Agrarian Village Schools, Rural Rebellion, and the Financing of Underdevelopment in the French Empire (Poster 30)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Friday 11:45am
  In Invited Poster Session: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research Poster Session

Abstract

How do rural schooling and colonial finance interact to shape strategies of collective mobilization? I examine how agrarian life and village education shaped divergent decolonial trajectories in the former French colonies of Senegal and Vietnam, rooted in Islamic and Confucian traditions, respectively. Archival records across France, Senegal, and Vietnam show how education structured interactions between indigenous rural elites, urban elites, colonial authorities, and an emergent working class. Village schools emerge as key institutions, mediating tensions between rural and urban politics, as well as tradition and modernity. I contribute to research on rural rebellion, nationalism by centering how colonial-era schools conditioned the spread of political ideologies and became contested sites of governance and insurgency.

Author

• Austin Vo, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill