Sylvia Plath's confessional poem, "Lady Lazarus" can be used to illustrate a connection between autobiography and social critique. "You poke and stir" among the institutions that form social relations--the educational system, the court system, the economic system--to find individuals whose lives, whose joys and pains, and…

Churches, and in a larger sense religion, should serve as the conscience of society. Hence Christian bodies have an obligation to condemn gross evils and to speak out on the great moral issues, but they should not give their full support to any political party or cause. The World Council of Churches (WCC) from its beginning in 1948 showed an…

Examines how four major versions of neo-Marxism (i.e., Hegelian, Phenomenological, Structuralist Marxism, and the Frankfurt School) attempt to overcome the base-superstructure thesis of the political economists of education. Considers the implicit social ontological and epistemological assumptions and the related theory of education of each.…

The theories of various neo-Marxist philosophers are examined for insight into their views of human nature that underlie educational proposals. Important education and social policy issues are explored by Marxist theorists. (DF)

Presents a general description of curriculum studies made in the sociology of education and comparative education in the past decade. Discusses structural/functional studies, studies in the "new" sociology of education, and ethnomethodological studies. Argues that ethnomethodology provides the most heuristic approach to curriculum…

Traces contemporary literary analyses of Latin American melodrama and the romance, looking especially at the work of Peter Brooks and Janice Radway. Suggests that the film "Lejania" produces a spectatorship of shifting positionalities, which mitigate against a passive spectatorship that would serve as a reactionary force. (RS)

Examines the growing influence of Mikhail Bakhtin in a variety of fields. Describes two dominant strains that permeate Bakhtin's philosophical project: phenomenology and Marxism. Argues that the ambivalence displayed between these two poles in Bakhtin's work suggests an ambivalence in the larger arena of literary studies. (HB)

Analyzes the university as an institutional narrative. Describes postsecondary schooling as a material and ideological formation that enacts a drama in which teachers and students are actors. Calls for a subversive rereading of the stage directions given teachers and students. (RS)

To achieve its expressed political goals of social empowerment and transformation, cultural studies must maintain some significant ethical and political commitments. The growing field of cultural studies is analyzed in terms of its definition within a specific ethical and social justice agenda and its links to the critical pedagogy tradition in…

The field of educational administration has a major credibility problem in academe because it is seen to lack a convincing theoretical base. In the practical world of politics, management, and teaching, it appears that educational values are easily rendered marginal in policy making and that team and institutional leaders lack a sophisticated…

This article critiques "Schooling and Work in the Democratic State" by Martin Carnoy and Henry M. Levin. The book examined the public school as more than an institution that reproduces unequal class relations of capitalist society, but also as a product of conflict between the dominant and the dominated in the paid workplace. (MT)

This critique of John Langton's behavioral evolutionist account of the development of bureaucracy in the 18th Century British pottery industry contends that the evolutionary explanation rests on unexamined functionalist assumptions which overlook social costs and the mediating effects of the class structure and the profit motive. (TE)

Examines the career choices and aspirations of women in two contexts: social divergency theories derived from Marx and Simmel, and personal symbolization theories based on George Mead's writings. Presents a series of propositions to help formulate a coherent social theory about women's career choices, supported by empirical confirmation. (AYC)

Describes and assesses the contributions of Marxist political theorist Antonio Gramsci to developing a meaningful theory relating political education to equality. Identifies Gramsci's major contribution as the substitution of the notion of an ambiguous common sense for false consciousness. (Author/DB)

Three authors review the book by Harold Entwistle about the theoretician of Marxist social theory, Antonio Gramsci. Conclusions are that the book does not accurately reflect Gramsci's view on education. (KC)