ITS Workshop: Organised Abandonment in Education

Organised Abandonment in Education
Friday, April 18th, 2:00-3:00 pm
Presenter: Arathi Sriprakash
Location: 363 Grace Dodge Hall

In this talk, I consider the histories and geographies of educational disinvestment through the lens of Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s ‘organised abandonment’. The concept of organised abandonment refers to the intentional disinvestment in particular communities and areas by state and capitalist interests. Such disinvestment renders groups vulnerable to precarity and harm, creating conditions for further extraction and control. Drawing on initial findings from the Repair-Ed project in Bristol, England, I explore how organised abandonment, when applied to education, functions in two interrelated ways: by ‘abandoning places’ – the material, social and economic infrastructures of education, and; by ‘abandoning futures’ – which involves the circumscription of educational aspirations and the foreclosing of alternatives for young people. The concept of organised abandonment not only offers a useful lens to recognise longstanding, active, and deeply felt structural injustices in education, but it also underlines the political necessity of abolitionist imaginaries and reparative action for the field of education.

Bio: Arathi Sriprakash is Professor of Sociology and Education at the University of Oxford. She is co-author of Learning Whiteness: Education and the Settler Colonial State. This paper draws on her ongoing research with Claire Neaves, Annabel Wilson, Alice Willatt and Vivian Latinwo-Olajide on Reparative Futures of Education. See www.repair-ed.uk for more information.