The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education

Michael W. Apple, Stephen J. Ball, Luis Armando Gandin, Michael W. Apple, Stephen J. Ball, Luis Armando Gandin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415619967
• eBook ISBN: 9781135179700
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This collection brings together many of the world's leading sociologists of education to explore and address key issues and concerns within the discipline. The thirty-seven newly commissioned chapters draw upon theory and research to provide new accounts of contemporary educational processes, global trends, and changing and enduring forms of social conflict and social inequality.

The research, conducted by leading international scholars in the field, indicates that two complexly interrelated agendas are discernible in the heat and noise of educational change over the past twenty-five years. The first rests on a clear articulation by the state of its requirements of education. The second promotes at least the appearance of greater autonomy on the part of educational institutions in the delivery of those requirements. The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education examines the ways in which the sociology of education has responded to these two political agendas, addressing a range of issues which cover three key areas:

• perspectives and theories
• social processes and practices
• inequalities and resistances.

The book strongly communicates the vibrancy and diversity of the sociology of education and the nature of 'sociological work' in this field. It will be a primary resource for teachers, as well as a title of major interest to practising sociologists of education.

Part 1 Perspectives and theories

DOI: 10.4324/9780203863701-2

1 ‘Spatializing' the sociology of education

Stand-points, entry-points, vantage-points¹

Susan L. Robertson

DOI: 10.4324/9780203863701-3

Introduction

This chapter explores the implications of an absence of a critical spatial lens in the conceptual grammar of the field of the sociology of education. I argue that it is not sufficient to simply bring a spatial lexicon to our conceptual sentences (as in ‘geographies’ of classroom emotions; the school as a ‘place’; communities of practice). This is to fetishize space, leaving a particular medium of power, projects and politics – space – to go unnoticed. Rather, to apply a critical spatial lens to the sociology of education means seeing the difference that space, along with time and sociality – the two privileged angles of view in modernity – makes to our understanding of contemporary knowledge formation, social reproduction and the constitution of subjectivities (Massey, 2005: 62; Soja, 1996: 71). By tracing out the ways in which space is deeply implicated in power, production and social relations, I hope to reveal the complex processes at work in constituting the social relations of ‘education space’ as a crucial site, object, instrument and outcome in this process. A ‘critical’ spatial lens in the sociology of education involves three moves: one, an outline of the ontological and epistemological premises of a critical theory of space; two, the specification of the central objects for enquiry to education and society; and three, bringing these theoretical and conceptual approaches together to open up an entry point for investigation, a vantage point from which to see education–society phenomena anew, and a standpoint from which to see how education space is produced and how it might be changed.

Move 1: a critical theory of space

Space is a highly contested concept in social science. Here, I will introduce the core vocabulary for a critical socio-spatial theory drawn from the leading theorists on space, including Lefebvre (1991), Soja (1996), Harvey (2006), Massey (1994), Smith (1992), Brenner (2003) and Jessop et al. (2008). This vocabulary, which has been developed over time and as a result of a series of spatial turns, offers us a set of theoretical and empirical concepts with which to work. The following assumptions are key: that, ontologically, space is social and real; that spaces are social relations stretched out; and that space is socially produced.

Epistemologically, space can be known through particular categories of ideas, as ‘perceived’, ‘conceived’ and ‘lived’ (Lefebvre, 1991), or as ‘absolute’, ‘relative’ and ‘relational’ (Harvey, 2006). These two framings will be developed in this chapter. Spaces are dynamic, overlapping and changing, in a shifting geometry of power (Massey, 1994). The organization of socio-spatial relations can take multiple forms and dimensions. This is reflected in a rich spatial lexicon that has been developed to make sense of the changing nature of production, (nation)state power, labour, knowledge, development and difference. Key concepts in this lexicon are ‘territory’, ‘place’, ‘scale’, ‘network’ and ‘positionality’. These concepts are pertinent for the sociology of education, which has, as its central point of enquiry, on the one hand, the role of education in (re)producing modern societies, and on the other hand, an examination of transformations within contemporary societies and their consequences for education systems, education experiences, opportunities and outcomes.

An ontology of space

French philosopher Henri Lefebvre and British-born geographer David Harvey are both viewed as having transformed our understanding of space, from a largely geometrical/mathematical term denoting an empty area, to seeing space in more critical ways: as social, real, produced and socially constitutive. Lefebvre’s intellectual project explicitly works with and beyond the binary of materialism and idealism. What marks out Lefebvre’s meta-philosophical project is his concern with the possibilities for change by identifying ‘third space’ (Soja, 1996: 31), a space of radical openness. In other words, Lefebvre’s approach is concerned, not only with the forces of production and the social relations that are organized around them, but also moving beyond to new, an-Other, unanticipated possibilities.

The introductory essay, ‘The plan’, in The production of space (1991) is regarded as containing Lefebvre’s key ideas. Lefebvre begins by arguing that, through much of modernity, our understanding of space was profoundly shaped by mathematicians, who invented all kinds of space that could be represented through calculations and techniques (Lefebvre, 1991: 2), To Lefebvre, what was not clear was the relationship between these representations (mental space) and ‘real space’ – ‘… the space of people who deal with material things’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 4).

However, Lefebvre was unhappy with pursuing an analytics of space centred on either continental philosophy or Marxism. He regarded this binary pairing as part of a conceptual dualism (conceived/idealism versus lived/materialism), closed to new, unanticipated outcomes. Lefebvre was particularly critical of the way continental philosophers, such as Foucault and Derrida, fetishized space, so that the mental realm, of ideas, representations, discourses and signs, enveloped and occluded social and physical spaces. To Lefebvre, semiology could not stand as a complete body of knowledge because it could not say much about space other than it was a text; a message to be read. Such thinking, he argued, was both political and ideological in that its science of space concealed the social relations of (capitalist) production and the role of that state in it (Lefebvre, 1991).

This did not mean Lefebvre embraced Marxism unproblematically. Though Lefebvre’s project aimed to reveal the way the social relations of production projected themselves onto space (Lefebvre, 1991: 129), he was critical of the way Marxist theorists on the one hand fetishized temporality, and on the other hand reduced ‘lived space’ to labour and products, ignoring the complexities of all spheres of life (such as art, politics, the judiciary) and their attendant social relations. A more expansive idea of production was embraced to take account of the multiplicity of ways in which ideas are produced, humans are created and labour, histories are constructed and minds are made (Lefebvre, 1991: 70–72). For Lefebvre,

social space subsumes things produced; and encompasses their relationships in their coexistence and simultaneity – their (relative) order and their/or their relative disorder. It is the outcome of a sequence or set of operations, and thus cannot be reduced to the rank of a simple object.

(Lefebvre, 1991: 73)

Similarly mindful of the need to avoid fetishizing space over time and vice versa, theorists such as Harvey (1989) and Massey (1994: 2) refer to ‘space–time’ to emphasize the integral nature of space and time, while Massey (1994) and Rose (1993) have advanced theoretical projects around gender as a social relation that is also profoundly spatially organized.

The twin ideas of ‘space’ and ‘production’ are central to Lefebvre’s analysis. Using an approach he calls ‘analysis followed by exposition’, Lefebvre’s project is to make space’s transparency and claim to innocence opaque, and therefore visible and interested. A ‘truth of space’, he argued, would enable us to see that capital and capitalism influence space in practical (buildings, investment and so on) and political ways (classes, hegemony via culture and knowledge). It is thus possible to demonstrate the role of space – as knowledge and action – in the existing capitalist mode of production (including its contradictions), to reveal the ways in which spaces are ‘produced’, and to show that each society had its own mode of production and produces its own space. Furthermore, if – as he argued was the case – the transition from one mode of production to another over time entailed the production of new spaces, then our analyses must also be directed by both the need to account for its temporality and also its spatiality.

Harvey, in an essay entitled ‘Space as a keyword’ (2006), draws upon a Marxist ontology of historical materialism and, like Lefebvre, seeks to understand processes of development under capitalism. However, Harvey’s central focus has centred upon capitalist temporalities and spatialities, specifically the contradiction between capital’s concern to annihilate space/time in the circuit of capital, and capital’s dependence on embedded social relations to stabilize the conditions of production and reproduction (Harvey, 1982, 1989). Nevertheless, for both writers, the production of space, the making of history and the composition of social relations or society are welded together in a complex linkage of space, time and sociality, or what Soja has called the trialectics of spatiality (1996).

Epistemologies of space

If epistemology is concerned with how we know, then the question of how to know space is also complicated by the multiple ways in which we imagine, sense and experience space. We travel through space, albeit aided by different means. We also attach ourselves to particular spaces, such as places of belonging, giving such places psycho-social meaning. Lefebvre’s theoretical approach is to unite these different epistemologies of space. In other words, in order to ‘… expose the actual production of space …’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 16) ‘… we are concerned with logico-epistemological space, the space of social practice, the space occupied by sensory phenomena, including products of the imagination such as projects and projections, symbols and utopias’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 11–12). These claims led Lefebvre to identify and develop three conceptualizations of space at work all of the time in relation to any event or social practice: spatial practice (the material, or perceived space); representations of space (or conceptualized space, or conceived space); and representational spaces (it overlays physical space and is directly lived through its associated images and symbols; or lived space) (Lefebvre, 1991: 38–39). Like his meta-philosophical embrace of idealism and materialism, Lefebvre’s epistemology is never to privilege one spatial dimension over another, for instance conceived space over lived space. Rather, the three dimensions are part of a totality, a ‘trialectics of being’ (Soja, 1996: 71).

Harvey’s epistemology of space is somewhat different. Though both agree upon the materiality of space, which Harvey calls ‘absolute space’, while Lefebvre refers to it as ‘perceived space’, Harvey offers two alternative concepts to make up a somewhat different tripartite division: that of ‘relative space’ and ‘relational space’. Applied to social space, space is relative in the sense that there are multiple geometries from which to choose (or not), and that the spatial frame is dependent upon what is being relativized and by whom (Harvey, 2006: 272). So, for instance, we can create very different maps of relative locations depending on topological relations, the various frictions enabling movements through space are different, the different spatio-temporal logics at work, and so on. The idea of ‘relational space’ is intended to capture the notion that there are no such things as time and space outside the processes that define them. This leads to a very important and powerful claim by Harvey, of internal relations. In other words, ‘an event or a thing at a point in space cannot be understood by appeal to what exists only at a particular point. It depends upon everything that is going on around it … the past, present and the future concentrate and congeal at a certain point’ (Harvey, 2006: 274). This point is particularly pertinent for a critical theory of education and society, for it is to argue that it is critical to see ‘events’ in relation to wider sets of social, economic and political processes.

The spatiality and geometry of power

In the arguments advanced so far, the idea that space is a form of power is implicit. Doreen Massey (1994: 2005) makes this explicit. Not only is space social relations stretched...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction Mapping the sociology of education: social context, power and knowledge
• Part 1: Perspectives and theories
• Part 2: Social processes and practices
• Part 3: Inequalities and resistances