Education and the Racialization of Neoliberal Urban Governance: A Critical Geography Approach to Multiple Urban Contexts

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

Critical geographers argue that neoliberal urban restructuring is contingent and place specific, and thus tremendously heterogeneous.

This panel draws upon the insights of critical geographers to examine education’s role in neoliberal racialization in several urban contexts, demonstrating that neoliberal urbanism is always in production, shifting, impermanent and "experimental", and that race provides an important resource in both furthering and contesting neoliberal urbanism.

The panelists document the imbrication of education in this process through an examination of Sydney, Detroit, Cape Town, Milwaukee, and Chicago, demonstrating that differential racialization has contributed greatly to the heterogeneity of neoliberal urban forms across urban contexts. Coming to terms with this heterogeneity emerges as a central component of efforts to redemocratize urban schools and urban life.

Sub Unit

• Division B - Curriculum Studies / Section 4: Ecological Justice and Critical Geography

Chairs

• Thomas C. Pedroni, Wayne State University

• Pauline Lipman, University of Illinois at Chicago

Papers

• All Are Created Unequal in the Eyes of the Market: Education Policy, Christian and Islamic Schooling, and the New Urban Spaces of Race - Kalervo N. Gulson, University of New South Wales

• Emaciating Gramsci: Is Consent Still Needed in an Era of Disposable Communities? - Thomas C. Pedroni, Wayne State University

• Education and Neoliberal Responses to the Crisis: Producing and Contesting New Forms of Racialized Urban Space and Governance - Pauline Lipman, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Can Black Get Blacker? Neo-Racial Spatialization, Education, and Marginal Youth Positioning in Postapartheid Cape Town - Nur Mohammed Azeem Badroodien, Stellenbosch University; Aslam Fataar, Stellenbosch University

Discussant

• William H. Watkins, University of Illinois at Chicago