UCLA

Carlos Alberto Torres has been one of the most prolific and influential theorists of education over the past half century and is the preeminent scholar in the founding and development of the subfield of the political sociology of education, which critically examines the operations of power and inequality in education, their role in social and cultural reproduction, and their effects on the concepts and practices of democracy, citizenship, and multiculturalism. This dissertation provides the first major study of Torres’ work to chart and critically assess his intellectual development, theoretical contributions, and influence within that subfield, exploring both his experiences growing up in Argentina and living in the United States that shaped his perspective on the relationship between power and knowledge as well as the broader historical and intellectual environment that led to the emergence of critical studies within education that eventually gave rise to the political sociology of education. A historical-biographical approach is taken to provide a brief intellectual biography of Torres, and a historical, theoretical, and philosophical approach is taken to examine the intellectual context in which his work and the framework of the political sociology education emerged and developed. That framework is then applied to two prominent contemporary problems within higher education, the student loan debt crisis and the reevaluation of the purpose and value of college, to critically assess its ability both to analyze the causes and conditions of those problems as well as to provide viable solutions that support and enable democratic dialogue and engagement.