Colección: Revista Interamericana de Bibliografía (RIB)
Número: 1-4
Título: 1997
Sección: Reseñas Informativas / Informative Reviews
Raymond Allan MORROW and Carlos Alberto TORRES. Social Theory and Education:
A Critique of Theories of Social and Cultural Reproduction. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 1995. xi, 517 p., notes, references,
index.
Over the last three decades, social sciences have witnessed a number of exciting
theoretical developments, and it is within this context that Social Theory
and Education, written by Raymond Morrow and Carlos Alberto Torres,
does more than simply outline the conventional contours of the sociology of
education as a distinct genre within the broader terrain of sociological research.
The authors have undertaken an analysis and synthesis of the most important
works published in or about the sociology of education over the last three
decades in English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese.
Stressing the need for a metatheory, this book reasserts the centrality of
ideology as a means of understanding numerous perspectives within the social
sciences in general and the sociology of education in particular. The authors
invite educators and cultural workers to confront the ideological dimensions
of the production of knowledge surrounding a wide range of theoretical issues,
as well as interrogate the institutional arrangements of knowledge in response
to the social relations of production and the globalization of capital.
Developing the notion of political sociology of education, and with a focus
on the relationship among education, power, knowledge, and the state, Social
Theory and Education offers a conceptual analysis and criticism of social
reproduction in education while advancing new directions for theoretical and
empirical research.
The authors recognize that the practice of sociology is implicated in the
production, maintenance, and transformation of particular subjectivities and
forms of social agents. The language of sociology itself must be inherent
in a social praxis and therefore must be considered more than simply an abstract
system of differences. Pedagogically and politically, Morrow and Torres work
against reproducing the discipline of sociology as a means of producing passive
agents. The sociology of education is reconfigured dialectically as a means
of enabling cultural workers to become more aware of their discurssive and
material situatedness in relation to larger social, cultural and institutional
contexts outside of the academy.
The work is divided into six sections. The first one focuses on the concept
of reproduction of educational systems and provides a synthetic reference
point for comparing the full range of concepts of the relation between society
end education. The second section attempts to provide an in-depth comparative
analysis of structural functionalist and structural theories in the ligth
of reproduction theory. The third one analyzes the problem from the perspective
of neo-marxist conflict theories, stressing the concepts of class and domination,
and in section four, the authors shift from neo-marxism to introduce the concept
of critical theory.
In the fifth, the discussion is based on developments in advanced societies
(U.S.A. and Europe) and peripheral ones (Latin America). The authors link
the discussion of education with recent debates on theories of the state.
The concluding chapters in the volume construct the agenda for a research
strategy based on the concept of “critical modernism” which includes
discussions of the interactions among class, race and gender, and social reproduction
within the context of a postmodernist critique.
M.B.
1. Estas reseñas fueron preparadas por las sugientes funcionarias de la Secretaría
Ejecutiva para el Desarrollo Integral/These reviews were prepared by the following
staff members of the Exeuctive Secretariat for Integral Development: María
del Carmen Barreneche, María de Icaza, María Teresa Mellenkamp, y Rosario
Villanueva Popovici.