New theories and theory-based methodological approaches have found their way into Comparative Education--just as into Comparative Social Science more generally--in increasing number in the recent past. The essays of this volume express and critically discuss quite a range of these positions such as, inter alia, the theory of self-organizing social systems and the morphogenetic approach; the theory of long waves in economic development and world-systems analysis; historical sociology and the sociology of knowledge; as well as critical hermeneutics and post-modernist theorizing. With reference to such theories and approaches, the chapters--written by scholars from Europe, the USA and Australia--outline alternative research agendas for the comparative study of the social and educational fabric of the modern world. In so doing, they also expound frames of reference for re-considering the intellectual shaping, or Discourse Formation, of Comparative Education as a field of study. Contents of this book include: (1) Comparative Education Methodology in Transition: Towards a Science of Complexity? (Jurgen Schriewer); (2) Towards a Theory of Systemic Regulation? The Case of France and Germany in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Claude Diebolt); (3) Globalization: A New World For Comparative Education? (Roger Dale); (4) The World Institutionalization of Education (John W. Meyer/Francisco O. Ramirez); (5) Domination, Legitimacy and Education: Max Weber's Contribution to Comparative Education (Bernd Zymek); (6) Transferring Education, Displacing Reforms (Gita Steiner-Khamsi); (7) New Times, Hard Times: Re-Reading Comparative Education in an Age of Discontent (Anthony Welch); (8) Contributions and Challenges of Feminist Theory to Comparative Education Research and Methodology (Nelly P. Stromquist); (9) National Imaginaries, the Indigenous Foreigner, and Power: Comparative Educational Research (Thomas S. Popkewitz); and (10) A Spatial Turn in Comparative Education? Constructing a Social Cartography of Difference (Rolland Paulston).