Metropolitics

Education Myths, Black Self-Determination, and University Accountability to the City

Christopher R. Rogers & Laura Wolf-Powers — 2024-03-08T06:00:00Z

Laura Wolf-Powers interviews scholar and community organizer Chris Rogers about his extensive work in Philadelphia. They discuss his journey to Penn and activism against the University of Pennsylvania's “parasitic relationship to Black Philadelphia,” including policing on campus, housing struggles, and efforts for payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs).
---- Series: Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces I'm Laura Wolf-Powers, a professor of urban planning at CUNY

- Interviews / Philadelphia, education, Black Lives Matter, Black politics, university, self-determination, housing, activism, Black Power, Movement for Black Lives

Where are the Women Architects?

Collectif Architoo & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-03-31T05:00:00Z

At the 2020 edition of the Albums des jeunes architectes et paysagistes (AJAP) competition, organized by the French ministry of culture, only two women were among the architects nominated. The Architoo collective underlines the persistent inequalities that still mark the careers of female architects.
The Albums des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes (“Young Architects' and Landscape Architects' Albums”)—or AJAP—is a biennial competition that was relaunched by the French ministry of culture in

- Debates / architecture, gender, feminism, sexism, architect, women, teaching, education, inequalities

Migration and Inequalities: The Importance of Social Class

2021-11-19T06:00:00Z

Since the 1990s, Anne-Catherine Wagner's research has focused on migrants from the most affluent classes in society. In this interview, she returns to the notion of international capital, which she used in her work to shed light on inequalities relating to mobility, particularly in her pioneering survey of “expat” executives in France.
Where does your interest in upper-class migration come from, and what do you see as the contribution made by work on this subject?
When I began my PhD

- Interviews / mobility, expatriation, globalization, social class, upper classes, migrants, immigration, migration, school, education, inequalities

The Belhoumi Family and the Sociologist

Adèle Momméja & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-10-15T05:00:00Z

What are the objective and intimate conditions for the social ascension of the children of immigrants? And what roles do family relationships—between parents and children, but also between brothers and sisters—and residential rootedness play in this process? Stéphane Beaud's 2018 book La France des Belhoumi takes the form of a long-term biographical study that explores the differences in social trajectories between genders and generations within a family of Algerian origin.
The French

- Reviews / immigration, Algerians, social trajectories, France, North Africans, Algeria, working classes, education, upbringing, family, youth

Teacher Unionism and the Bargain for the Common Good

Claire Cahen — 2021-07-06T05:00:00Z

Rank-and-file teachers across the United States challenge their unions to embrace social democratic ideals, and fight for equal access to social goods, such as quality public schools and safe tap water. Drawing on the case of Newark, New Jersey, this essay questions the liberal democratic norms and policies that continue to treat teacher unions as narrow economic organizations.
A decade ago, teacher unions were minor political players in US cities, focused primarily on negotiating educator

- Essays / Newark, New Jersey, United States, trade unions, activism, teaching, education, public education, water, common good

Understanding School Closures in Chicago: A Review of Eve Ewing's Ghosts in the Schoolyard

Ryan M. Good — 2019-12-17T06:00:00Z

Eve Ewing's Ghosts in the Schoolyard portrays recent school reform efforts in Chicago through the eyes of those devastated by the imposition of “choice” and “market discipline” in public education.
The great deceit of marketized education reform—and the mass school closures such reforms produce in communities like Chicago's Bronzeville—is the suggestion that the introduction of choice and market discipline can undo histories of racism that have systematically disadvantaged communities of

- Reviews / United States, Chicago, race, racism, school, education, education reform

Why School Securitization Fails. Lessons from Morrill and Musheno's Navigating Conflict

Andrés Besserer Rayas — 2019-10-08T05:00:00Z

Navigating Conflict describes how pupils are able to address conflicts on their own, and how school securitization policies undermine these efforts.
“Every day when I walk into the campus, I am greeted by uneasy stares and nervous shouting reminding me to make sure I do not have keys or a belt or anything that may alert the metal detector,” a high-school student declared before the New York City Council Budget and Oversight Hearings in March of 2019 (Make the Road New York 2019). She spoke as

- Reviews / school, education, conflict, securitization, security, United States, ethnography

Teaching Art and the History of Tattoos at Rikers Island: An Interview with Tamara Santibanez

Lisa Jean Moore — 2019-01-22T06:00:00Z

An interview with Tamara Santibanez, who teaches art and the cultural and social history of tattoos to youth offenders at Rikers Island prison, explains how tattoos can help develop visual literacy and explores tattooing's potential to empower inmates both personally and professionally.
Arts programs in jails and prisons support the therapeutic, developmental, and vocational goals of incarcerated persons. Artists are uniquely positioned to help prisoners express their identities, address

- Interviews / United States, New York, art, artist, arts, prison, education, art worlds, art economies, tattoos, youth offenders, Rikers Island

The Educational Fortunes of Children of Immigrants in France

Mathieu Ichou & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-07-06T05:00:00Z

How can the attainment gap between children of immigrants and children of native-born parents be explained? While some underline the role of an implausible “culture of origin”, Mathieu Ichou shows that differences in academic achievement are linked above all to social origin, and in particular to the social positions occupied by immigrant parents both in their host country and in their country of origin.
Despite many nuanced contributions from sociologists, the theme of academic failure among

- Essays / immigration, culture, children, education, school, social class

The Everyday Activism of Chicago's Public High-School Football Coaches

Lawrence Johnson — 2018-03-13T06:00:00Z

For several generations, high-school football programs have been an important part of the social fabric in economically challenged Chicago neighborhoods. Sociologist Lawrence Johnson, himself a former player in the Chicago Public League, draws on in-depth interviews with coaches and players to conclude that policies being pursued by city officials in the name of educational choice and reform are ripping this fabric apart.
A tearing social fabric
Ebony Magazine published an article in 1963

- From the Field / Chicago, sport, education, school, education reform, social networks, high-school football, football coaches, school restructuring