This book of tightly woven dialogues engages prominent thinkers in a discussion about the role of culture-broadly construed-in contemporary society and politics. Faced with the conceptual inflation of the notion of 'culture,' which now imposes itself as an indispensable issue in contemporary moral and political debates, these dynamic exchanges seek to rethink culture and critique beyond the schematic models that have often predominated, such as the opposition between "mainstream multiculturalism" and the "clash of civilizations." Prefaced by an introduction relating current cultural debates to the critical theory tradition, this book examines the politics of culture and the spirit of critique from three different vantage points. To begin, Gabriel Rockhill and Alfredo Gomez-Muller provide a stage-setting dialogue, followed by discussions with two major representatives of contemporary critical theory: Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser. Working at the horizons of this tradition, Judith Butler, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Cornel West then provide important critical perspectives on cultural politics. The book's concluding section engages with Michael Sandel and Will Kymlicka, who work out of the Rawlsian tradition yet are uniquely concerned with the issue of culture, broadly understood. The epilogue, an interview with Axel Honneth, returns to the core issue of critical theory in cultural politics. Ranging from recent developments and progressive interventions in critical theory to dialogues that incorporate its insights into larger discussions of social and political philosophy, this book sharpens old critical tools while developing new strategies for rethinking the role of 'culture' in contemporary society.

This book argues the relationship between culture and politics can be productively explored by delving into the nature of the cultural politics enacted by Latin American social movements and by examining the potential of this cultural politics for fostering social change.

"Innovative study of the cultural legacy of the Mexican Revolution, using the story of rural schools. Focuses on Puebla and Sonora and the attempt by the central government to implement socialist education and to advance its nationalist agenda. Stresses the importance of negotiation among national and local leaders, teachers and peasants"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

The Hollywood Presidency of Ronald Reagan was founded on the skills of the 'Great Communicator'; Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA' is used by the Chrysler Corporation to assure us that the 'pride is back'; feminists and right-wing militants converge to oppose pornography; racial tensions increased when the Cosby show tops the ratings. This book is a radical attempt to lay out the complex ways in which the American media and American culture are powerfully interlocked.

The bodies and minds of children--and the very space of children--are under assault. This is the message we receive from daily news headlines about violence, sexual abuse, exploitation, and neglect of children, and from a proliferation of books in recent years representing the domain of contemporary childhood as threatened, invaded, polluted, and "stolen" by adults. Through a series of essays that explore the global dimensions of children at risk, an international group of researchers and policymakers discuss the notion of children's rights, and in particular the claim that every child has a right to a cultural identity. Explorations of children's situations in Japan, Korea, Singapore, South Africa, England, Norway, the United States, Brazil, and Germany reveal how children's everyday lives and futures are often the stakes in contemporary battles that adults wage over definitions of cultural identity and state cultural policies. Throughout this volume, the authors address the complex and often ambiguous implications of the concept of rights. For example, it may be used to defend indigenous children from radically assimilationist or even genocidal state policies; but it may also be used to legitimate racist institutions. A substantive introduction by the editor examines global political economic frameworks for the cultural debates affecting children and traces intriguing, sometimes surprising, threads throughout the papers. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Norma Field, Marilyn Ivy, Mary John, Hae-joang Cho, Saya Shiraishi, Vivienne Wee, Pamela Reynolds, Kathleen Hall, Ruth Mandel, Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, and Njabulo Ndebele.

Michael Apple offers a powerful analysis of current debates and a compelling indictment of rightist proposals for change. Apple presents the causes and effects of further integrating schools into the corporate agenda, as well as current calls for a national curriculum and national testing, privatization and voucher plans, and fundamentalist religious pressures to censor textbooks. He demonstrates who will be the winners and losers culturally and economically as the conservative restoration gains in strength, bringing with it an even greater restratification of knowledge and students in terms of race, class, and gender.