Using an analysis of learning by a case study comparison of two undergraduate courses at a United States University, Nespor examines the way in which education and power merge in physics and management. Through this study of politics and practices of knowledge, he explains how students, once accepted on these courses, are facilitated on a path to power; physics and management being core disciplines in modern society. Taking strands from constructivist psychology, post-modern geography, actor-network theory and feminist sociology, this book develops a theoretical language for analysing the...

This text provides a framework for understanding higher education in the US (and other western countries) since the 1970s whereby the logic of the market place has increasingly come to dominate all arenas and, in context, the education system. The author calls this process commodification and he describes the transformation of universities in the US (and elsewhere) as they attempt to accomodate the enforced changes on their academic lives and those of their students.

This text offers descriptions and analyses of some of the different ways in which schools and other educational institutions have started to establish new collaborative relationships in today's competitive educational marketplace. Using case studies, the book describes examples of such collaborative structures.

James S. Coleman was one of a distinguished generation of sociology students who passed through the Columbia Sociology Department in the 1940s and 50s. This book critically debates his work and his contribution to society and the social sciences more generally. It consists of 18 major papers by 20 authors from six countries on a range of themes. The volume is framed by an extended editorial introduction reflecting on the five- year exchange of correspondence between James Coleman and the editor, together with two of Coleman's own works.