Cultural Sociology: A New Approach to the Study of the History of Education

摘要

This paper examines the possibility of applying the principles of cultural sociology to the study of the history of education and training. Although research into the development of education and training in the recent decades has been quite sociological in character, most sociological concepts used in such studies do not adequately addresses the issue of culture. Existing studies are mostly based on utilitarian and materialistically oriented approaches. This is why we believe it is necessary to develop more culturally-oriented perspective that would offer appropriate analytical tools to study the cultural dimension of the development of education and training. In our opinion, the cultural sociology of J. C. Alexander with its concepts of cultural codes, narratives and metanarratives offers precisely this perspective. It is precisely these tools that we apply to four problems in the historical study of education and training.