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Mapping Comparative Education After Postmodernity

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International Handbook of Comparative Education

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE,volume 22))

This article examines the postmodern challenge to how we have come to see, represent, and practice comparative and international education. More specifically, I ask three questions: (1) Can a close reading of the relevant literature identify and type major positions or arguments in the postmodernism debate in our field? (2) How might these positions or knowledge communities be mapped as a discursive field of diverse perspectives and relations? Then, using this “heterotopia” of different ways of seeing Blake’s minute particulars or mini narratives, (3) What might we reasonably conclude about the postmodern challenge of multiperspectivism and its impact on how we as comparativists choose to represent our world?

To Isaiah Berlin, in Memoriam

Two extravagances: to exclude Reason, to admit only Reason.

(Blaise Pascal, Pensées)

He who would do good to another must do so in Minute Particulars: General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and fl atterer; For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.

(William Blake, Jerusalem)

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  1. Rolland G. Paulston
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL, UK

    Robert Cowen

  2. Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53711, USA

    Andreas M. Kazamias

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Paulston, R.G. (2009). Mapping Comparative Education After Postmodernity. In: Cowen, R., Kazamias, A.M. (eds) International Handbook of Comparative Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6403-6_62

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