From working draft:
Educational Policy as Political Spectacle
This article draws upon Edelman’s (1988) theory of political spectacle, as applied to educational policy by Smith (2004).  Political spectacles are, according to these scholars,  political constructions of reality that “resemble theater, complete with directors, stages, casts of actors, narrative plots, and (most importantly) [...]

This site is still under construction.

To see the ways in which Herve Varenne is extending, presenting and “playing” with my work on NCLB’s Supplemental Educational Services. There you’ll even find an emerging comic strip based on the work of Ray McDermott, Herve Varenne, and Jill Koyama!  It’s entitled, “The School America Builds.”

ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY
I draw upon actor-network theory (Latour, 1995, 2005) to examine the dynamic work and the relational links set in motion by the appropriation—commonly referred to as the formation and implementation—of educational policy and “to grasp the interactions (and disjunctions) between different sites or levels in policy processes” (Shore & Wright 1997: 14).  The theory [...]

THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE
Despite the multiple and various “critiques in anthropology [that] have largely dethroned the concept of culture from its once-central position in anthropological theory” (Gershon and Taylor 2008: 417), culture remains an enduring and relevant notion in my work on education in America. I take seriously that “[a]s anthropologists, we must face culture [...]