Culture is not a predetermined, static, bounded unit. Both its boundaries and what is considered cultural difference are constructed through social processes. Ray McDermott and Herve Varenne (1995) argue that only certain differences are noticed, usually according to what is regarded as meaningful difference in one's own society. For example,…

This article examines the multiple spaces of schooling as it shifts architecturally, geographically, and increasingly virtually. It aims to examine how how teachers might find new networks of power and subjectivities--using the interlocking concepts of the vagabond, the nomad, and imaginal machines--of historically situated bodies that perform and…

In the last thirty years there has been a broad shift in ideas and practices concerning the individual's responsibility to pursue healthiness (in particular ways, with particular idealized outcomes). This is a result of the ''unwinding'' (Packer 2013) of the social welfare contract between governments and its citizens, and…

When entering the permanent exhibit titled "Living in America" in the Arab American National Museum (AANM) in Dearborn, Michigan, visitors are greeted with a sign that reads "Ahlan wa Sahlan." It is a greeting that translates in English to: "Your path is easier now that you are with us." The visitor, "you,"…

This article is organized as follows. First, the author introduces a few ways to consider and define spoken word in its current cultural and historical form. She then discusses spoken word literacy by bringing in the voices of youth spoken word artists to address further the question of relevance. In doing so, Ruth Kin connects how spoken word…

In this article, the author draws specifically on the work of Walter Benjamin and engages with the world of video games by focusing on the constitution of labor as it unfolds in modding practices, as well as approaching the very act of seeing labor in a highly visual culture where value is extracted not just through the labor process but also…

As a field of study, kinesiology is realized in different places and locations as a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and, very rarely, transdisciplinary project. In the words of the American Kinesiology Association, it is an academic discipline that involves the study of physical activity and its impact on health, society, and quality of…

"Elitism" is frequently invoked among the pantheon of "isms" actively to be disavowed. Indeed the charge of elitism often takes the form of reiteration, of identifying yet another manifestation of adherence to traditional standards steeped in discrimination by sex, race, and class, this time in their institutional guises in the merit credited to…

Any critical theory of education, which critical pedagogy claims to be, is intimately caught up in questions of value, critique, and the possibility of constructing more engaged and democratic forms of learning. The struggle for a democratic education is, however, more than the expression of antagonism but is also deeply concerned with human…

While the educational project privileges signifying speech, the psychical significance of the "voice" has become an institutional "vanishing mediator." Against the commonplace assumption that the voice functions as a benign vehicle for conscious meaning-making, this article examines the sublimated privilege and function of the voice in the context…

The field of youth studies appears to have increasingly taken on a self-consciously "international" orientation, characterized by grappling with how to represent local youth identities and social practices within international, transnational, or global contexts. This challenge is repeated across many different types of study and worked through in…

The author cites the popular distinction between "traveler" and "tourist", noting that the latter has come to signify someone less enlightened, less conscientious and less distinguished than the former. Discussing critical pedagogy in terms of this paradox, she draws upon her experience in designing and teaching an interdisciplinary undergraduate…

September 11, 2001 generated diverse responses from around the world, but for many subjects located in "the West," an enduring perception surfaced in the aftermath of the attacks: that 9/11 revealed the fragility of the "Western Self" as a secure identity. In a move towards self-scrutiny post 9/11, it is not only the presence of the Other that has…

In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and amid sweeping patriotic declarations that the suicide hijackers had waged a war on America as well as democracy, the energetic response by public intellectuals, academics, philosophers, and theorists has been to ask, what "America," what "democracy," what…

In this article, the author suggests that a Foucaultian analytics of power may be used to explain not only how white, middle-class parents make school choices, but also the effects such choices have on these parents. This essay looks at an empirical moment in which a group of white, middle-class parents responded to a change that occurred in their…