Toward the Concrete: Critical Geography and Curriculum Inquiry in the New Materialism Robert J. Helfenbein, Loyola University Maryland Abstract: This paper offers perspectives on the ways in which Curriculum Theory has, might, and perhaps should turn its attention toward the concrete. In a recent book on the future of cultural studies, Grossberg (2010) suggests that the political commitments of critical work push scholars not to “high theory, nor is it captured in those intellectual practices that, starting with the concrete, leap into the universal… not the attempt to find the universal in the concrete, and the concrete is not an occasion for philosophizing, however brilliant and pertinent such philosophizing may be in the final analysis…” But instead to take up work that “is always in the service of the concrete, enabling one to produce the concrete in more productive ways” (p.2). In particular, the paper explores Grossberg’s charge and its application to a curriculum in/of urban contexts specifically as contested and contradictory places and focuses attention on new possibilities for “the interdisciplinary study of educational experience” (Pinar, 2004, p. 2). Keywords: Critical Geography, Urban Education, Curriculum Theory, Cultural Studies of Education, Qualitative Research Theory is always a detour on the way to something more important ” (Hall cited in Grossberg 1997, p. 346) You should only use theory if it creates illumination, casts light on things, helps you present a phenomenon more fully in itself (Willis, 1977, p. 190).