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

Introduction: The Crisis of the Welfare State in the Postmodern Condition; Section I: Communitarian Responses to the Crisis; Chapter 1 Social Policy and the Move to Community; Chapter 2 Democracy and Community-based Social Policy; Chapter 3 Welfare and the Future of Community: The New Zealand Experiment; Section II: Neo-liberal Individualism; Chapter 4 The New Right Reforms of Education; Chapter 5 The Politics of Choice: Public Choice Theory and the Autonomous Chooser; Chapter 6 Children of Rogernomics: The New Right, Individualism and the Culture of Narcissism; Section III: Methodological Responses to the Crisis; Chapter 7 From Evaluation to Education: The Ideal Learning Community; Chapter 8 Educational Policy Analysis and the Politics of Interpretation; Section IV: The Postmodern 'Way Out'; Chapter 9 Postmodernism: The Critique of Reason and the Rise of New Social Movements; Chapter 10 Beyond the Philosophy of the Subject: Liberalism, Education and the Critique of Individualism; Chapter 11 Individualism and Community: Education and the Politics of Difference; Conclusion: Critical Social Policy in The Postmodern Condition; Bibliography Index;