The Argonauts of Postcolonial Modernity: A Multisited Global Ethnography of Schools in Barbados

• In Event: Intersections of National and Transnational Class Formations, Postcoloniality, and Globalization in Elite Schools: Project Updates

Abstract

1. Objectives or Purposes

The purpose of this paper is to explore how elite independent schools in Barbados are educating to produce the Argonauts of postcolonial modernity. Utilizing the Greek mythological symbol of Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, I explore the ambitious global imaginary of the school youth who set out of their homeland Barbados to explore the world in search of better opportunities and future. In doing so, my paper actually reflects on the process of transnational capitalist class formation in the context of globalization and heightened human mobility across the world.

2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework


The larger research project of multi-sited global ethnography is using literature on transnational elite class formation as our primary theoretical background. For this particular presentation I also draw on the literature of the formation of global imaginary.


3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

Our methodology is based on the framework of “global ethnography” developed by Michael Burawoy (2000) based on the argument of Marcus (1998) that contemporary ethnographies should be “multi-sited” and explore the “complex connections” between sites.

4. Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials

Specifically, I will report on some of the early findings related to a multi-sited ethnographic study of two Barbadian elite secondary grammar schools (Old Cloisters and Ardent Arbors) and the way they are preparing young people for globalizing futures.
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4. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view

Based on early findings derived from semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and policy evaluation, the central organizing claim of my research (at this early stage) is that the reproduction of transnational elites in the Barbadian schools is a complex and deeply conflicted process. As the post-independence Barbadian educational system strikes out a path of indigenization and national ownership of education away from a British colonial inheritance, it must contend with the powerful crosscurrents of the policy imperatives and pressures of NAFTA-defined globalization and the real existing circumstance that Barbadian young people are culturally orienting to the United States and Canada, immigrating in large numbers to pursue their professional futures in North America. The schools register this enormous transformative tension in the curricular choices of the student body versus official efforts at these schools to uphold illustrious school pasts and the indigenizing present. This institutional effort to uphold the past and the nationalist indigenizing present sharply conflicts with the revolution of rising expectations and ebullient global imaginations of school youth and their perception of the expanded professional options and opportunities that exceed the material capacity of Barbados’ society and economy, stimulated as they are by recruiting institutions from the United States and Canada that visit these schools peddling exotic job futures to high school students.


5. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work

In recent times scholars have engaged to theorize schooling and the formation of new global imaginary. My paper proposes to put their theory under empirical pressure to bring it into dialogue with socio-cultural theories of globalization, youth mobility and transnationality.

Author

• Cameron R. McCarthy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign