boababtree

Comparative and International Education: Reflecting on Extractivismo, Epistemic Genocide, and Theoretical Colonialism

José Cossa | ORCID: 0000-0002-9586-4287
Associate Professor, College of Education, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, USA – [email protected]

Received 3 October 2023 | Accepted 21 January 2024 | Published online 8 July 2024

Published in the Beijing International Review of Education 6 (2024) 71–81

Abstract

This article argues that, if Comparative and International Education can be understood as the application of theories and methods in the social sciences and humanities to study education globally, how the field chooses to explain reality (theories) and to study reality (methods) is crucial and must be understood in the historical-social context of its existence. Therefore, a re-historicizing and decolonializing (that is, beyond decolonizing) of the field is indispensable yet presents a challenge that requires our reflection and reflexivity on what it means to re-historicize, decolonialize, and educate. The article discusses the place of Africa in the field; places modernity as the field’s cosmological and theoretical inheritance; and argues for the need to reflect on the role of philosophy, theory, and methodology to abandon the practices of extractivismo, theoretical colonialism, and attempts at epistemological genocide. The article issues a call to action through the poem, Ode to My Academic Field.

Keywords

Comparative and International Education – extrativismo/extractivism – episte- mological genocide – theoretical colonialism – Africa – modernity – metaphor of the box – improving education

Improving education requires a problematizing of what it means to “improve,” in addition to what constitutes an education, given the colonially-imposed meaning of both concepts and, what I have come to call as, attempts at epis- temic genocide that manifest also in theoretical colonialism (Cossa, 2020). If Comparative and International Education can be understood as the applica- tion of theories and methods in the social sciences and humanities to study education globally (Epstein E., ca. 2002), how the field chooses to explain real- ity (theories) and to study reality (methods) is crucial and must be understood in the historical-social context of its existence. Therefore, a re-historicizing and decolonializing (my term) of the field is indispensable yet presents a chal- lenge that requires our reflection and reflexivity on what it means to re-histori- cize, decolonialize, and educate. Since history, education, social development, and the colonial are informed by philosophical and theoretical traditions, this reflection and reflexivity will require reflecting on the role of philosophy, the- ory, and methodology in the field of comparative and international education and on how African perspectives might inform the field. My focus on Africa is because, as a comparativist and member of the Global Africa community, such naturally serves as a rooting and point of departure in my view of life and all its manifestations. I hope that during my life and scholarly journey, this reality will interact with that of fellow humans whose rooting and points of depar- ture have experienced the bitter effects of colonialism and the consequent attempts to eradicate them through Western education.

Africa in Comparative and International Education

In the field of Comparative and International Education, Africa has been a subject of study and Western scholars have claimed expertise about the continent and, in some instances, such expertise was corroborated by having been on the continent. An instance of that can be seen in Bereday’s editorial decision, while an editor of the Comparative Education Review (cer), to reject an article written about Africa on the basis that the author had written on Africa without ever having been on the continent (Cossa, 2016). On the other hand, perceptions of expertise on Africa that favored Western scholars, thus confined to modernity’s perception of “the educated” and to the colonial perception of the Western scholar as the expert of Africa, were evident in Altbach’s selection of the cer Board, which precluded any African from being asked to serve. For Bereday, it was important to travel to a country in order to understand it and such travelers should “concentrate on presenting eyewitness point by point accounts which will be respected as vital primary sources by more specialized scholars” (Bereday, 1958). The concept of “more specialized scholars” is evidence of how the field conceptualized a hierarchy of scholarship that would obviously be advantageous to Western scholars studying non-Western societies and would shape how comparative and international education research would be conducted in Africa and about Africa. Moreover, Bereday’s emphasis on the importance of (Western) research methods, inspired by Jullien who is often considered “the father” of Comparative and International Education (Gautherin, 1993), authenticated a modernistic approach to scholarship in the field, which precludes any other form of knowing by elevating a criterion for reaching a “high level of scholarship” characterized by requiring methodological expertise viewed as scientific by Western scholarship. Obviously, this modernistic perspective of scholarship and the elevation of Jullien to the status of “the father of the field” ruled out the possibility of viewing as early comparativists and perhaps among the predecessors of the field such African scholars as Leo Africanus (Maalouf, 1992) – also known as Joannes Leone de Medici, Yuhannah al-Asad, or al-Hasan Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ahmad al-Wazzan, – and Olaudah Equiano (Equiano, 1794), also known as Gustavus Vassa, whose writings were already comparative and international in 1526 and the eighteenth century, respectively. Obviously, our re-historicizing must reckon with, and address, the fact that women were likely hidden intellectual figures in such early accounts.

An online search of the Comparative Education Review (cer) revealed that 4627 research articles were published in the cer from 1957 to 2022 and out of these articles, 827 had the word “Africa*”1 in their title. Assuming that the presence of this word in the title reflects the articles’ foci on “Africa*” as keywords (since the system did not allow for a search by keyword), we can safely conjecture that the top authors of articles addressing “Africa*” are non-African scholars (see Table 1). This is not to say that there are no African comparativists writing about “Africa*” and publishing in other journals that might not be primarily considered high impact journals focused on the field of Comparative and International Education. However, as the leading and doorway journal in the field, it is imperative that this point is highlighted herein because most researchers are likely to search the cer for what they might perceive as cutting-edge scholarship in the field, in its historicizing about regional societies, and in the practice of Comparative and International Education globally.

Table 1 Top Authors by number of articles mentioning Africa
Comparative and International Education: Reflecting on Extractivismo, Epistemic Genocide, and Theoretical Colonialism 1

The Metaphor of the Box

In my previous work (Cossa, 2020), I have used the metaphor of the box, which I equate to modernity, to explain the relationship between modernity and the exterior to modernity (sometimes written as exterior-to-modernity) world. I will recount this metaphor here, so it is immediately accessible in this narrative.

I invite us to imagine a box (not exempt from having smaller boxes and perhaps even other shapes within) and the expansive diverse space that exists outside the box. The box is modernity; the space is the world ex- terior to modernity’s direct total influence. Modernity is the period that (roughly) springs out of the enlightenment period (Van Der Veer, 1998) and establishes itself through humanism (Cossa, 2023). It is noteworthy that the box relies heavily on structures. While structures existed prior to Modernity, such structures became more established through the phi- losophizing and theorizing of humanists and the legitimizing of what became known as the scientific method – a method that was, and still is, viewed in Western epistemology as the path for reaching truth in an in- contestable manner. So, through the scientific method and theories such as functionalism, it was possible to firm structural differentiation on sci- entific and theoretical grounds. Since then, we have hardly questioned this beyond the boundaries of the disciplines that modernity created (Branford, 1903), thus unable to shake it off completely – in other words, modernity has established itself so deeply that we are even afraid to con- sider, let alone fathom, any alternative. (Cossa, 2020, p. 32)

Using the same metaphor, the status of our field can be explained in terms of “the inhabitants of the box” who stand in comfort within the confines of the box and watch the struggle of those upon whom the box imposes its ways (p. 36) while creating theories, policies, and practices to re-colonize the exterior through neo- forms of economic nationalism (e.g., establishment of new extractive economies) and through intensifying epistemic violence (Vázquez, 2011) and attempts to epistemic genocide (my term). I have used the term epistemic genocide to emphasize the link between the genos and the epistemic because the erasing of the epistemic is intrinsically linked to the erasing of a people. To stop its contribution to such attempts at epistemic genocide, we need to reflect, critically and soulfully, on our role in legitimizing efforts inherent in colonializing/re-colonializing 2 projects formulated in the name of modernization, development, progress, and improvement, which at the onset undermine the epistemologies, ontologies, and axiologies of those that modernity labels as the other… and we often do, too, as we collaborate with modernity in its inclusion efforts without ever asking “inclusion to what” or if the so-called other ever wanted to be included.

The Lingering Theoretical Colonialism

The question of who publishes about a given field in its prominent journals has implications on who shapes the field and its ontological, epistemological, and axiological perceptions (Epstein E. H., 2016; Cossa, 2016). Theorizing is a critical aspect of such perceptions and the shaping of the field, yet the field has relegated Africa to a non-theorizing space and imposed Western theorizing on African reality. In my earlier work (Cossa, 2020), I introduced the concept of theoretical colonialism when arguing for the need to soulfully reckon with the colonializing propensity appended in progressive revolutionary theories because while it is easier to spot the colonial in traditionally colonial theories, we run into the conundrum of staying oblivious of the colonial genes engraved in revolutionary theories emanating from modernity. It is noteworthy that the aim of such theories is to fight the hegemonic core within modernity, but not to dethrone modernity or its humanistic perception of personhood, which is both discriminatory and individualistic, thus incommensurate with non-modernist perceptions such as those deriving from the original peoples’ ontologies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania. In the same vein, I argued that a manifestation of this theoretical colonialism is the deeply rooted assumption that only the Marxs and Foucaults of this world can legitimize subversion at a theoretical level.

Therefore, the question of theorizing is also connected to the question of how the human is conceptualized in the field and how the citizenship status of such a human is articulated in discourses that the field feeds into the spheres of research, policy, and practice. Citizenship status is tied to perceptions of nationality, which in turn derive from perceptions of nation. Just as it ought to be with education, if one’s perception of being human is tied to land and one’s perception of citizenship is tied to an abstract concept inherent in the modernistic construction of State and its violation of native/original nations while imposing randomly constructed nation-states, the field of Comparative and International Education must pay attention to the pervasive colonial and neocolonial perceptions of “nation” and “international” (Cossa, 2021). The field must address the fact that “national,” as a construct that is historically used by its scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners, is a violation of “national” as understood by existing nations outside the perceptions of “nation” imposed by colonial practices (Meneses, Khan, & Bertelsen, 2018) such as what Moira Millan has called terricidio (Copley & Millan, 2012; Millán, 2011).

Improving education requires a reckoning with the lingering presence and dominance of the colonial in our field, albeit discourses of decoloniality and epistemic/epistemological justice. The most recent literature on theories in Comparative and International Education continues to demonstrate a lack of interest, recognition and respect for philosophizing and theorizing that is exterior to modernity. When engaging with exterior to modernity philosophical and theoretical articulations, we often confine them to postmodern philosophical and theoretical spaces and, consequently, subjugate them to Western interpretation of truth, reality, and values – this was evident when President N’Dri Assié-Lumumba called for uBuntu as the theme of our conference and we saw a proliferation of evident extrativismo (in presentations) interpreting uBuntu as an African appropriation of humanism rather than a philosophy in its own right that was a recalling of ancestral African philosophy with a nuanced understanding of human.

Extrativismo, a Practice Inherent to Economic Nationalism

Extractivismo is an old monster. The theoretical stance of economic nationalism during colonial times provided a rationale for colonial powers to devise and implement economic strategies that had implications far beyond the economy of colonized countries. While the extraction of raw materials and labor to strengthen the metropolis was seen as an economic transaction, the repercussions were a tearing of long-established civilizations comprising of complex societal fabrics. This practice did not disappear with the independence from colonialism but lingered during the so-called post- colonial era and prevails today when extractive economy practices have become mainstream. Economic nationalism and its methods paved the way to the current landscape of theory and methods in our field by providing it with the rationalized practice of extraction from the Global South to the Global North – for instance, we still teach our students, and often coerce them through Institutional Review Boards (irb s), to employ nomothetic quantitative (a.k.a., data-driven) research designs as well as ideographic qualitative designs such as the ethnographic method, a monster that is sometimes tamed as critical ethnography. According to Pryke (2012),

Economic nationalism should be considered as a set of practices de- signed to create, bolster and protect national economies in the context of world markets. The practice is not necessarily antithetical to external economic activity, but it is opposed to allowing a nation’s fortunes to be determined by world markets alone. The policies have consisted of controls on imports to create domestic monopolies, on finance to fix cur- rencies, on capital to direct investment to priority sectors and nationali- sation to establish state-owned companies. (p. 285)

While as comparativists we may think that the Pryke quote is only relevant to economics, we would be wise to reflect on it as we consider the practice of our own field – the theories and methods we deem right and even superior, the development work we have supported, the publications we consider worthy, the goals of our pedagogical engagement, our engagement with the people and knowledges of Global Africa and the overall Global South, etc. This reminds me of Moira Millán’s cry against el extrativismo cultural in Eszter Salamon’s choreographed performance in Kunstenfestivaldesarts that took place on May 5 of 2017 (Millán, 2020) and unless we, too, say “Basta!” to such extractivismo, our field will continue to colonize, extract, and appropriate instead of acknowledging, respecting, and learning from exterior to modernity philosophies and theories. Consequently, instead of speaking about improving education, we ought to be aiming our efforts toward acknowledging, respecting and learning from non-modernistic educational systems and practices that provide alternative ways of engaging the world and doing comparative and international education. We ought to re-problematize, re-historicize, redefine, and engage non-modernistic theories and methods to study education globally.

To conclude, the following poem reflects the status of our field and was spoken as a preface to the Presidential Address by Assié-Lumumba at cies 2016 in Vancouver, Canada:

Ode to my Academic Field

Copyright © 2016 by José Cossa

60 Years of history
A crossroads toward proactive history
A crossroads with a reclusive past
A crossroads towards an inclusive future
The epistemic recluses ought to become epistemic inclusives Those delusional epistemic hermits
Worshiping the god … ‘Cartesian dualism’
And its offspring at constant war for
Space, validation, and validity
Authenticity and purity
Those epistemic recluses ought to become inclusives
This is the crossroads of affirmation
This is the crossroads of no B-S proclamation
This is the crossroads of action

(…)

So … I’m calling on all epistemic hermits
‘Y’all epistemic hermits come out of your caves’ Come out of your caves, but know that … Know that this time is going to be different This time you will not come to dictate

You will not come to master our minds
You will not come to take us hostage
You will not come to kidnap us for mental slavery

(…)

Know that this time is going to be different
This time you will sit at the table
This time you will come to engage, not to debase This time you will come to respect, not to deflect This time you will come to sit to listen
To listen without judgment, to listen and learn Accept, reject, direct, deject, eject …

(…)

60 years and we are now at a time A time when we can say for sure That the time has come …
That ‘now is the time!’

That the time has come and the time is now! To calibrate and reverberate
To reflect and interject
A time to disrupt and a time to build
Disrupt the status quo and build the quo vadis A time to take stock, baby!

Time to not count beans, but ask
‘what beans? Whose beans? For what purpose?’

(…)

60 years … six-zero years
In the words of Canada’s own child, Drake,
“we started from the bottom and our whole crew is here!”
We are here to put uBuntu on the epistemological agenda
We are here to propose a new challenge and point to new opportunities uMuntu nguMuntu ngaBantu
We are here to reverberate and to calibrate
To infuse ubuntu-based epistemological blood
To rejuvenate and disintoxicate this 60 years-old entity

To breathe life and resuscitate
Resuscitate the dominant cells in its being
To bring the being to maturity
That’s what time it is!!!
To bring this entity into maturity!
To put uBuntu and other epistemologies on the table uMuntu nguMuntu ngaBantu
This is the time
Now is the time
E’skhati s’fikile
Yi tlasile nkama

References

Bereday. (1958, October). “Letter to Gerald Read”. Comparative and International Education.

Copley, F., Millan, M. (Writers), & Copley, F. (Director). (2012). Pupila de Mujer, Mirada de la Tierra [Motion Picture]. Argentina: Cruz del Sur c i n e . Retrieved from https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=mQ8UH8Q027o.

Cossa, J. (2016). Shaping the intellectual landscape. In Crafting a Global Field. In E. H. Epstein (Ed.). Springer.

Cossa, J. (2020). Cosmo-uBuntu: toward a new theorizing for justice in education and beyond. In A. A. Abdi (Ed.), Critical Theorizations of Education (pp. 31–43). Brill | Sense. doi:10.1163/9789004447820_003

Cossa, J. (2021). Cosmo-uBuntu theorizing about the global citizen in modernity’s fron- tiers: lived experience in Mozambique, United States, Swaziland, South Africa, and Egypt. In S. Wiksten (Ed.), Enactments of global citizenship education: social justice in public spheres of education (pp. 14–27).

Cossa, J. (2023). ‘uMuntu nguMuntu ngaBantu’: Toward an Equitably Infused Global Epistemological Orientation and Global (Philosophy of) Education. Bandung, 10(1), 33–52.

Epstein, E. H. (Ed.). (2016). Crafting a global field: Six decades of the Comparative and International Education Society (Vol. 33). Springer.

Epstein, E. (ca. 2002). Epstein lectures.
Equiano, O. (1794). The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus

Vassa, the African (8th ed.). Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Gautherin, J. (1993). Marc-Antoine Jullien (‘Jullien de Paris’) (1775–1848). Prospectus:

The Quarterly Review of Comparative Education, xxiii(3/4), 757–773. Maalouf, A. (1992). Leo Africanus. New York: New Amsterdam.

Meneses, M. P., Khan, S. P., & Bertelsen, B. E. (2018). Introduction: Situating Mozam- bican Histories, Epistemologies, and Potentialities. (M. P. Meneses, & S. P. Khan, Eds.) Brill, 21(Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies).

Millán, M. (2011). Mujer mapuche. Explotación colonial sobre el territorio corporal. In E. C. Alejandra de Santiago Guzmán (Ed.), Feminismos y poscolonialidad. Descol- onizando el feminismo desde y en América Latina (Vol. 201, pp. 291–306). clacso. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv253f4j3.9.

Millán, M. (2020, Febrero 24). Nación Mapuche. Moira Millán: «El extractivismo cultural es la sustracción de un saber o arte ancestral para destruirlo. Resumen Latinoamericano.

Pryke, S. (2012). Economic nationalism: Theory, history and prospects. Global Policy. Global Policy, 3(3), 281–291.

Vázquez, R. (2011). Translation as Erasure: Thoughts on Modernity’s Epistemic Vio- lence. Journal of Historical Sociology, 24(1), 27–44.

  1. This includes Global Africa categories such as African American.
  2. I use de/colonializing instead of de/colonizing to emphasize the lingering power of the “colonial as a deeply rooted ontological, epistemological, and axiological system,” not so much of the “colonial as a social, economic, and political system.” History has shown us that the reforming of, and attempts at transforming, the latter did/will not remove the former.

Related Articles

Responses

Share to...