Inventing The Modern Self And John Dewey

Pragmatism provoked both admiration and fear, as global changes brought into the twentieth century provoked a revisioning of the cultural narratives about who the citizen and child are and should be. In a new book edited by Thomas S. Popkewitz, scholars representing twelve nations provide original chapters to explore the epistemic features and cultural theses figured in Dewey's writings as they assembled in the discourses of public schooling. The significance of Dewey in the book is not about Dewey as the messenger of pragmatism, but in locating different cultural, political, and educational terrains in which debates about modernity, the modern self, and the making of the citizen occurred.

Thomas S. Popkewitz is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His studies are concerned with the knowledge or systems of reason that govern educational policy and research in teaching, teacher education, and curriculum, including The Political Sociology of Educational Reform, Governing the Soul, and Cultural History and Education.