Dreams of Wholeness and Loss: critical sociology of education in South Africa

South African sociologists of education are living through a momentous and highly particular transition at the same time as they participate in global trends and debates. This paper reviews changes in their framing concerns as they move from an oppositional positionality to afar more ambiguous space that seems to require of them to choose between critique and reconstruction. The resultant re‐positioning and the changing forms of appropriation of international themes as local priorities shift is the central concern of this review.