This is a collection of essays that address the international changes in welfare policy. The book discusses the new patterns of governing associated with the notions of welfare, care, and education that emerge during the late Twentieth and early Twenty-first-centuries. The issues examined are, among others, the role of international donors and their emphasis on efficiency and lower social subsidies, international migration and its impact on welfare policy inclusions (and exclusions), and national policy change. While representing many different locations and traditions, contributors work within a variety of critical theoretical perspectives that critique our cultural ways of reasoning about the care and education of the child, the role and practice of the state, and the social and cultural construction of citizenship and nationhood.
'A rich and multidimensional portrait of the historical and actual forces that govern the child in various corners of today's world.' - Kenneth Hultqvist, Stockholm Institute of Education
'Through their new understanding of the embedded systems of cultural reasoning governing the state, this intellectual tool may influence social and educational policy and practice for decades.' - Louis F. Miron, University of Illinois
'This collection performs important conceptual work by crossing and combining fields that are all too often kept apart: child studies, education, and social policy. Using a variety of disciplinary approaches, the authors show convincingly how policymakers in all of these domains use children as a wedge issue in efforts to reform families and restructure welfare states. By ranging across societies and over time, the articles map the impact of cross-cultural exchanges and trace the consolidation of global patterns of governance. Taken as a whole, thevolume offers a fresh perspective on governmentality and the power/knowledge nexus; unique in its ambition, it has the potential to revise thinking in all of the fields it addresses.' - sonya Michel, Professor of American Studies and History, University of Maryland, author of Children's Interests / Mothers' Rights: The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy
'Editors and international colleagues, Bloch, Holmlund, Moqvist and Popkewitz present in this collection a rich smorgasbord of critical views of topics all too infrequently explored. Discourses, ideologies, research methodologies and theoretical perspectives are appropriately diverse in what amounts to a comprehensive reconceptualization of education's private-public realms. Central to all contributions are thematics and relations of governing and government, of care and welfare, of reason and knowledge, of freedom and control. This is exciting reading with something for everyone who seriously considers reform.' - Lynda Stone, Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
'Through their new understanding of the embedded systems of cultural reasoning governing the state, this intellectual tool may influence social and educational policy and practice for decades.' - Louis F. Miron, University of Illinois
'This collection performs important conceptual work by crossing and combining fields that are all too often kept apart: child studies, education, and social policy. Using a variety of disciplinary approaches, the authors show convincingly how policymakers in all of these domains use children as a wedge issue in efforts to reform families and restructure welfare states. By ranging across societies and over time, the articles map the impact of cross-cultural exchanges and trace the consolidation of global patterns of governance. Taken as a whole, thevolume offers a fresh perspective on governmentality and the power/knowledge nexus; unique in its ambition, it has the potential to revise thinking in all of the fields it addresses.' - sonya Michel, Professor of American Studies and History, University of Maryland, author of Children's Interests / Mothers' Rights: The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy
'Editors and international colleagues, Bloch, Holmlund, Moqvist and Popkewitz present in this collection a rich smorgasbord of critical views of topics all too infrequently explored. Discourses, ideologies, research methodologies and theoretical perspectives are appropriately diverse in what amounts to a comprehensive reconceptualization of education's private-public realms. Central to all contributions are thematics and relations of governing and government, of care and welfare, of reason and knowledge, of freedom and control. This is exciting reading with something for everyone who seriously considers reform.' - Lynda Stone, Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill