The Exemplary, the Exotic and the Exact in Comparative and Intercultural Education

Overview & Synopsis

This article suggests some new ways to think about comparative education and intercultural education. The examples and narratives used are drawn mainly from comparative education--the speciality of the author. However, it is hoped that the questions asked will link with, or contradict, thinking by colleagues who specialise in intercultural education. The article takes up C Wright Mills' injunction to make sense of relations between individual biographies, social structures and historical forces. Here, two main arguments are offered: the fields of study such as comparative and intercultural education become confusing if the autobiographical is mixed with conventional understandings of the "traditions" of fields of study; especially if the sensitivity of comparative education (and probably both fields of study) to domestic and international politics is ignored. The second argument is that the seriousness of these confusions can be shown when an effort is made to identify the "deep dissonances" within comparative education itself; the ways in which comparative education is always getting itself muddled up over the exemplary, the exotic and the exact.