By Derron O. Wallace In post-Brexit Britain, who considers the impact of the aspiration agenda on ethnic minority young people –particularly Black boys? What is the role of Black boys in building the ‘aspiration nation’? Better still, what is the… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘identity’
Policy Logics, Counter-Narratives, and New Directions: Boys and Schooling in a Neoliberal Age
By Konstanze Spohrer and Garth Stahl In this chapter we argue for approaches to researching and imagining aspiration that reflect the complexities of masculinities. We suggest that future academic work on boys’ aspirations adopts an intersectional approach to considering the… Read More ›
“Gotta get that laziness out of me”: Negotiating masculine aspirational subjectivities in the transition from school to university in Australia
by Sue Nichols and Garth Stahl Aspiration is centrally concerned with becoming, and inherently frames the present in terms of the future desired self. The moment at which a young person graduates from school is a nexus point for aspirational… Read More ›
Conference: Social Mobility, Aspirations, Education and White Working-Class Youth: Urban, Rural and Coastal Contexts
A BSA Sociology of Education Study Group One-Day Conference in association with the Faculty of Education, Canterbury Christ Church University. 5 July 2017 At Canterbury Christ Church University, UK PROGRAMME This one-day conference, supported by the BSA’s Education Study Group, focuses… Read More ›
“I Want To Be a Soccer Player or a Mathematician”: Fifth-Grade Black Boys’ Aspirations at a “Neoliberal” Single-Sex School
By Joseph Derrick Nelson For over a decade, amid widespread neoliberal education reform in the United States, single-sex schools for boys of color have increased in popularity among urban school districts. The growing interest in this school model is… Read More ›
White Working-Class Boys in the Neoliberal Meritocracy: The Pitfalls of the “Aspiration-Raising” Agenda
by Sam Baars The great meritocracy When she became British prime Minister in July 2016, the core narrative of Teresa May’s premiership was quick to emerge: “I want Britain to be the world’s great meritocracy – a country where everyone has… Read More ›
Sociological Catalysts and Operationalising Theory in Practice
by Yusef Bakkali Life as an academic can be a lonely and alienating calling at the best of times; lots of time spent inside one’s own head reflecting on a world playing out someplace beyond the indiscernible turrets and bulwarks… Read More ›
Call for Abstracts: Youth, Place and Theories of Belonging
BSA Sociological Futures Proposal Youth, Place and Theories of Belonging Edited by: Garth Stahl, PhD Sadia Habib, PhD Mike Ward, PhD This proposed edited collection draws on interdisciplinary perspectives of space and place in order to investigate young… Read More ›
21st Century Salute to my Heroine Quartet
by Natty Mark Samuels On this Saturday evening, I sit relaxing in joyful thought, wishing that the next time I go to Ghana, I get to hear Dr. Rabiatu Deinyo Ammah speak. I wish I could have been there, at… Read More ›
Book Review: Diversity, Equality and Achievement in Education (Knowles & Lander, 2011)
reviewed by Sadia Habib Diversity, Equality and Achievement in Education by Gianna Knowles and Vini Lander (Sage, 2011) Intentional and unintentional racism is very much still a part of today’s society experienced by people of colour in everyday situations… Read More ›
What does integrity mean in a digital age? Self-branding, promotion and why Mark Zuckerberg probably doesn’t like you
An extract from Social Media for Academics by Mark Carrigan As a teenager I was captivated by Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I’d enjoyed fiction prior to this but there was a certain quality to the story that left it… Read More ›
The Diary of Natty Samuels – 21 December 2015
by Natty Mark Samuels As yesterday, I focused on reflection – and the writing of the first installment of the diary – so today, I review the words of the previous day, including fire – nar; field – haql; forest… Read More ›
The Diary of Natty Samuels – 20 December 2015
by Natty Mark Samuels Dec.20th Amongst other words in my head as I awoke this morning, was the name Eric Clapton! Every morning when I awake, I give myself a review, of the previous day’s learning. Yesterday, one of the… Read More ›
Natty Samuels – Beginning an Arabic Language Learning Journey
by Natty Mark Samuels In November 2015 – I decided to learn Arabic. As we go along, I shall speak of the reasons why. For now, I would like to say that this idea, which has turned into a great… Read More ›
Book Review: Muslims, Schooling & The Question of Self-Segregation
reviewed by Sadia Habib Muslims, Schooling & The Question of Self-Segregation by Dr Shamim Miah (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) Muslims and education are frequently ‘hot topics’ in media and political discourses. Academics have highlighted how pessimistic media and political rhetoric about… Read More ›
Humanity on a Budget, or the ‘Value-Added’ of Being Human
This piece is dedicated to Stefan Stern, who picked up on – and ran with – a remark I made at this year’s Brain Bar Budapest, concerning the need for a ‘value-added’ account of being ‘human’ in a world in… Read More ›
Marginalisation of Muslims and organisations like CAGE
Katy Sian’s brilliant response to Max Farrar’s attempts to vilify human rights organisation CAGE: “Alas Max Farrar, the difficulty of your approach is that you consistently fail to accept that collective identities are not predetermined and that the process of… Read More ›
Oppression and self-promotion on social media
This is a really important post by Eric Grollman that has helped me rethink a part of Social Media for Academics that I was struggling with. The systematic generation of imposter syndrome within the academy is a crucial mechanism through which the costs… Read More ›
Celebrity, Publicity and Self-Branding in Web 2.0
If you like this lecture by Alice Marwick, you’ll enjoy her excellent book Status Update.
Homi K Bhabha’s Nation and Narration
“What kind of a cultural space is the nation with its transgressive boundaries and its ‘interruptive’ interiority?” (p5) Bhabha’s edited book contains chapters by prominent thinkers on the “ideological ambivalence” of nation, and the performative nature of language employed when… Read More ›
Book Review: Youth, Multiculturalism and Community Cohesion
Youth, Multiculturalism and Community Cohesion by Paul Thomas (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) (Palgrave Politics of Identity & Citizenship Series) Thomas’ book is an engaging and well-written account of the dilemmas of contemporary society in dealing with youth identity and multiculturalism, particularly… Read More ›
The Study of the Learner Identity in Neoliberal Times
by Garth Stahl Class, gender, and ethnicity, while contested areas, all play a role in the constitution of identity as the self is not fixed. Identities are not distinct from discourses but instead produced by and through them. As collections… Read More ›
Book Review: The Ashgate Research Companion to Multiculturalism
The Ashgate Research Companion to Multiculturalism Edited by Duncan Ivison, University of Sydney, Australia Review by Sadia Habib The Ashgate Research Companion to Multiculturalism provides a thoroughly detailed and very contemporary analysis of the problematic and nuanced nature of… Read More ›
Book Review: Identity, Neoliberalism and Aspiration – Educating white working-class boys
review by Sadia Habib Identity, Neoliberalism and Aspiration – Educating white working-class boys by Garth Stahl Adopting a culturalist approach and a Bourdieusian lens, the book focuses on research conducted in London to learn about white working-class students’ experiences, identities… Read More ›
Discourse, Power, Resistance 15 – Creative Spaces for Collective Voices
Dear Colleagues Discourse, Power, Resistance 15 – Creative Spaces for Collective Voices Come to a conference at Goldsmiths on 15th-17th April 2015. Abstracts have been submitted from all over the world including: Reigniting the Flame of Activism– Challenging Homophobia as… Read More ›
The gaps in which being human happens
I’m currently reading Vincent Deary’s How We Are. It’s the first book in a planned trilogy exploring how people change. For the last few months I’ve had a vague idea that at some point I’d like to develop themes from my PhD… Read More ›
Book Review: Liminality and the Modern, Living Through the In-Between by BjØrn Thomassen
Book Review by Bradley Williams With Liminality and the Modern, BjØrn Thomassen has provided an invaluable resource for researchers of all types of ritualistic processes in different social settings. As Thomassen notes, the concept of liminality is under-utilized in anthropology… Read More ›
Grayson Perry and The Ashford Hijab: White, Female & Muslim
#GraysonPerry Ashford Hijab by Grayson Perry Via @AnthonyDBowen pic.twitter.com/WZb1gkbQjQ — Education Researcher (@educ_research) October 27, 2014 In October 2006, I interviewed a White British female Year 11 student who had researched Islam for eight months and then decided to convert… Read More ›
Preview of Book: Identity, Neoliberalism and Aspiration – Educating White Working-class Boys
The issues surrounding boys ‘underachievement’ and raising standards have been at the centre of public debate in education over the last two decades. As part of the Routledge Research in Educational Equality and Diversity series, Identity, Neoliberalism and Aspiration: Educating… Read More ›
Representation in The Keeper of Lost Causes
The Scandinavian noir film adaptation of Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s gripping book The Keeper of Lost Causes hit our British art-house cinema screens this week. The original book, which was first published in Danish as Kvinden i buret in 2008,… Read More ›