Searching and Finding the State in the Sociology of Education: A Tribute to Roger Dale

As a sociologist of education, I have always been fascinated by this discipline. I love teaching basic theories of Parsons, Bourdieu, Bernstein or Bowles and Gintis to undergraduates. Unmasking power relations and conflict on and over education has always had a magnetic attraction for students. They become fascinated about accessing the tools to interpret social reality in a sociological manner, uncovering official discourses about meritocracy or social mobility.

When teaching the sociology of education, I could easily give students comprehensive theories to combine economic, cultural and social explanations about social forces shaping education. From systemic functionalist explanations to theories of reproduction, I could use texts from all the classical authors in the sociology of education to help them understand key concepts such as social function, reproduction, contradiction, hegemony or power, and contextualise their use in interpreting the social role of education. However, it was very obvious that there was something missing in the picture. Why if education has such a political nature does the State receive so little attention in the discipline?

Could the role of the State in education be understood and circumscribed simply as an ideological apparatus, as Althusser conceptualised? Should it be enough, as I used to do in the sociology of education course, to refer to the Miliband-Poulantzas debate on how the ruling class rules and understands the...