Analyzing Policy Borrowing between the Private and the Public Sector: A Focus on Boundary Work, Adaptations and Translations

• In Event: Problematising inequalities through a global lens II

Proposal

The close collaboration between the public and the private sectors, advanced as part and parcel of managerial
reforms of the past twenty years, has blurred the boundaries of how the two types of providers conceive, design
and speak of basic educational services and goods. The presentation focuses on the interaction between the two
sectors and documents transfer that is taking place from one to the other, using a Luhmannian systems theory
approach. In particular, the presentation focuses on the logic of forprofit
education and tentatively explores the
boundary work that businesses undertake visàvis
the public education sector. Viceversa,
this study also
provides examples of how public education has networked with, reframed its mission, and built institutional
structures that resemble the private sector logic. Both sectors have engaged both in boundary work as well in
translation. The latter entails the public sector’s translation of marketoriented
principles of competition and
demand/supply into staterun
schools and viceversa
the private sector’s translation of the public good, equity and
social integration into their own business language and logic.

Author

• Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Columbia University