Social acceleration, the rapidly increasing speeding up of the pace of life, has been described and theorised by contemporary social theorists including Paul Virilio, Ben Agger, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and Hartmut Rosa. While these theorists use illustrations from education, and others such as Foucault and Adam have considered the relationship…

In the latest two decades, there has been an increasing number of publications in education studies drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT). However, the uptake of ANT in education studies was not immediate, and the investigations on educational leadership through ANT have been rare. With the aim of promoting the study of educational leadership…

This paper presents an argument that social theory has valuable roles to play in music education research and philosophy. I first discuss how theory can enhance and strengthen empirical work--and provide insights and connections that abstracted empiricism alone cannot. Then, I argue that social theory--developed, extended, and advanced through…

This essay begins with the story of Vincent Lloyd who recounts a disturbing experience he had while teaching a course to a group of students of color. What does pedagogical uptake under conditions of systemic oppression require of educators? In the first section, I explore philosopher Nancy Potter's (Nancy Potter. "Giving Uptake".…

This paper aims to explore the relationship between Karl Marx's concept of justice and Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach. Nusbaum follows the Aristotelian idea of man as a political animal, which is intrinsically consistent with Marx's view of human nature, but she provides us with a new normative perspective to reconsider Marxism. When she…

This article gives a historical-philosophical overview of three generations of pragmatist thinking centered around the question of democracy. It serves as an introduction and contextualization to the papers that develop a third generation pragmatic point of view in the remainder of the special issue. The perspective is from one American-trained…

Personal well-being is a central concept in philosophical discussions of education and its aims. Although the work of general philosophers like Nussbaum, Griffin, Raz and Sen on the topic has been influential here, there has been next-to-no interest among philosophers of education in John Rawls's work on 'the good' -- in great contrast to interest…

Jacques Rancière is a contemporary philosopher who theorises about everyday social life. His writings explore an anti-positivist social history, linking it with contemporary political thought. He positions the 'sensible' as a political construct, as a way of both being and transcending the conditions of cultural and social life. Rancière's oeuvre…

This article turns to the neglected pedagogical concept of "ingenium" in order to address some shortcomings of the admiration-emulation model of Linda Zabzebski's influential exemplarist moral theory. I will start by introducing the problem of the admiration-emulation model by way of a fictional example. I will then briefly outline the…

In this article, I pick up established critical explorations of the role and use of theory in higher education research, focusing on the theoretical affordances of the work of Bruno Latour, one of the architects of actor-network theory. Actor-network theory is increasingly widely used within education research, although Latour has moved away from…

This essay offers a new interpretation of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's landmark work of critical social theory "Empire." It develops an account of the politics of exile by situating this political strategy in terms of Hardt and Negri's claim that it is no longer feasible to confront capitalist power head-on. It attends closely to…

Ronald Barnett's modern classic "Realizing the University in an Age of Supercomplexity" (published December 1999), has had a crucial impact internationally on the field of Higher Education research and development since the book was published now nearly 20 years ago. Bridging an academic oeuvre across almost 30 years with close to 30…

One strand in the scholarship of Catholic school identity perceives that it has deteriorated since Vatican II (1962-1965) and therefore needs restoration. Unfortunately, this perception is based on an assumption that there is a "singular" Catholic identity. This article demonstrates a basis in theology, social theory, and educational…

This article presents an attempt to examine my own service-learning practices through the use of the conceptual tools of Michel Foucault, in particular his notions of governmentality and power. The article views the development of service-learning in South Africa and our current practices as operating within a regime of truth, and it considers…

This article examines how Zen Buddhism conceives of human suffering, the causes of suffering, and the method by which human suffering can be alleviated and compares these with similar notions within critical social theory and its educational manifestation in the critical pedagogy movement. While both Zen Buddhist and critical theories/discourses…