Chapter 1 Ethnography and Education Policy. A Critical Analysis of Normalcy and Difference in Schools

Abstract: This chapter introduces the major theoretical frames that delineate the object of study for researching the production of normalcy in school contexts. The major intellectual exercise in this work is to trouble the discursive, material, and affective paths that define how and why we should study the intertwined relation between policy, research practice, and inequality. In this introduction, major theoretical concepts and articulations will be laid out. It will also provide a critical contextualization of where this research is developed, with a specific focus on how neoliberal economic cultures and liberal ways of understanding policy reproduce inequality. The introduction also offers a description of the coming chapters, their foci, and articulations.