Differentiation

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Chicago School Reform and Its Political, Economic, and Cultural Context 3. Accountability, Social Differentiation, and Racialized Social Control 4. "Like a Hammer Just Knocking Them Down" - Regulation African American Schools 5. The Policies and Politics of Cultural Assimilation 6. It's Us Verus the Board - The Enemy - Race, Class and the Power to Oppose 7. Conclusion

Abstract: Social class differentiation in education results not only from differences in academic ability and processes of institutional differentiation but also from processes of self‐selection by pupils, students and their parents in the progression through the school system and into higher education, training and employment This paper examines the explanation of class differences in choices at transition or branching points in the system which is offered by Rational Action Theory in the light of evidence from qualitative studies of educational transitions It also explores the relationship of ‘rational action’ to Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction, with reference to some recent research into parental choice of school It concludes with a discussion of a reconceptualised notion of ‘rational action’

Abstract: This paper attempts to re-evaluate the evolutionary perspective in sociology by analyzing the concept of "stages" of societies or institutional systems as measured by the extent of social differentiation. An evolutionary perspective makes sense only so far as at least some of the changes that are inherent in the very nature of any social system bring about institutionalization of more differentiated cultural and social spheres, and in this way extend the range of a society's environment and its adaptability to it. Recognition of this relation between change and institutionalization is tempered by several systematic considerations. First, not all processes of social change necessarily give rise to changes in overall institutional systems. Second, systemic changes that do increase the scope of differentiation within the major spheres of a society do not necessarily assure the institutionalization of a more differentiated system. Third, even when structural differentiation is institutionalized, each new institutional system evinces different potentialities for further change, for stagnation, breakdown or development.

Abstract: This article sets out an analytical framework of differentiation derived from sociology and anthropology and argues that it can and should be applied to international relations (IR) theory. Differentiation is about how to distinguish and analyse the components that make up any social whole: are all the components essentially the same, or are they distinguishable by status or function? We argue that this approach provides a framing for IR theory that is more general and integrative than narrower theories derived from economics or political science. We show why this set of ideas has so far not been given much consideration within IR, and how and why the one encounter between IR and sociology that might have changed this - Waltz's transposition of anarchy and functional differentiation from Durkheim - failed to do so. We set out in some detail how differentiation theory bears on the subject matter of IR arguing that this set of ideas offers new ways of looking not only at the understanding of structure in IR, but also at structural change and world history. We argue that differentiation holds out to IR a major possibility for theoretical development. What is handed on from anthropology and sociology is mainly designed for smaller and simpler subject matters than that of IR. In adapting differentiation theory to its more complex, layered subject matter, IR can develop it into something new and more powerful for social theory as a whole.