“Effective Schooling” in the Age of Capital: Critical Insights from Advocacy Anthropology, Anthropology of Education, and Critical Disability Studies

Abstract

This paper argues that the ideological and material reproduction of “effective schooling” in the Age of Capital functions to normalize and perpetuate the unequal social relations and oppressive dynamics that characterize free market economies and their accompanying political and cultural practices in the historical and educational context of the United States of America. I argue that the intersection of three perspectives furthers the work of scholars grounded in the various disciplines—advocacy anthropology, the anthropology of education, and the mutual engagement of anthropology and critical disability studies—and demonstrates that a multi-inter- transdisciplinary lens is essential for deepening an understanding of the discourses as well as the concrete practices that push ‘disorderly’ student subjects into precarious circumstances that threaten their physical, emotional, and psychological integrity.