Literacies, schools, and kinds of people in the new capitalism

In this chapter, I first develop a perspective on our new high-tech and globalcapitalism, a capitalism that is producing a tripart employment hierarchy with"symbol analysts "at the top, service and temporary workers at the bottom,and technical workers in the middle. This changing employment structureholds a number of important implications for schools and society. It demands,for example, the production of "new kinds of people"-new kinds of studentsand workers-a demand that has important implications for issues of equityand justice in society. Next I develop specific examples, using discourseanalysis as a research tool, that are meant to help us think about some ofthe issues discussed earlier as they play out in schools and in the lives ofteenagers from different socioeconomic classes. My focus throughout is onthe ways in which different sorts of socially situated identities are called forthby the new capitalism and played out in schools and society.