Thinking through education: the geographies of contemporary educational restructuring

Despite playing central roles in state-building, economic development, social reproduction, and cultural politics, education has remained on the margins of critical geographical thought. Recent research, however, suggests that geographers are taking notice of the widespread and profound restructuring underway in advanced capitalist education sectors. This paper considers the possibilities for geographical research on (formal) education, and outlines one particular agenda for this emerging field. Rather than advocating a discrete topical specialty, it proposes developing a decentered and outward-looking literature — one in which education systems, institutions, and practices are positioned as useful sites for a variety of theory-building projects. The paper sketches several applications of this `joined-up' approach. `Thinking through' education — either as a constitutive moment or a critical case study of sociospatial transformation — may inform discussions of the geographies of neoliberalization, globalization, and knowledge economy formation.