Synopses & Reviews
Global reforms in welfare state provisions entail changes in family and school responsibilities, governmental responsibilities about who should care for and educate children, and the images and narratives of what the family and child are and should be. In
Governing Children, Families and Education, an international, interdisciplinary group of social scientists and historians explore the politics of these changing patterns in this groundbreaking book at two levels: structural examinations of the (re)distribution of power as it relates to class, gender, and race; and the mentalities that govern the relation of the private or public responsibilities of families and the child in care of the state and schools.
Review
"A rich and multidimensional portrait of the historical and actual forces that govern the child in various corners of todays world." --Kenneth Hultqvist, Stockholm Institute of Education
"Through their new understanding of the embedded systems of cultural reasoning governing the state, this intellectual tool may influence social and educational policy and practice for decades." --Louis F. Miron, Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois
“This collection performs important conceptual work by crossing and combining fields that are all too often kept apart: child studies, education, and social policy. Using a variety of disciplinary approaches, the authors show convincingly how policymakers in all of these domains use children as a wedge issue in efforts to reform families and restructure welfare states. By ranging across societies and over time, the articles map the impact of cross-cultural exchanges and trace the consolidation of global patterns of governance. Taken as a whole, the volume offers a fresh perspective on governmentality and the power/knowledge nexus; unique in its ambition, it has the potential to revise thinking in all of the fields it addresses.”
--Sonya Michel, Professor of American Studies and History, University of Maryland, author of Children's Interests / Mothers' Rights: The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy
“Editors and international colleagues, Bloch, Holmlund, Moqvist and Popkewitz present in this collection a rich smorgasbord of critical views of topics all too infrequently explored. Discourses, ideologies, research methodologies and theoretical perspectives are appropriately diverse in what amounts to a comprehensive reconceptualization of educations private-public realms. Central to all contributions are thematics and relations of governing and government, of care and welfare, of reason and knowledge, of freedom and control. This is exciting reading with something for everyone who seriously considers reform.”
-- Lynda Stone, Professor, Philosophy of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"This book is an important contribution to our understanding of the effects of globalization on welfare policies and the education of children in the early 2000s. It highlights both the main assumptions of today's discourses that travel and traverse nations and the immense variety in the way these are perceived and transcribed in different national contexts. Although there is a global child, it certainly has many faces. The book provides a rich and multidimensional portrait of the historical and actual forces that govern the child in various corners of today's world."
-- Kenneth Hultqvist, Professor, Stockholm Institute of Education
"This book offers conceptually powerful and historically grounded tools for scholars, policy analysts, and educators working in the broad arena of global studies in social welfare and education. Co-editors Bloch, Holmlund, Moqvist, and Popkewitz and their contributors provide sophisticated theoretical language and methodologies to aid in the understanding of the rapidly changing relations among knowledge/power and the state, both in its social as well as its 'non social' forms. Through their new understanding of hte embedded systems fo cultural reasoning governing the state, this intellectual tool may influence social and educational policy and practice for decades."
-- Louis F. Miron, Professor of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Synopsis
A new collection of essays that address the international changes in welfare policy, this book incorporates examinations of changing patterns of regulation and reform. An international group of authors explore changes in the political, economic, and cultural systems of knowledge that relate to changing discourses of reform and governing in relation to the child, family, and education. The contributors examine the role of international donors and their emphasis on efficiency and lower social subsidies, international migration and its impact on welfare policy inclusions (and exclusions), and national policy change. While representing many different locations and traditions, contributors work within a variety of critical theoretical perspectives that critique our cultural ways of reasoning about the care and education of the child, the role and practice of the state, and the social and cultural construction of citizenship and nationhood.
Synopsis
This is a collection of essays that address the international changes in welfare policy. The book discusses the new patterns of governing associated with the notions of welfare, care, and education that emerge during the late Twentieth and early Twenty-first-centuries. The issues examined are, among others, the role of international donors and their emphasis on efficiency and lower social subsidies, international migration and its impact on welfare policy inclusions (and exclusions), and national policy change. While representing many different locations and traditions, contributors work within a variety of critical theoretical perspectives that critique our cultural ways of reasoning about the care and education of the child, the role and practice of the state, and the social and cultural construction of citizenship and nationhood.
Synopsis
A new collection of essays that address the international changes in welfare policy, this book incorporates examinations of changing patterns of regulation and reform. An international group of authors explore changes in the political, econimic, and cultural systems of knowledge that relate to changing discourses of reform and governing in relation to the child, family, and education. The contributors examine the role of international donors and their emphasis on efficiency and lower social subsidies, international migration and its impact on welfare policy inclusions (and exclusions), and national policy change.
About the Author
Marianne N. Bloch is Professor of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Kerstin Holmlund is Senior Lecturer, Department of Teacher Education, University of Umea, Sweden.
Ingeborg Moqvist is Senior Lecturer, Department of Pedagogics, University of Vaxjo, Sweden.
Thomas S. Popkewitz is Professor of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Table of Contents
Part I: Framings * Global and Local Patterns of Governing the Child, Family, their Care, and Education: An Introduction--Marianne N. Bloch, Kerstin Holmlund, Ingeborg Moqvist, Thomas S. Popkewitz *
Part II: The Family and Child as an Object of Governing * Governing the Child and Pedagogicalization of the Parent: A Historical Excursus into the Present--Thomas S. Popkewitz * Governing New Realities and Old Ideologies: A Gendered, Power-based, and Class-related Process--Kerstin Holmlund * Educational Policy after Welfare: Reshaping Patterns of Governing Children and Families in Argentinian Education--Ines Dussel *
Part III: The Embodied Social and Welfare State * Constructing a Parent--Ingeborg Moqvist * Early Childhood Education: The Duty of Family or Institutions?--Loic Chalmel * Teenage Parenthood is Bad for Parents and Children: A Feminist Critique of Family, Education, and Social Welfare Policies and Practices--Miriam David * Child Welfare in the United States: The Construction of Gendered, Oppositional Discourse(s)--Gaile Cannella * Global/Local Analyses of the Construction of Family-Child Welfare--Marianne N. Bloch * Governing Children and Families in Kenya: Losing Ground in Neoliberal Times--Beth Blue Swadener & Patrick Wachira *
Part IV: Limiting the Boundaries of Reason: New Possibilities/Impossibilities * Pedagogy as a Loci of an Ethics of an Encounter--Gunilla Dahlberg * Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Language, Deaf Education, and the Governance of the Child in Historical Perspective--Bernadette Baker * The Web, Antiracism, Education, and the State in Sweden: Why Here? Why Now?--Camilla Hallgren & Gaby Weiner *