BookPDF Available

Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing Deterritorializing/ Reterritorializing Critical Geography of Educational Reform Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing Critical Geography of Educational Reform

  • April 2017
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-6300-977-5
  • Publisher: Sense Publishers
  • Editor: Nancy Ares
  • ISBN: 978-94-6300-977-5
Authors:
Nancy Ares at University of Rochester
Nancy Ares
Edward Buendía at University of Washington Bothell
Edward Buendía
Robert J. Helfenbein at Mercer University
Robert J. Helfenbein
Download full-text PDF
Read full-text
Download citation

Abstract

This volume features scholars who use a critical geography framework to analyze how constructions of social space shape education reform. In particular, they situate their work in present-day neoliberal policies that are pushing responsibility for economic and social welfare, as well as education policy and practice, out of federal and into more local entities. States, cities, and school boards are being given more responsibility and power in determining curriculum content and standards, accompanied by increasing privatization of public education through the rise of charter schools and for-profit organizations' incursion into managing schools. Given these pressures, critical geography's unique approach to spatial constructions of schools is crucially important. Reterritorialization and deterritorialization, or the varying flows of people and capital across space and time, are highlighted to understand spatial forces operating on such things as schools, communities, people, and culture. Authors from multiple fields of study contribute to this book's examination of how social, political, and historical dimensions of spatial forces, especially racial/ethnic and other markers of difference, shape are shaped by processes and outcomes of school reform.
Content uploaded by Nancy Ares
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Nancy Ares on Apr 12, 2017
Content may be subject to copyright.
Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing Nancy Ares, Edward Buendía and
Robert Helfenbein (Eds.)
Spine
14.3 mm
Deterritorializing/
Reterritorializing
Critical Geography of Educational
Reform
Nancy Ares, Edward Buendía and
Robert Helfenbein (Eds.)
SensePublishers
Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
Critical Geography of Educational Reform
Nancy Ares
Universtity of Rochester, USA
Edward Buendía
University of Washington – Bothell, USA
and
Robert Helfenbein
Loyola University of Maryland, USA
This volume features scholars who use a critical geography framework to analyze how
constructions of social space shape education reform. In particular, they situate their
work in present-day neoliberal policies that are pushing responsibility for economic
and social welfare, as well as education policy and practice, out of federal and into more
local entities. States, cities, and school boards are being given more responsibility and
power in determining curriculum content and standards, accompanied by increasing
privatization of public education through the rise of charter schools and for-profit
organizations’ incursion into managing schools. Given these pressures, critical
geography’s unique approach to spatial constructions of schools is crucially important.
Reterritorialization and deterritorialization, or the varying flows of people and capital
across space and time, are highlighted to understand spatial forces operating on such
things as schools, communities, people, and culture. Authors from multiple fields of
study contribute to this book’s examination of how social, political, and historical
dimensions of spatial forces, especially racial/ethnic and other markers of difference,
shape are shaped by processes and outcomes of school reform.
Cover photo: Representations, 2016 Kellie Welborn,
www.welbornimages.com
ISBN 978-94-6300-975-1
BSED 8
BREAKTHROUGHS IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATIONBREAKTHROUGHS IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION

Chapters (15)

About These Times
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.3-25
We decided to situate this book in the context of neoliberal policies and practices around education reform, given their widespread influence in the US and elsewhere. Such policies and practices have been pursued in a variety of places across the globe; a common denominator among them is their commitment to capitalism (for example, the United States, New Zealand, the UK, and Australia (Davis & Bansel, 2007).
Critical Geography of Education
Full-text available
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.27-40
Words fail. True in many ways, but particularly important as this volume takes up the question of what theories of critical geography might have to offer the study of contemporary education reform. In English, the terms space and place are used interchangeably and have multiple connotations from the specific to the abstract. This proves to be difficult as readers of the work are often unclear on important distinctions.
Tuck and Guess’ Foundational Question
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.41-44
We placed this chapter at the beginning of the book to emphasize the importance of the question, “whose land are we talking about?” Indeed, the very question of ownership is one Tuck and Guess remind us is open to challenge. Beginning with this chapter, we are signaling to readers that the spaces that we are writing about in the book are Indigenous spaces that have been violently overlaid with colonizing practices, actions, images, etc.
Collaborating on Selfsame Land1
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.45-56
We write to you from the middle of something. It may not really be the middle, but it is not the end and it is not the beginning. We write to you from somewhere, though as we write we are geographically dispersed. We write as collaborators in the truest sense – committed to one another’s personal, political, poetical, and professional projects.
Reterritorializing as Community Activism in an Urban Community-School Transformation Initiative
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.61-78
A resident-driven school and community transformation initiative in upstate New York, the Coalition for the Children of Lakeview (CCL), is the site for this chapter’s critical geography analysis. A Planning Panel1 (PP) of approximately 116 individuals representing residents (51%) and social service and governmental agency representatives (non-residents) (49%) was formed in 2005 to make critical decisions regarding the content of the CCL plan (e.g., specific foci such as k-16 education, employment, housing, public safety).
They Called us the Revolutionaries
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.79-97
Youth activists from marginalized groups and communities across the country have been fighting educational inequalities. Due to the rise of neoliberal reform agendas, the world has witnessed a resurgence of youth activism (Kirshner & Pozzoboni, 2011). Specifically, locating productive social spaces for youth to claim, to negotiate, and to articulate positive social selves are the focus of this chapter as youth engage in sense-making about educational injustice.
Seeking Lefebvre’s Vécu in a “Deaf Space” Classroom
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.99-107
Lefebvre’s spatial triad is well-known to geographers, and increasingly understood beyond the Field for me not to labour their description. Emerging from Lefebvre’s quest for Totalité—a quest that he posited in spatial terms as the pursuit of a moment in which, rather than finding itself squeezed into ill-fitting and ill-constructed spaces, we might integrate ourselves and our environments in ways that allow complete integrity and freedom—Lefebvre’s spatial triad manifested as the building blocks of encounter, three spatial moments that are innocently devoid of any over-authoring.
Story Maps as Convincing Representations of Claims to Space
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.109-120
The goal in this chapter is to illustrate how a critical geography framework guided my analysis of one resident/activist’s perspectives and participation in the Coalition for the Children of Lakeview (CCL; for an in-depth description, see O’Connor, Ares, & Larson, 2011), a resident-driven community-transformation initiative in upstate New York. As such, it is both a methodological piece and a report of research findings.
Same as it Ever Was
Full-text available
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.125-150
There has been much recent attention to understandings of our contemporary moment as what is being called “the new Jim Crow” (e.g., Alexander, 2012; Forman, 2012). This talk has primarily centered around discussions of ongoing practices in law and the criminal “justice” system that continue to lead to the overwhelmingly disproportionate incarceration of African American, Latinx and other people (often males) of color.
Welcome to Zombie City
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.151-174
The center of neoliberal education reform in both a literal and figurative sense is the urban public school. As such, the surrounding communities feel the effects of such reforms. Indeed, neoliberal education reform has ties to larger efforts to re(de)form the city (Helfenbein, 2011). These education reforms are situated with(in) a larger movement that seeks to undermine public services and shift the balance of democracy firmly away from any communitarian principles onto a hyper-realized individual.
The Scales of Power in School District Secession
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.175-189
Research focused on the processes and effects of educational segregation has consistently centered school district and municipal boundaries as conceptual units that are critical to understanding the dividing mechanisms of different racial and economic groups across U.S. schools. The two prongs constituting this line of inquiry—demographic and policy focused research—have emphasized the effects of these political units, particularly in how they sort different racial groups and structure access to high status educational programs.
Tefera, A. A., Rios-Aguilar, C., Artiles, A. J., Voulgarides, C. K., & Vélez, V. (2017). Developing a critical space perspective in the examination of the racialization of disabilities. In N. Ares, E. Buendia & R. Helfenbein, (Eds.), Deterritorializing/ Reterritorializing: C
Full-text available
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Breakthroughs in the Sociology of Education: Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing Critical Geography of Educational Reform
  • pp.191-207
Researchers have long argued that the spatial dimensions of our lives, in addition to the social and historical, have important practical and policy significance (Lefebvre, 1991; Soja, 1989, 2010). Although theorizing space has increased in recent years in a number of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, postcolonial studies, and economics, to name a few (Peake & Schein, 2000), it has been relatively under-theorized in education (Tate, 2008).
Genderplay and Queer Mapping
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.209-232
Many will likely look back at June 2015 as a pivotal month for queer and trans activists. In June, Caitlyn Jenner debuted on the cover of Vanity Fair. This media-supported public coming out transition of the Olympic athlete and reality television star brought widespread attention to transgender issues, politics, and identities. Just weeks later, the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
Latino Neighborhood Choice
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.233-250
The de- and re-territoralization couplet of the global-informational economy has brought with it economic and demographic changes across many metropolitan regions in the U.S. that have altered the contexts of educational reform. The dispersion of immigrant families across metropolitan regional areas has become a pervasive trend as global economies have amplified the employment opportunities beyond central cities (Castles & Miller, 2003; Singer, 2008; Wells et al., 2014).
Telling Our Own Stories
Chapter
  • Jan 2017
  • Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing
  • pp.253-256
The early nineteenth century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer famously wrote, “The task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what no body yet has thought about that which everyone sees.” This aphorism aptly describes how our eyes might be opened wider to the many ways that everyday social and ecological relationships can be revealed, clarified, and potentially transformed through geographic thinking, specifically through diverse enactments of an activist critical geography.

Supplementary resource (1)

BSED-Ares Flyer
Data
April 2017
Nancy Ares · Edward Buendía · Robert J. Helfenbein
... Les travaux les plus récents actent ce cadre théorique de la néolibéralisation, mais aussi un positionnement scientifique critique au travers de deux types de travaux. D'abord, une partie des chercheurs positionnent leur travail dans une dynamique de recherche action, appelant à la mobilisation face à la privatisation de l'éducation, promouvant l'idée que les écoles sont des espaces de résistance (Anyon 2008 ;Ares et al. 2017 ;Hankins et Henry 2014 ;Lauria et Mirón 2005 ;Lipman 2011b). Ensuite, cette orientation se lit même dans la définition du champ de la géographie de l'éducation, dans les thématiques choisies et dans ses méthodes (Basu 2010 ;Brock 2013 ;Butler et Hamnett 2007 ;McCreary et al. 2013 ;Taylor 2009). ...
... Les circulations scientifiques et surtout la communication entre les deux communautés scientifiques amènent à des appropriations réciproques. À titre d'exemple, on peut citer l'emploi encore timide de la notion de territoire dans des travaux récents en géographie de l'éducation aux États-Unis ou la revendication de la position radicale dans la géographie urbaine française (Ares et al. 2017 ;Gintrac et Giroud 2014). ...
Déposséder l'école pour servir la ville néolibérale aux Etats-Unis. Les cas d'Atlanta et de Philadelphie.
Thesis
  • Dec 2021
La néolibéralisation des politiques éducatives aux États-Unis transforme les paysages scolaires des grandes métropoles dont les marchés éducatifs se recomposent et participent à la fabrique des territoires urbains. Le processus d’accumulation par dépossession trouve dans la filière éducative un nouveau champ d’expansion, donnant lieu à de multiples processus politiques, économiques, sociaux mais aussi spatiaux, recoupant les grandes dynamiques urbaines contemporaines à la fois la marginalisation de certains quartiers périphériques et la gentrification d’autres plus centraux. Cette thèse interroge la place de l’éducation dans les mutations du nouvel ordre urbain néolibéral. Au travers de deux études de cas, Atlanta en Géorgie et Philadelphie en Pennsylvanie, l’enquête qualitative s’appuie sur un recueil de données de terrain varié et la construction de bases de données cartographiques inédites permettant de dresser un portrait des territoires scolaires et de leurs transformations. Une approche à la croisée des géographies sociale et radicale permet d’adopter plusieurs notions pour explorer ce champ. La montée des enjeux politiques éducatifs au sein des agendas urbains néolibéraux se lit au travers de la structuration de régimes éducationnels urbains portant les politiques de reterritorialisation par la privatisation de l’éducation. Les résistances aux différentes formes de dépossession (politique, économique, scolaire, mémorielle) donnent à lire un ordre nouveau où les hybridations et solutions des acteurs construisent de nouveaux territoires scolaires au sein de mosaïques urbaines de plus en plus complexes.
View
... In focusing on area history and community assets for educational leaders (Khalifa 2012), this article builds on research that centersand strengthens community constituencies within efforts to increase equity within urban schools (Warren 2011;Warren and Mapp 2011). It also contributes to research focused on the relationship between space, educational reform, and contextually lived experience (Ares et al. 2017). Thus, it underscores the role of the city, its inhabitants (Lefebvre 1996;Lipman 2011;Purcell 2002), and local schools in (un)doing spatially fixed inequality. ...
... CBOs and community coalitions can help to ameliorate systemic problems associated with race-and class-based discrimination ) and push in the direction of societal transformation. Research also documents concerns about these relationships (Green and Gooden 2014;Horsford and Sampson 2014), educational reform as relevant to the lived experience or urban residents (Ares et al. 2017), and because of larger configurations of power, who gets to participate and to what extent (Purcell 2002). Still, community-based alternatives to traditional educational accountability and standards reforms forge ahead (Anyon 2005(Anyon , 2009Oakes and Rogers 2006;Warren 2005;Warren and Mapp 2011) and with good reason. ...
(Un)doing Spatially Fixed Inequality: Critical Reflections on Urban School District-Community Partnerships
Article
Full-text available
Utilizing critical geography, critical history, and critical educational studies as guideposts, this article examines community organizing and school district partnerships as relevant to improving urban public education reform efforts and schooling practices within the United States. Proceeding in four parts, part one discusses the kinds of external multi-sector entities working with school districts in a continued era of accountability-driven educational reform. Understanding community activism as a lever to address urban geospatial obstacles to equity-oriented educational practices, this is followed by a historical overview of community-based organizations (CBOs) as tied to sociopolitical, economic, and schooling transformation throughout the U.S. Part three helps to illustrate this position through discussion of the Buffalo-Niagara Region and the case of one urban school district context—Buffalo Public Schools (BPS). Specifically, it considers how regional history, demographic shifts, urban development, racial spatialization, and CBOs affect district practices. It concludes with a discussion of the significance of CBO partnerships with urban schools toward the end of improving educational opportunities for traditionally underserved, low income, and minoritized student populations.
View
... In fact, Ares, Buendia, and Helfenbein (2017) have used deterritorialization and reterritorialization to examine power dynamics in space-related social practices. Deterritorialization refers to changes in or the breakdown of existing social relations that regulate actions, and reterritorialization describes the process of reorganization of control over the flows given changes across boundaries (Ares et al., 2017). Although grobalization may not necessarily involve territorial changes, the hegemonic influences across borders can be both covert and implicit. ...
View
... Below we summarize some key aspects of this literature on residential choice and immigrant social networks, with a focus on sociological studies to align with our theoretical framework. First, immigrants rely on friends and family in their housing and employment search, particularly in new areas (Basolo & Nguyen, 2009;Buendía et al., 2017;Krysan & Crowder, 2017;Zhou, 1992). This information is particularly useful given the role that residential mobility can have on improving labor market outcomes (Ludwig & Raphael, 2010). ...
Combining social network analysis and geographic information system for communication research: an application to immigrant communities
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2022
Social Network Analysis and Geographic Information Systems can be combined and applied to communication research to better understand how communication networks are associated with spatial or city characteristics. We use a case study of communication networks of immigrant church members (N = 178) in New Jersey to test theories of spatial versus strategic assimilation, visualize social networks, and city racial composition. The findings demonstrate that church members seeking information from coethnic immigrant networks were more likely to live in cities with a concentration of white residents, whereas members who provided more informational support to other members were less likely to live in whiter areas. Thus, coethnic residential choice may not always be linked to immigrant network use and the case applies more to the pattern of strategic assimilation. Future communication research involving questions related to physical locations and space can benefit from combining Social Network Analysis and Geographic Information System techniques in innovative ways.
View
... Both a curricular and a spatial lens offer opportunities to see society in new and striking ways that push back on commonsense understandings and ideologies. Examples of this type of work can be seen in the collection of scholarship in a special issue on spatial theory and education research (Helfenbein & Huddleston, 2013) and the book Deterritorializing/Reterritorializing: Critical Geography of Educational Reform (Ares, Buendía, & Helfenbein, 2017). While not exclusive examples, these works represent an explicit application of critical spatial theory in various curricular ways. ...
View
Critical Gender Geographies
Article
  • Feb 2021
Critical geography, as it is studied in North America and parts of Europe, has been growing since the 1970s. However, focusing on gender, sexual orientation, race, home language, or the like, was not a primary concern of the field until the mid-1980s. As radical critical geography shifted toward cultural and critical geography, marginalized voices could be heard in and across the field in local and less-local contexts. As critical geography began to intersect with education in the mid-1990s, it became a tool for studying marginalization across layers of scale. Fields of geography are impacted as much by contemporary sociopolitical dialogues as they are by educational research and its related historical boundaries and borders. Finally, it is significant to consider what a critical gender-queer geography might mean as the field continues to grow.
View
Small Rural Schools in Austria: Potentials and Challenges
Chapter
Full-text available
  • Aug 2019
The author of this chapter analyses the potential and challenges of small rural primary schools. Between 2009 and 2015, researchers of two transnational projects co-operated with partners from Switzerland to carry out studies in small rural schools in Western Austria. Due to topological conditions, small rural primary schools are common in this region, with 43% of primary schools consisting of fewer than 50 pupils. Yet despite this high number, little research had been done previously. The authors of 20 case studies of small rural primary schools in Vorarlberg showed that these schools are a source of both educational opportunities and specific challenges. The author will describe issues informing the work of teachers in these schools, the special situation of rural head teachers, and the struggle to secure the existence of small schools through developing a special profile as Montessori institutions.
View
Geographies of Schooling
Book
Full-text available
  • Jan 2019
This open access book explores the complex relationship between schooling as a set of practices embedded in educational institutions and their specific spatial dimensions from different disciplinary perspectives. It presents innovative empirical and conceptual research by international scholars from the fields of social geography, pedagogy, educational and social sciences in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Czechia, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Norway and Canada. The book covers a broad range of topics, all examined from a spatial perspective: the governance of schooling, the transition processes of and within national school systems, the question of small schools in peripheral areas as well as the embeddedness of schooling in broader processes of social change. Transcending disciplinary boundaries, the book offers deep insights into current theoretical debates and empirical case studies within the broad research field encompassing the complex relationship between education and space.
View
Field and Terrain: The Micropolitics of Community Leadership in Small, Rural Schools in England
Chapter
Full-text available
  • Aug 2019
The authors of this chapter discuss the role and centrality of the school in two contrasting rural villages in England. They first analyse the school’s social history, then evaluate its sustainability relative to other village-based service provisions, and finally focus on the role of the head teacher. The authors base their discussion heavily on the results of an RCUK-funded project conducted in two English villages. Differences emerge between the cultural heritages and individual leadership styles in both localities. They argue that the rural head teacher’s relative autonomy as a key actor in a small rural community has shifted, as has the relationship between school and village in terms of social cohesion, and that the backdrop of the locality’s cultural heritage is critical. They conclude that small rural schools are shaped by their local contexts and social histories, but that their head teachers continue to enjoy a degree of relative autonomy.
View
A Multilevel View of Small Schools: Changing Systems in Baden-Württemberg and Vorarlberg
Chapter
Full-text available
  • Aug 2019
Owing to demographic changes, discussions concerning the quality of small schools have increased in European countries. Two opposing schooling paradigms form this discussion’s backdrop: Advocacy of and opposition to small schools. How the discussion on the “making of schools” is conducted depends on preferred education policies and ideological affiliations, as well as on national state or economic situations. Numerous actors on a number of different spatial levels are involved in determining concrete school parameters, e.g., system structures via school planning, traffic planning, teacher allocation and organizing school routines. The multilevel view on small schools introduced here identifies an array of factors that influence the making of schools, i.e., societal processes, structures and systems, groups of actors and individuals. The author’s empirical research in Baden-Württemberg and Vorarlberg covers 25 years, and the pioneering comprehensive multilevel view on issues related to the making of small schools illustrates its importance for spatial planning.
View
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.