The Construction of the Consumer: A Theoretical Reconsideration of a Key Figure in School Choice

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Fifteen
  In Roundtable Session: Families, Parents, and Youth Navigating School Choice and Educational Reforms (Table 3)

Abstract

The consumer, despite her central role in discussion of school choice, remains undertheorized. My aim in this theoretically-oriented piece is twofold. First, to focus analytic attention on the specific logics and theoretical framings that are invoked in the causal stories mobilized in favor of the SCM. Second, to draw on literature from the sociology of markets, specifically the performativist strain of theory that follows the work of Michel Callon (Fourcade, 2007; Callon, 1998), to provide an alternate means of understanding the consumer as an effect of a particular sociotechnical configuration rather than a natural state of affairs.

Author

• Julie Fitz, Learning Policy Institute
  Presenting Author