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Multiple modernities from the South to the North: history of the present, cultural differences and social pathologies.

Mon, March 24, 2:45 to 4:00pm, Palmer House, Clark 7

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The panel brings together contributors with different scientific sensibilities but committed to the same research interest: bringing together theories, methodologies and empirical studies that have gradually developed in plural contexts combining tradition and modernity. If there are different cultural grammars, despite a common humanity, based on religions and philosophies, it seems important to bring to light different digital and social settings of the market, the community and the State to characterize multiple modernities in education (Eisenstadt, 2020).

From one culture to another, from one society to another, the terms "teaching", "learning", "self", "autonomy", "community" refer to different interpretations and meanings on education. They take place in education systems and digital arrangements that are part of historically situated norms and frames that order, classify and shape educators and students in the process of schooling (Popkewitz, 2014). This panel considers also politics of living together define a certain horizon of expectations along shared values, ideals, and principles of justice (Normand, 2024). But these politics include and exclude also some categories of people outside the digital space or place them in an indefinite status, depending on their educational achievements, gender, disability, ethnicity, language, immigrant status, degree of wealth or poverty (Popkewitz, 2020).

The panel intends to focus on the past, present and future of digital education (Popkewitz, 2013, Normand, 2020). The aim is to question the place of history as the great narrative of modernity, and to recognize local cultures alongside global and digital standards. A history of the present can also shed light on many aspects of multiple modernities. They reveal processes of fabrication, re-problematization, adaptation and transfer of knowledge, norms and methods according to key moments and policy agendas. We will particularly highlight the conditions of their emergence, their conditions or possibilities and uncertainties, and their specificities and fragilities in relation to digital globalization.

These issues range from the negative effects of instrumental digitalization to the return of religion to public debate, to uncertainties created by migration, global warming and wars (Hulqvist & oth, 2018; Biesta, Hannam, 2020, Williamson & oth., 2023). The rise of populism and nationalism exacerbates mistrust of the other, while fuelling cultural and religious conflicts and maintaining the denial of common humanity (Hussain & Yunus 2021; Robertson, S. L., & Nestore). The digitalization of educational institutions and social demand, sustained by market mechanisms and privatization, deconstructs also traditional solidarities whereas it weakens relationship between education and welfare (Cone, Brogger, 2020). Education faces also social pathologies beyond inequalities, racism and discriminations, which prevent possible cooperative and open relations between people despite the extent of digital narratives (Neuhan, 2023).

The panel is the result of international, multidisciplinary and comparative research, which led contributors to exchange their views with some thirty researchers from Latin America, Europe and China at various seminars and other scientific events. These exchanges have resulted in a publication by Bloomsbury, already accepted and due for publication at the end of 2025.




References

Biesta, G., & Hannam, P. (Eds.). (2020). Religion and education: The forgotten dimensions of religious education?. The Netherlands: Brill; Boston, MA: Sense,

Cone, L., & Brøgger, K. (2020). Soft privatisation: Mapping an emerging field of European education governance. Globalisation, societies and education, 18(4), 374-390.

Eisenstadt, S. N. (2020). The challenge of multiple modernities. In Tomasi L. (ed) New horizons in sociological theory and research (pp. 99-126). London, Routledge.

Hultqvist, E., Lindblad, S., & Popkewitz, T. S. (Eds.). (2018). Critical analyses of educational reforms in an era of transnational governance. Dordrecht, Springer International Publishing.

Hussain, S., & Yunus, R. (2021). Right‐wing populism and education: Introduction to the special section. British Educational Research Journal, 47(2), 247-263

Normand, R. (2020). The politics of metrics in education: A contribution to the history of the present. Handbook of Education Policy Studies: Values, Governance, Globalization, and Methodology, Volume 1, 345-361.

Normand, R. (2024). Between reflexivity and critique: French pragmatic sociology and the plurality of engagements in the quest for justice. In Rethinking Sociological Critique in Contemporary Education (pp. 21-34). Routledge.

Neuhann, E. (2023). Social Pathologies as Educational Injustices. Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis, 2(2), 2.

Popkewitz, T. (2013). The sociology of education as the history of the present: Fabrication, difference and abjection. Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education, 34(3), 439-456.

Popkewitz, T. S. (Ed.). (2014). The reason of schooling: Historicizing curriculum studies, pedagogy, and teacher education. London, Routledge.

Popkewitz, T. S. (2020). The paradoxes of practical research: The good intentions of inclusion that exclude and abject. European Educational Research Journal, 19(4), 271-288.

Robertson, S. L., & Nestore, M. (2022). Education cleavages, or market society and the rise of authoritarian populism?. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 20(2), 110-123.

Williamson, B., Komljenovic, J., & Gulson, K. (Eds.). (2023). World yearbook of education 2024: Digitalisation of education in the era of algorithms, automation and artificial intelligence. Taylor & Francis.

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