be understood by appeal to what exists only at a particular point. It depends upon everything that is going on around it . . . the past, present and the future concentrate and congeal at a certain point’ (Harvey, 2006: 274). This point is particularly pertinent for a critical theory of education and society, for it is to argue that it is critical to see ‘events’ in relation to wider sets of social, economic and political processes. The spatiality and geometry of power In the arguments advanced so far, the idea that space is a form of power is implicit. Doreen Massey (1994: 2005) makes this explicit. Not only is space social relations stretched out, but these social relations constitute a ‘geometry of power’ (Massey: 1994: 4). This is a dynamic and changing process. This implies a plurality (Lefebvre, 1991) or a ‘. . . lived world of a simultaneous multiplicity of spaces’ (Massey, 1994: 3), of uncountable sets of social spatial practices made up of networks and pathways, bunches and clusters of relationships, all of which interpenetrate each and superimpose themselves on one another (Lefebvre, 1991: 86). This multiplicity of spaces is ‘. . . cross-cutting, intersecting, aligning with one-another, or existing in relations of paradox or antagonism’ (Massey, 1994: 3). To insist on multiplicity and plurality, argues Massey, is not just to make an intellectual point. Rather, it is a way of thinking able to reveal the spatial as ‘constructed out of the multiplicity of social relations across all spatial scales, from the global reach of finance and telecommunications through the geography of the tentacles of national political power, to the social relations within the town, the settlement, the household and the workplace’ (Massey, 1994: 4). Massey’s (2005: 147) relational politics of space is also more in tune with Lefebvre’s, of a framing imagination – like ‘anOther’ – that keeps things more open to negotiation, and that takes fuller account of the ‘constant and conflictual process of the constitution of the social, both human and non-human’ (2005: 147). In Massey’s view (2005: 148), this is not to give ground to the modernist project, of no space and all time, or the postmodern project, of all space and no time, but to argue for configurations of multiple histories, multiple entanglements, multiple geographies, out of which difference is constituted, and where differences count. 18 ‘SPATIALIZING’ THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION The organization of spatial relations – a methodology Jessop et al. (2008) take up the challenge of advancing a methodology for studying spatial relations. They propose a lexicon that includes key concepts such as ‘territory’, ‘place’, ‘scale’, ‘network’ and ‘positionality’. ‘Territory’ refers to the boundaries that constitute space in particular ways, as differentiated, bordered areas of social relations and social infrastructures supporting particular kinds of economic and social activity, opportunity, investment and so on. Territories are arenas to be managed and governed, with the state and the boundaries of the nation state particularly important throughout the twentieth century (Harvey, 1982: 390, 404). Territories are filled with normative content, such as forms of identification. Interest in the idea of territory and processes of territorialization emerged when attention turned to the assumption that political power was established around national boundaries by nation states, and that these boundaries also served to define societies as ‘nationally bounded’. The unbundling of the relationship between territory and sovereignty since the 1980s has resulted in changing spatialities of statehood (Brenner, 2003), the changing basis of citizenship claims (Robertson, 2009) and forms of subjectivity. Territory, as a spatial form of organization, can be read as absolute (a material thing, as in a human resource complex), as conceived (e.g. a map of a region) and as lived (e.g. attachment as a Canadian). It is relative in that the movement within and across territories, for instance, will be different, dependent upon where and how one is located. It is relational in that it is not possible to understand particular territories without placing them in their past, present or emergent futures. ‘Scale’ represents social life as structured in particular ways, in this case relationally, from the body to the local, national and global (Herod and Wright, 2002). This structuring of social life is viewed as operating at the level of the conceived and the material; in other words, that scales, such as the national or global are real enough; they are also powerful metaphors around which struggles take place to produce these social relations. Extending Lefebvre’s insights into the social production of space, Smith (1990) has termed this the ‘social production of scale’. Work on scales, their recalibration and re/production, have helped generate insights into the making of regions (scale-making), the global, the reworking of the local, and strategic bypassing of the scales (as in scale jumping) and so on. Scales themselves may shift in importance as a result of processes that include new regionalisms, globalization and decentralization. There have also been important critiques of scale advanced by writers such as Marston et al. (2005) for the conceptual elasticity of the concept and, more importantly, the privileging of vertical understandings of socio-spatial processes, rather than vertical and horizontal. Marston et al. (2005: 420) are at pains to point out that the power of naming (as in representations of space) should not be confused with either perceived or lived spaces. This is an important point and emphasizes the value of ensuring we keep these epistemologies distinct in our analysis. ‘Place’, on the other hand, is constituted of spatialized social relations and the narratives about these relations. Places, such as ‘my home’ or ‘my school’, only exist in relation to particular criteria (as in ‘my school’ draws upon criteria such as formal learning, teachers and so on), and, in that sense, they are material, they are social constructions or produced (Hudson, 2001: 257), and they are lived. Massey argues that place emerges out of the fixing of particular meanings on space; it is the outcome of efforts to contain, immobilize, to claim as one’s own, to include and therefore exclude (1994: 5). ‘All attempts to institute horizons, to establish boundaries, to secure the identity of places, can in this sense be seen as attempts to stabilize the meaning of particular envelopes of space-time’ (Massey, 1994: 5). Amin puts this relational argument a 19 SUSAN L. ROBERTSON little differently: that place is ‘. . . where the local brings together different scales of practice/social action’ (2004: 38) and where meanings are constituted of dwelling, of affinity, of performativity (Amin, 2004: 34). From the perspective of production, places are ‘. . . complex entities; they are ensembles of material objects, workers and firms, and systems of social relations embodying distinct cultures and multiple meanings, identities and practices’ (Hudson, 2001: 255). Importantly, places should not be seen as only whole, coherent, bounded or closed, though they may well be (Hudson, 2001: 258). Rather, we should also see places as potentially open, discontinuous, relational and as internally diverse, as they are materialized out of the networks, scales and overlapping territories that constitute this space–time envelope (Allen et al., 1998: 55–56). For Hudson (2001: 258), the degree of ‘closedness’ or openness is an empirical question rather than an a priori assertion. More recently scholars, influenced by the work of Castells (1996), have advanced a relational reading of space that ‘. . . works with the ontology of flow, connectivity and multiple expression’ (Amin, 2004: 34). In this work, social relations stretch horizontally across space (implicitly questioning scale – as in local to global – as the main organizer of place). The metaphor representing this idea is the ‘network’. The project is not to focus on spatial hierarchies, as is implied in the idea of scale, but on the transversal, the porous nature of knots and clusters of social relations. The idea of ‘the network’ has become particularly appealing and powerful in thinking about interspatial interconnectivity – for instance in governance systems, inter-firm dependencies, communities of participants and so on. And while this way of conceiving space has a materiality about it, as we can see with, for instance, communities of Internet game-players, the organization of a firm, or a network of experts, it is a way of representing spatial organization. Most importantly, however, the idea of the network is to press the temporality of spatial formations: as ‘temporary placements of ever moving material and immanent geographies, as “hauntings” of things that have moved on but left their mark in situated moments in distanciated networks that cross a given place’ (Amin, 2004: 34). The reason for pressing this way of reading (network versus scale and territory) is, for Amin, a question of politics: it relates, not only to the scope and reach of local political activity, but also what is taken to count as political. This is a particularly important point for understanding current developments in education, particularly higher education, as local entities, such as universities, stretch their institutional fabrics across space. For Shepherd, ‘positionality’ is a corrective to the fascination with networked relations, which tend to overlook ‘. . . the asymmetric and path dependent ways in which futures of places depend on their interdependencies with other places’ (2002: 308). Positionality within a network is dependent upon which network one participates in; it is emergent and contingent rather than pre-given; and it describes how different entities are positioned with regard to one another in space/time. Positionality is relational, it involves power relations, and it is enacted in ways that tend to reproduce and/or challenge existing configurations. For Shepherd (2002: 319), the idea of positionality is critical in calling attention to how connections between people and places – such as the World Bank in Washington and the African economies, or members of a household – play a role in the emergence of proximal and geographic inequalities. Similarly, drawing locales and their pre-capitalist forms of production into circuits of capitalist production (for instance, bringing pre-capitalist/pre-modern tribal relations in Samoa into capitalist colonial networks of relations) draws these actors into new social relations of power and inequality. Finally, the conditions for the possibility of place do not necessarily depend upon local initiative but, rather, with the interactions with distant places. For example, education provision in Cyprus is partly shaped by Cyprus’s relations with the European Commission, while member states of the World 20 ‘SPATIALIZING’ THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION Trade Organization are differently positioned with regard to the centres of global power, so that negotiating education sectors will be differently experienced as a result. The importance of Jessop et al.’s (2008) intervention is to advance an approach that overcomes the privileging of one spatial form of organization over another – e.g. scale over other spatialities: the result of what they argue are different turns that unfortunately display all of the signs of ‘. . . theoretical amnesia and exaggerated claims to conceptual innovation’ (p. 389). For Jessop et al., it is important to see that these processes and practices are closely linked and, in many cases, occurring simultaneously, and propose a way of reading these together. This is important and clearly offers sets of readings of events that are not limited to one spatial form of organization. Move 2: the conceptual grammar of the sociology of education The question of how to lay out the conceptual grammar of the field is a particularly challenging one. One way is to work at a particular level of abstraction so as to enable the possibility of translation across the different ontological and epistemological traditions that are bought to bear on the education and society relationship. Dale’s (2006) work on ‘the education questions’ is particularly valuable here. There are three levels of questions. Level 1 focuses on the practice; level 2 on the politics of education; and level 3 on the outcomes of education. In opening up these three levels we can then begin to place key approaches, topics, issues and debates that have taken place over time and space and in relation to particular kinds of social relation and forms of social reproduction. These questions are specified in four ways: 1 2 3 4 Who is taught what, how, by whom, where, when; for what stated purpose and with what justifications; under what (school/university classroom) circumstances and what conditions; and with what results? How, by whom, and at what scale are these things problematized, determined, coordinated, governed, administered and managed? In whose interests are these practices and politics carried out? What is the scope of ‘education’, and what are its relations with other sectors of the state, other scalar units and national society? What are the individual, private, public, collective and community outcomes of education? In relation to who is taught what, how, by whom, when and where, we immediately can see that learning opportunities are differentially experienced, and different kinds of learning are acquired. This has been a major field of concern for sociologists such as Bourdieu (1986) and his argument that various forms of capital (cultural, economic and social) are differently mobilized and realized through learning experiences in the home, in schools and in the wider society. Similarly, Bernstein’s (1990) work on pedagogic discourse and its relationship to class, codes and control links pedagogy to wider processes of social reproduction. There is a considerable literature on the ways in which social relations, such as gender, race, sexuality and old colonial relations (cf. Arnot and Reay, 2006; Gillborn and Youdell, 2006; Smith, 2006), are produced through what is taught to whom, and where. Concerning the questions of ‘how, by whom and at what scale are these things problematized, determined, coordinated, governed, administered and managed?’ and ‘in whose interests are these practices and politics carried out?’, this is broadly the province of governance (cf. Dale, 1996). Sociological research around this question has concerned itself with the emergence of markets as a mechanism of coordination (cf. Gewirtz et al., 1995; Ball, 2007; Ball et al., 1996; Levin and Belfield, 2006); 21 SUSAN L. ROBERTSON the rise in importance of international organizations, such as the OECD, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, in shaping education agendas within national states (Rizvi and Lingard, 2006; Robertson et al., 2002); the emergence of private companies in providing education services (cf. Ball, 2007; Hatcher, 2006; Mahony et al., 2004); and how new economic sectors are being produced, bringing education more tightly into the global economy (cf. Brown and Lauder, 2005; Guile, 2006; Kamat et al., 2004). Finally, in relation to the question about outcomes as a result of these projects and processes as they are mediated through education, we begin to see very clearly that particular identities are produced, families advantaged or excluded, classes constituted, genders reproduced, populations privileged and so on thro...
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