ABSTRACT
The research programme in the sociology of education broadly known as social realism breaks with the belief that academic knowledge is the preserve of conservative forces in education. The chapter argues that the link between rational knowledge and democratic politics is the result of connecting two features of rational thought. It identifies the conditions that are required to take rational knowledge from being a pre-condition for moral integration to being a contingent connection. The chapter argues that these conditions are the provision of rational knowledge to all, provision that is only possible through national education systems that simultaneously individualise and socialise people into 'partial loyalty'. The structures of knowledge and democracy are analogous in that both systems consist of structuring contradictions which allow for interruptions that provoke change and the potential for connection between the two spheres. 'Collective representations' are the impersonal conceptual representations that connect people in modern societies.
