1st Edition

Individualism And Community Education And Social Policy In The Postmodern Condition

By Michael Peters, James Marshall Copyright 1996
    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    248 Pages
    by Routledge

    Examining, in the widest sense, the changes in political philosophy that have occurred in Western capitalist states since the early 1980s, this book focuses on the introduction of neo-liberal principles in the combined area of social and education policy. New Zealand presents a paradigm example of the neo-liberal shift in political philosophy. From constituting the social laboratory of the Western world in the 1930s in terms of social welfare provision, New Zealand has become the neo-liberal experiment of the fully marketised society in the 1990s. Against the theoretical background of educational theory and practice, this book examines neo-liberalism and its critiques as responses to the so-called crisis of the welfare state and argues for a reformulated critical social policy in the postmodern condition. The conclusions about social policy drawn by the authors can be generalized to similar situations in other Western capitalist countries.

    Introduction: The Crisis of the Welfare State in the Postmodern Condition; Section I: Communitarian Responses to the Crisis; Chapter 1 Social Policy and the Move to Community; Chapter 2 Democracy and Community-based Social Policy; Chapter 3 Welfare and the Future of Community: The New Zealand Experiment; Section II: Neo-liberal Individualism; Chapter 4 The New Right Reforms of Education; Chapter 5 The Politics of Choice: Public Choice Theory and the Autonomous Chooser; Chapter 6 Children of Rogernomics: The New Right, Individualism and the Culture of Narcissism; Section III: Methodological Responses to the Crisis; Chapter 7 From Evaluation to Education: The Ideal Learning Community; Chapter 8 Educational Policy Analysis and the Politics of Interpretation; Section IV: The Postmodern ‘Way Out’; Chapter 9 Postmodernism: The Critique of Reason and the Rise of New Social Movements; Chapter 10 Beyond the Philosophy of the Subject: Liberalism, Education and the Critique of Individualism; Chapter 11 Individualism and Community: Education and the Politics of Difference; Conclusion: Critical Social Policy in The Postmodern Condition; Bibliography Index;

    Biography

    Michael Peters