Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to create a theoretical framework beyond the comparative approaches (e.g. Bereday, Comparative method in education. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964; Green, Preston, & Janmaat, Education, equality and social cohesion: A comparative analysis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) in the studies of student subjectivities’ formation in transnational education cooperation, such as between the Nordic states and China. Comparative approaches merely keep the analytical lenses focused on preserving the dichotomy between the West (represented by the Nordic states) and the East (represented by China). The proposed framework perceives the transnational education context as a global assemblage in which translocal governmentality is operating (Ong & Collier, Global assemblages: Technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005). The framework suggests identification of new modes of subject-making through the intersections of social categories (Staunæs, Where have all the subjects gone? Bringing together the concepts of intersectionality and subjectification. NORA—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 11(February 2015), 101–110, 2003) and detection of what Popkewitz (Cosmopolitanism and the age of school reform: Science, education, and making society by making the child. London: Routledge, 2007) calls “the limits of the cosmopolitan citizenry.”
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In this, I use the analysis from Popkewitz both historically and analytically, as it is my intention to apply his notion of cosmopolitanism as a critical strategy used to understand education in a transnational space as a kind of reform—from a national to a transnational curriculum.
- 2.
Foucault argued that we live in the age of a governmentality, which was discovered in the eighteenth century (Foucault, 2002a). Foucault analyzed this shift in his lecture on governmentality in 1978. He demonstrated that government, as a general problem, occurred in the middle of the sixteenth century. He found it remarkable that “from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth, there develops and flourishes a notable series of political treaties that are no longer exactly ‘advice to the prince,’ … but are instead presented as works on the ‘art of government’” (Foucault, 2002a, p. 201). The governance of the prince was connected to sovereignty, which operates on a territory, and thus on the subjects who inhabit it. This he called “sovereignty,” and the altered kind of governance he called “the art of government.”
- 3.
Staunæs was inspired by the school of Foucault reception which interprets his subject notion with performing, acting, doing, and becoming as vital aspects of subjectivity constitutions (Butler, 1999; Davies, 2000; Søndergaard, 1996) rather than merely organized and structured by power and knowledge relations. In this, she is inscribed, herself, within the tradition of the fields of pedagogy and psychology, particularly in that part where poststructuralist and social constructionist researchers have developed their perspectives on the processes of subjectification in relation to discourse theory. However, they continue the sensitive view of the subjectification processes, “in which people take up, ignore or resist the accessible discourses, make them their own and in this struggle constitute subjectivity” (Staunæs, 2005).
- 4.
In Crenshaw’s framing of the concept of intersectionality, she argues that “[i]ntersectionality is a conceptualization of the problem that attempts to capture both the structural and dynamic consequences of the interaction between two or more axes of subordination” (Crenshaw in Lutz, 2014, p. 3).
- 5.
Staunæs tries to make sense of Foucault’s notion of the two meanings the subject has in power complexities by using Davies and Harré’s (1990) interpretation of Foucault’s (2008) early work in the sixties, such as the idea of subject positions as effects of discursive regularity together with his later ideas of the embodied “on-going subjugation” in the late seventies (Foucault, 1980, p. 97). By emphasizing the processes that Foucault called “on-going subjugation,” Staunæs ties the positions regulated by the discourses and the subjects’ embodiments of the positions together. In this Foucault has turned his analytic eye toward the interactional level, as he questions more concretely the processes in subject-making—the processes of how our bodies, gestures, and behaviors are constituted in their material instances. Staunæs argues that in the establishing processes of subjectivity, questions of how bodies, gestures, and behaviors are shaped operate through material instances as social categories (Staunæs, 2003).
References
Bereday, G. Z. F. (1964). Comparative method in education. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Biggs, J. (1996). Western misperceptions of the Confucian-heritage learning culture. In D. Watkins & J. B. Biggs (Eds.), The Chinese learner: Cultural, psychological, and contextual influences (pp. 45–67). Hong Kong: CERC.
Brah, A. (1996). Cartographies of diaspora, contesting identities. London: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1999). Gender trouble. Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. Reprint.
Chan, C. (2010). Classroom innovation for the Chinese learner: Transcending dichotomies and transforming pedagogy. In C. K. K. Chan & N. Rao (Eds.), Revisiting the Chinese learner (Vol. 25, pp. 169–210). Springer Netherlands.
Chan, S. (1999). The Chinese learner—A question of style. Education + Training, 41(6/7), 294–305.
Clark, R., & Gieve, S. N. (2006). On the discursive construction of “The Chinese learner”. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 19(1), 54–73.
Coverdale-Jones, T. (2006). Afterword: The Chinese learner in perspective. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 19(1), 148–153.
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43, 1241–1299.
Dale, R. (2003). Globalization: A new world for comparative education? In J. Schriewer (Ed.), Discourse formation in comparative education (pp. 87–109). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Davies, B. (2000). (In)scribing body/landscape relations. Oxford: AltaMira Press.
Davies, B., & Harré, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 20, 43–46.
Faist, T., Fauser, M., & Reisenauer, E. (2013). Transnational migration. Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Foucault, M. (1980). Two lectures. In C. Gordon (Ed.), Power/knowledge—Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977—Michel Foucault. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Foucault, M. (2002a). Governmentality. In J. D. Faubion (Ed.), Power—Essential works of Foucault 1984–1989 (Vol. 3). Penguin Books.
Foucault, M. (2002b). The subject and power. In J. D. Faubion (Ed.), Power—Essential works of Foucault 1984–1989 (Vol. 3). London: Penguin Books.
Foucault, M. (2008). The archaeology of knowledge. Routledge Classics.
Green, A., Preston, J., & Janmaat, J. G. (2006). Education, equality and social cohesion: A comparative analysis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gu, Q., & Schweisfurth, M. (2006). Who adapts? Beyond cultural models of “the” Chinese learner. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 19(1), 74–89.
He, L. (2016). Transnational higher education institutions in China: A comparison of policy orientation and reality. Journal of Studies in International Education, 20(1), 79–95.
Heater, D. (2002). World citizenship, cosmopolitan thinking and its opponents. London: Continuum.
Hu, G. (2002). Potential cultural resistance to pedagogical imports: The case of communicative language teaching in China. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 15(2), 93–105.
Jin, L., & Cortazzi, M. (2006). Changing practices in Chinese cultures of learning. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 19(1), 5–20.
Li, J. H. (2016). Students’ strategies for position-taking in transnational education. Praktiske Grunde: Nordisk Tidsskrift for Kultur- og Samfundsvidenskab, 3–4, 53–72.
Lutz, H. (2014). Intersectionality’s (brilliant) career? How to understand the attraction of the concept? Working Paper Series, 1(1). Retrieved from http://www.fb03.uni-frankfurt.de/51634119/Lutz_WP.pdf
Ministry of Education in China. (2016a). The list of approved postgraduate level transnational higher education programs and institutions. Retrieved from http://www.crs.jsj.edu.cn/index.php/default/approval/orglists/1
Ministry of Education in China. (2016b). The list of approved undergraduate level transnational higher education programs and institutions. Retrieved from http://www.crs.jsj.edu.cn/index.php/default/approval/orglists/2
Mok, K. H. (2012). The rise of transnational higher education in Asia: Student mobility and studying experiences in Singapore and Malaysia. Higher Education Policy, 25(2), 225–241.
Ong, A. (1999). Flexible citizenship: The cultural logics of transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Ong, A. (2005). (Re)articulations of citizenship. Political Science and Politics, 38(4), 697–699.
Ong, A. (2006a). Experiments with freedom: Milieus of the human. American Literary History, 18, 229–244.
Ong, A. (2006b). Mutations in citizenship. Theory, Culture & Society, 23, 499–505.
Ong, A., & Collier, S. J. (2005). Global assemblages: Technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Plum, M. (2010). Dokumenteret faglighed: Analyser af hvordan pædagogisk faglighed produceres gennem læreplanernes dokumentationsteknologi [Documented professionalism: Analyses of how “professionalism” is produced through the technology of educational plans]. University of Copenhagen.
Popkewitz, T. S. (1998). Struggling for the soul: The politics of schooling and the construction of the teacher. New York: Teachers College Press.
Popkewitz, T. S. (2000a). Globalization/regionalization, knowledge, and the educational practices: Some notes on comparative strategies for educational research. In Educational knowledge—Changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community (pp. 3–27). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Popkewitz, T. S. (2000b). Rethinking decentralization and the state/civil society distinctions: The state as a problematic of governing. In Educational knowledge—Changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community (pp. 173–199). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Popkewitz, T. S. (2001). Cultural history and education: Critical essays on knowledge and schooling. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Popkewitz, T. S. (2007). Cosmopolitanism and the age of school reform: Science, education, and making society by making the child. London: Routledge.
Popkewitz, T. S., & Brennan, M. (1998). Foucault’s challenge: Discourse, knowledge, and power in education. New York: Teachers College Press.
Rastall, P. (2006). Introduction: The Chinese learner in higher education—Transition and quality issues. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 19(1), 1–4.
Razack, S. H. (1998). Looking white people in the eye: Gender, race, and culture in courtrooms and classrooms. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.
Saravanamuthu, K., & Yap, C. (2014). Pedagogy to empower Chinese learners to adapt to western learning circumstances: A longitudinal case-study. Cambridge Journal of Education, 44(3), 361–384.
Søndergaard, D. M. (1996). Tegnet på kroppen. Køn: Koder og konstruktioner blandt unge voksne i akademia [The sign on the body. Gender: Codes and constructions among young adults in academia]. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum.
Staunæs, D. (2003). Where have all the subjects gone? Bringing together the concepts of intersectionality and subjectification. NORA—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 11(February 2015), 101–110.
Staunæs, D. (2004). Køn, etnicitet og skoleliv [Ethnicity, gender and school lives]. Frederiksberg: Forlaget Samfundslitteratur.
Staunæs, D. (2005). From culturally avant-garde to sexually promiscuous: Troubling subjectivities and intersections in the social transition from childhood into youth. Feminism & Psychology, 15(2), 151–169.
Vertovec, S. (2002). Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, context and practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Watkins, D. (2008). Western educational research—A basis for educational reforms in Asia. In O. S. Tan, D. M. McInerney, A. D. Liem, & A. Tan (Eds.), What the West can learn from the East: Asian perspectives on the psychology of learning and motivation (pp. 59–76). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Yan, F. (2010). Tensions within the changing Chinese higher education system and learning. Frontiers of Education in China, 5(4), 473–476.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Li, J.H. (2019). Beyond Comparative Methods in Research on Transnational Education Cooperation: A Proposed Theoretical Model for Examining Contextual Complexities. In: Liu, H., Dervin, F., Du, X. (eds) Nordic-Chinese Intersections within Education. Palgrave Studies on Chinese Education in a Global Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28588-3_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28588-3_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-28587-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-28588-3
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)