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Rites to Reform: The Cultural Production of the Reformer in Urban Schools
Author(s) -
Yang K. Wayne
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
anthropology and education quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.531
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1548-1492
pISSN - 0161-7761
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1492.2010.01075.x
Subject(s) - grassroots , neoliberalism (international relations) , power (physics) , state (computer science) , sociology , public administration , fell , officer , reform movement , political science , identity (music) , community organizing , political economy , law , politics , paleontology , physics , algorithm , quantum mechanics , computer science , acoustics , biology
As neoliberal reformers are appointed to manage the “crisis” of U.S. public schools, their power has become a pressing reality for grassroots movements in education. I examine how the Small Schools movement in Oakland, California—just as the school district fell under state administrative control—employed rites of passage to socialize a grassroots identity: the reform officer. These rites represent a form of grassroots cultural power that disrupts the conditions of neoliberal domination. [neoliberalism, school reform, counterhegemony, community organizing, cultural production]