Globalization, privatization, and the State: Education reform in post-colonial contexts—the case of Honduras

• In Event: Highlighted Session: The State and education in Latin America: Foundations, fault-lines, and alternatives (Panel 2)

Proposal

Research in comparative and international education (CIE) has mostly addressed the ways in which globalization and privatization are drastically affecting education around the world and are changing the power relationship between States and other transnational actors. However, while there has been much research on globalization, privatization and the State separately, it has not been common to address these issues together, at least not in the field of CIE. In this regard, while the ways in which globalization and privatization are influencing educational reform processes have been documented, these works have not explored the genealogy of State apparatuses to explain the dynamics that underlie each context. Strictly speaking, although there is research that analyzes the way in which globalization has impacted on the production of educational policy, and although many studies have mapped the privatization trends in different educational systems, we argue that it is necessary to transcend the analyzes that focus solely on the actions of a series of individual actors (e.g. policymakers, international organizations, private companies) to also incorporate in the analysis the evolution and nature of the State, and the ways in which this evolution affects the State’s capacity to provide public services (such as education), to engage with (and mitigate) the forces of globalization and to regulate the private sector in each context.

This presentation aims to make a contribution in this direction based on a the experience of Honduras. The insights presented are the result of three years of empirical research and theoretical exploration. We combine elements from the field of global educational policy, political economy, world-system perspectives, and postcolonial literature in order to construct a conceptual framework to analyze the dynamics of educational reform—and, in particular, of education privatization—in postcolonial States in the context of globalization. Applying this framework to the case of Honduras, we not only show how colonial logics, relationships, and practices have become embedded in the post-colonial State, but also how colonial legacies continue to affect the ways in which education privatization occurs today in the country. This study demonstrates that, that far from being an anomaly, privatization emerges as an inherent element in the logic of operation of the Honduran education system: the dynamics of education privatization in Honduras are in fact linked to the core characteristics of the postcolonial State apparatus, with these characteristics embodied in what we call an ‘ethos of privatization’. We argue that this ‘ethos’ is a consequence of the postcolonial State apparatus, in its current form, being built on the extractivist logics and practices of colonialism and capitalism. Finally, we address the implications of the persistence of this ethos for education policy and for the current functioning of postcolonial States in the context of global governance of education.

Authors

• D. Brent Edwards, University of Hawaii

• Mauro C Moschetti, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Alejandro Caravaca, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona