This is a collection of essays that address the international changes in welfare policy. The issues examined are, among others, the role of international donors and their emphasis on efficiency and lower social subsidies, international migration and its impact on welfare policy inclusions (and exclusions), and national policy change.

PART I: GLOBAL AND LOCAL PATTERNS OF GOVERNING THE CHILD, THE FAMILY, THEIR CARE AND EDUCATION: AN INTRODUCTION; M.Bloch, T.Popkewitz, K.Holmlund & I.Moqvist PART II: THE UNIVERSAL CHILD AND FAMILY IN A GLOBAL SOCIETY: THE NATIONAL CONTEXT WITHIN THE GLOBAL CIRCULATION OF POWER RELATIONS The Ethics of Learning; G.Dahlberg The Welfare State and the Changed Meaning of Childhood; G.Hallden Constructing a Parent; I.Moqvist Children's Rights and the Protection of Childhood Under Changing Conditions in Russia; E.Smirnova & V.Sobkin PART III: HISTORIES AND HISTORIOGRAPHIES OF THE CHILD, FAMILY, CARE AND SCHOOLING Remaking the Home and 'Belonging': Changing Patterns of Governing the Child in the Family; T.S.Popkewitz Hear Ye! Hear Ye! The State, (Dis)ability, Education, and the Child; B.Baker The Child and the Spectacle of Policy in the Age of the 'Dangerous Individual'; C.Bailey Early Childhood Education: the Duty of the Family or Institutions?; L.Chalmel PART IV: YOUNG CHILD, GENDER AND CHANGING GOVERNING PATTERNS The State and Wage Earning Mothers: Ideology or Reality?; K.Holmlund Child Welfare in the United States: The Construction of Gendered, Oppositional Discourse(s); G.S.Cannella Children's Rights and Market Rights in the De-Welfared State; V.Polakow 'Teenage Parenthood is Bad for Parents and Children': A Feminist Critique of the Restructuring of the Governance of Family, Education and Social Welfare Policies and Practices; M.David PART V: GLOBALIZING NEW GOVERNING DISCOURSES IN SCHOOLING AS THE ADMINIDTRATION OF THE CHILD, FAMILY, AND EDUCATION Children and Families in Neocolonial Kenya: Losing Ground Under Neoliberal Global Policies; B.B.Swadener & P.Wachira Antiracism, IT, Education and the State in Sweden: Why here? Why now?; C.Hallgren & G.Weiner Educational Policy after Welfare: Reconstructing Patterns of Governance in Argentinean Education; I.Dussel The Global and the Local: A Feminist and Post-Colonial Analysis of the Restructured Governing Patterns Relatedto National Imaginaries of Care for Children and Families: Governing the Well-Educated and Cared for Citizen and Family in the USA, Senegal, and Hungary; M.Bloch

'A rich and multidimensional portrait of the historical and actual forces that govern the child in various corners of today's world.' - Kenneth Hultqvist, Stockholm Institute of Education 'Through their new understanding of the embedded systems of cultural reasoning governing the state, this intellectual tool may influence social and educational policy and practice for decades.' - Louis F. Miron, University of Illinois 'This collection performs important conceptual work by crossing and combining fields that are all too often kept apart: child studies, education, and social policy. Using a variety of disciplinary approaches, the authors show convincingly how policymakers in all of these domains use children as a wedge issue in efforts to reform families and restructure welfare states. By ranging across societies and over time, the articles map the impact of cross-cultural exchanges and trace the consolidation of global patterns of governance. Taken as a whole, thevolume offers a fresh perspective on governmentality and the power/knowledge nexus; unique in its ambition, it has the potential to revise thinking in all of the fields it addresses.' - sonya Michel, Professor of American Studies and History, University of Maryland, author of Children's Interests / Mothers' Rights: The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy 'Editors and international colleagues, Bloch, Holmlund, Moqvist and Popkewitz present in this collection a rich smorgasbord of critical views of topics all too infrequently explored. Discourses, ideologies, research methodologies and theoretical perspectives are appropriately diverse in what amounts to a comprehensive reconceptualization of education's private-public realms. Central to all contributions are thematics and relations of governing and government, of care and welfare, of reason and knowledge, of freedom and control. This is exciting reading with something for everyone who seriously considers reform.' - Lynda Stone, Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Marianne Bloch is the editor of co-editor of "Educational Partnerships" (forthcoming from Palgrave, 2003). She is also the editor of "Women and Education in Sub-Saharan Africa" and "The Ecological Context of Children's Play". Thomas Popkewitz is the author of "Foucault's Challenge, Struggling for the Soul" and "Educating Knowledge".