Imaginary Capital: Youths, Choice, and Stratification in the Neoliberal Imaginary of Education

• In Event: 31.033 - Imagination, Imaginaries, and Policy Sociology in Education: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives

Abstract

Objectives:
By promoting choice and competition, neoliberalism has reshaped the social imaginary of who belongs where and how individuals relate to each other (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). This reshaping has been quite pronounced in education following the introduction of policies such as school choice, marketization, privatization and internationalization. In response, a body of research and scholarship has emerged to capture the consequences of these reforms. Yet, I argue that how young people respond to and obtain new positions through their situated imaginations in this shifting neoliberal education landscape has been under-explored and under-theorized. This paper aims to fill this gap. This paper’s objectives are: (1) to review the literature on neoliberalism and young learners; (2) to introduce a new conception of imaginary capital; and (3) to apply the concept to analyze the interface among youth imaginations, the neoliberal imaginary and social stratification.

Modes of inquiry:
My review of the literature includes a review of theoretical and empirical research on the effect of neoliberal education reforms on how young people (ages 10-19) make meanings of schooling (from Kindergarten to Grade 12), specifically where performance, competition and choice have become organizing and regulating forces. I review critical youth studies, school choice, marketization and privatization studies and the global and international education literature and identify a lack of theorization, or rather a stagnation of theorization, in trying to understand the effects of neoliberal reforms from the perspective of youths.

Theoretical influences:
I draw upon a wide range of social theories, political philosophy, critical policy studies, critical youth and feminist scholarship, and hermeneutics – and especially from Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of capital and field – to articulate the notion of imaginary capital. I define the concept as encompassing the practices and products of young people’s socially situated imaginations of their presents and futures in relation to the dominant social imaginary. I theorize that imaginary capital is accumulated when one aligns one’s hopes and conduct with the dominant imaginary through participation in neoliberal policies and practices. The acquisition of this capital subsequently matters to their social and educational positions.

Application and justification:
I apply the concept of imaginary capital to show how the processes of participating in the neoliberal education policy of school choice provide experiences and opportunities through which students (G 7-12) accumulate imaginary capital while imagining particular futures and embodying those imagined futures. I underscore the importance of the imaginary in theorizing how young people of diverse and unequal backgrounds imagine themselves belonging and becoming in increasingly polarized cities and an increasingly polarized world.

Scholarly significance:
This paper will provide an alternative conceptual lens through which we can account for the more complex urban, national, and global processes and consequences of social and educational stratification, inequality and exclusion resulting from neoliberal reforms. Therefore, it will shed much needed light on our understanding of how youths are implicated in the neoliberal making of stratification.

Author

• Ee-Seul Yoon, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign