Giroux Reader

by Henry A. Giroux, Christopher G. Robbins

One of the world's leading social critics and educational theorists, Henry A. Giroux has contributed significantly to critical pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, social theory, and cultural politics. This new book offers a carefully selected cross-section of Giroux's many scholarly and popular writings, which bridge the theoretical and practical, integrate multiple academic disciplines, and fuse scholarly rigor with social relevance. The essays underscore the continuities and transformations in Giroux's thought, just as they offer invaluable approaches to understanding a range of social problems. Giroux's work suggests that a more humane and democratic world is possible and provides critical tools that can assist concerned citizens in bringing it into being.

Genres: Nonfiction, Education

364 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2006

About the author

American cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, media studies, and critical theory.

A high-school social studies teacher in Barrington, Rhode Island for six years, Giroux has held positions at Boston University, Miami University, and Penn State University. In 2005, Giroux began serving as the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Giroux has published more than 35 books and 300 academic articles, and is published widely throughout education and cultural studies literature. Since arriving at McMaster, Giroux has been a featured faculty lecturer, and has published nine books, including his most recent work, The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex.

Routledge named Giroux as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period in 2002.

Reviews

[Arda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Giroux is a rebel!

Notes from thesis:

The logic of institutions is that they are aligned with government, and as long as this is the case, the bodies intersecting in the spaces will remain complicit (Giroux, 2008)

Giroux (2008) demonstrates the connection of space and agency in the following:
“In a society in which the public sphere is characterized by a culture of fear and public life has receded behind gated communities, a pervasive discourse of privatization coupled with the practice of brutalization embraces an utterly narrow and commodified definition of freedom and feeds a disinterest in politics while closing down any sense of responsibility for those who in a neoliberal capitalist society represent the losers, the unemployed, the incarcerated, the poor, the young, and the elderly.” (p. 594-595)

Understanding how pedagogies work is critical in acquiring the means to challenge and speak back to the authoritarian discourse (Arendt, 1976, 1977) – “from a position of critical agency” (Giroux, 2008, p. 611).

Public pedagogy is set on and distributed in the public sphere of institutionalized sites such as, but not limited to, educational and cultural establishments as well as media platforms (Giroux, 2008). The Anglo and Euro centric discourse of academia, media, social media, various institutions working within the funding of governmental as well as non-governmental organizations and United Nations platforms, sets the defining relationships between the “developing” vs. “the developed.” The language, from that viewpoint, is within the “impoverished vocabulary of privatization, individualism, and excessive materialism” and it does not encourage critique or the type of collective action that would change the comfort zone by which governments are in the service of investors (Giroux, 2008, p. 592).

[Stephen Bigger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vital collection of papers by an outstanding American thinker

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strictly academic, but makes you feel like people can actually make a difference. Pretty radical in all ways possible.