The Pedagogical State Education and the Politics of National Culture in Post-1980 Turkey

"The Pedagogical State is an outstanding work of social science. It can be read with great benefit by students in comparative politics, political sociology, and politics and religion, and will also be of interest to senior comparativists." - Perspectives on Politics "Sam Kaplan's account of the pedagogical project of the modern Turkish state is a wonderfully revealing example of the competition among different interest groups over the education of children. This is a thought-provoking book in the best sense." - Ayhan Aktar, Marmara University, Istanbul (Turkey) "Part history, part political analysis, and part ethnography, Kaplan's book is a major contribution to understanding education in Turkey and will likely be of interest to those interested in education and the state more generally." - Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East "Topically, conceptually, and in terms of scholarly impact, Kaplan's book is a welcomed contribution to the anthropological study of education. Its major strengths are in framing education broadly in relation to communities, markets, families, and media, and in painting a theoretically informed and hence generalizeable picture of how education serves as site for imagining, casting, and ultimately reconfiguring ideas about politics and citizenship." - Anthropology and Education Quarterly "This book will inform both scholarship and public policy debates about the role-or lack thereof-of schooling in generating contemporary political conflicts. Kaplan's thorough and skillful research demonstrates the pointlessness of secular/religious dichotomies, particularly in cases where such dichotomies have traditionally been a primary reference point." - Gregory Starrett, University of North Carolina (Charlotte) "This book is a must-read for anybody who tries to make head or tail of why Turkey as a Muslim country is almost unique in having consolidated its democracy and, more generally, why its experience with Islam has strengthened the hands of those who have challenged the clash of civilizations theory." - Turkish Studies