Puncturing notions of precarity through critical educational research on young lives in Australia: towards a critical ethnography of youth. Issue 2 (3rd May 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Smyth, John
• Is Part Of: Ethnography and education. Volume 11:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 129
• Page End: 141
• Publication Date: 2016-05-03
• Subjects: disengagement -- critical ethnography -- student resistance -- learning as a political act; Educational anthropology -- Periodicals; Ethnology -- Research -- Periodicals; 306.43
• DOI: 10.1080/17457823.2015.1040429
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1745-7823

Abstract

Abstract : This papers deals in a polemical fashion with what is arguably one of the most contentious issues in education – the disengagement of increasing numbers of young people from schooling. It makes the argument that what is occurring is that global forces are conspiring to position young people as a form of 'social waste' and that allowing them to be unproblematically portrayed as constituting a precariat is an over-simplification if not a misrepresentation. In making the case for a different approach, conceived in terms of a critical ethnography of student disengagement, the paper invokes a political economy approach in which learning is seen as a political act engaged in by young people. The paper concludes with a series of propositions intended to provide a different and more critically ethnographic inflection on what is occurring.