Globalization, education and discourse political analysis

QUALITATIVE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 2000 VOL 13 NO 1 1plusmn 24

Globalization education and discourse politicalanalysis ambiguity and accountability inresearch

ROSA NIDIA BUENFIL-BURGOSCentro de Investigacio n y Estudios Avanzados Del ValleMe xico

Introduction

No one would call into question that globalization is a key concept in contemporaryeducational policies Both in industrialized and in the so-called Third World countriesthis notion has reached a crucial position Some may agree with a global organizationof education and some others may not but it can hardly be ignored Two questionsderive from this Can globalization aspire to a univocal sense Does globalizationinvolve the same political and social consequences in this heterogeneous planet weinhabit

In spite of the fact that educational policies (eg globalizing policies) do not reachschools and other educational environments exactly as they were proposed theynevertheless leave a trace in day-to-day local educational practices This is a position Iwill sustain in this paper knowing that it challenges the ordinary idea that policies arediscourses (ie just words) which have nothing to do with everyday practices (iereality) Some considerations also derive from the former position How was theequivalence between local and everyday practice constructed How productive inanalytic terms can a concept of discourse be that reduces it to just words And alsowhat are the implications of an analysis that does not realize the contact betweeneducational policies (ie the macro level) and everyday local educational practices(ie the micro level)

Having said this the reader can gain a picture of the reg eld of interest to be exploredin this paper Concerning the subject-matter I will deal with the concept ofglobalization concerning the focus I will explore some of its diUacute erent meanings andimplications The perspective for carrying this out is discourse political analysis

I will argue that there is a proliferation of meanings of globalization which is notdue merely to an academic fashion but to the very empty and macr oating character of anodal signireg er such as globalizationThe ambiguity of this concept opens the possibilityof its use in diUacute erent political and ethical ways thus entailing responsibility andaccountability of the use one chooses I will use educational examples to discuss linksbetween the global and the local and stress the process of resignireg cation taking place inthis movement I will also interlace these themes underlining ethical and politicalconsiderations

The main goals of this paper are

(1) From a discursive perspective to show the constitutive ambiguity ofglobalizationand what intellectualattitude this demands from an educationalresearcher

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education ISSN 0951-8398 print ISSN 1366-5898 online rsquo 2000 Taylor amp Francis Ltdhttp wwwtandfcouk journals tf 09518398html

2 rosa nidia buenfil-burgos

(2) From a politicalapproach to elucidate how this constitutiveambiguityallowsthe meaning of globalizationto be reg xed in diUacute erent concepts thus demandingits accountability and responsibility of the meaning chosen

(3) From an educational perspective to discuss why even if policies areresemanticized when they arrive at everyday local educational actions thisdoes not amount to a minimization of their analysis (links between theuniversal and the particular)

This paper is organized in four sections (1) Globalization intellectual genealogy andarea of dispersion (2) Conceptual and analytical approach (polysemy and ambiguityanalytical procedure) (3) The global meets the local educational examples and (4)Mapping the horizon scenarios and reg nal remarks

Globalization has been a nodal signireg er within the last decade of educationalpolicies particularly in the American continent but its meaning seems to involve aconsiderable degree of dispersion It can either be associated with an evil that has to beexpelled or with the reg nal road to progress it can be reg xed either as correlative tohomogenization or to fragmentation and lack of social bonds Some have even claimedthat globalization does not exist and that the term is not a good description of the facts(Hirst amp Thompson 1996) The point here is not an ontological discussion but rathertracing how it came to be what it is now and examining how it works in diUacute erentdiscursive formations

A more general meaning of globalizationwould refer to a national policy of treatingthe whole world as a proper sphere for political inmacr uence compare imperialisminternationalism (Websterrsquo s Collegiate Dictionary 1990 p 521) Let us consider now howsocial theoreticians and other intellectuals have constructed it

Globalization intellectual genealogy and area of dispersion

This section will display the area of dispersion of globalization as a sign drawing fromconceptions produced by social scientists stressing economic political historical andcultural angles during 1991 to 1997 from both the American continent and Europe(namely Germany Spain and the UK) Discussions have emerged as to whetherglobalization is a new historical epoch or just a renewed strengthening of existingcapitalist structures and as regards its causes (a single or multiple causality) stressingits dynamics and projection But in order to set some grounds for this analysis asuccessive reduction of a great variety of positions has to be made I will focus on thefollowing features

(1) its links with imperialism neo-liberalism modernity and a necessary momentin a historical and or economic course

(2) its association with universalism and homogeneity(3) its identireg cation with the contact the encounter the interconnection of

diUacute erent trends (4) its construction as the outcome of an interconnection or the encounter of

diUacute erent tendencies

There is little need to display here the great amount of subtleties and nuances one canreg nd in the literature Therefore a typology seems a rather diaelig cult enterpriseNonetheless some ordering principles will be attempted so as to have some grounds for

globalization educationand discoursepolitical analysis 3

further discussion To these ends the best I can do is try some genealogical links and lookfor some family resemblance (Wittgenstein 1963) among the meanings attributed toglobalization and the main trends located during this review

How did we get here

Contiguity with modernity a phase of capitalism imperialism neo-liberalism and thecollapse of socialism from this basic resemblance one can reg nd a bifurcation of positionsoscillating from an intrinsic necessity for each other to a historically contingentproximity linked to power relations

From an economic historical perspective globalizationhas been seen as an inevitabletendency involving the universalization of the market economy in terms of labordivision commodireg cation goods production and distribution consumer practices etc(Braudel 1991 Wallerstein 1989) It refers to the macr ux of investment capital throughfrontiers according to the capacity of each aUacute ected economy (Chomsky 1997 p 13)and the conquering and progressive occupation of virtually the whole globe and all theaspects of its inhabitantsrsquo lives by imperialism under the guidance of transnationalcapital (Fu$ rntratt-Kloep 1997 p 27) Market policy appears as a whole proposal toconstitute a homogenized world capitalist society (Hinkelammert 1997 pp 113plusmn 114)

Military geopolitical relations are also among the causes associated withglobalizationeither in terms of a contingent but gradual domination of liberal ideologycommon economic political and military interests (Gilpin 1987 p 89) or associatedwith the decline and collapse of historical socialist societies and the parallel rise ofcapitalism (Fu$ rntratt-Kloep 1997) For some they are concomitant and inevitableprocesses corresponding to the course of history the product of economic and politicalunequal relations They are the result and proof of capitalist victory over Socialism andreform capitalism (Hinkelammert 1997)

Technological advances have produced global interdependence and inter-connectedness diminishing geographical and social distances (Rosenau 1990) Otherswould stress how technology has eUacute ects in cultural terms globalization is related to theuniversalization of cultural values and practices such as the massive use of teleinformaticmedia for both knowledge diUacute usion and popular culture or ethnic and religiousproducts (McLuhan amp Powers 1989)

Some taking for granted the links between globalizationand modernity emphasizeits multicausal character (Giddens 1990) or the fact that it has produced similar socialand cultural phenomena (eg forced and free migration) in the whole world namelyin the postcolonial world (Hall 1997 p 4)

The idea of exclusion and resistance is another ingredient present here Since it is theresult of an exclusion of the powerless and the totalization of capitalism (total market)and its eaelig cient productive rationality solidarity and resistance to globalization areproposed as political responses (Harvey 1989 Hinkelammert 1997) Againstglobalized imperialism we have the advantage of numerous examples of revolutions(even if they have failed) (Fu$ rntratt-Kloep 1997) Within the frame of an associationbetween modernity and globalism the latter is understood as the exclusion of thecultural political economic and national identities of Asia Africa and Latin AmericaThe globalizing world system has a limit it is ` ` where the Alterity of the Other starts[which is its] locus of resistancersquo rsquo (Dussel 1997 capitals in the original)


Projections to the future

There is a tendency to universalizationhomogenization integrationand centralizationThis is another resemblance that can easily be found in the literature either to reject itor to celebrate it While some might stress the historical political and economic causesand implications others will underline the intellectual cultural and technologicalfeatures

In previous conceptions many anticipated a universal and homogeneous planeteither for economic reasons (Braudel 1991 Wallerstein 1989) or in a more generalsense ` ` from a pluralist world of many paradigms we went to a world globalized andhomogenized by a single one rsquo rsquo (Hinkelammert 1997) From a mass-mediatic andteleinformatic perspective McLuhan (1989) also foresees universalization

The prevalence of a central point of view ie a Western modern prospectpermeates with its orientation and strategies economic political cultural andeducational tendencies in an area of inmacr uence eg US views on the Americancontinent It involves national disintegration and transnational integration of both theleaders of global capitalism and the marginalized from it (Harvey 1989)

In the search for a global view to replace the societal views intellectual enterprisemust lead us to the arrival of the One World committed to reason and humanity byrelaunching the Enlightenment project but shorn of its positivistic and dehumanizingaccounts of the social (Archer 1991) In the same frame the capitalist global society isunderstood as a necessary departing point towards the construction of a new societybeyond the state

Fortunately the paralyzing eUacute ect produced by the collapse of Socialism bypostmodernism and neoliberalism on the creative spiritual energy of humanityhas started to recede From diUacute erent corners of the global village new initiativesand paradigms emerge leading to the overthrow of capitalist barbarianism suchas Habermas (Chomsky amp Dieterich 1995 p 183)

From a cross-cultural perspective globalization has been construed as a culturalcatastrophe that is harassing cultural minorities (Aronowitz 1995) and therefore acultural and educational strategy becomes crucial to defend minority cultures

Cultural integration at a transnational scale international uniformization of criteriafor school certireg cation the intensireg cation of cultural exchange and the ruling ofcommunication are other frequent associations Supranational or regional integrationmay provide better conditions for weaker economies in their entrance into the worldeconomic system Europe gives us an interesting experience of articulation ofglobalization and regionalizationwith its diaelig culties and risk of national disintegration(Garcotilde a Canclini 1996)

As a contemporary tendency of both cultural reaaelig rmation and homogenization(Labastida 1991) the latter is taking advantage not just by teleinformatic means butin a more generalized sense (science technology environment economy inter alia)

Interplay between opposed tendencies

A further resemblance refers to those conceptualizations whereby tension encounterinteraction interconnection and contact are emphasized as constitutive features ofglobalization putting forward the coexistence of double movements and clashingtendencies from either a cultural or an economic view from a political or a mass-


mediatic perspective What makes the family resemblance here is the acknowledgmentof how the contact between the diUacute erent can lead the planet not to an either or but toboth a universalistic and a particularistic view intertwined (eg the colonizer and thecolonized view coexisting)

We all participate albeit from diUacute erent positions in a global system ofculture frac14 increasingly less dominated by the West less Eurocentric frac14 And sothere must be more and more people in the West like ourselves who are bothaware of their ignorance of many of the other traditions and want to know more(Kawame amp Gates 1997 XI)

Globalization is understood not as Westernalization but as the transformation of thevery day-to-day life (medicine cuisine art religions) of Western societies thusproducing syncretic formations It articulates pluralism in a postmodern society ofcultural fragmentation it is a reg rst global civilization (Perlmutter 1991)

Others emphasize Western imperialism and a global media system producing bothuniversalization and particularization (Robertson 1990) The combination of econ-omic military and political trajectories has produced this global condition Capitalisminterstate system militarism and industrialism are creating this discontinuouscontingent and uneven development (Giddens 1990)

In my view some features stressed by those who oppose globalization and oUacute ersome ways to overcome it present its very limits and thus incipient traces of itsnonuniversal and omnipresent character emerge Alterity (Dussel) resistance(Hinkelammert) strategies to defend cultural minorities (Aronowitz 1995)

Before I end this review let me mention some constructions found in a sample ofeducational writings

How education is associated with globalization

Many of the previous conceptions can also be found in the literature specializing ineducation for instance the relation with capitalism the idea of a historical tendency itsnecessity the idea of universalization and homogeneity links with a promising or acatastrophist horizon etc

Even from a progressive culture-oriented perspective economic issues are putforward the global macr ow of merchandise and capital depends on a fragmentation plusmn orreparochialization plusmn of sovereign territories Education processes both in the largersocial community and in schooling sites are inextricably linked to the politics ofneoliberalism driven by an expanding capitalism (McLaren amp Gutie rrez 1997)

While some have just described globalization as a historical tendency involving theuniversalization of the market economy others emphasize how naive it is to believe thatglobalization guarantees a better distribution of wealth in the world economy since inthe last instance it is a hierarchical market system organized by just one pole of the worldcapitalist structure (Gutie rrez Pe rez 1991) This would involve the prevalence of acentral point of view ie a Western modern outlook permeating cultural andeducational tendencies in an area of inmacr uence for instance US views on the wholeAmerican continent In its early stages globalizing university curricula was viewed asa means to produce such educational innovations so that students would develop worldcognitive maps for a better understanding of everyday local events (Perlmutter 1991)

Some others also construe globalizationas an inevitable tendency in contemporary


history that should be met regardless of the guarantee of equity and welfare for all itmay or may not provide (Buchbinder 1994) since it poses challenges on educationalstrategies that cannot be ignored (Barabtarlo 1992 Casillas 1993 Del Valle 1992Del Valle amp Taborga 1992 Marum 1993 Weiss 1994)

Some consider it an opportunity to substantiate the creation of new research centers(Garibay amp Torres 1992) some just state the changes it has brought about in education(Sosa 1994) without further judgment or qualireg cationof these changes Still others takeit as something against which educational strategies have to contend (Abreu 1993)

The review could continue since plenty of writing has been done on this topicThere are debates concerning integration versus fragmentation centralization versusdecentralization juxtapositionversus syncretization etc However it is time to set someanalytical grounds for their examination

Let me stop now to summarize some key aspects of the variety of meanings thus farindicated I will highlightcrucial points that will be retrieved later for my argument Onthe one hand in a genealogical gesture one can trace back and reg nd that it has becomea key signireg er in the late 1980s and the 1990s albeit that as a process of planetaryinterconnection it can be found much earlier The work by Wallerstein Braudel andMcLuhan pioneered the proliferation of writing on the subject On the other hand inan organizing gesture I have grouped this area of dispersion in family resemblance intothree types

(1) The view of an intrinsic connection between globalization modernity andneoliberal capitalism can be observed albeit there might be some diUacute erencesin terms ofhow their benereg tsare anticipatedEither through the lawsofhistoryor the course of economies it seems that there is a necessary implicationbetween these three signireg ers The link between globalization and homo-genization seems to be taken for granted

(2) The association of globalization with a neoliberal postmodern and post-socialist global capitalist society that can be superseded by progressive anti-capitalist global perspectives In this enterprise Rationalism and Habermasrsquo snon-distorted communicative action would play a key role In this case thelinks between globalization and capitalism can be broken nonetheless thereare still residues of a logic of necessity retroactively operating as the conditionof possibility for a noncapitalist global village (Archerrsquo s new object ofsociology) Thus we can have bad capitalist globalization as a necessarycondition for the emergence of a good global village

(3) The dissociation of globalization from a universal necessary tendency ofhistory and from mere cultural economic ethical or political imperialization(either capitalist or postcapitalist) can be observed Cultural clash andintegration postsocialist political world repositioning economic worldreorganization inter alia are considered as historical conditions forglobalization Emphasizing the heterogeneous and diUacute erential character ofsocial communities in the planet globalization can be understood as acondition for contact between what is diUacute erent

In the preceding lines one may see the wide area of dispersion of the meanings associatedwith globalization and this makes its analysis a challenging enterprise$ DiUacute erentpositionshave been posited eg the implicationsof its implementation in a specireg c reg eld(economy education culture etc) the positive and or negative consequences in thosegeographical areas where globalization penetrates and so on Rather than comparing


which one is better than the other I will try to show how this proliferation can beaccounted for and why this constitutive ambiguity allows the political reoccupation ofglobalization

I now want to examine

(1) The non-univocal character of a sign On the one hand the diUacute erent valuesreferred to by globalizationcan be identireg edby its positionin a languagegame(eg the economic the historic the cultural etc) giving it some precision ineach frame (ie polysemy) On the other it is impossible to dereg ne a univocaland ultimate meaning of a sign even within the same language game (ieconstitutive ambiguity)

(2) Its conceptual implications ie to understand this constitutiveambiguity anopen attitude (postfoundationalist ) from the researcher is needed plusmn I wouldsay the capacity to repositiononeself in order to grasp the meaningswhichhavebeen excluded from the signireg er This reg ts with a postmodern horizon ofintelligibility (Laclau 1988)

(3) Its politicaldiscursive possibilitiesin a particular reg eld (educationand culture)in those geographical areas where globalization penetrates emphasizing theundecidable relations between integrationplusmn hybridization homogeneityplusmnheterogeneity cultural contactplusmn unequal conditions

Intellectual tools and research approach

The perspective assumed in this paper is discourse political analysis (Laclau 19851988amp ) which tries to examine through desedimentation (ie showing the area ofdispersion of a signireg er) and reactivation (suggesting other possible articulations) howthe meaning of a signireg er has been precariously reg xed Focusing on inclusion andexclusion it searches those power relations involved in the process

The main sources of the theoretical toolboxrsquo nourishing this research involved somebasic concepts such as sign signireg er and value borrowed from Saussure and notionssuch as family resemblance language game and use taken from Wittgenstein

Taking from them both the nonpositive character of language ie its relationalnature and the possibility of expanding their key concepts processes and logics oflanguage procedures to other reg elds of social relations a concept of discourse isconstructed It involves linguistic and nonlinguistic meaningful ensembles whosemeaning is constituted in relations (diUacute erence equivalence antagonism etc) it sustainswith other discourses Discourse is understood as a meaningful totality never completeor sutured but always exposed to dislocation due to the action of other discourses(

Discourse political analysis is a qualitative perspective which does not involve oneproper method of its own but according to the specireg c interest and the particularanalytical unit chosen it takes from a theoretical toolbox those which may beappropriate provided of course they are conceptually compatible AccordinglyWittgenstein Foucault and Derrida have provided valuable devices such as familyresemblance genealogy and deconstruction for the analytical ends of our perspective

The research approach) to the subject in this particular case included thefollowing

(1) Choosing a set of nodal signireg ers within a discourse of interest for the researchIn this paper gloablization was selected since as anyone interested in


educational matters knows it is a key signireg er in contemporary policies notjust educational but also economic cultural and geopolitical ones

(2) Examining how globalization has been used (in the Wittgensteinian sense ofthe term) in diUacute erent language games and the political implications of theseuses Language game is used here as an articulation of actions objects andwords around a meaningful grouping In the interest of this paper thismeaningful articulation concerns educational policies ergo my politicalanalysis was not restricted to just words (as in its colloquial sense) but alsoinvolved other forms of meaningful actions concerning educational policies

(3) Tracing how it came to mean what it means currently ie what has beenincluded and excluded how ambiguity is working in its margins and thepolitical implications of these relative reg xations

In the broader research wherein this paper is inscribed globalization appears as anodal point (Z) iz) ek 1989) as a signireg er holding together and precariously reg xing thereg eld of educationalmodernization (See Infra ucirc III) Globalizationis both a desired goalto reach by means of the homologous character of curricula or the tendency to train inhomogeneous skills and an alleged requirement to achieve a healthy capitalistdevelopment It is viewed both as a desired state of things by those who promote it andparadoxically as a catastrophe by those who reject it This of course is not a matter ofsome lying and some others being truthful but clearly is a matter of a proliferation ofmeanings This has been ordinarily understood either as polysemy or ambiguity

Polysemy as indicated by Websterrsquo s dictionary comes from the Greek polysrsquo mos(poly 1 srsquo ma) stating that a word is marked by multiplicity of meanings Polysemy hasbeen dealt with both by traditional linguistics and by philosophy of language as thediversity of senses that a signireg er may be associated to in diUacute erent speech contexts Theconcept value in Saussure for instance refers to this diversity which is resolved bysignireg cationwithin the frame of parole ie the undecided meaning becomes precise inthe reg eld of a particular speech On the other hand pragmatism also produced a formulawhereby polysemy could be resolved In his Philosophical investigations Wittgenstein hasindicated that the use of a word in a particular language game dereg nes its meaning

Ambiguity according to its most basic sense can be understood as double meaninginnuendo play on words or pun It is dereg ned by Websterrsquo s as something doubtful oruncertain it is an adjective to indicate the quality of obscurity or indistinctness a wordcapable of being understood in two or more possible senses or ways Derrida tells us thatthis is a constitutive feature of any signireg er since it is impossible to dereg ne the univocaland ultimate meaning of a sign even within a specireg c analytical frame Thisimpossibility is due to the undecidable character of the text

In order to understand how globalization has such a broad area of dispersion theconditions for its polysemy and ambiguity will be conceptually elaborated in twodimensions On the one hand to understand that the structure is neither preestablishednor has it a necessary unfolding I will comment on the concepts of contingent andundecidable structure On the other hand to understand why there is neither reg x norfull meaning I will draw on the concepts of macr oating and empty signireg er

The impossibility to reg nd an ultimate foundation on top of which the wholediscursive edireg ce would get together refers on the one hand to what Derrida (1982)conceptualized as the undecidability of the structure and on the other it involves thatthe articulation of this signireg er is a contingent one ie there is no reg nal certitudeconcerning the discourse wherein it will be named or which others it will be associated


with However its ideological use requires a dimension of closure of the globalizingdiscourse in its senses of threat and illusion of plenitude since an association with adestiny of the totality underlies both regardless of its positive or negative value This iswhy for some sources there are necessary links (see Supra ucirc 11 and 12) operating justlike the naturalization of a contingent articulation

The position I will sustain here is that this very contingency in the articulation ofglobalization with either market economy or with cultural heterogeneity is whatallowsan ethical and political action ie the possibilityof some decision concerning themeaning one is prepared to defend and promote This involves not just some convictionregarding the social and historical benereg ts one or the other meaning of globalizationcould bring about It also implies the strategic discursive means to support one or theother eg the increase of equivalencies assisting their spread the proliferation ofantonyms and antimodels to dissuade our interlocutors from one or the other and so on

In previous pages we have seen how the meaning of globalization macr ows hovers ormacr oats in diUacute erent directions depending on who is speaking about it and in what contextbecause there is no way in which one single meaning could exhaust all the possible usesthis expression has A partial emptiness of the signireg er is a condition for its macr otation andresponds to the relational character of sign (Saussure 1959) We also have to considertwo more conditions

(1) that the macr oating term is articulated diUacute erently from opposed discursive chainseg those who eulogizeand those who object to globalization(otherwise therewould be no macr otation at all Laclau 1994 )

(2) That within these discursive reg elds the macr oating term functions vis-arsquo -vis all theother components of a chain both as a diUacute erential but also as an equivalentialcomponent

When globalizationis presented as an essential component of the free world its meaningwill be partially reg xed owing to its diUacute erential position and the contiguity it has withother signs in the same chain However as it is presented as the totalization of thissociety that the free world wants to achieve equivalencies are then established with allthe other components of this discourse On the one hand globalization is notsynonymous with neoliberalism modernization or world integration (ie they can beconstrued as the eUacute ect the cause the goal etc of globalization)But on the other eachone of these components plusmn not being enclosed in itself plusmn also works as an alternativeequivalent name within this totality (eg someone who rejects neoliberalism can takeit as equivalent of globalization)thus conferring its ideologicaldimension to this global-world discourse

In addition to its macr oating character globalization is an empty signireg er otherwisethere would be one and only one meaning capable of reg lling it This emptiness of thesignireg er does not mean that the word is worn out On the contrary it is appealing andoperates as a nodal point because it can accept many meanings And it can acceptdiUacute erent senses because it is not and cannot be full

Both macr otation and emptiness are conditions of possibility and impossibility for thesignireg cation of globalization In other words they allow some signireg cation ofglobalization and at the same time show that a full reg nal signireg cation is structurallyimpossible We can see here two dimensions of the same discursive operation

(1) one marking the limits between inside and outside for instance how thesignireg eds connected to globalization in a conservative discourse work as aconstitutiveoutsideof its critical articulation(such as the Chomskianversion)


(2) another functioning as a foundation of the discursive system itself whichamounts to saying that it appears as if it were already its core basic nature oressence from the very beginning

We can now see that the foundation of the system of relational identities is not a positivecore (the market modernity politics or homogenization) but exclusion a lack and anempty place (which is endlessly reg lled with these and other meanings) Neither is thefoundation a univocal or determined relation but as we have seen an undecidable oneThis leads to the ambiguous character (I indicated earlier and will retrieve below) as aconstitutive feature of the very system of signireg cationThis impossibility to neither infernor determine once and for all a precise meaning (ie undecidability) is what Iapproached earlier in a twofold manner

(1) A reg rst meaning concerning the diUacute erential character of an element of thesystem vis-arsquo -vis the others within the system For instance globalization isdiUacute erent from (iquest) neoliberalism iquest modernization iquest the strengthening ofinternational unity (ie they are not synonymous) within the economicdiscourse of postcold-war capitalism

(2) A second meaning concerning the equivalentialcharacter of an element vis-arsquo -vis the other elements of the same system when confronting a diUacute erent systemIn this case any of its elements represents the system qua totality (primacy ofequivalence over diUacute erence) Following the example the signireg ersglobalizationrsquo rsquo neoliberalism rsquo rsquo modernization etc are nonethelessequivalent before a social democrat a progressive or a radical discourse

From an abstract view or as a conceptual assumption it is not possible to point inan a priori way at a specireg c topic which would occupy the nodal position and becomean empty signireg er in a given discourse ie the one which would represent its essencevis-arsquo -vis another discourse Its diUacute erential and unequal character plusmn in the time andspace where these elements are positioned plusmn makes some of them more feasible thanothers to operate as an articulation point

In historical formations the diUacute erential and unequal character of these elementscannot be ignored In this terrain we know some elements (not any one of them) havemore chances to incarnate an articulation principle It is a hegemonic practice thatallows us to understand how a signireg er can occupy this position For instance it is morefeasible that globalizationcould articulate discourses (and agents supporting it) such asneoliberalism modernization the strengthening of international unity and so onwithin the economic system of postcold-war capitalism and yet this signireg er has lesspossibilities to hegemonize a social-democrat or a radical discourse However someintellectuals have made important advances in the latter direction (either rationalistlike Habermas and Archer or postfoundational like Hall Giddens and Perlmutter)

In brief we have thus far looked into the undecidable structure of the signireg er andthat its articulation to one discourse or another is contingent We have approached theprinciples ruling the macr oating character of globalization and how this accounts for itsdiUacute erential and its equivalential sides We have also looked upon the exclusionoperating as the empty foundation of a discursive texture in this case globalizationreg nding that far from discovering a necessary law of Being History or market we havecontingency and the undecidable structure of discourse This is why even if we take aconcept of globalizationwithin the same discursive context (ie social scientists) we reg ndsuch a wide area of dispersion This is precisely the constitutive ambiguity of themeaning of globalization


Thus far the reality of a wide area of dispersion of the meaning of globalization hasbeen presented Then the analytical tools that allow me to examine the contingent andundecidable character of this signireg er has been put forward thus elucidatingconceptually its constitutive ambiguity Below some implications of this ambiguity willbe discussed focusing on possible connections between global educational policies andlocal practices To these ends I will draw on educational research stressing twooperations On the one hand how the meaning of globalization is resignireg ed in itscirculation throughout diUacute erent institutional levels On the other hand in doing soglobalization operates as a nodal signireg er whose meanings displace themselves fromschedules and syllabuses or academic stimuli for lecturers and teachers to theadministration and school management reg nances etc $ temporarily articulating theirmeaning These two operations are arenas for political and ethical intervention

The global meets the local educational examples

In a world where globalizing eUacute ects constantly transgress the limits of particularcommunities the historical conditions are set for the development of even moreextended chains of equivalence and consequently for the increase of their macr exibilityLet us now discuss some social political and educational entailments of globalizingpolicies and give a second thought to the relationship between universal and particular

Social identities are the result in our contemporary world of a criss-crossing ofcontradictory logics of contextualization and decontextualization For instance whileon the one hand the crisis of universal values opens the way to an increasing socialdiversity (contextualization) on the other a macr exible morality (decontextualization)also becomes progressively more important (Laclau 1996) since there is no absolutehard principle that could reg t and rule in all time and space The relationship betweenuniversality and particularity becomes an issue and can no longer be taken for grantedbecause universal values are no longer considered to be transcendental but an outcomeof negotiations historically and geographically situated This should not be mis-understood as the abyss of relativism as foundationalists call it The lack of an ultimate-positive foundation of morals science the community and so on does not amount tosaying that anything goes and that the diUacute erence between repression and emancipationis blurred (Habermas 1987) A relationalist position amp rather involves that anyfoundation is historically established ergo is context-dependent which following theexample means on the contrary that repression does not have a universal andatemporal essence but has to be dereg ned in each specireg c context and on our planet thesecontexts are heterogeneous and unequal rsquo

Thus considering that signireg ers operate in unequal conditions one couldlegitimately question whether a globalizing project in its historical and geo-politicalcondition ie today in our Western Lebenswelt does not involve an implicit pretensionof denying or at least undermining particularity diUacute erence and its ethical and politicalpotentiality (as Lyotard would suggest)

Unfortunately no one could exclude this possibility and in fact this meaning is notfar from reality (probably Chomsky and Garrido do not miss the point in their ethicaljudgments on this issue) for instance when a market economy is constructed in somediscourses as the one and only possible content capable of providing wealth andplenitude to the community and as such as the very name of plenitude itself By thismeans the supporters of this discourse are evidently producing a representation of


reality and inviting us to accept it This invitation to share their representation ofreality is what I call in another text ( an interpolation which as Althusser would sayis one step for the constitution of subject-positions

Accepting such an interpellation (ie that a market economy is the one and onlypossible content capable of providing wealth and plenitude to the community) wouldlead us to a pessimistic view in social terms (especially if the regulatory principles of amarket economy are decided by the economically powerful elite that has participatedin the creation of the misery in the world we know today) And in conceptual terms toassume such an interpellation would put us back in a position that ignores the macr oatingand empty character of signireg ers and the undecidable and contingent character of theirstructure It is our prerogative to accept this version of reality or deconstruct it

Once we reject the view that there is one and only one way to provide wealth andplenitude (whatever this means) that the heterogeneous conditions of our world cannotbe homogenized by a uniform orientation and that there is no necessary tendency inhistory then we can see why Furet (1995) says it is crucial to give back to history itsunpredictable character and stop glorifying systems where we can reg nd globalexplanations of its destiny explanations acting as a substitute for divine action

Still once we consider the macr oating undecidable and contingent character of thesignireg er globalization can be understood in such a way that homogeneity is not itsnecessary result and then a diUacute erent condition emerges for our ethical and politicalinsertion in the reg eld for a reoccupation of the reg eld Once we know there is somethingto say in this discursive competition then we have also to assume the responsibility forour very representations of reality and recognize that they will compete with otheravailable interpretations This includes of course those concerning educationaleveryday actions where we reg nd traces of a texture integrated by cultural habitudes andeducational policies And once we realize that those resignireg cations of educationalpolicies take place not just in day-to-day practices but also in many intermediateinstances and involve political operations we can also understand why they are worthanalyzing

Do global educational policies reach the local

One topic in recent discussions concerns the links and distance between strategies andmeans issued by policies and what really happens in schools To put the extreme viewssome are convinced that policies are discourses that remain at a general level and neverhave contact with what really happens in the classroom Therefore if one researcheseducation one should study the particularity of local actions in the classroom Otherswould claim that policies determine as an overarching apparatus all corners ofeducational practices Therefore one should study the goals and strategies of stateapparatuses and see how they aUacute ect specireg c institutions My position is that no matterwhere one starts the search one has to look for the circulation of some meaningsthroughout diUacute erent levels since there is no one-direction causality but a multiple-wayconditioning I now want to present some examples of links between globalism andeducation

Before I start let me quote Giddensrsquo s approach to this issuefrac14 people live in circumstances in which disembedded institutions linking localpractices with globalized social relations organize major aspects of day-to-daylife Globalization articulates in a most dramatic way this conmacr ation of presence


and absence through its systemic interlocking of the local and the global(Giddens 1990 p 79)

From a critical perspective ) McLaren and Gutierrez (1997)have produced interestingresearch showing how ` ` recent local antagonisms evident both in the larger socialcommunity and in the educational arena are inextricably linked to the politics ofneoliberalism driven by an expanding global capitalismrsquo rsquo They are arguing for thedevelopment of a framework ` ` for better understanding the ways in which themicropolitics of the urban classroom are in fact the local instantiations of thesociopolitical and economic consequences of a rapidly expanding global marketplace rsquo rsquo(McLaren amp Gutierrez 1997 pp 195plusmn 196)

They propose that critical ethnography and pedagogy can become the vehicles forconnecting the local and the global in school sites and for pushing the boundaries ofeducational and social reform With many years of ethnographic classroom observationin both urban and suburban schools they can today show that the social architectureof the classroom its normative and other discursive practices are permeated by globaleducational policies

A diUacute erent access to these issues is undertaken by Popkewitz who drawing from aFoulcauldianperspective approaches educational reforms as specireg c forms of governingpractices namely the administration of the soul He considers that the moral andpolitical rhetoric of educational struggles has shifted through the languages ofneoliberalism and analyses of neoliberalism (markets choice privatization) Heconsiders that what is called neoliberalism and the dismantling of the welfare state ismore appropriately a reconstruction of the governing practices that do not start withrecent policies but are part of more profound social cultural and economic habits thatoccurred well before Thatcher in Britain or Reagan in the US (see eg discussion inPopkewitz 1991 Popkewitz in press) He challenges one current association betweenglobalization and neoliberalism

The discursive representation of time according to some postcolonial theorists forexample leaves unscrutinized the Western narrative of progress and enables themanagement and surveillance of the Third World in the guise of some notion ofdevelopment frac14 Further discourses of and about neoliberalism reinscribe thestate civil society distinction that was undermined by the construction of theliberal welfare state itself (Popkewitz in press)

His interest being the registers of social administration and freedom in the practicesof reform he then concludes ` ` If the modern school is a governing practice thencontemporary reform strategies need to be examined in relation to changes in itsgoverning principlesrsquo rsquo (ibid) In his work Popkewitz (1997) also shows us how aneducational reform permeates and is resignireg ed in its actualization in the classroomThe point here is that in the microphysics of each space even in the classroom tracescan be found of what the national policy was fostering

What I wanted to emphasize in the two previous cases of US research is thecirculationof the signireg ers incarnating these policiesand their displacement throughoutdiUacute erent levels or social scales

Let me mention now some examples of research carried out in Mexico illustratingthe displacements of globalization throughout diUacute erent social planes ranging from theinternational recommendation to the national policy to the school specireg c program(curriculum and syllabuses) to the classroom On the one hand I will mention somework dealing with the specireg c features of how these national policies derive from


internationalagreements one concerns professional identity the other refers to trainingschemes for industrial workers I will also have a closer glance at two more examplesresearch dealing with a recent Mexican national policy and educational agencies suchas communitarian centers for childcare

Recently research has been done dealingwith Mexican policies on higher educationand changes in the professional identireg cation of sociology students in the early 1980sThese policies indeed derive from international standards and ideals for the region Inher research Fuentes Amaya (1998) shows that policies do not determine but certainlydo set conditions for the changes in professional identireg cation of those sociologystudents These national policies circulate throughout diverse institutional levels fromthe Vice-Chancellor of the 400000 student Universidad Nacional Auto noma deMe xico to the Director of the Escuela Nacional de Estudios Profesionales to the Headof the Department of Sociology to the Lecturer Board and to the students Incirculating they are combined with the advances of disciplinary knowledge micro-politics and other dimensions thus being resignireg ed

Another example concerning training schemes for industrial workers focused on theneed to operate with an alien language (be it English in the case of Mexicans who workin Mexico or be it elementary computational languages) Papacostas (1996) oUacute ers ussome highlights of how technological literacy involves these skills which now are a pieceof global training that would allow industrial workers to be competitive in diUacute erentnational settings The point here is that industrial workers tend to be trained incompetences that may not be of immediate use and still have become important owingto the globalization of the economy and the productive equipment So the traces ofglobalizationmay be found in these training schemes even if the reason is not present ina direct way

In these examples one can see that globalization operates as a nodal signireg erarticulating neoliberalism basic academic skills or language competence and isresemantized from the most particular context to the most general one Indeed it is notthe same concept in the classroom and in the recommendations made by the OECD andyet the signireg er is exactly the same and some traces may be found in the former althoughpart of its meaning in one case has been excluded in the latter As an eUacute ect of the veryprocess of globalizationan intense displacement of signireg ers from one context to anothertakes place as in the case of neoliberalism indeed changing its meaning and yetpreserving some traces in both extreme interpretations

The very concept of basic academic skills which today in Mexico is part of thediscursive fabric concerning preparatory school (upper secondary school before college)can be traced back as an eUacute ect of a global educational policy stated by the OECD (19861993) but also by the New York College Board 1983 (Medina 1995) This concept canbe found later in the Programa de Modernizacio n Educativa (SEP 1989) and theCurriculum Ba sico Nacional (SEP 1994) and of course it works in textbookssyllabuses and didactic strategies in the classroom as a general guide dereg ning theirfeatures

Let me now stop and consider at closer quarters a couple of reg nal examples the reg rstconcerning globalizationas a nodal signireg er in a recent Mexican educationalpolicy thesecond referring to a microlevel experience of communitarian centers for childcare

Research has been done recently on the conditions of production of an educationalpolicy Modernizacio n Educativa This research shows inter alia how domesticeducational policies derive their main issues from recommendations made by the WorldBank UNESCO or the International Monetary Fund In her work Cruz Pineda


(1998) reveals how these recommendations are sometimes taken literally sometimes aresubtly changed and sometimes are massively resignireg ed in the very process of theirappropriation

Modernizacio n Educativa (Educational Modernization $ ) is the name of a Mexicaneducational policy during 1988plusmn 96 albeit that as a trend it had been fostered muchearlier by international agencies such as the IMF WTC WB IDB for the wholecontinent and inn particular for Latin America In this frame its meaning is displayedin values institutions rituals and budgets orientating educational policies Theprogram starts with a diagnosis of the schooling system amp indicating its main failuresand consequently establishing the main challenges imposed to the plan (see SEP 19891994) Some of them are almost literal translations of international recommendations widening access redistributing places improving quality pertinence and relevancelevel-integrationadministrativedeconcentration improvement of teachers rsquo conditionsIf one consults oaelig cial documents one may reg nd their solutions equity reform of plansand syllabuses integration of the former kindergarten primary and secondary levels inthe basic cycle (or circuit) administrative decentralization and the revaluing ofschoolteachers (Buenreg l 1996)

The Mexican government assumes social liberalism (a euphemism forneoliberalism rsquo ) as the philosophical axis of this reform thus subordinating educationto economic views (eg education as investment) economic needs (eg schooling asunemployed depot) and pace (eg education as training) thus inscribing on educationa managerial administration Neoliberalism in Mexico is articulated with a traditionalmoral and institutional conservatism and also with the contingent eUacute ects of a politicalreform (

The point here is that globalization emerges as a nodal signireg er in Modernizacio nEducativa in a peculiar articulation with neoliberalism and neoconservatism Itinterlaces the various threads of the educational policies and the Mexican contexttemporarily reg xing the meaning of this educational policy and permeating diverseoaelig cial measures to actualize it Thus from curricula to incentivesrsquo for schoolteachersfrom school administration to reg nance from programs to textbooks this meaningcirculates acquiring specireg c features in each level and yet keeping the promise of afuture oUacute ering a more competitive national integration into the new world concert

Another recent piece of research has studied how this educational policyModernizacio n Educativa provides models of identireg cation for schoolteachers and howthese models are resignireg ed in the very process of its appropriation by the schoolteachers(Lo pez 1998) He concentrates on the process through which the meaning of thisnational policy is disseminated throughout the diUacute erent interpretations it acquires inthe oaelig cial sector in the white schoolteacher union the dissident schoolteacher unionand the schoolteachers in the classroom

Further research has to be done in order to visualizehow apart from schoolteachersother schooling practices are permeated by this global view in educational policiesnonetheless what has been presented above gives clear indications of the point stressedin this paper

Let us move now to the second example of this closer glance Research has beenundertaken recently in communitarian centers for child care (Ruiz Mun4 oz 1996 19971998) where formal schooling is not the organizing axis of educational activities butrather self-assistance participation the meeting of social demands and so on ) In thesecenters people display an open rejection of oaelig cial educational policies neoliberalismand globalization inter alia The sites of this research are extremely poor areas in


Mexico City whose demands for basic services (ie sewage electricity schools etc)have articulated them into collective entities Their repudiation of neoliberalism isinteresting since some of the participants of these centers are hardly literate citizensMany of them may not know the meaning of neoliberalism but they reject it since it hasbecome an equivalent of a chain of signireg ers associated with modernity and oppressiveglobal policies and as such they function as an enemy articulating the strategiesundertaken by those reg ghting these policies

For instance in an interview with one user of the Center the researcher asks for herview on the contemporary problems in Mexico and in the neighborhood and sheanswers

Well I am very concerned this globalization issue I donrsquo t quite understand it Ifeel you cannot forget the past a country a whole tradition a culture Secondlyeconomic factors are very important and well frac14 these globalizing factorsthen we had to subordinate to them had we not because the economic situationin this country determines it this way in this moment on the other hand I feelthat this is a very diaelig cult epoch as part of this generation I feel that one isnowhere one does not determine anything and at the same time you have to copewith everything you donrsquo t belong and itrsquo s diaelig cult to participate in something weare so disenchanted with everything we are lacking expectations and this harmsus does it not because this precisely makes us not want to be involved inanything doesnrsquo t it I mean at least I see it myself this way well the crisis ismanifest in ourselves I feel there is a lack of values this leads us into loneliness intodrugs and all that I worry a lot the lack of values such as love self-respect solidarity this leads the people into well frac14 (in Ruiz 1998 authorrsquo s trans)

The interviewer then asks what she thinks about how they react to this situation

frac14 sometimes we are siding with what is for our convenience are we not I thinkthis is a part of what globalizationhas led us to think of myself only of myself tosee how much I can proreg tfrac14 (Interview with a woman 35 Technician in SocialWork mother of a 6-year-old girl and 4 years participation in the Center in Ruiz1998)

Let me quote another opinion from this source that rounds out the idea very well Theinterviewer asks later what she thinks about modernity

Modernity I hate it modernity means that you have the most recent CD the bestsound system the most advanced technology this should not be so I thinkmodernity should be all children having access to books all children havingfood no starvation no drugs no modernity it doesnrsquo t exist for the poor it is likebecoming cold (unfeeling) and selreg sh just thinking of yourself (ibid)

In the previous paragraphs one can see how globalizationand modernity are part of thesame construction ie a problem in Mexico (global) a problem in the neighborhood(local) Globalization is constructed in a chain of equivalence that equates it withforgetting the past culture and tradition an economic factor subordination to anexternal force loss of sense of belonging loss of ethical values lack crisis the path todrugs loneliness In short it leads the people to selreg shness and noncommitment

It is interesting to see how this woman who is a technician and not articulate enoughcan express her feelings and understanding of globalizationwhich by the way was notthe topic of the question

Of course here we have a complex circulation of messages coming from diUacute erent


sources on the one hand oaelig cial speech opinions from private sectors such as bankersand managers (idealizing globalization) On the other hand the opinions ofintellectuals priests and political activists also circulate (demonizing globalization)She then has her own local conditions intervening in the signireg cation she can construct the situation of her neighborhood all sorts of deprivations etc And simultaneously aspart of her own conditions she is surrounded by the work of the Center with itsenthusiasm sense of participation solidarity and so on

All these conditions permeate her appropriation of the interpellations coming fromthe media and closer sources of opinion The point here is that globalization as adiscourse that apparently would have nothing to do with this particular agent in herspecireg c condition has however reached her But in this very process it has beeninverted and in spite of presenting itself as the opportunity to be a part of theindustrialized world and modernity as the plenitude of community she constructed itas its very opposite the crisis the lack the universal signireg er of a threat to cultureethical values and so on It is interesting to point to a subtle diUacute erence in herconstruction of modernity vis-arsquo -vis globalization The latter seems inevitably linkedwith a negative value while there is some ambiguity concerning her feelings aboutmodernity since in this case she presents an alternative view of what modernity couldbe in a positive ideal construction While actual modernity is associated with frivolityand technology it can and must become equality and formal instruction

In these examples the consideration of cultural linguistic social and otherconditions in each specireg c site is crucial to understand how and why theseresignireg cations take place but this does not mean that all links between the two extremepositions are broken or to put it in other terms that one may be equated with reality(the most particular microexperience) and opposed to discourse (irreal false themacropolicy) It does not amount either to assuming in epistemological ethical andpolitical terms one of the two extremes as incarnating the essential or foundational oneand the other as the subordinate the parasitic or the epiphenomenic

Now we can see why neither one interpretation is real and the other irreal nor oneis right and the other mistaken and even less can we identify discourse with the irrealand experience with the real and nondiscursive We can see now that the process ofresemantization becomes a challenging subject to analyze Both extreme interpretationsof globalization (and of course also the intermediate ones) are relevant in their owncontext ie acceptable or not legitimate or not and the fact that an ultimate truthconcerning its meaning may not be found does not make indiUacute erent at all what positionone may assume Or to put it bluntly why ` ` everything goes rsquo rsquo is a wrong consequenceto draw On the contrary it makes evident that a position has to be taken because thetruth validity and legitimacy of globalization itself cannot be discovered outside in theworld but is constructed within specireg c language games And once we know that it issocially constructed our ethical and political responsibility can hardly be ignored

This brings us back to an issue discussed at the beginning of this paper ie thedistance and links between educational policies and local day-to-day educationalpractices In the second half of the 1970s ethnographic research reacted against theclassroom research oblivion (Stubbs amp Delamont 1976) Yet in 1980 UNESCOendorsed a recommendation on educational research stating that ` ` it must start and endin the classroom rsquo rsquo $ Many researchers still take the classroom or the small communityas the sites for educational research My claim is that they are dereg nitively overlookingthe relational character of the social It is one thing to have a preference formicrorelations (which is quite legitimate) quite another to say this is the only


legitimate educational interest (which is quite illegitimate) I would never dare to saythat the one and only rightful research path is the one concerning educational policiesbut I am prepared to defend its pertinence to respect the relevance of microprocessesand to promote research on their links But apart from personal and academicpreferences as an intellectual (ie a researcher or a discourse political analyst) a keyissue concerning the conceptual dimension of how the educational action is viewed orif one so wishes how the relational character of the social is conceived should not beoverlooked

Mapping the horizon scenarios and closing remarks

So far I have argued that by considering the proliferation of meanings of globalization(presented in the reg rst section) rather than the ultimate essence of globalizationwe canat best reg nd some family resemblance in this wide area of dispersion The sources of thisproliferation cannot be reduced to an academic fashion but are the very features of anempty and macr oating signireg er (ie globalization discussed in the second section) in itsposition as a nodal point I then approached educational examples to discuss linksbetween the global and the local (in the third section) and to stress the importance offurther research In this section I will interweave these three lines underlining ethicaland political considerations At this point it must be evident that conclusions of adiUacute erent order could be drawn ethical political epistemological educationallinguistic and semiological But for the type of discussion of globalization displayed inthis article I chose to organize the wide area of dispersion of its meanings groupingtheir resemblance in the following three scenarios

In the reg rst scenario one can reg nd the polarization of two discursive reg elds where thesignireg ed of globalization has been temporarily reg xed and in spite of their oppositionthese reg elds share the view of an intrinsic connection between globalization modernityand neoliberal capitalism

E a discourse that conceptualizes it as an inevitable tendency of history involvingthe universalization of the market economy labor division commodireg cationgoods distribution consumer practices the universal ruling of a macroethicsglobal aesthetic values and so on

E a discourse that visualizes globalization as a cultural catastrophe which isharassing cultural minorities (Aronowitz 1995) an economic capitalism andimperialization to a planetary extent

The second scenario shows globalization as a necessary universal process involving thereal exploitation of the planet as a single unity organizing production market andcompetitiveness whose eUacute ects are economic military cultural and political globalformations

It is associated with a global capitalist society characterized by neoliberalismpostmodernism and the collapse of Socialism and a global village that would denouncebarbarian capitalism (Chomsky amp Dieterich 1995)

This view is much inspired by Habermasrsquo s non-distorted communicative action andthe relaunching of the Enlightenment project (Archer 1991) This view also rejects allforms of capitalist exploitationand proposes its overthrow by means of a communicativeaction supported by a quasitranscendental explanation which working as an ultimatefoundation in the end would manage to guarantee that nondistorted social links willsucceed


A third scenario would associate globalization neither with a universal necessarytendency of history nor with cultural economic ethical or political impendingimperialization ie the ruling of a single homogeneous view over the planet (not evenif it were noncapitalist) As we saw globalization can also be understood asinterconnectedness

We thus have interrelationships of economic tendencies contact of cultural diversityintertwining of many traditions interdependence of political trends This meansacknowledging our contemporary existential situation as a multidirected conditioningof the universal and the particular the homogeneous and the heterogeneousunderstanding that opposing tendencies such as fragmentation and integrationcentralization and decentralization interact with each other

Indeed it involves the production of syncretic and hybrid economic culturaleducational and political schemata as well as the contention of assorted fundamentalistpositions fostering a mythical pure and uncontaminated identity

Interconnectedness contact and interlacing of the diverse do not occur withoutconmacr ict since our planet has unequal development in each realm and geopolitical areaTension encounter friction clash and conmacr ict$ are part of the process and this canhardly be overlooked or concealed by wishful Enlightenment thinking However thisdoes not amount to a pessimistic outlook

Globalization can be associated with the prospect of some commensurabilitybetween the heterogeneous ie contact between the diUacute erent Lyotardrsquo s metaphor onthe archipelago is appropriate to visualize this possibility since it involves the diUacute erentislands (eg cultures values etc) which are separate and yet connected by the sea(language in his metaphor discourse in ours)

This presupposes a painful assumption that there is no distortion-free com-munication no transparent society no reg nal resolution of antagonisms in short no reg nalsuture of the social Accordingly once the necessary tendencies of history and aquasitranscendental explanation are conceptually rejected one has to face theresponsibility of onersquo s own decisions

These three scenarios set diUacute erent conditions for the reincorporation of globalizationas a component of an educational policy Before I interrupt $ these remacr ections let mestate my own position in a few words I certainly adhere to the third scenario since asa discourse political analyst I object to the view of an ultimate hard-positive foundationa necessary tendency in history or transcendental reason to free language fromdistortion When a lack of essence is what organizes discursive structures (socialeconomic educational etc) then we have no determinism no algorithmic causality butthe possibility is provided for decision I also hold to the concept of the political as adimension$ $ where there is no a priori center of politics (be it the state class struggleor other) and the political subject is he she who emerges at the precise moment ofdecision taking$ There is no center of the social but any discursive centrality isprecariously instituted in space and time and therefore it can change By the same tokenall meanings of globalization are socially instituted and not a necessary tendency inhistory Having said this I will not overlook the political implications of the meaningsattached to this signireg er in contemporary educational policies What I want to stress isthat none of them can stand for its ultimate truth and consequently there is aninterstice for a decision on it to position oneself in respect of it to pose onersquo s owninterpretation assume our responsibility and account for it

Dealing with the ambiguous character of the signireg er globalization how it allowsdecisions to be taken and demands positions to be held has been the way to conceive


the distance and links between educational policies and local educational practices andassert the relational constitutive feature of any social action In the local micro-experience one can always reg nd the traces of the global macropolicy and indeed themacroscheme can always be dislocated by a microevent Here one has to consider thediUacute erence between a global plan and a global condition Thus globalization for sometoday an attempt to make uniform on the planet a view held by a center of economicpolitical and cultural domination is not immune to heterogeneous microcontestationsThe latter emerging within the reg ssures of domination expands the distance between animagined homogeneous order and its actualization Relations between the wide-scaleand the narrow-scale discourses are not a question of choosing one as the importantreal true or decisive and the other as the secondary reg ctitious untrue orepiphenomenal It is not an either or question but the contrary In my opinion it is aquestion of how we link these two extremes of educational discourses how we think ofthe displacement of sense (ethical political epistemical and or aesthetic values) fromthe macropolicy to the microphysics and vice versa Educators researchers policymakers and others concerned with education may have an important enterprise invisualizing analyzing and improving these links rather than excluding one of them

Notes

1 I want to thank E Laclau A Norvol A De Alba and D Howarth for the generosity in their criticalreadings of the reg rst drafts of this paper I also want to thank T Popekewitz and the Wednesday Group forthe discussion of a second draft in February 1999 Of course I am responsible for whatever errors remain

This paper was partially presented at the First Annual Conference Ethnographic Inquiry and QualitativeResearch in a Postmodern Age under the title ` ` Is ambiguity synonymous with non-accountabilityPostmodernityand discoursepoliticalanalysis rsquo rsquo at the University of SouthernCalifornia on June 20plusmn 23 1997but Proceedings will not be published

2 I must say now that I do not know Habermasrsquo s actual position on globalization Here I retrieveChomsky amp Dietrichrsquo s way to put Habermas in their own construction On the other hand knowingHabermasrsquo s theory of communicative action one can be authorized to sustain their compatibility

3 A wider sample of discursiveconstructionson this topic was involvedin the corpus analyzed 21 articlestaken from 14 journals (issued in Mexico VenezuelaSpain only from 1991 to 1995) 18 book chapters takenfrom 10 books (from Mexico Venezuela Argentina and the USA)

4 For instance Rorty (1989) Laclau (1988) inter alia See a revision in Buenreg l (1997a)5 In education see Buenreg l (1990 1994 1997b)6 I am taking the notion of theory as a toolbox form Levi-Straussrsquo s bricoleur Wittgenstein (1963) and

Foucault (1977)7 See Laclau ([amp MouUacute e] 1985 1988 1990 1996) and many others I did not quote here8 I am speaking of a research on todayrsquo s Mexican educational policy that I am conducting in the

Departamentode InvestigacionesEducativasCinvestavin MexicoThis research is an umbrella articulatingsome specireg c proposals such as those oUacute ered by Fuentes (1997) Lo pez (1998) Cruz (in process) Ruiz Mun4 oz(1997) and further research in process) which among other things showshow diUacute erent educationalsignireg ers(modernization globalizationparticipation social commitment etc) articulate educationalmeanings (ielinguistic and nonlinguistic practices) displacing them throughout diUacute erent institutional levels (from theMinistry to the classroom) and thus resignifying them

9 We know this from Saussure (1957) Wittgenstein(1963) and of course all the poststructuralist school10 See Lacan Zizek Derrida Laclau11 Following Laclau (1994) we have to consider reg rst that macr otation is possible if the relation between

signireg ed and signireg er is already a loose one ie if the signireg er were necessarily attached to one and only onesignireg ed there would be no room for any macr otation whatsoever

12 Articulation point nodal point (Laclau amp MouUacute e 1985) or point de capiton (Lacan 1983) is aconcept that refers to a signireg er which holds togethera set of other elements temporarily reg xing their meaningsand making out of them a specireg c discursive totality The nodal point functions as an assembler of dispersesignireg ers which by means of this very operation become a discursive reg eld even if in a precarious way

13 Which besides have an ideological function a promise of plenitude and the closure of discourse theimage of a necessary present and future

14 In this sense I would agree with the idea that relativism is a false problem posed by foundationalistsExcellent work has been done on this issue See Bernstein (1983) Margolis (1991) Rorty (1989) amongothers


15 This has an obvious family resemblance to post-foundationalism(Arditi 1996)16 For a lost Third World village hallopathvaccinationmay be quite progressive and liberating while for

a neighboring village the very same hallopathvaccinationcould become a repressive and colonizingpractice(if their normal medicine is homeopathy) There is no privileged position from which our senior brother willpredereg ne how this hallopathvaccinationwill be appropriated in each particular site (I discussmore examplesin Buenreg l 1997a)

17 See Buenreg l (1990)18 McLaren and Gutierrez consider that ` ` the materialist and nondiscursivedimensionsof social life have

become cavalierly dismissed in a research climate that seems to have become infatuated with the primacy oftextual exegesis rsquo rsquo (as in the practice of postmodern ethnographyor curriculum studies) What they wish is torethink from a more materialist global perspective the links between the local and the broad educationalpractices There is an obvious diUacute erence here between McLarenrsquo s and my own view concerning the conceptof the nondiscursiveIn fact McLaren either reproduces a commonsensical idea of discourse or he retrieves itfrom Foucault who based on a rather substantialistconcept of discourse reduces it to linguistic actions Butif we followeitherWittgensteinrsquo sconceptof languagegame or the Saussureansemiologicalprojector BarthesDerrida Lacan Eco Laclau and many others we will realize that signireg cation is not only conveyed bylinguisticsignireg ersand the text in Derridean terms is not reduced to words within two book-coversThereforeto analyze the discursive features of educationby no means indicatesdismissingobjects action architecturepractices or in McLarenrsquo s words the materialist nondiscursiveI would in turn ask McLaren if he analyzesthe material features of schooling(the quality of mixture of concrete and liquid in the walls) or precisely theirmeaning in a social practice

19 Popkewitz follows At one level is the breakdown of the Fordist compromise in postwar Europe and theUnited States a compromise among workers industrialistsand the state which produced a division of laborand mechanization in exchange for a favorable wage formula and the implementation of a state welfaresystem as Fordism lost its eaelig ciency in technologiesand markets The organizationsof work that we are nowwitnessing are in part a response to the lack of eaelig ciency of Fordist mass production But in a diUacute erent layerthere is a range of other challenges to the mechanism of social government that emerged during these samedecades from civil libertarians feminists radicals socialists sociologists and others These reorganizedprograms of government utilize and instrumentalize the multitude of experts of management of family lifeof lifestyle who have proliferated at the points of intersection of sociopoliticalaspirations and private desiresfor self-advancement (frac14 Popkewitz 1998)

20 This opens new theoretical questions as to the traditional idea of determination teleology and theexpressive totality that I will not discuss in this paper

21 See Fuentes Amaya (1997 1998)22 See Cruz Pineda (1998) in process23 In Mexico modernization is a value increasingly generalizing from Enlightenment It began as an

intellectual value prevailed from the Liberal Reform in the second half of the nineteenth century onwardsit was revalued in revolutionary and postrevolutionary programs during the reg rst three decades of thetwentieth century and recycled in the late 1940s at the beginning of the Cold War However it has achieveda special emphasis in the last two decades which is condensed in its formulation as an educational policyreaching a particular value in coming to be a part of the neoliberal discursive horizon as the regionalorientation for the American continent

24 My sources are two key oaelig cial documents wherein this policy is enunciated the Programa de laModernizacio n Educativa (1988) and the Acuerdo Nacionalpara la Modernizacio n Educativa (1992) bothedited by the Ministry of Education

25 The lacks in the Mexican school system are so evident and so many that it would have been diaelig cultto fail in their diagnosis The oaelig cial document put forward the following insuaelig cient coverage and qualitylack of links and excessive repetition in primary and high school administrative concentrationpoor teacherconditions Consequently the orientation to be stressed by the new policy followed this diagnosis

26 Some considerations must be advanced concerning the specireg c way in which neoliberalism isappropriated in a society such as the Mexicannamely concerning the relationshipbetween politicaland civilsocieties Although neoliberalism entails the thinning of the state ie the reduction of the institutionalapparatus and the opening of social participation in Mexico it is the conservative forces who are moreorganized and have the means to occupy those spaces deserted by state control By conservative I mean theRoman Catholic Church through its diUacute erent branches the political ecclesiastic hierarchy civilianassociationsheaded by religious interests the majority of parents rsquo associations the Partido Accio n Nacional(PAN) private interests religiously biased inter alia On the other hand both nationalist and pro-US andboth laic and proreligious businessmenrsquo s associations have increased the number of private schools plusmn at alllevels plusmn the competitivenessof which is increasingly stronger and legitimized since they meet a demand thatthe oaelig cial system cannot

27 Political reform has opened state governmentsrsquo and municipal positions to representatives of politicalparties This was unthinkable in 1980 Now it is possible for instance to reg nd a PAN governor legitimatelyestablishing educational orientations undoubtedly regressive in moral and intellectual terms eg inGuanajuatothere is a PANista governor authorized by the local representativeof the Minister of Educationa ` ` Guide for the Good Schoolteacherrsquo rsquo was published recommending attitudes clothing and rituals


combininga strong authoritarianism (as for discipline)and puritanvalues (for dress speechteachingsubjectsetc) This is easily identireg able with a prerevolutionary ethical imagery (ie the so-called Porreg rista morals)

28 I take this example from the reg eldwork made by RuizMun4 oz (1997) for her PhD researchSee also Ruiz(1996)

29 They are not alien to each other and yet neither are they causeplusmn eUacute ect related As a discourseglobalizationwill achievediUacute erent reg xationswithouta reg nal suture or completenesswithout one of them beingable to become its reg nal identity

30 See the recommendations issued by the RegionalConference of Ministers of Education organized byUNESCO in 1979 in Gimeno (1983)

31 Insightfulconsiderationson this contact have been made by De Alba (1989) who proposes the idea ofcultural contact which is inevitably unequal and conmacr ictive

32 I use the word interrupt rather than reg nish conclude close because I want to convey the meaning ofa paper that does not end on the contrary that is open-ended and the signireg ers usually employed have thetraces of something that closes or encircles itself

33 See MouUacute e (1993) and Dyrberg (1997) who state that the political is an ontology of potentials thatrevolves around context authority and decision

34 See Laclau (1990)

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Studies in the Humanities and the Social Sciences University of EssexAronowitz S (1995 October) GlobalizacioU n y educacioU n Paper presented in the panel at Congreso Nacional

de Investigacio n Educativa III Me xicoBarabtarlo y Zedanski A (1992) Apuntes de un modelo de formacio n de recursos humanos en salud Revista

Mexicana de EducacioU n MeU dica 3 12plusmn 17Bernstein R (1983) Beyond objectivism and relativism Oxford Basil BlackwellBraudel F (1991) Escritos sobre la historia Mexico Fondo de Cultura Econo micaBuchbinderH (1994) Tiempos difIrsquo ciles falta de reg nanciamientocorporacionesglobalizacio n y gobiernoen

las universidades canadienses Perreg les Educativos 64Buenreg l-Burgos R N (1990) Politics hegemony and persuasion Education and the Mexican revolutionary discourse

during world war II Doctoral dissertation Essex University 1990Buenreg l-Burgos R N (1994) Cardenismo ArgumentacioU n y antagonismo en educacioU n Mexico DIE-Cinvestav

ConacytBuenreg l-Burgos R N (1996) GlobalizacioU n Signireg cante nodal en la modernizacioU n educativa Paper presented at

Congreso Latinoamericano de Ana lisis Crotilde tico de Discurso I Buenos AiresBuenreg l-Burgos R N (1997a) Education in a postmodern horizon Voices from Latin America British

Educational Research Journal 23 97plusmn 107Buenreg l-Burgos R N (1997b) Postmodernidad globalizacioU n y utopotilde U as Paper presented at the XLI Annual

Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society Me xicoCasillas M (1993) Los retos de globalizacio n y polotilde ticas de ciencia y tecnologotilde a en Brasil Universidad Futura

4 36plusmn 46College Board (1983) Academic preparation for college What students need to know and be able to do New York The

College BoardChomsky N (1997) La sociedad global In H Dieterich (Ed) GlobalizacioU n exclusioU n y democracia en AmeU rica

Latina (pp 13plusmn 25) Me xico Joaquotilde n MortizChomsky N amp Dieterich H (1995) La sociedad global Me xico Joaquotilde n MortizCruz Pineda O (1998) El discurso modernizador Proyecto polotilde [ tico del estado mexicano para la formacioU n de docentes

1988plusmn 1994 Unpublished masterrsquo s thesis in Pedagogotilde a Divisio n de Estudios de Posgrado UniversidadNacional Auto noma de Mexico Me xico

De Alba A (1989) Postmodernidad y educacio n Implicacionesepiste micas y conceptualesen los discursoseducativos In De Alba (Ed) EducacioU n y postmodernidad MeU xico Mexico Universidad NacionalAuto noma de Mexico

Del Valle J (1992) Tres oleadas de desafotilde U os a las universidades de MeU xico Reforma y Utopotilde U a Remacr exiones SobreEducacioU n Superior 6 75plusmn 92

Del Valle Hanel J amp Taborga Torrico H (1992) Formacio n de los ingenieros frente a la globalizacio nRevista de la EducacioU n Superior 20 37plusmn 45

Derrida J (1982) Margins of philosophy Brighton Harvester PressDieterich H (Ed) (1997) GlobalizacioU n exclusioU n y democracia en AmeU rica Latina Me xico Joaquotilde n Mortiz


Dyrberg T B (1997) The circular structure of power London and New York VersoFoucault M (1977) Language countermemory practice Oxford BlackwellFuentes Amaya S (1997) Identireg cacio n y constitucio n de sujetos El discurso marxista como articulador

hegemo nico del proceso identireg catorio de los estudiantes de sociologotilde a de la ENEP Arago n1979plusmn 1983 In Tesis DIE 30 Me xico DIEplusmn Cinvestav

Fuentes Amaya S (1998) Ana lisis de un proceso identireg catorio Los socio logos de la ENEP Arago n1979plusmn 1983 Revista Mexicana de InvestigacioU n Educativa 3 77plusmn 100

Fu$ rntratt-Kloep E (1997) El derrumbe del socialismo real existente y la globalizacio n como resultados dela guerra frotilde a In H Dieterich (Ed) GlobalizacioU n exclusioU n y democracia en AmeU rica Latina (pp 27plusmn 49)Mexico Joaquotilde n Mortiz

GaribayG L amp de la Torres T F (1992) Papel de la educacio n en el desarrollo de recursos humanos parala cuenca del pacotilde reg co El caso de Me xico Docencia 20 107plusmn 119

Garcotilde a Canclini N (1996) Culturas en globalizacioU n Caracas CNCA CLACSO y Ed Nueva SociedadGiddens A (1990) The consequences of modernity Cambridge Polity PressGilpin R (1987) The political economy of international relations Princeton Princeton University PressGimeno J B (Ed) (1983) Education in Latin America and the Caribbean T rends and prospects 1970plusmn 2000 United

Kingdom UNESCOGutie rrez Pe rez A (1991) La Globalizacio n econo mica alcances y limites Revista Universidad de MeU xico

4646 (491 December) 12plusmn 14Habermas J (1987) Teorotilde U a de la accioU n comunicativa Madrid TaurusHall S (1991) The local and the global Globalizationand ethnicity In A King (Ed) Culture globalization

and the world system (pp 1plusmn 17) London MacmillanHall S (1997) Introduction Who needs ` identityrsquo In S Hall amp P Du Gay (Eds) Questions of Cultural

Identity (pp 1plusmn 17) North Yorkshire UK SageHarvey D (1989) The condition of postmodernity London Basil BlackwellHinkelammert F (1997) Ame rica latina y la globalizacio n de los mercados In H Dietrich (Ed)

GlobalizacioU n exclusioU n y democracia en AmeU rica Latina (pp 113plusmn 131) Mexico Joaquotilde n MortizHirst P amp Thompson P (1996) Globalization in question the international economy and the possibilities of

governance Cambridge Polity PressIanni O (1996) T eorotilde U as de la globalizacioU n Mexico Siglo XXIKawame A A amp Gates H L (1997) The dictionary of global culture New York Alfred A KnopfLabastidaMartotilde n del Campo J (1991) Globalizacio n cultura y modernidadUniversidadde MeU xico 46 8plusmn 11Lacan J (1983) El seminario de Jacques Lacan Barcelonaplusmn Buenos Aires Paido sLaclau E (1988) Politics and the limits of modernity In A Ross (Ed) Universal Abandon (pp )

Minneapolis University of Minnesota PressLaclau E (1990) New remacr ections on the revolutions of our times London VersoLaclau E (1994) Why do empty signireg ers matter to politics In The lesser evil and the greater good The theory

and politics of social diversity London Oram PressLaclau E (1996) Emancipation(s) London VersoLaclau E amp MouUacute e C (1985) Hegemony and socialist strategy London VersoLo pez R J J (1998) Modernizacio n educativaResignireg cacionespor cuatro protagonistasIn T esis DIE 30

Mexico DIEplusmn CinvestavLyotard J F (1988) La diferencia Barcelona GedisaMarum Espinosa E (1993) Globalizacio n e integracio n econo mica Nuevas premisas para el posgrado

Reforma y Utopotilde U a Remacr exiones Sobre EducacioU n Superior 8 7plusmn 21McLaren P amp Lankshear C (1994) Politics of liberation Paths from Freire London RoutledgeMcLaren P amp Gutie rrez K (1997) Global politics and local antagonisms In P McLaren (Ed)

Revolutionary multiculturalism Pedagogies of dissent for the new millennium (pp ) Colorado USA WestviewPress HarperCollins

McLuhan C amp Powers B R (1989) The global village Oxford Oxford University PressMargolis J (1991) The truth about relativism Oxford Basil BlackwellMedina S R (1995) EducacioU n y modernidad El bachillerato en MeU xico ante los desafotilde U os del tercer milenio

Unpublished doctoral dissertation in Filosofotilde a y Letras Divisio n de Estudios de Posgrado enPedagogotilde a Divisio n de Estudios de Posgrado Universidad Nacional Auto noma de Me xico Mexico

Minsburg N amp Valle H W (1995) El impacto de la globalizacioU n Buenos Aires Letra BuenaMouUacute e C (1993) The return of the political London VersoOECD (1986) La naturaleza del desempleo de los joU venes Informes de la Organizacio n de Cooperacio n y

Desarrollo Econo mico MadridOECD (1993) Education at a glance Indicators Paris OECDPapacostas Casanova A (1996) Alfabetizacio n tecnolo gica Un enfoque constructivista In Tesis DIE 30

Mexico DIEplusmn CinvestavPerlmutter H V (1991) On the rocky road to the reg rst global civilization Human Relations 44 897plusmn 1010Popkewitz T A (1991) Political Sociology of Educational Reform Power Knowledge in Teaching Teacher

Education and Research New York Teachers College PressPopkewitz T (1997) Reform Key Lecture at the IV Congreso National de Investigacio n Educativa

Me rida Me xico Octoberplusmn November

24 globalization educationand discoursepolitical analysis

Popkewitz T (in press) Reform as the social administration of the child Globalization of knowledge andpower University of Madisonplusmn Wisconsin Wisconsin

RobertsonR (1990) Mapping the global conditionIn M Featherstone(Ed) Global culture London SageRorty R (1989) Contingency irony and solidarity Cambridge Cambridge University PressRosenau (1990) The study of global interdependence London Frances PinterRuiz Mun4 oz M (1996) Alternativas pedagoU gicas en el campo de la educacioU n de adultos ReconstruccioU n histoU rica

Unpublished masterrsquo s thesis Universidad Nacional Auto noma de Me xico MexicoRuiz Mun4 oz M (1997) La participacioU n como punto nodal en la educacioU n de adultos Paper presented at the XLI

Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society Mexico City MexicoRuiz Mun4 oz M (1998) Polotilde U tica y alternancia en la educacioU n de adultos PhD Unpublished research documents

Mexico DIEplusmn CinvestavSaussure F (1959) Curso de linguX otilde U stica general Mexico NuevomarSEP (1989) Programa de modernizacioU n educativa en MeU xico Secretarotilde a de Educacio n Pu blicaSEP (1994) Curriculum baU sico nacional de MeU xico Secretarotilde a de Educacio n Pu blicaSosa M (1994) El intercambio acade mico en America Latina Universidades 44 10plusmn 13Spybey T (1997) Britain in Europe An introduction to sociology London RoutledgeStaten H (1984) Wittgenstein and Derrida Lincoln and London University of Nebraska PressStubbs M amp Delamont S (Eds) (1976) Explorations in classroom observation Chichester New York WileyWallerstein I (1989) El capitalismo tardotilde U o Mexico Siglo XXIWebsterrsquo s Collegiate Dictionary (9th ed) (1990) Springreg eld MA Merriam-WebsterWeiss E (1994) Situacio n y perspectiva de la investigacio n educativa Avance y Perspectiva 13 33plusmn 41Wittgenstein L (1963) Philosophical investigations Oxford Basil BlackwellZ) iz) ek S (1989) The sublime object of ideology London Verso


(2) From a politicalapproach to elucidate how this constitutiveambiguityallowsthe meaning of globalizationto be reg xed in diUacute erent concepts thus demandingits accountability and responsibility of the meaning chosen

(3) From an educational perspective to discuss why even if policies areresemanticized when they arrive at everyday local educational actions thisdoes not amount to a minimization of their analysis (links between theuniversal and the particular)

This paper is organized in four sections (1) Globalization intellectual genealogy andarea of dispersion (2) Conceptual and analytical approach (polysemy and ambiguityanalytical procedure) (3) The global meets the local educational examples and (4)Mapping the horizon scenarios and reg nal remarks

Globalization has been a nodal signireg er within the last decade of educationalpolicies particularly in the American continent but its meaning seems to involve aconsiderable degree of dispersion It can either be associated with an evil that has to beexpelled or with the reg nal road to progress it can be reg xed either as correlative tohomogenization or to fragmentation and lack of social bonds Some have even claimedthat globalization does not exist and that the term is not a good description of the facts(Hirst amp Thompson 1996) The point here is not an ontological discussion but rathertracing how it came to be what it is now and examining how it works in diUacute erentdiscursive formations

A more general meaning of globalizationwould refer to a national policy of treatingthe whole world as a proper sphere for political inmacr uence compare imperialisminternationalism (Websterrsquo s Collegiate Dictionary 1990 p 521) Let us consider now howsocial theoreticians and other intellectuals have constructed it

Globalization intellectual genealogy and area of dispersion

This section will display the area of dispersion of globalization as a sign drawing fromconceptions produced by social scientists stressing economic political historical andcultural angles during 1991 to 1997 from both the American continent and Europe(namely Germany Spain and the UK) Discussions have emerged as to whetherglobalization is a new historical epoch or just a renewed strengthening of existingcapitalist structures and as regards its causes (a single or multiple causality) stressingits dynamics and projection But in order to set some grounds for this analysis asuccessive reduction of a great variety of positions has to be made I will focus on thefollowing features

(1) its links with imperialism neo-liberalism modernity and a necessary momentin a historical and or economic course

(2) its association with universalism and homogeneity(3) its identireg cation with the contact the encounter the interconnection of

diUacute erent trends (4) its construction as the outcome of an interconnection or the encounter of

diUacute erent tendencies

There is little need to display here the great amount of subtleties and nuances one canreg nd in the literature Therefore a typology seems a rather diaelig cult enterpriseNonetheless some ordering principles will be attempted so as to have some grounds for



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Globalization, education and discourse political analysis

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