This book examines the socioeconomic foundations of work and vocational education (VE), and is divided into the following 6 parts and 18 chapters: (1) nature of work (a sense of purpose; modernism and the evolution of the technocratic mind; power and the development of the modernist economy; good work, bad work, and the debate over ethical labor); (2) historical dimensions of VE (the origins of VE; the progressive debate, the victory of vocationalism, and the institutionalization of schooling for work; failures and reforms in the recent history of VE); (3) coping with and directing change (post-Fordism, technopower, and the changing economic and political arena; democratic post-Fordist workplaces and debating the changing purposes of VE; confronting and rethinking educational theory); (4) race, class, and gender (plausible deniability and the skeleton in VE's closet; class, gender, race, racism, and VE); (5) role of labor and unions in VE (democratic unionism in the global economy and corporate-directed VE; the new unionism and the struggle for a democratic social movement); and (6) vision of government, VE, and the future (worker civics and the decline of the nation-state and rise of corporate government; a reconceptualized government for the 21st century). The book contains 349 references. (MN)