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This book scrutinizes how social – common sense – knowledge is shared, transmitted and transformed in different social and psychological contexts, particularly in research related to education, social work and communication.
By linking the experiences of immigrant families with the increased reliance on cheap and flexible workers for care and domestic work in Southern Europe, this study documents the lived experiences of neglected actors of globalization — migrant women — as well as the transformations of Western families more generally. However, while describing in detail the structural and cultural contexts within which these women have to operate, the book questions dominant paradigms about women as passive victims of patriarchal structures and brings out instead their agency and the creative ways in which they take control of their lives in often difficult circumstances. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, the author offers a valuable dual comparison between two Southern European countries on the one hand and between two migrant groups, one Christian and one Muslim, on the other, thus bringing to light unique detailed data on migration decision-making, settlement and on the multiple ways in which different women cope with the consequences of their transnational lives.
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The visionary legacy of Aldous Huxley is as relevant today as ever. Huxley possessed a sober understanding of the human condition as well as an inspired vision of the human potential. This volume presents an interdisciplinary examination and appreciation of Aldous Huxley’s three visionary novels – Brave New World (1932), Ape and Essence (1948), and Island (1962) – to reveal the extent to which Huxley’s prognoses into our possible futures was prophetic. The author assesses each novel to reveal the foresights that define our current educational, social, religious, political, and economic institutions, while also exposing our conflicts within those institutions. This volume examines the educational, cultural and technological changes that have shaped our society since Huxley’s work, with special reference to the enduring legacy of educational philosopher John Dewey. It offers profound insights into the educational forces and moral foundations of our society that shape us, both inside and outside of our schools. It is the first of its kind to focus exclusively on all three of Huxley’s visionary novels and detail their relevance to our world today.
This is the first major study of two overlapping strands of contemporary French cinema, "cinéma beur" (films by young directors of Maghrebi immigrant origin) and "cinéma de banlieue" (films set in France's disadvantaged outer-city estates). Carrie Tarr's insightful account draws on a wide range of films, from directors such as Mehdi Charef, Mathieu Kassowitz and Djamel Bensalah. Foregrounding such issues as the quest for identity, the negotiation of space and the recourse to memory and history, she argues that these films challenge and reframe the symbolic spaces of French culture, addressing issues of ethnicity and difference which are central to today's debates about what it means to be French.
More than ever, diasporas have a direct impact on the politics of their homelands. Today's diasporic activists-empowered by new media and the ease of travel afforded by globalization-engage directly to shape elections and conflicts in distant settings: politics from afar. Drawing on a global range of cases, this groundbreaking volume explores the impact of transnational diaspora politics on development, democratization, conflict, and the changing nature of citizenship. The contributors to this collection, representing a variety of disciplinary perspectives and area studies expertise, reveal the diasporic politics shaping the governance of development in Mexico, conflict in Sri Lanka, and ele...
Based in sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity, this volume describes and critiques key aspects and practices of liquid education--education as market-driven consumption, short life span of useful knowledge, overabundance of information--through a systematic comparison with ancient Greek paideia and medieval university education, producing a sweeping analysis of the history and philosophy ofeducation for the purpose of understanding current higher education, positing a more holisitic alternative model in which students are embedded in a learning commutity that is itself embedded in a larger society. If liquid modernity has left a vacuum where, according to Bauman, the pilot’s cabin is empty, this volume argues that no structure is better positioned to fill this vacuum than the university and outlines a renewed vision of social transformation through higher education.
Today, workers based in institutions designed to serve the public – teachers, nurses, social workers, community officers, librarians, civil servants, etc – are expected to reorganize their thoughts and practice in accordance with a 'performance' management model of accountability which encourages a rigid bureaucracy, one which translates regulation and monitoring procedures into inflexible and obligatory compliance. This book shows how and why this performance model may be expected, paradoxically, to make practices less accountable – and, in the case of education, less educative.
The 1980s were an important decade for educational inquiry. It was the moment of the “linguistic turn,” with its emphasis on the role of language as a constructor of reality, a structuring agent for institutions such as schools, and a medium for translating knowledge into elements of power for processes of social regulation. Drawing on the work and insights of educational researcher Thomas S. Popkewitz, this book shows how the linguistic turn provided an alternative to both mainline educational research grounded in the ideals of political liberalism and the effort of neo-Marxists to challenge liberal thinking in favor of a scholarship based on class conflict and economic determinism.
In an effort to address the problems confronting the American education system, the Obama administration has issued structural and systematic reforms such as Race to the Top. These initiatives introduce new statistics and accountability systems to gauge what constitutes "good" teaching, both from an administrative standpoint and the perspective of teacher training programs. This volume offers a direct critique of this approach, concluding that it does not respond adequately to the issues of education reform but rather raises new problems and actively stymies progress. The author argues that at the heart of the confusion lies a misguided and rationalistic view of teaching and learning. He draws on the philosophical strategies of Ludwig Wittgenstein to break down the guiding assumptions of Race to the Top, allowing both the positive and the negative aspects of the policies to be heard. The author then proposes a different view of teaching and learning which considers how to effectively address the problems Race to the Top seeks to confront.