Excerpted from introduction
This article is taken, with publisher permission, from the Rethinking Childhood Series book: Cannella, G. S. & Diaz Soto, L. (Eds.) (2010).Childhoods; A Handbook. NY: Peter Lang. This paper examines the impact of neoliberalism on early childhood education, care, and policy both as a global phenomenon and in the form of disaster capitalism in post-Katrina New Orleans. Neoliberalism is discussed in general terms and then analyzed through a critical, feminist, poststructural, and postcolonial lens in orderto reveal the way in which early childhood policy and practices in the United States (such as with NCLB, school choice initiatives, and the charter school movement) have been used as mechanisms to control and privatize services like public education for young children, creating vast inequities and denying access to a free and appropriate education for many.The reader is referred to the complete book for additional critical, feminist, post-structural, reconceptualist analyses on social justice issues within early childhood studies.