"Effective" Schooling in the Age of Capital: Critical Insights From Advocacy Anthropology, Anthropology of Education, and Disability Studies

• In Event: 34.072 - Disrupting Boundaries of Disability While Reimagining Educational Justice Landscapes: Contentions in Disability Studies in Education

Abstract

Objectives: This paper argues that the ideological and material reproduction of ‘efficient’ schooling in the ‘Age of Capital’ functions to normalize and perpetuate the unequal social relations and oppressive dynamics that characterize free market economies and accompanying cultural practices. In keeping up with our commitment to critical and intersectional disability studies, this paper elicits the following questions: How are processes of disablement framed within capitalist modes of production and, by extension, how and to what end are disabled subjectivities produced as deviant within this framework? Do well-established disciplines such as anthropology have an ethical responsibility to engage with and enliven debates originating at different historical and disciplinary junctures? What is the importance of the mutual engagement of advocacy anthropology and disability studies?

Theoretical Framework: Building on cultural anthropological theory, this paper revisits the nature/nurture debate. I address this dichotomy to call attention to processes whereby ‘deviant’ student subjectivities are constructed and administered according to the neoliberal (ill) logics of ‘economic readiness’ and ‘independence’ that uphold compulsory able-bodiedness (McRuer, 2006). This is especially important when reflecting collectively about the experiences of students living at the intersection of multiple oppressions.

Method: Although this paper is primarily conceptual, some sections draw insight from activist ethnography and emancipatory methodologies in education. The overall tone and rhetoricity of the paper are developed through narrative analysis and interpretive frameworks emerging from advocacy anthropology, anthropology of education, and disability studies. By bringing these perspectives together, this paper exposes the detrimental impact of ‘effective schooling’ ideologies and the concrete practices that push ‘unruly’ body/minds to the periphery of social and cultural recognition, dignity, and material survival.

Data Sources:
Eddy, E. (1985). Theory, research and application in educational anthropology. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 16(2), 83-104.
Foley, D. (1997). Deficit thinking models based on culture: The anthropological protest. In R. Valencia (Ed.), The evolution of deficit thinking: educational thought and practice (pp. 115-131). Washington, DC: Falmer Eddy.
González, N. (2010). Advocacy Anthropology and Education: Working through the binaries. Current Anthropology, 51(S2), S249–S258.
McRuer, R. (2006). Crip theory: The cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Purdy, L. (1986). Nature and nurture: A false dichotomy? Hypatia, 1(1), 167-174.

Findings: A preliminary analysis of the literature indicates that there is dialogic and political value in revisiting the nature/nurture debate; especially when adopting an interdisciplinary approach. A joint exploration of scholarly literature emerging from advocacy anthropology, the anthropology of education, and disability studies contends with the neoliberal politics of “effective” schooling and promises to yield new terrains for future exploration.

Significance: By weaving in critical insights from advocacy anthropology, the anthropology of education, and disability studies, this paper models and further advocates interdisciplinarity. The concepts and themes explored throughout this paper contribute to the diversity of positionalities and social locations that challenge and disrupt the boundaries around disability and disability studies.

Author

• Sara M. Acevedo, Bellevue College