This article presents the main terms of the racial contract, as they appear in the subcontracts of Mills' theory, such as the spatial, epistemological, cognitive subcontracts. It is important to keep in mind that these subcontracts are by no means separate and represent analytical moments of the main contract. Furthermore, other than its…

We old warriors of ideology critique and "wissensoziologie" should not be too hard on ourselves for having forgotten reflexivity and the labors of putting paradigms, including our own, back into the context of history and social movement. Normal science is our necessary bread and butter. We achieved a lot by shaking the liberal…

Drawing on one of the author's experiences of teaching white teacher candidates in an urban university, this paper argues for the importance of interrogating the ways that benign emotions (e.g., pity and caring) are sometimes hidden expressions of disgust for the Other. Using critical race theory, whiteness studies, and critical emotion…

The aim of this article is to analyse how good intentions in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) discursively construct and maintain differences between "Us" and "Them". The empirical material consists of textbooks about sustainable development used in Swedish schools. An analysis of how "Us" and…

This article critiques some of the existing literature in critical pedagogy and the way it tends to overlook or downplay the strong emotional investments of troubled knowledge in posttraumatic situations. Examining existing literature in critical pedagogy reiterates the argument that the discourse of critical pedagogy constructs and sustains its…

Jacques Ranciere remains neglected within educational debates. In this paper I examine the potential of his philosophies for enacting critical interventions in relation to contemporary (higher) educational concerns. Ranciere argues against the progressive temporality of pedagogic relations and provides an alternative thesis that equality is a…

Public schools around the world have been hijacked and deformed beyond recognition by the forces of the economy over the past three decades. This paper provides an analysis and a way out of this miasma around the notion of the socially just school. While not another prescription, this orientation is argued to be the most hopeful possibility for…

Despite its ideological saturation, recent neo-liberal education policy has been deeply depoliticising in the sense of reducing properly political concerns to matters of technical efficiency. This depoliticisation is reflected in the hegemony of a managerial discourse and the decontestation of terms like "quality" and "effectiveness", as well as…

While the need for humanising education is pressing in neoliberal societies, the conditions for its possibility in formal institutions have become particularly cramped. A constellation of factors--the strength of neoliberal ideologies, the corporatisation of universities, the conflation of human freedom with consumer satisfaction and a wider…

Recently critical scholars have shown a renewed interest in spatial relations in educational contexts. In this essay we use selections from Gulson and Symes's edited volume "Spatial theories of education" as a point of departure to examine what spatial analysis can contribute to the critical education traditions. We argue that, when done…

Although alienation is widely recognized as a barrier to educational success for many students, prevailing explanations tend to focus on psychological traits and individual deficits, rather than the oppressive economic and social structures bearing down on young people. This paper addresses the issues of youth alienation and student engagement…

The paper aims to explore the relationship between globalization and education through an investigation of educational policy development in the specific context of the Asia Pacific. The paper's primary focus is on data collected from the World Bank, OECD, IMF and UNESCO to look primarily at three interrelated trends in education: increasing…

Drawing on the voices of students, parents and teachers from a secondary school located in a regional area of Australia in a township characterised by its high welfare dependency and Indigenous population, this article explores the tensions between how marginalised students see themselves and how they are seen by their peers, teachers and fellow…

This paper is part of the ongoing work of the author and others in developing a social realist theory of knowledge for educational studies. It contrasts Durkheim and Vygotsky's theories and why both are important for educational theory. It begins by emphasizing the similarities between them; that knowledge has to be understood in terms of its…

Critical research in education is not what it used to be. It must now engage with a differently structured and globalized world with different social and material conditions for its peoples. This paper sets out to name the contemporary structure of feeling in which education researchers now work, particularly in terms of what now is to be the…