Educational Inequality and Social Cohesion: a Time Series Analysis

The role of education in societal integration has been an recurrent motif in the sociology of education from its inception. Emile Durkheim (1977) in the 19 century was centrally concerned with the functions of education in cultural reproduction and the promotion of social solidarity; Talcott Parsons (1968) in the 20 followed him, designating social integration a primary task of public education; more recently historians and theorists of education and state formation (Boli, 1989; Curtis, 1988; Green, 1990; 1997; Meyer, J. et al., 1985; Weber, 1979) and social capital (Brehm and Rahn, 1997; Putnam, 2001) have sought to understand the effects of education on the construction of social collectivities at both community and state levels. Educational inequality has also been a dominant theme in educational sociology and policy in the since WW2, although its preeminence in policy debates somewhat receded during the years neo-liberal revival in the 1980s and 90s.