Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The intellect, mobility and epistemic positioning in doing comparisons and comparative education

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 50; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03050068.2013.874237

1360-0486

Terri Kim,

Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy

AbstractThis article offers a reflexive analysis and discussion of the relationship between academic mobility and comparative knowledge creation. It argues that what constitutes 'comparative knowledge' is not solely Wissenschaften but more often entwined with Weltanschauungen, derived from lived experiences – as exemplified in the biographic narratives of some of the major intellects. It reviews the notions of the 'gaze' and the concepts of the Other and Homeworld/Alienworld as epistemic positioning in doing comparative education. In the framework of phenomenological thinking, the paper discusses the intimate relationship between comparative knowledge and positional knowledge. Notes on contributorDr Terri Kim is Reader in Higher Education in the Cass School of Education and Communities, University of East London (UEL), and Associate in the Centre for Higher Education Studies (CHES), Institute of Education, University of London. As a specialist in Comparative Higher Education, she has been a full time Lecturer at Brunel University for 10 years. In this period, she was invited as a Visiting Scholar at the Collège de France in Paris in 2006, and also invited as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Monash University in 2013, where she gave the Sixth Annual LASC Lecture in the Faculty of Arts, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Previously she worked as a research consultant for OECD in Paris; a Visiting Research Scholar in International Relations at LSE in London; a Brain Korea 21 Contract Professor at Seoul National University in Korea. She has published one book and over 35 articles internationally in the field of higher education. She is a member of the CESE (Comparative Education Society in Europe) Executive Committee and currently serving as a member of the Executive Board of International Studies in Sociology of Education journal. She is also on the editorial board of major international journals: Comparative Education, Intercultural Education, and Gender and Education (all Routledge Taylor & Francis journals). Her research interests cover the following themes - international relations and the changing governance of higher education, knowledge, and the academic profession; academic migration and the knowledge economy, with special reference to Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific countries. Many of her invitational writings and plenary talks have taken into account the future directions and strategic needs of Governments, international agencies, and policy think tanks.Notes1. E.g. research on education policy transfer (Phillip 1989; Phillips and Ochs Citation2004; Phillips and Schweisfurth Citation2008); policy borrowing and lending (Steiner-Khamsi and Waldow Citation2012) and the new meta-theorisation of transfer, translation and transformation (Cowen Citation2006, Citation2009); and 'transitologies' (Cowen Citation1999; Larsen Citation2010).2. E.g. Postmodernism and its Comparative Education Implications (Rust Citation1991); and Postpositivist Theorizing and Research (Ninnes and Mehta Citation2000; Unterhalter Citation2009).3. Foucault's intellectual project was to analyse the longue durée of formation and use of these discourses within the context of specific historical practices. In The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses), published three years later in 1966, Foucault presented a comparative study of the development of economics, the natural sciences and linguistics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which can be claimed as the first 'postmodern' history of ideas. Foucault wrote his next major work, The Archaeology of Knowledge (L'Archéologie du Savior) during the period when he was residing in Tunisia (1966–1968). This period of writing was a turbulent time for Tunisia with serious political violence and demonstrations aimed primarily at Israel. It is said that Foucault's experience in Tunisia had an effect on his work and thought. In the Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault argued that in addition to the classical unities of the existing human sciences, there are discursive unities that underlie them and are often not evident (The Foucault Society, Citation2010: http://foucaultsociety.wordpress.com/about-michel-foucault/).4. Adam Smith wrote his 'economics' as part of his work as a philosopher. He was the Chair Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. In the days of Adam Smith, much of the study carried out at universities was history and philosophy; a course in philosophy would include a study of jurisprudence. A study of justice leads naturally to a study of the various legal systems, which of course leads to the study of government, and, finally, to a study of political economy (http://martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/adam_smith.html).5. Dugald Stewart states that Hume wrote out his books with his own hand, and Adam Smith dictated his to a secretary. (Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith LL.D. by Dugald Stewart, 1793, from the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Read by Mr Stewart, 21 January and 18 March 1793. Printed in the Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, vol. 10, pp. 1–98 (http://www.adamsmith.org/sites/default/files/resources/dugald-stewart-bio.pdf).