First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Sinéad Murphy’s Effective History presents its reader with a thorough explanation and evaluation of H.-G. Gadamer’s concept of “effective history,” not only as it pertains to the broader range of hermeneutic and postmodern thinkers working in the wake of Kantian philosophy, but first and foremost as a careful and measured consideration of the practice of effective history as a critical method for philosophy in our current times. In this latter sense, the work pushes Gadamer’s thinking forward into new territory and provides an insightful estimation of the value of hermeneutic inquiry. Murphy demonstrates that the notion of effective history not only stems from a central issue in Kant’s critical philosophy (the divide between the empirical and transcendental, between history and pure knowledge), but that it is best understood through an analysis of the various ways that certain contemporary thinkers fall into the traps and contradictions that stem from Kant’s critical turn.

Douglas Booth, a prize winning sports historian, presents a theoretically sophisticated historiography of sport history.

Critical Literacies in Action: Social Perspectives and Teaching Practices asks how educators can become more experienced in order to truly support literacy, particularly for children of poverty or for those who have been labeled “at-risk”. This is especially important in current times, since a literate individual is one who is more successfully able to situate him- or herself within a continuum of lifelong learning in order to fulfill personal goals and to participate fully within the wider societyal context.

The 1980s were an important decade for educational inquiry. It was the moment of the “linguistic turn,” with its emphasis on the role of language as a constructor of reality, a structuring agent for institutions such as schools, and a medium for translating knowledge into elements of power for processes of social regulation. Drawing on the work and insights of educational researcher Thomas S. Popkewitz, this book shows how the linguistic turn provided an alternative to both mainline educational research grounded in the ideals of political liberalism and the effort of neo-Marxists to challenge liberal thinking in favor of a scholarship based on class conflict and economic determinism.

First Published in 2004. This work places Foucault's methodologies against social theory and philosophy in order to provide a guide to social sciences, particularly historical sociology. Written to clarify Foucault's contribution for professional and non-professional readers, the text demonstrates the originality and usefulness of Foucault's work and embodies a conviction that Foucault's approaches could transform sociology into an effective, multi-focused, relevant discipline. Finally, the book illustrates that his methods provide the necessary condition for any state-of-the-art social research today, addressing his methodological position and establishing its relationship to Nietzsche, Kant, Weber, Elias, Habermas, Giddens, and the Annales and Frankfurt Schools.

Michel Foucault's influential work spanned a wide array of intellectual disciplines, his writings having been widely taken up in philosophy, history, literary criticism and political theory. Focusing on the implications of Foucault's theories for education, whilst characterizing them as provocative, problematizing, poetic and playful, Lynn Fendler describes the historical context for understanding Foucault's ground breaking critiques. Including a discussion of his major theories of disciplinary power, genealogy, discourse and subjectivity, this text provides generative explanations of concepts, using analogies to the Internet and to food, in order to connect Foucault's theories to everyday experience.