Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Queering Habits and Entanglements of the Normal and Deviant Subjectivities in Ethnographies

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Ethnography and Education Policy

Part of the book series: Education Policy & Social Inequality ((EPSI,volume 3))

Abstract

This chapter critically analyses the production of normal and deviant identities in schools through the production of ethnographic texts. The chapter advances the argument that dominant notions of time and space facilitate an apolitical stability of subjects’ cultural and social positionalities as presented in five school ethnographies. Studying the political, material, epistemological, and affective production of identities considered normal in school settings requires questioning the representational habits we (researchers) maintain when producing knowledge using ethnographic methods. I argue that there is a “habit of mind” that presses the replication of dominant representational templates of the biological, social, cultural, and affective compositions of those we observe, the spaces they inhabit, and the temporal stages defining how they behave.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Ahmed, S. (2011). Happy futures, perhaps. In E. L. McCallus & M. Tuhkanen (Eds.), Queer times, queer becomings (pp. 159–182). Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included. Racism and diversity in institutional life. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baez, B. (2004). The study of diversity. “The knowledge of difference” and the limits of science.” The Journal of Higher Education, 75(3), 285–306.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward and understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3), 801–831.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Béhague, D. (2015). Shaping the modern child: Genealogies and ethnographies of developmental science. Social Science and Medicine, 143, 249–254.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Britzman, D. (2000). “Question of belief:” Writing poststructural ethnography. In E. St. Pierre & W. Pillow (Eds.), Working the ruins: Feminist poststructural theory and methods in education (pp. 27–40). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Browne, K., & Nash, C. (2010). Queer methods and methodologies. An introduction. In K. Browne & C. Nash (Eds.), Queer methods and methodologies. Intersecting queer theories and social science research (pp. 1–23). England: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, E., & Lassiter, L. E. (2015). Doing ethnography today. Theories, methods, exercises. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chambers, I. (1994). Migrancy, culture, identity. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colebrook, C. (1999). A grammar of becoming: Strategy, subjectivism, and style. In E. Grosz (Ed.), Becomings. Explorations in time, memory, and futures (pp. 117–140). Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, L. (2013). The end of normal. Identity in a biocultural era. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Department of Immigration and Migration of the Ministry of Interior and Public Security. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.extranjeria.gob.

  • Freeman, E. (2010). Time binds. Queer temporalities, queer histories. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillborn, D. (2008). Coincidence or conspiracy? Whiteness, policy and the persistence of the black/white achievement gap. Educational Review, 60(3), 229–248.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gillborn, D. (2010a). Reform, racism and the centrality of whiteness: Assessment, ability and the “new eugenics”. Irish Educational Studies, 29(3), 231–252.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gillborn, D. (2010b). The colour of numbers: Surveys, statistics and deficit thinking about race and class. Journal of Education Policy, 25(2), 253–276.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gillborn, D. (2016). Softly, softly: Genetics, intelligence and the hidden racism of the new geneism. Journal of Education Policy, 31(4), 365–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2016.1139189.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grosz, E. (1995). Space, time, and perversion. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grosz, E. (1999). Becomings. Exploration in time, memory, and futures. New York: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grosz, E. (2005). Time travels. Feminism, nature, power. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. (1992). The promises of monsters: A regenerative politics for inappropriate/d others. In L. Grossberg, C. Nelson, & P. Treichler (Eds.), Cultural studies (pp. 295–337). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harwood, V., & Allan, J. (2014). Psychopathology at school. Theorizing mental disorders in education. London & New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harwood, V., & McMahon, S. (2014). Medicalization in schools. In L. Florian (Ed.), The sage handbook of special education (pp. 915–930). Los Angeles: Sage.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Heckert, J. (2010). Intimacy with strangers/intimacy with self: Queer experiences of social research. In K. Browne & C. Nash (Eds.), Queer methods and methodologies. Intersecting queer theories and social science research (pp. 41–54). England: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackman, M. C. (2010). The trouble with fieldwork: Queering methodologies. In K. Browne & C. Nash (Eds.), Queer methods and methodologies. Intersecting queer theories and social science research (pp. 113–128). England: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist, queer crip. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karping, I., & O’Connell, K. (2015). Stigmatising the “normal”: The legal regulation of behaviour as disability. UNSW Law Journal, 38(4), 1461–1483.

    Google Scholar 

  • Katz, M. (2013). The biological inferiority of the undeserving poor. Social Work & Society International Online Journal, 11(1). Retrieved from http://www.socwork.net/sws/article/view/359/709.

  • Korthagen, F., & Valsalos, A. (2010). Going to the core: Deepening reflection by connecting the person to the profession. In N. Lyons (Ed.), Handbook of reflection and reflective inquiry: Mapping a way of knowing for professional inquiry (pp. 531–554). New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kumashiro, K. (2002). Troubling education. Queer activism and anti-oppressive education. New York: Routledge Falmer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kumashiro, K. (2008). The seduction of common sense. How the right has framed the debate on America’s schools. New York and London: Teacher College Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lather, P. (2013). Methodology-21: What do we do in the afterward? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 634–645.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lather, P., & St. Pierre, E. (2013). Introduction. Post qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 629–633.

    Google Scholar 

  • Manning, E. (2009). Relationscapes: Movement, art, philosophy (technologies of lived abstraction). Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Massey, D. (2005). For space. London: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matus, C., & Haye, A. (2015). Normalidad y diferencia en la escuela: diseño de un proyecto de investigación social desde el dilema político-epistemológico. Estudios Pedagógicos, 41, 135–146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Matus, C., & Infante, M. (2011). Undoing diversity: Knowledge and neoliberal discourses in colleges of education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(3), 293–307.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matus, C., & McCarthy, C. (2003). The triumph of multiplicity and the carnival of difference: Curriculum dilemmas in the age of postcolonialism and globalization. In W. Pinar (Ed.), International handbook of curriculum research (pp. 73–82). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matus, C., & Rojas, C. (2015). La normalidad y la diferencia en nuestras escuelas a propósito de la Ley de Inclusión Escolar. Revista Docencia, 56, 47–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCallum, E. L., & Tuhkanen, M. (2011). Becoming unbecoming. Untimely mediations. In E. L. McCallum & M. Tuhkanen (Eds.), Queer times, queer becomings (pp. 1–21). Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Connell, K. (2015). Bad boys’ brains: Law, neuroscience and the gender of “aggressive” behavior. In S. Schmitz & G. Hoppner (Eds.), Gendered neurocultures: Feminist and queer perspectives on current brain discourses. Retrieved from https://ssrn.com/abstract=2581322.

  • O’Connell, K. (2016). Unequal brains: Disability discrimination laws and children with challenging behaviour. Medical Law Review, 24(1), 76–98.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pillow, W. (2003). Confession, catharsis, or cure? Rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodological power in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies, 16(2), 175–196.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pillow, W. (2015). Reflexivity as interpretation and genealogy in research. Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies, 15(6), 419–434. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708615615605.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rooke, A. (2010). Queer in the field: On emotions, temporality and performativity in ethnography. In K. Browne & C. Nash (Eds.), Queer methods and methodologies. Intersecting queer theories and social science research (pp. 25–39). England: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Samuels, E. (2014). Fantasies of identification: Disability, gender, race. New York and London: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schneider, J. (2002). Reflexive/diffractive ethnography. Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies, 2(4), 460–482.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skliar, C. (2007). La educación (que es) del otro. Argumentos y desierto de argumentos pedagógicos. Buenos Aires: Noveduc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stewart, K. (1996). A space on the side of the road. Cultural poetics in an “other” America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stewart, K. (2007). Ordinary affects. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • St. Pierre, E. (1997). Nomadic inquiry in the smooth spaces of the field: A preface. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 10(3), 365–383.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • St. Pierre, E. (2000). Poststructural feminism in education: An overview. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(5), 477–515.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thrift, N. (2008). Non-representational theory. Space|politics|affect. London & New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tsolidis, G. (2008). The (im)possibility of poststructuralist ethnography—Researching identities in borrowed spaces. Ethnography and Education, 3(3), 271–281.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weems, L. (2006). Unsettling politics, locating ethics. representation of reciprocity in postpositivist inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(5), 994–1011.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weems, L. (2010). From “home” to “camp:” Theorizing the space of safety. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 29, 557–568.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weheliye, A. (2014). Habeas viscus. Racializing assemblages, biopolitics, and black feminist theories of the human. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yoshino, K. (2007). Covering the hidden assault on our civil rights. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.

    Google Scholar 

  • Youdell, D. (2006). Impossible bodies, impossible selves: Exclusions and student subjectivities. The Netherlands: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Youdell, D. (2010). Queer outings?: Uncomfortable stories about the subjects of post-structural school ethnography. Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(1), 87–100.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Youdell, D. (2011). School trouble. Identity, power and politics in education. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Educational Justice, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Claudia Matus

Authors
  1. Claudia Matus
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claudia Matus .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Educational Justice, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Macul, Santiago (RM), Chile

    Claudia Matus

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Matus, C. (2019). Queering Habits and Entanglements of the Normal and Deviant Subjectivities in Ethnographies. In: Matus, C. (eds) Ethnography and Education Policy. Education Policy & Social Inequality, vol 3. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8445-5_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8445-5_3

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-8444-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-8445-5

  • eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation