ABSTRACT
The anthropology of education policy has emerged from multiple theoretical orientations within the disciplines of anthropology and education, and from the direct involvement of anthropologists in policy formation, implementation, and evaluation. Anthropological research complexified court-ordered desegregation, showing the fallacy of simple mathematical formulas to achieve racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic parity. This chapter first discusses the anthropology of education policy historically. In order to focus this discussion, it reviews temporally backward and forward from Brown versus Board, examining the field's emergence in the US Then, the chapter lays out a broad conceptual framework for an anthropological understanding of education policy. Building on the late 20th century critical sociocultural "turn" in policy studies, it examines policy as processual, and as apprehended via its social meanings. The chapter explores concludes by considering the potential of the anthropology of education policy to serve as a democratizing social science in times of growing social and educational inequality.
