The book uses Chicago as a case study to examine the cultural politics surrounding neoliberal education policy in general and the concomitant alterations to democratic practice in particular. After juxtaposing the numerous failures of neoliberal education policy and the language of democratic norms used by those who continually double-down on these same policies, it examines four distinct but related policy arenas. Each chapter begins with a vignette of a particular example of the neoliberal education policy in action. Taken together, Taylor illuminates the anti-democratic nature of neoliberal education policy and the toll it takes on democratic practice in urban space. The book concludes with a discussion of what resistance might look like in spaces which co-opt democratic concepts for anti-democratic ends.

Analyzes neoliberalism and the ways it is able to transform the public sphere as well as what this means for social movements resisting the omnipresent influence of neoliberal logic Argues that using the language of democracy to push anti-democratic policies is not just a cynical attempt to sell unpopular policies but rather signifies a redefinition of democratic practices and understanding under neoliberalism Uses Chicago school reform efforts to show that current struggles are not over reform policies but instead over the meaning of democracy in neoliberal times

Inhalt
Chapter 1. Democracy and the Doubling-Down of Neoliberal Reform Failure.- Chapter 2. Shifting Rationalities and Multiple Democracies: The New Meanings of Neoliberal Democracy.- Chapter 3. Differential Citizenship in Neoliberal Chicago: School Reform and the Production of Anti-Democratic Space.- Chapter 4. A Strike by Any Other Name...: Democratic Education and the Language of Hegemony.- Chapter 5. The Dissolution of Trust: Coercion and Chicago's Integral State.- Chapter 6. The Anti-Democratic Dialectic: Democratic Practices within Antagonistic Space and the Never-Ending Way Forward.- Chapter 7. Coda: Devos and the Future of Neoliberal Education Reform and Resistance in Chicago.