The State and the Politics of Knowledge

Among the most crucial ways to understand the complex connections between education and differential power is to examine the politics of knowledge. How is the state perceived in the US? What role does it play? How is it challenged? What are the contradictory power relations within and between the state and civil society in the US? To answer these questions, Michael Apple has assembled established and emerging scholars to show how political institutions - including educational systems - regulate knowledge and legitimate certain versions of culture. This book represents a widening and deepening of foregoing scholarship, and its new understanding of power relations offers a means toward critical policies and practices, and toward more effective social movements in the US.

Table of Contents:
1. The State and the Politics of Knowledge, Michael W. Apple 2. Becoming Right: Education and the Formation of Conservative Movements, Michael W. Apple and Anita Oliver 3. Reading Polynesian Barbie: Iterations of Race, Nation, and State, Hannah Tavares 4. Rethinking the Education/State Formation Connection: The State, Cultural Struggles, and Changing the School, Ting-Hong Wong and Michael W. Apple 5. What Happened to Social Democratic Progressivism in Scandanavia?: Restructuring Education in Sweden and Norway in the 1990s, Petter Aasen 6. Schooling, Work, and Subjectivity, Misook Kim Cho and Michael W. Apple 7. Democracy, Technology, and Curriculum, Lessons from the Critical Practices of Korean Teachers, Youl-Kwan Sung and Michael W. Apple 8. Educating the State, Democratizing Knowledge: The Citizen School Project in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Luis Armando Gandin and Michael W. Apple 9. Afterword, Michael W. Apple

About the Author :
Michael W. Apple is the John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has recently been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Educational Research Association and his book, Ideologyand Curriculum (Routledge 1990), was voted one of the top twenty books on education in the twentieth century.

Review :
"This volume could not have arrived at a more important time. In a period in which critical scholarship on the state and education has all but atrophied, Michael Apple and his collaborators shed new light and sustained depth of insight on the complexity of state involvement in the organization of knowledge in educational institutions in the new millennium. Throughout, contributors to The Stateand the Politics of Knowledge offer lucidity, reflexivity, and illumination as they integrate theory, empirical details, and policy analysis in these absorbing accounts of state involvement in the educational enterprise. The State and the Politics of Knowledge is a landmark volume in a time when radical scholarship on educational issues is experiencing a recession of intellectual value, relevance, and influence. A volume of this sort is long overdue." -- Cameron McCarthy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign "Scholars, educators, and activists searching for a serious and insightful book that weaves critical educational theory together with empirical and historical data, policy analysis, and a transnational focus will greatly appreciate what Apple and his co-authors have to say in The State and the Politics of Knowledge. By bringing powerful social theories into conversation with the complex and contradictory educational experiences in very diverse economic, political, and cultural contexts, Apple and his colleagues have begun to build the theoretical explanations needed to challenge and interrupt dominance." -- Amy Stuart Wells, Teachers College-Columbia University "Reading Apple is rather like taking part in an erudite conversation. One is stimulated, challenged, and educated and eager to talk back. This book, written with students and other collaborators, builds upon and extends Apple's formidable analysis of state/education relations and the politics of identity, subjectivity, and knowledge. Here these concerns are set in a global perspective with chapters from locations as diverse as Korea, Scandinavia, the U.S.A., and Polynesia, but without losing coherence or credibility. Wide-ranging, ambitious, and compelling, The State and the Politics of Knowledge is a considerable achievement, and important book." -- Stephen J. Ball, University of London