Spatial Analytics and the Study of Neighborhood Effects in Education

• In Event: 70.031 - New Materialisms and the Ontologies of Social Context: Critical Inquiry on Equity and Justice in Education

Abstract

Inquiry on neighborhood effects is inherently, in part, about spatiality. However, spatiality has often been taken up in education and the social sciences from the lens of the Euclidean geometric coordinates of space with all of its quantifiable questions of size and density as in a container. Unfortunately, this tends to miss the nuances and particularities of the structural relations within and without these geometric coordinates. In contra-distinction, what might a topological analysis of spatiality look like? What might be entailed with a spatial lens that focuses on the boundaries, connections, interiorities and exteriorities of the intra-acting relationships within and without those fixed/specified geometric coordinates? In what ways might a topological analysis have greater utility for our contemporary moment of advanced and rapid communication technologies that defy and transgress legally constituted geographic boundaries while adhering to the laws of place? And, what more might be revealed regarding the effect of reconfiguring power relations on the inra-acting and ubiquitous processes of education? This paper will conceptually take up these questions while providing an empirical example with youth everyday practices.

Author

• Ezekiel J. Dixon-Roman, The University of Pennsylvania