Beyond Comparative Methods in Research on Transnational Education Cooperation: A Proposed Theoretical Model for Examining Contextual Complexities

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to create a theoretical framework beyond the comparative approaches (e.g. Bereday, Comparative method in education. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964; Green, Preston, & Janmaat, Education, equality and social cohesion: A comparative analysis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) in the studies of student subjectivities’ formation in transnational education cooperation, such as between the Nordic states and China. Comparative approaches merely keep the analytical lenses focused on preserving the dichotomy between the West (represented by the Nordic states) and the East (represented by China). The proposed framework perceives the transnational education context as a global assemblage in which translocal governmentality is operating (Ong & Collier, Global assemblages: Technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005). The framework suggests identification of new modes of subject-making through the intersections of social categories (Staunæs, Where have all the subjects gone? Bringing together the concepts of intersectionality and subjectification. NORA—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 11(February 2015), 101–110, 2003) and detection of what Popkewitz (Cosmopolitanism and the age of school reform: Science, education, and making society by making the child. London: Routledge, 2007) calls “the limits of the cosmopolitan citizenry.”