ABSTRACT
This book offers a Bhaskarian critical realist intervention into the field of Marxist Sociology of Education. The field is a historically specific emergent form of educational endeavour born out of the politico–theoretical tensions of Western Marxism and the radicalism of the post-1968 moment in Western capitalist history. The intervention is conceptual and engages with Marxist social theory primarily via the philosophy of science. This is not to deny practice; rather, drawing from both Bhaskar and Marx, philosophy is for practice. Meta-theoretical tools are used to sharpen and to develop more concrete theories with the intent of digging critically deep into the world. The purpose of philosophy does not reside in simply pondering the world and constructing idealistic images; it is directed to the service of grasping the world in its essence in order to really change it.
