A carpet loom and matters of inequality: an agential realist approach to deindustrialisation and schooling in the City of Geelong, Australia

Abstract

This paper brings Barad’s agential realism into relation with educational ethnographic work, and longstanding concerns with matters of inequality. We extend previous work that foregrounds time and space in particular places, and that resists approaches to inequality that generalise about ‘best practices’ for schools in communities facing challenging circumstances. An Axminster Jacquard carpet loom—located in a particular place, the City of Geelong—becomes a specific point of entry to a discussion of agential realism, ethnography and inequality. This carpet loom was once a key machine in a thriving Geelong carpet factory employing families intergenerationally; it is now a demonstration machine in the Geelong National Wool Museum, operated by skilled carpet weavers (now employed as demonstrators) formerly employed at the (now closed) factory. We read questions of deindustrialisation and schooling through the carpet loom as apparatus, working with the questions that it materialises about educational research, ethnography and inequalities.