Key Tasks for Critical Qualitative Research in the Face of Corporate Ideology and Market Fundamentalism

• In Event: Critical Qualitative Research and the Corporatized University: On a Collision Course

Abstract

This presentation will elaborate on two tasks for critical qualitative researchers in higher education: 1) Broadening our notions of intersectionality, and 2) Broadening our methodological toolkit. Critical qualitative scholars tend to focus on achievement gaps, gaps in college access and retention, and other concerns that foreground issues of race, class and gender in education. Most scholars of color are especially drawn to this important research agenda because of civil rights and equity concerns. A few scholars, mostly white, have begun to study an assault on K-16 education by market fundamentalist, corporativist, the military, and privatizing agendas that have been growing since the 1970s. This new ideology, often termed “neoliberalism,” is being produced and disseminated via new corporate funded policy networks and think tanks which themselves need to be objects of more intense study (See Scott, 2009). In addition to continuing to resolve tensions among critical scholars between the politics of recognition and distribution (Fraser, 1997), a new intersectionality has to be integrated that includes the horizontal intersectionality among race, class, gender, LGBT, etc. and vertical intersectionalities with the new corporate-supported policy networks that are changing the very nature of formal education, and which differentially impact the poor, women, and people of color. Some initial attempts to coalesce this balkanization of critical scholars is underway (Cooper, 2007; Duggan 2003; Fraser, 2010; Goldberg, 2008; Lipman, 2011; Scott, 2008; Wilson, 2009), but methodological implications are still unclear. In addition, early influence from anthropology and qualitative sociology continue to narrowly define qualitative research as ‘fieldwork” at the cultural level, and this genre continues to be taught in doctoral programs. A larger toolkit is needed in order to address the issues described above. Continued attention is needed to traditional attempts to merge structure and culture through ethnography (Anderson, 1989; Smith, 2005; Willis, 1977), but more attention is needed to participatory and community-based methods, critical discourse analysis, GIS, community asset mapping, network analysis, critical policy analysis, and even investigative journalism. Even this focus on “research” (gathering “data”) may be discouraging young scholars from doing important conceptual work, which is “qualitative” in its own way. Perhaps the closest thing to a recent best seller in education is Diane Ravitch’s (2010) devastating conceptual critique (although drawing on published research) of corporate school reform including a chapter titled, “The Billionaire Boys’ Club.” More than critical qualitative studies, such books have perhaps the greatest potential to ultimately challenge the new corporate-engineered common sense.

Authors

• Gary L. Anderson, New York University

• Janelle T. Scott, University of California - Berkeley