At The Margins Of Globalization

This book explores how Indigenous Peoples are impacted by globalization and the cult of the individual that often accompanies the phenomenon.

Globalization has become one of the dominant ideas of recent times. However, is the debate on globalization as global as it ought to be? In this book Grant and Rennie Short have brought together prominent experts in the field to consider how globalization affects marginalized countries and groups. A variety of case studies provide a unique assessment of the issue of globalization and offer a new look at the relationship between the global and the local.

Reflecting on almost three decades of postsocialist transformations, the second edition of Globalization on the Margins explores continuities and changes in Central Asian education development since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, with a particular focus on the developments that took place since the production of the first edition in 2011. Rather than viewing these transformations in isolation, the authors place their analyses within the global context by reflecting on the interaction between Soviet legacies and global education reform pressures in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. This new edition, in addition to a revised introduction and a newly added conclusion, consists of four thematic sections, each reflecting a key theme in the educational life of the Central Asian states. These thematic sections, introduction and conclusion collectively update our understanding of the recent developments and challenges in education of the five Central Asian states. They, however, go beyond mere information update, so as to complicate, re-engage, re-form and re-define the margins, taking up ‘margins’ a conceptual, geographic, cultural, and geo-political construct. Notwithstanding the diversity of local and international authors, variety of theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and conceptual lenses, the essays reveal the complexity and uncertainty of the post-socialist education transformations. Instead of portraying the transition process as the influx of Western ideas into the region, Globalization on the Margins provides new lenses to critically example education as a contested field of diverse perspectives, competing forces, and multidirectional flow of ideas, concepts, and reforms in Central Asia. ENDORSEMENTS: "Hindsight famously brings clarity. And, much of what happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union has now been correctly deeded over to historians. Nonetheless, we ignore that history at our peril. The contributors to this volume show that carefully textured and historically attuned education research generates deep insights into ongoing transformations and the political, cultural, social and economic structures, relations, and practices that do the work of producing margins and centers in the first place." ~ Noah W. Sobe, Loyola University Chicago "Globalization on the margins and at the epicentre of the battles of the Great Powers. Two excellent educators, Sarfaroz Niyozov and Iveta Silova, compiled a timely and long-awaited scholarly work based on empirical research in societies, which had similar history close to three decades ago. All the contributors are prolific educators who know the education system from within and without, who either hailed from the region or have spent a considerable amount of time to know the systems well. The book contains remarkable stories of education through the ups and downs of historical evolution. It is a must-read primer for anyone interested in learning about high quality research in the field of education in Central Asia. It is a huge contribution to educational research with an impact on research and teaching for years to come." ~ Duishon Shamatov, Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan "The challenge of moving Central Asia from the borders of the Soviet Empire to the world’s center is the focus of the discussions in ‘Globalization on the Margins.’ The transition to the Western models of education was happening in the context of major paradigm shift, which entire humanity was experiencing and which could be described as the arrival of the new post-industrial civilization. During this process, Central Asian countries have been pushed to the margins, because their contribution to the wealth of the new world know-how was much less pronounced than that of their Western neighbours. Therefore, investment into the research that contributes to local knowledge production seems a natural solution to the problem. All the contributors to this book have a vast experience in the region and many of their observations are thought provoking. This is a very insightful and much needed book." ~ Elena Lenskaya, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, Russia

The Karakoram Highway was constructed by the Pakistani state in the 1970s as a major development project that furthered the national interest and solidified state control over the disputed region of northern Pakistan. Focusing on this highway, this book provides a unique analysis of the links between space, travel and history in the formation of the Pakistani nation-state. The book discusses how the highway was a symbol for an imagined national identity, and goes on to look at how it offered Pakistan a pre-Partition history and a fixed territory, by providing a historical link to the Silk Route and a contemporary geographical linkage to Central Asia. Examining the influence of the diverse travellers along the Karakoram Highway, the book shows how global flows of development, trade, labour, and tourism have remapped the Pakistani nation-state and reshaped the local. Providing a fresh perspective on the nation-state of Pakistan, this book is an important contribution to studies on South Asian History, Anthropology, Politics and Geography.

Reflecting on 2 decades of postsocialist transformations, Globalization on the Margins explores the continuities and changes in Central Asian education development since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Rather than viewing these post-Soviet transformations in isolation, the authors place their analyses within the global context by reflecting on the interaction between Soviet legacies and global education reform pressures in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Notwithstanding the variety of theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and conceptual lenses, the essays have one thing in common: both individually and collectively, they reveal the complexity and uncertainty of the post-Soviet transformations. Instead of portraying the transition process as the influx of Western ideas into the region, Globalization on the Margins provides new lenses to critically examine the multidirectional flow of ideas, concepts, and reform models within Central Asia. The subtle interplay between local and trans-local elements in the formation of educational policies and institutions calls for analytic approaches that transcend the paradigm of conceptualizing global forces as entering local "places." This much needed volume paves new ground by examining schools and educational practices in Central Asia in all their contingent and emergent complexity. In directing our attention to fascinatingly diverse postsocialist educational trajectories, this collection illuminates the ways that power relations infuse the production of all "places," whether they be centers or margins, and all "forces," whether styled as system-internal and ostensibly local or system-external and putatively global.---Noah W. Sobe, Associate Professor, Cultural and Educational Policy Studies, Loyola University Chicago There may only be one-way traffic on the old silk road when it comes to ideas about education policy transformation; this has not helped avoid a huge ideological pile up. Silova's exploration reveals how oversold and oversimplified Western policy ideas collide with inertia in education systems in post-Soviet Central Asia. What matters is not the ideological disparities between East and West but when and how these collude to redefine the boundaries for education exclusion and education privilege in Central Asia. Globalization on the Margins helps us to better understand this collision and this convergence, hitchhikers on that road will do well to take along some reading.---Hugh McLean, Director. Education Support Program, Open Society Foundations, London

The realities of globalization have produced a surprising reversal in the focus and strategies of labor movements around the world. After years of neglect and exclusion, labor organizers are recognizing both the needs and the importance of immigrants and women employed in the growing ranks of low-paid and insecure service jobs. In Organizing at the Margins, Jennifer Jihye Chun focuses on this shift as it takes place in two countries: South Korea and the United States. Using comparative historical inquiry and in-depth case studies, she shows how labor movements in countries with different histories and structures of economic development, class formation, and cultural politics embark on similar trajectories of change. Chun shows that as the base of worker power shifts from those who hold high-paying, industrial jobs to the formerly "unorganizable," labor movements in both countries are employing new strategies and vocabularies to challenge the assault of neoliberal globalization on workers' rights and livelihoods. Deftly combining theory and ethnography, she argues that by cultivating alternative sources of "symbolic leverage" that root workers' demands in the collective morality of broad-based communities, as opposed to the narrow confines of workplace disputes, workers in the lowest tiers are transforming the power relations that sustain downgraded forms of work. Her case studies of janitors and personal service workers in the United States and South Korea offer a surprising comparison between converging labor movements in two very different countries as they refashion their relation to historically disadvantaged sectors of the workforce and expand the moral and material boundaries of union membership in a globalizing world.

This collection of essays examines sociolinguistic phenomena in a variety of marginal environments, providing both an overview of globalizaiton on the margins and a foundation for an expanded understanding of the processes of linguistic and cultural changes at work in these settings.