ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some instances of the use of assemblage as a conceptual framing and method for interrogating a range of substantive contemporary social phenomena both inside and outside education. Ian McGimpsey's work on 'youth service assemblage' approaches policy as a component of the assemblage. McGimpsey's work also situates education policy sociology pursued as assemblage analysis in a clear political economy by fore-grounding capitalism and monetary and labour flows as significant components of youth service assemblage. Education policy sociology offers a critical account of the makings and effects of contemporary education policy. In this sense assemblage ethnography is not a new competitor or alternative to policy sociology it is a different orientation to the 'problem', in which the social formation and the 'things', including policy, that produce this, rather than policy itself. McGimpsey's work offers policy sociology a way of thinking about neoliberalism; the distinction and relationship between neoliberalism and capitalism.
