Preface

GLOBALIZATION AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF RACE ANDEDUCATIONAL REFORM

The focus of this special issue is on the cultural politics of race and educa-tional reform in the context of major societal changes often discussedunder the term “globalization”. These changes are marked by worldwide spread of interconnected economic relations and markets. Howeverglobalization is not only about the processes of economic exchange, itinvolves cultural processes. Ideas, attitudes, people, technologies, mediaand cultural commodities and symbols now flow across the globe inwhat were once unbridgeable temporal and spatial distances. If global-ization is about the compression of time and space then it has profoundconsequences for identity, and in particular people’s cultural affiliations,and potentially the politics of race and educational reform.

The major question explored in this special issue then is the extent towhich, and how, has the cultural politics of race been transformed not onlyby the contemporary processes of globalization but also by the successivegenerations of educational reform designed to tackle the problems of racistexclusion and inequality. Which practices of racist exclusion persist inschools and other educational organizations? How might we account forthe persistence of race inequalities in education? Has globalization creatednew racial formations, as well as new practices of racist exclusion, and if sowhat new initiatives might be needed to overhaul programs of educationalreform?

The special issue is deliberatively international and comparative in itsdesign. This is so because race is a social construction, and therefore thepractices of racist exclusion must be understood in ways that are bothhistorically specific and relational. Major variations in race constructionsmust be expected across time and space, relating to different colonialhistories and narratives of educational reform. The issue will thus consistof four papers.

The opening paper in this special issue is by Sally Tomlinson (Univer-sity of Oxford, UK) which reflects on some of the changes in the discourses

Journal of Educational Change 4: 209–211, 2003.© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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and practices of race and multicultural educational reform that have takenplace over the past twenty five years both in Britain and elsewhere. Sallyillustrates her arguments by referring in particular to the papers presentedon race, ethnicity, multiculturalism and education at the previous fiveconferences of the International Sociology Association (ISA), held everyfour years.

The next paper by Yusuf Syed (University of Sussex, UK), CrainSoudien (University of Cape Town, South Africa) and Nazir Carrim(University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa) looks at the notions ofinclusion and exclusion as they have been constructed, appropriated andused in the politics of educational reform in post-Apartheid South Africaand India. The paper assesses the value of these approaches, and suggeststhat the main conceptual weakness of current understandings is theirfailure to adequately engage with social justice concerns.

The third paper by Ruth Arber (Monash University, Australia) discussesthe ways in which discourses of ethnicity, racism and multiculturalismhave changed in Australia in a ten year period from 1989 to 1999.She explores conversations with teachers and parents at one Melbournesecondary school as the modern definition of identity, as it was definedat the end of the 1980’s, took on the fluidity of post-modern definitiona decade later. Even as identification seemed contingent and negoti-ated and difference seemed to disappear teachers and parents continuedto understand their identity in relation to the ambivalent definition ofothers.

The final paper by Leslie Roman (University of British Colombia,Canada) puts the spotlight on the currently popular notion of “globalcitizenship”. Within knowledge-power nexus, she examines three “globalcitizens” around which particular curricular initiatives and practicesoperate – first, educators and learners as “intellectual tourists, voyeurs, andvagabonds” second, as agents of “civility and democratic nation-builders”;and third, as “multicultural consumers of ethnic, racial and (inter)nationaldifference”. She finds each of these constructions problematic and presentsoutlines of an alternative.

AUTHOR’S BIO

Fazal Rizvi has been a professor in Educational Policy Studies at the Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2001. Before that he held appointments ata number of Australian universities; and is a former President of the Australian

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Association for Research in Education. He is currently researching issues ofidentity, culture and transnational education.

FAZAL RIZVI

Educational Policy Studies377 Education Bldg. MC 708-1310 S. SixthUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignChampaign, IL 61820USAE-mail: frizvi@uiuc.edu