This article explores the expansion of feminist ideas as both a conceptual and a political issue. It focuses on two major theories of social change, world culture theory (WCT) and world system analysis (WSA), comparing and contrasting how they frame gender as a factor shaping society, how they account for the diffusion of feminist ideas and how…

This paper draws on fieldwork done in Greystone School in South Africa, a single sex girls' school. I explore how the legacy of coloniser and colonised is reconfigured through the history of the school and the particular racialised politics of South Africa, where race and class have always been imbricated in differently nuanced ways before,…

The argument in this paper is that action and participatory research developed within the context of social and political movements aimed at promoting democratic relationships and institutions represents a methodological strategy for deconstructing and reconstructing the hegemonic perspective of knowledge and knowledge production. After a brief…

This paper explores the practices of one small non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Mindanao working innovatively to challenge power and interests by linking resources to local communities who control their productivity. While this may seem like social capital, I suggest that the agency over production, and the deeply political and ideological…

In the former Soviet Union, the upbringing of children in the spirit of Marxist-Leninist values was central to the project of societal transformation. More than 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is important to understand how the education of young children in this region has changed in response to a world rapidly globalising and…

This paper focuses on the socialist underpinnings of education policies in three small (and micro) states: Guyana, Jamaica and Grenada. It explores the role of education underneath ideological pluralism in constructing socialist citizens through cooperative socialism in Guyana, democratic socialism in Jamaica and revolutionary socialism in…

More than 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, scholars and educators continue to engage with histories under socialism and re-evaluate the consequences of those education systems for everyday lives then and in the present. This article develops an understanding of how kindergarten teachers understand their historical work in the socialist…

Popular education, by which is meant adult education within and in support of radical social movements, has become a major topic in academic adult education in recent times. This paper criticises the lack of attention paid in most of this writing to the history, theory and practice of revolutionary parties in the communist and socialist tradition.…

In the year 2000, Rwanda launched an ambitious long-term development strategy intended to render a fundamental transformation from an agrarian to a knowledge society by 2020. Knowledge society, however, could be viewed as a "floating signifier" open for a wide range of interpretations. Guided by a policy translation perspective the aim of this…

This new century has witnessed the rapid and frequent emergence of many new information and communications technologies (ICTs). On one hand, digitalisation enhances our economic, social and political lives. But on the other hand, it leads to certain negative social impacts. One prevalent problem is digital divide--the gap between different social…

This paper challenges us to consider the meaning of schooling for youth in the global south. We explore the ways in which young people living and learning on the outskirts of Kathmandu balance the visions and passions of modern schooling with social realities that are often quite incompatible. We depart from conventional analyses of modernity,…

Ideas of linear progress and predictability are essential to globally circulated ideas of educational planning, but do not necessarily correspond with the realities and priorities of ordinary people whose life trajectories often shape very differently. Thus, shedding light on the contradictory ideas about education and divergent expectations as to…

This article focuses on the geo- and body-politics of knowledge production related to global citizenship education. It introduces a set of concepts and questions, developed in the work of (mainly) Latin American scholars, that problematise Eurocentric conceptualisations of modernity, globalisation, knowledge and "being" with several implications…

This article critically examines the creation of the dominant academic discourse of global citizenship education, highlights gaps of thinking in the current discourse based on empirical research, and suggests some of the areas of translation/mediation/engagement that exist or need to exist in order to further research in the area. It uses a…

In response to exclusionary globalisation processes, Bolivia forms part of a wider Latin American return to regionalism and nationalism. With the indigenous president Morales, Bolivia distances itself from "imposed" neoliberal policies, aiming instead for "dignity and decolonisation". The Bolivian conflict is characterised by historical processes…