Description: "Drawing on ethnographic research in one New York City school district, Ujju Aggarwal traces the contestations that surfaced when, in the wake of the 2007-2009 Great Recession, public schools navigated austerity by expanding choice-based programs. Unsettling Choice argues that this strategy, positioned as "saving public schools," instead ensured exclusion even as they were couched in language of equity, diversity, care, and rights"--
Review Quotes:
"Brilliant in her artistry, Ujju Aggarwal carries us across narrative maps of an extraordinary set of relations. Her geographic analysis compels us into tense and complex terrains of partition and possibility: neighborhood, community, and school. Unsettling Choice exquisitely collides scale to consider vast histories and conditions of publics, choice, gentrification, abandonment, and more while simultaneously centering the profoundly intimate, local story of a group of women practicing radical care. Read this book, and be moved and transformed."--Sabina Vaught, coauthor of The School-Prison Trust
"Unsettling Choice combines ethnographic encounters with race theory emanating from Black studies and critical geography to present a nuanced understanding of how education and housing are structurally formed by race, class, and gender. Ujju Aggarwal's book is a must-read to understand the racialized violence inherent within one of the most fundamental aspects of education in the United States: the logic of choice."--Damien M. Sojoyner, author of First Strike: Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles
"Recommended."--CHOICE
"Activists, researchers, and educators will find Unsettling Choice an important guidebook. It maps out where we came from, makes us aware of our current surroundings, and gives us a North Star to navigate a path forward where all students are unquestionably valued."--Anthropology Education
"Unsettling Choice offers a rich ethnographic account that deepens understandings of the discourse around rights and education as a public good." --Transforming Anthropology