Part 1: Introduction Bringing Education Back in: International Perspectives on the Relationship between State, Culture and Society Carla Aubry, Michael Geiss, Veronika Magyar-Haas, and Jürgen Oelkers Part 2: Comparing School Systems The National State, the Local, and the Growth of Mass Schooling: History Lessons from England, France, and the United States Miriam Cohen State Intervention in Backward Countries: Some Case Studies of State Education Systems in Hispanic America (ca. 1870-1920) Gabriela Ossenbach Part 3: Financing Education The Provision of Education and the State: From Equity to More Equality Carla Aubry State Education, Crisis and Austerity: An Historical Analysis through the Lens of the Kondratiev Cycles Vincent Carpentier Part 4: Educational Administration To Write Like a Bureaucrat: Educational Administration as a Cultural Phenomenon Michael Geiss Bureaucratizing from the Bottom up: The Centralization of School Discipline Policy in the United States Judith Kafka The State of Education in the States: The Evolving Federal Role in American School Policy Patrick McGuinn 'Governing by Numbers': Social Work in the Age of the Regulatory State Holger Ziegler Part 5: Power, Myths of Community, and Utopia 'Among School Children': The Churches, Politics, and Irish Schooling, 1830-1930 Deirdre Raftery Make the Nation Safe for Mass Society: Debates about Propaganda and Education in the USA in the 20th Century Norbert Grube Conceptualizations of Dignity and Exposure in Critiques of Community: Implications for Ethics and Educational Theory in the Work of Plessner and Nancy Veronika Magyar-Haas 'Taking the Path of Least Resistance': Expulsions from Soviet Schools in the Stalinist 1930s E. Thomas Ewing Utopia, State, and Democracy Jürgen Oelkers