Includes bibliographical references (p. [265]-299) and index.

Contents: 1. Introduction and context: Researching social studies in the postmodern: an introduction -- Social studies research in the context of intellectual thought -- 2. Postmodern propositions: Social studies in an age of image: surveillance-spectacle and the imperatives of "seeing" citizenship education -- Within and against citizenship: bad girls in deviant subject positions -- Gendering social studies, queering social education -- Citizenship and belonging: constructing "a sense of place and a place that makes sense -- The public museum and identity: or, the question of belonging -- Space, place and identity in the teaching of history: using critical Geography to teach teachers in the American South -- What's the purpose of teaching a discipline. Anyway? The Case of history -- The tragic knowledge of the social, Gerda Wever Rabehl -- Representations of family in curriculum: A Poststructural analysis -- Adventures in metropolis: popular culture in Social studies -- Critical, liberal and poststructural challenges for global education -- 3. Responses: Social studies in flux: in pursuit of a new rigor, critically and practically -- Whose worldview? representation and reality in the Social studies -- Two cheers for postmodernism: some caveats regarding postmodern research in social education -- The Invisible hand of theory in Social Studies Education -- Deploying foucault: purposes and consequences -- After the essays are ripped out, what? -- 4. Afterwords: Critical Social Studies: where are we now and where do we go from here? -- The problem with the problem with the problem of authority: critical postmodern deconstruction as democratic practice -- Visions, consequences and the construction of social studies education --