In this essay, music education is conceptualized as a game or performance within The Game, the "pervasive atmosphere" (Fisher 2009) of neoliberal capitalism, which inevitably shapes scholarship, practice, and policy. Even people who strive to see music education for what it really might be (e.g., those researching and promoting social…

In this paper I explore social justice and equity research in music education through the lens of capitalist realism and accompanying concepts. I look at Fisher's ideas on hauntology and its connection to classical liberalism and neoliberalism. Fisher noted how some electronic music and pop music of the early 21st century is structured by…

In contemporary societies, schools play an important role in reproducing the social system. Those who want to maintain the status quo find social reproduction desirable, while more radical scholars are critical regarding the social inequality and injustice perpetuated through this reproduction process. Traditionally, schools and families have…

This essay argues that educational practices are uniquely situated to mobilize antifascist resistance. Contemporary fascism produces through macro- and micropolitical movements. The author looks to how educational practices make molecular fascist productions sensible. Educators can resist the molecular and micropolitical productions of fascist…

Purpose: Although California school discipline policy changes over the past decade have resulted in significant drops in suspension rates, scholars have found that racial disproportionality in punitive discipline persists for Black, Indigenous, and at times Latinx students. This study utilizes racial capitalism as an analytical framework to…

My contribution to this special issue engages with Michael Sandel's "The Tyranny of Meritocracy" and its significance to the academic conversation about meritocracy and its discontents. Specifically, I highlight Sandel's diagnosis of the rise of populism and his proposed remedy for the 'tyranny of merit'. First, building on Menno ter…

Decolonising work in Higher Education (HE) has become increasingly mainstreamed. One issue is the relationship between such work and that of equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI), or the potential reduction and co-option of decolonising for EDI purposes. This article discusses the characterisations of, and drivers for, decolonising inside UK…

The last few years have witnessed a resurgence of interest among both scholars and public intellectuals over issues associated with distributive justice and its gravitational orbit of concepts, including the idea of merit and the adjacent vision of a meritocratic society. Nevertheless, despite its centrality for conceptions of equality of…

The antagonism between "class" and "race" have plagued educational theory for decades. As a communist organizer seeking to move Marxist educational theory out of the stagnant waters of theoretical debates, I turn to recent CRT scholarship, which I find much more in line with the communist project. Yet, this literature omits…

Educational leadership serves a pivotal function in establishing the tenor of campus cultures. Executive decisions shape educational policy and practice in ways that either hinder or advance marginalised students' academic success. Leaders are in powerful positions to modify unjust academic ecosystems and to de-ideologise the white-centric…

In the past ten years radical educators have developed several theories around the notions of reproduction and resistance. In this article, Henry Giroux critically analyzes the major positions of these theories, finding them inadequate as a foundation for a critical science of schooling. He concludes by outlining the directions for a new theory of…

In this essay, I articulate the value of understanding antiracism from a materialist perspective, drawing from the concept of racial capitalism. I critique the lack of accounting for race in class-first paradigms of critical scholarship in music education, arguing that racial hierarchy laid the foundation for capitalist exploitation through…

This essay places Paulo Freire in dialogue with a Black Radical Tradition (BRT) in three distinct yet interrelated ways. First, the paper situates the significance of Cedric's Robinson's articulation of a BRT while exploring how contemporary scholars are troubling his disputatious relationship with Marxist social thought. Second, the paper…

Anarchists and (mathematics) education researchers generally share convergent interests regarding social (in)equality--that is to say, both groups share a concern over noticing inequality and making efforts to pursue social justice. In this dissertation, I employ three tenets of anarchism (cooperation; mutual aid; freedom from unjustified,…

This paper contributes to research on lifelong learning (LL) by examining discourses of multilateral organisations through the lens of 'progressive neoliberalism', in which contradictory ideologies of social justice movements and capitalism are hybridised (Fraser 2017). LL has been interpreted as a means of upskilling to remain competitive in the…