Where do we go from here?

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Globalization, education and the challenge of uncertainty

Stephen Carney, Roskilde University

Framing Uncertainty

• Modernity intensifying & spreading(Giddens, Beck, Friedman)

• Modernity diversifying(Appadurai, Castells)

• Modernity unraveling(Wallerstein, Hardt & Negri)

• Modernity as abjection(Bauman, Ferguson)

Some Central Concerns• The changing role/ nature of the state

- State spatiality and reach (as potential)- Rescaling (neoliberalism as decline)

• The prospects for political action

- Globalization connecting the ‘multitude’ - Consumer society alienating the ‘mass’

• ‘Culture’, place, locality

- Imagination and ‘ideoscape’- Cosmopolitanism and anti-membership

‘Multi-level Analyses’ and Comparison

Three Experiments

• ‘Policyscape’ (Denmark, Nepal, China)

• ‘Eduscape’ (Denmark, South Korea, Zambia)

• Youth and schooling (Nepal)

Exploring flows across spaces:

Exploring flows within a single site:

Responses to ‘Policyscape’

- ‘breaks from the legacy of methodological nationalism’ (Gita Steiner-Khamsi)

- ‘theoreticial innovation’ (Robert Cowen)

- ‘spatial fetishism!’ (Susan Robertson)

A Different Type of CritiqueQuestion:

- Are we dealing with uncertainty, denying or embracing it?

Sub-question:

- What counts as data in the ‘global cultural economy’?

‘Asia in Miniature’Towards ‘an analytic of noise’:

‘…a mode of analysis that would take seriously both the fact that signifying actors might have social reasons not to establish a bond of communication but to rupture it, and the way that stylistic messages take on a social significance whether they are ‘understood’ or not through a social process of construal of the partially unintelligible’.

(James Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity 1999)

It is in the silences that the music is made. (Debussy)

Questions• Where do we do comparative education research under conditions of profound global interconnectivity?

• What counts as data in the emerging global cultural economy?

• What type of progressive project is possible in such research?

Thank you!

Unframing ‘Modern’ Policy ResearchSubjectivity as ‘becoming’

- In assemblages- As movement

‘Non-state philosophy’ - Minor literature (Deleuzes)- Beyond power and production (Baudrillard)

Social/ epistemological - ‘State’ and ‘subject’ as investments- Morality and ethics (Nietzsche)

Post-Modern Origins of Globalization

(Lizardo & Strand, 2009)

French(The social)

German(The political)

British(The economic) The US

(The cultural/ aesthetic)

‘Domesticating’ French theorizing• Post-classical theory viewed as ‘impractical’:

- too little focus on economy, state or change • ‘Global condition’ defined by US/ British interests:

- class (Marx)- state (Weber)- social solidarity (Durkheim)- ‘North’ now seen in ‘South’

• French ‘post’ theorizing lingers as (practical/ politically-aware) globalization research

The Global Cultural Economy

• ‘Scapes’(ethno, media, techno, finance and ideo)

• ‘Global Flows’ (complex, rapid, overflowing and disjunctive)

• Interconnectivity of phenomena (end of centre/ periphery distinction)

(‘Modernity at Large’, Arjun Appadurai 1996)

Educational ‘Policyscape’

Neo & advanced liberalism (Mitchell Dean)

• Visions and values

• Management and organisation

• Learning processes

Different Countries, Systems, Levels

Policy Agents Technologies

DK Uni Law Boards Contracts

Nepal Community Parents SMCs schools

China Curriculum Students Pedagogy

Interconnectivities• State spatiality (read: ‘state’)

- Strong state/ weak state- Reaching in/ reaching out

• Negotiation and enactment (read: ‘action’)

- New and old voices heard- Productive and repressive power

• ‘Locality’ (read: ‘culture’)

- As nationalism and protest- As tradition and change

However…….

Other Responses

• Vertical case study (Fran Vavrus)

• Multi-site ethnography(George Marcus)

• Anthropology of policy(Susan Wright)

(Comparative) Education Paradigms

‘Uncertainty’ / ‘Complexity’• In relation to:

- Schooling & education institutions- Teachers and teaching- Knowledge

• Old certainties collapsing; new ones hard to find:

- End of political will?- End of metanarratives?- End of theory?