ABSTRACT
This collection investigates the ways in which boys and young men negotiate neoliberal discourse surrounding aspiration and how neoliberalism shapes their identities. Expanding the field of masculinity studies in education, the contributors offer international comparisons of different subgroups of boys and young men in primary, secondary and university settings. A cross-sectional analysis of race, gender, and class theory is employed to illuminate the role of aspiration in shaping boys’ identities, which adds nuance to their complex "identity work" in neoliberal times.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|52 pages
chapter 1|15 pages
Policy Logics, Counter-Narratives, and New Directions
Boys and Schooling in a Neoliberal Age
chapter 2|19 pages
Aspiration Anxieties
Developing Middle-Class Masculinities among Black African Boys in London
chapter 3|16 pages
White Working-Class Boys in the Neoliberal Meritocracy
The Pitfalls of the “Aspiration-Raising” Agenda
part II|75 pages
chapter 4|18 pages
“I’m Not Just One Type of Person”
Aspirational Working-Class Belfast Boys and Complex Embodied Performances of Educationally Successful Masculinities
chapter 5|19 pages
Coming of Age through the Recession
High School Imaginings of Post-Recession Futures in New York City
chapter 6|18 pages
“I Want To Be a Soccer Player or a Mathematician”
Fifth-Grade Black Boys’ Aspirations at a “Neoliberal” Single-Sex School
chapter 7|18 pages
“Without My Education, I Can’t Be Somebody”
Latino Masculinity, School Contexts, and Aspiration
part III|69 pages
chapter 8|19 pages
(Re)masculinizing “Suzhi Jiaoyu” (Education for Quality)
Aspirational Values of Modernity in Neoliberal China
chapter 9|18 pages
“Gotta Get That Laziness Out of Me”
Negotiating Masculine Aspirational Subjectivities in the Transition from School to University in Australia
chapter 10|18 pages
The Neoliberal Masculine Logic
Skilled Migration, International Students, and the Indian “Other” in Australia
chapter 11|12 pages
Conclusion Masculinity and Aspiration in the Era of Neoliberal Education
International Perspectives