Historical Sociologies of Knowledge, Science, and Modernity, Volume 2: Visual Cultures and Affective Economies in Education

This edited collection offers an exploration and critical reassessment of the sciences in educational research, foregrounding their agential and material qualities rather than treating them as a neutral instrument of knowledge. Addressing the enduring allure of research as expertise and of science as an elixir for enabling the good life, the book examines a distinctive form of activism within modernity and challenges the ahistorical assumptions that often frame the practices of the human sciences. The two volumes comprise original historical and sociological studies by international scholars who examine the infrastructures of ideas, theories, methods, and technologies through which scientific knowledge is produced. Across a wide range of educational contexts, the authors interrogate how science operates performatively, shaping norms, subjectivities, and modes of governance. Part of a two-volume series, Volume 2, Visual Cultures and Affective Economies in Education, gives attention to science as a projection that sustains norms of anticipated potentialities that compare different kinds of people and how these projections travel and settle in different historical spaces. It will appeal to scholars and researchers across interdisciplinary fields, including sociology of education, sociology of knowledge, historical sociology, political philosophy, educational policy, comparative and international education, and transnational studies.

• Publication date: 19 October 2026
• Page count: 222
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9781032954196