'Cities of Signs' now available

Andrew's latest book Cities of Signs: Learning the logic of urban spaces is now available from Peter Lang publishing. Charting the ways that public pedagogies mobilise cultural logics within urban space, Cities of Signs draws on cultural studies, urban sociology and critical pedagogy to present a case for reading the city as a signed landscape.

As noted by Jennifer Sandlin 'Going beyond surface level readings of cultural texts to also explore how audiences engage with those texts, Cities of Signs troubles simplistic notions of cultural transmission by explicating the various mechanisms through which signs work to mediate culture. Hence, Cities of Signs presents an account of the ways that public pedagogies actually function'.

Further details can be found via the Peter Lang website.

New Journal Publication on Knowledge Epistemologies

Andrew's latest publication from the International Journal of Science in Society charts the some of the central tenets of thinking surrounding Indigenous knowledges and the Academy. Titled, Knowledges and Knowing: Indigenous and Alternative Knowledges and the Western Canon, this article suggests that a shift in the way that knowledge is understood and recognised has been occurring in the Western academy in recent years. Marked by significant works from within the academy, such as those by Connell (2008), Denzin and Lincoln (2005), and Kincheloe and Semali (1998), and from a growing acknowledgment of theorists, academics and activists from outside the canon, the understanding of knowledge systems and ways of knowing different to that from the West has gathered momentum. This paper explores recent writing in the engagement of 'indigenous' and 'alternative' knowledge systems in terms of 'border' theory, whilst charting a direction for research methodologies that engage and remain respectful to epistemologies and ways of knowing alternative to those of the Western academy.

The Routledge Handbook of Public Pedagogy

The Routledge Handbook of Public Pedagogy is now available. Andrew's chapter, 'When the Street Becomes a Pedagogue' charts the public pedagogical implications of the streetscape as an informal site of knowledge construction. The handbook also contains chapters by William Pinar, Norman Denzin, Peter McLaren, Bill Talen and others. Details for the book are available at: 

http://www.routledge.com/books/Handbook-of-Public-Pedagogy-isbn9780415801270

New Journal Publication on Race and "Whiteness"

Andrew, with collaborator and colleague Jon Austin, recently published findings from a major funded research project in the International Journal of the Humanities. The paper, exploring the cultural politics of 'whiteness' and race was drawn from ethnographic fieldwork undertaken throughout 2008. Titled 'Visible Whiteness: coming to terms with white racial identities', the paper explores the invisibility and cultural locatedness of whiteness in the sociology of race.

Andrew's Ph.D Awarded ACE Outstanding Research Award

Andrew's PhD thesis, "Public Pedagogies, Place and Identity: an ethnographic study of an emerging postmodern community", was awarded the Australian College of Educators (ACE) prize for Outstanding Postgraduate Research at the recent Faculty of Education Graduation Award Ceremony, 2nd May 2009.

The 'iPod and Philosophy' Now Available

The latest title in the 'Popular Culture and Philosophy' series by Open Court Publishers is now available from Amazon.com. Edited by Dylan Wittkower, this book explores the cultural cache of the iPod and the influence it has exerted as an object of desire and 'cool'.

Andrew's chapter, 'iCon of a Generation' explores the operation of the iPod as a key symbolic identifier of youth and 'youth-ness'. Drawing on Baudrillard's idea of the simulacrum, Andrew charts a course for understanding the consumption of and by youth in this product saturated now.