Leaders in the Sociology of Education: Intellectual Self-Portraits (Leaders in Educational Studies)

Leaders in the Sociology of Education: Intellectual Self-Portraits contains eighteen self-portraits written by some of the leading sociologists of education in the world. Representing the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong, the authors discuss a variety of factors that have affected their lifetime of scholarship, including their childhoods, their education and mentors, the state of the field during their “coming of age,” the institutions where they have worked, the major sociologists during their lifetimes, the political and economic conditions during their lifetimes, and the social and political movements during their lifetimes. These autobiographical essays reveal a great deal not only about their work and their influences, but also about themselves. Taken as a whole, the book provides sociology of knowledge about the creation of sociology of education research since the 1960s. It reveals a number of important themes central to all of the authors’ work, including educational inequality; the influence of the classical sociological theorists, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim; and the influence of more recent classical sociologists of education, Basil Bernstein, Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman. The authors’ research represents a variety of theoretical and methodological orientations including functionalism, conflict and critical theory, interactionist theory and feminist theory, as well as quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods research. Finally, the editors discuss a number of lessons to be learned from the lives and works of these sociologists of education. Front Matter....Pages i-vii Leaders in the Sociology of Education....Pages 1-11 Continuity and Change....Pages 13-27 Intellectual Self-Portrait....Pages 29-36 Thinking about Schools and Universities as Social Institutions....Pages 37-55 Com Muito Axé....Pages 57-67 Searching for Equity in Education....Pages 69-85 Striving Towards the Big Questions....Pages 87-100 The Sociology of a Life....Pages 101-114 Engaging the Sociological Imagination....Pages 115-130 The Accidental Sociologist of Education....Pages 131-151 Power, Purpose and the Rise of the Rest....Pages 153-170 Education, Gender, and Development....Pages 171-184 Discovering Unseen Social Contexts and Potential Levers for Social Change....Pages 185-199 Holocaust Memories....Pages 201-216 Beginning a Journey and Choosing a Path....Pages 217-229 The Making of a Political Sociologist of Education....Pages 231-252 Reading and Producing Research across Boundaries that So Often Divide....Pages 253-274 Critical Theory and Education....Pages 275-285 My Life with the Sociology of Education....Pages 287-300