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.
Author(s): Michael Peters
Edition: 1
Year: 1996
Language: English
Pages: 248
Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Preface and Acknowledgments......Page 8
List of Figures......Page 10
Introduction: The Crisis of the Welfare State in the Postmodern Condition......Page 12
Social Policy and the Move to Community......Page 32
Democracy and Community-based Social Policy......Page 45
Welfare and the Future of Community: The New Zealand Experiment......Page 62
The New Right Reforms of Education......Page 76
The Politics of Choice: Public Choice Theory and the Autonomous Chooser......Page 88
Children of Rogernomics: The New Right, Individualism and the Culture of Narcissism......Page 109
From Education to Evaluation: The Ideal Learning Community......Page 126
Educational Policy Analysis and the Politics of Interpretation......Page 148
Postmodernism: The Critique of Reason and the Rise of the New Social Movements......Page 168
Beyond the Philosophy of the Subject: Liberalism, Education and the Critique of Individualism......Page 184
Individualism and Community: Education and the Politics of Difference......Page 202
Conclusion: Critical Social Policy in the Postmodern Condition......Page 218
Bibliography......Page 226
Index......Page 246
