Money Talks. Money Walks: The Sustainability of Collaborative Research in the Context of Wealth Disparity

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday VI)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Building sustainable relationships in the practice of comparative & international education research

Proposal

In 2000, the United Nations passed 8 Millennial Goals which included the aim that all boys and girls around the globe should have an opportunity to complete a primary education by 2015 (UN 2000). Yet, as of 2018, this goal has not been reached. One important mechanism in efforts to achieve these educational goals in “developing” and poor countries is a loan system through the World Bank. The World Bank made its first education-focused grant to Uganda in 1998 (part grant, part interest-free loan) and began making high interest education loans in 2009 (World Bank 2009). Uganda is considered one of the poorest nations in the world (among the poorest 20 countries in the world) with one of the largest youth populations. It is reported that 78% of Uganda’s population is under the age of 30 (Youth Policy 2014). The history and neoliberal tenets of contemporary fiscal arrangements between the wealthy global north and west engaged with the poorer global south is problematic. The World Bank has not only engaged in fiscal business-making at the expense of poorer countries like Uganda, it has purposefully engaged in “knowledge aid” whereby the fiscal links are tethered to particular ways to “think” (Molla 2014) “In very specific ways the development of education is inextricably linked with the development of capital whose fiscal mechanisms are directly linked to government-aided schools” (Mayengo, Namusoke, Dennis 2015, p. 295).

This neoliberal fiscal context is not negligible for contemporary educational researchers in the Uganda. Much of the power and wealth rests in the hands of those from the west coming into the country. I draw on my work with Ugandan colleagues to bring forward a conversation on the impacts of wealth disparities on collaborative, inter-cultural research and the sustainability of such unequal relations. Fiscal involvement within the context of Uganda’s poverty has required both personal and institutional investments, neither of which can be taken for granted if the collaboration is to continue. Moreover, the challenges of wealth cannot be ignored interpersonally or structurally. The questions that surface broadly examine the materiality of sustainability in economically disadvantaged communities and can include specifically: How and in what ways should there be open dialogue with collaborators about money? In what ways does a multilayered exchange of money bind collaborators in ways they might not choose? How are questions of money worked out amongst the participants over time?

Mayengo, N., Namusoke, Jane, and Dennis, B. (2015). The testimony of neoliberal contradiction in education choice and privitasation in a poor country: The case of a private, undocumented rural primary school in Uganda. Ethnography and Education, 10(3), 293-309.

Molla, T. (2014). Knowledge aid as instrument of regulation: World Bank’s non-lending higher education support for Ethiopia.” Comparative Education 50(2), 229–248. doi:10.1080/030500 68.2013.807645.

UN (United Nations). (2000). United Nations Millennium Declaration. September 18. General Assembly 55th Session, Agenda Item 60b.

World Bank. (2009). World Bank approves $150 million for post primary education in Uganda. Accessed April 27, 2015. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:22124165~menuPK:34463~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html.

Youth Policy Org. (2014). Situation of Young People. Accessed October 4, 2018. http://www.youthpolicy.org/factsheets/country/uganda/

Author

• Barbara Dennis, Indiana University