Education, culture and society in a globalizing world: implications for comparative and international education

Abstract

As the world settles in to the reality of globalization, it becomes clear that many incongruous facets of human existence have been forced together into a giant tumbler – economy, information systems, finance and people – giving rise to contradictory but also generative responses. Previously excluded and excised ‘objects’ are now occupying intimate spaces with those who had believed that their subject position was ordained by God. Questions around co‐existence and co‐determination, knowledge and citizenship, culture and science, and cognitive justice are being asked at the most penetrating levels. This paper posits the integrative paradigm shift as a method in this dynamic episode in which knowledge paradigms of those excluded and epistemologically disenfranchised move centre stage, acquire agency and demand a new synthesis, signalling an era in which modernization now proceeds but without Western values. New theories of freedom, understandings of context, diversity, difference and co‐operative contemporary change are hallmarks of this generational moment. It is against these realities that international and comparative education is challenged to make its position known.