ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to address the broad area of cultural reproduction theory and its relationship to comparative education research, particularly through a case study of Indian textbook content. It provides a brief review of social and cultural reproduction theory and discusses its applicability to education in India. The chapter examines the concept of hegemony and explain its relationship to the politics of schooling. It also provides an analysis of Indian school textbook content and relates the findings of the analysis to questions of cultural reproduction which occur in India. Language textbooks, history or civics textbooks, were selected because of the importance and stress placed upon reaching a level of literacy, both reading and writing, that is fundamental to all learning. The portrayal of families in the textbooks is relatively infrequent and the nuclear-conjugal family is the type most commonly presented.
