An Anthropological Perspective on Globalization and Schooling

Abstract

Abstract This chapter describes how anthropologists and other ethnographers understand globalization, the spread of the Western form of schooling, and subsequent worldwide efforts to reform schools. The review essay begins from three premises. First, things, people, and ideas have always traveled. Second, all action is nonetheless local, and people necessarily remake the meanings of schooling and of traveling reforms in each new context. Third, policy and reform are practices of power. Some ethnographers have documented how international organizations and other actors have advocated (not without internal contention) certain global school reforms, and have used both overt and “soft” power to promote them. Many ethnographers have also described how local educators, whether in national ministries or school classrooms, have remade such global reforms to conform to local cultural understandings and material constraints. Therefore, anthropologists predict continued diversity across schools worldwide despite efforts for homogenization.