Chapter 1

Defining Globalization and Assessing its Implications

for Knowledge and Education, Revisited
Nelly P. Stromquist and Karen Monkman

GLOBALIZATION DEFINED
Globalization, a contemporary term well ingrained in people’s consciousness, is a
phenomenon that comprises multiple and drastic changes in all areas of social life,
particularly economics, technology, and culture. Not surprisingly, its meaning varies
depending on the angle that is emphasized when defining it. Globalization can be
discussed in economic, political, and cultural terms. It can be found in neoliberal
economic perspectives, critical theory, and postmodernity. While initially centering on
convergence/divergence, homogenization/heterogeneity, and local/global issues
(Stromquist and Monkman, 2000), it now is understood as a much more multi-faceted
and complex dynamic (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, and Perraton, 1999), one that is
contingent, ambiguous, contradictory, and paradoxical. Despite its ability to capture in
its unfolding changes the involvement of the entire world in one way or another,
globalization remains an inexact term for the strong, and perhaps irreversible,
changes in the economy, labor force, technologies, communication, cultural patterns,
and political alliances that it is shaping in every nation.
As Harvey has nicely encapsulated, under contemporary capitalism we have a
“time/space compression” (cited in Castells, 2010, p. 448). English is emerging as the
global language and social/economic transactions are being formulated within what
Castells (2010) calls the “network society,” a rise in horizontal connections among
related institutions and communities in diverse localities and dependent on computer-
mediated technologies.
A useful definition of globalization is that offered by Gibson-Graham (2006): “a
set of processes by which the world is rapidly being integrated into one economic
space via increased international trade, the internationalization of production and
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financial markets, the internationalization of a commodity culture promoted by an

increasingly networked global telecommunications system” (p. 120).
Globalization has many faces. In the area of economics, practices favoring free
trade, private enterprise, foreign investment, and liberalized trade prevail. In the
social area, new consumption patterns and lifestyles with consequences for family
relations and social organization have arisen. At cultural levels, the flows of people,
goods, information, and images reflect the influence of communication processes
(Appadurai, 2002; Featherstone, 1990) and new identities and imaginaries are taking
shape. At the political level, there is increased acceptance of pluralistic systems,
multi-party democracy, free elections, independent judiciaries, and the call for human
rights (Ghai, 1987; also see Bajaj, this volume). Some observers are skeptical that
 these practices and norms will alter the real economic order. For instance, González
Casanova (1996) sees the term globalization as a rhetorical device for the
reconversion of dependency, as it hides the effects of economic policies that are
creating major social problems in many developing countries. As Amin (1996) notes,
globalization affects not only trade but also the productive system, technology,
financial markets, and many other aspects of social life. So far, because there are
still people outside the modern economy, globalization has not affected the lives of
every person in every country, but increasingly, it appears that ultimately all groups
will be brought into conformity.

ESTABLISHED ACTORS IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

The unfolding dynamics of globalization have brought several major players into the
economic and political decision-making process. The first of these is unquestionably
the market; the others, the more tangible ones, are the transnational corporations
(TNCs) with indisputable roles in the market and politics.

The Market

Today, with the demise of the centrally planned, socialist economies, great
promise and reliance are placed on the role of the market to release creative
energies and minimize inefficiencies. Through competition of firms, the market is
expected to enable production to reach its highest volume and quality.
Competitiveness, then, is a major principle in the globalized market.
Castells (2010) identifies sources of competitiveness in the global economy.
They operate through four distinct processes: (1) the technological capacity of a
country or the articulation of science, technology, management, and production; (2)
access to large, integrated, affluent markets such as the European Union, North
American Free Trade Agreement, or Japan; (3) a profitable differential between
production costs at the production site and prices at the market of destination
(including not just labor costs but land costs, taxes, and environmental regulations);
and (4) the political capacity of national and supranational institutions to guide the
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growth strategy of those countries or areas under their jurisdiction (pp. 103–105). In
this list, knowledge as technological capacity emerges as a key component in the
attainment of competitiveness; as we will see later, knowledge might not be
accessible to everyone.
The power exercised by markets does not benefit all. And this is the problematic
situation, as no market self-regulatory apparatus exists. Financial markets behave in
extremely speculative ways; not only do they not engage in productive investments
but they have triggered currency devaluation of entire countries (e.g., Brazil, Mexico,
Thailand, and Russia), with corresponding consequences in reduced national wealth
and limited public spending. One million children in Asia were unable to return to
school after the crisis in the late 1990s. And, we have seen the damaging
 consequences of this economic agenda on education and other social services, family
well-being, and local and national economic infrastructures following the 2008 global
economic crisis.
A feature of contemporary markets is their clustering in regional blocs to attain
benefits of scale, coordinate production, and target specific populations. Three such
blocs have emerged (Europe, North America, and East Asia) and they are preparing
themselves for increasing competition.[1] Together with the global market, we are
seeing the creation of macroinstitutions to facilitate economic and political exchanges.
Examples are the growing influence of the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank in numerous countries, the creation of the World Trade Organization and the
General Agreement on Trade in Services, and the redefinition of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization to address sociopolitical problems within European countries. On
the other hand, world institutions such as those needed for the creation of a new
international economic order are not being fostered. Through structural adjustment
programs, and subsequently the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, coordinated by
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the process of capital
accumulation continues while impacting negatively on the process of distribution and
reallocation of the social product (see Kendall and Silver, and Odora Hoppers, this
volume) and shaping such distributions in ways that maintain existing hierarchies
between and within nations. Neoliberalism, which can be defined as the economic
doctrine that relies on market forces as the main adjudicator of social decisions, has
solidified itself over the past twenty years.

Transnational Corporations

Some forty-three thousand large firms qualify today as TNCs (Vitali, Glattfelder,
and Battiston, 2011). TNCs are both the primary agents and major beneficiaries of
globalization (Ghai, 1987; Gibson-Graham, 1996). It is estimated that 70 percent of
the world trade was controlled by the five hundred largest industrial firms in 2002
(Share the World Resources, 2013). Through access to highly mobile capital, TNCs
have created global factories, relying on the cheapest combination of labor and skills
for selected tasks. TNCs thus have generated increasingly integrated and
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interdependent systems of capital-labor flows across regions and between states.

With the support of international financial institutions, TNCs can engage in substantial
and speedy capital investment, technology transfer, financial exchanges, and
increased trade.
The emergence of institutions that are less publicly accountable, such as TNCs,
banks, and media conglomerates, has produced a society in transition with new
philosophies about government (Independent Commission on Population and Quality
of Life, 1996, p. 257). Blackmore (this volume) warns that, “Whereas the welfare
state previously disciplined the market within its national boundaries, in a globalized
context the corporate state now mediates transnational market relations in education
…” (citing Rizvi and Lingard, 2010). A worrisome development is the recognition of
 TNCs in U.S. courts and in the discourse of UN documents as citizens and thus as
having the same rights as “people” (Crookshanks, 2008; Development Alternatives
with Women for a New Era [DAWN], 2013).
The emergence of TNCs as major players has implications for education. With
business and profitability as the main referent, “social and public service interests are
devalued” and “appropriate knowledge becomes increasingly narrowly defined”
(Bhanji, 2008; Kempner, 1998, p. 455). At local levels, there is an increased presence
of business in cooperation with the schools, determining what constitutes quality and
what is needed.
Recently eyes have been on the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring, and other
global movements that seek to push back or limit the neoliberal agenda, limiting the
economy’s strong hand in shaping life chances (Hale, 2013). Whether there will be a
long-term effect on economic structures, policies, or actors, and what it would look
like, remains to be seen.

CULTURE
The impact of globalization on culture is universally felt. However, there are opposing
viewpoints about current developments. While some observers see a tendency
toward homogeneity of values and norms, others see an opportunity to rescue or
even reinvent local identities.
Communication technologies such as cell phones and satellite television and the
many modalities of Internet expression are accelerating cultural change faster than
ever before. Advances in transportation and its decreasing costs are facilitating travel
abroad, which fosters exposure to other ways of life. Through the mass media
(television, film, radio, video), not only is English becoming the global language but
there has developed a tendency, particularly among elites and middle classes all over
the world, to adopt what might be termed an “American way of life.”
For Cvetkovich and Kellner (1997), the cultural forces reflected in the global
media influence roles, identities, and experiences. In their view, old identities and
traditional ways of seeing and being in the world have been challenged, and new
forms are being constructed out of the “multifarious and sometimes conflicting
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configurations of traditional, local, national, and now global forces of the present time”
(p. 10). But they also argue that “although global forces can be oppressive and erode
cultural traditions and identities they can also provide new material to rework one’s
identity and can empower people to revolt against traditional forms and styles to
create new, more emancipatory ones” (p. 10). Nonetheless, globalization fosters a
greater synchronization of demands as well as a greater similarity in taste and
preference within the national markets. In a way, this homogeneity is necessary to
ensure a more standardized, and thus easier to produce, supply of products and
services such as leisure and foreign travel.
It is likely that globalization is creating forces that will divide people economically
but it might also generate forces with the potential to offer new bases for solidarity
 (Kenway, 1997). While the world is becoming smaller and more homogeneous at
some levels, in a variety of ways local cultures are making efforts to retain their
identity and, in some cases, even to rediscover it. One such example concerns recent
developments in Latin America. While for many years there raged a debate as to
whether the indigenous question should be about social class or ethnicity, indigenous
organizations have opted for the second position, which does not deny or ignore the
exploitation indigenous peoples face but prefers to challenge it through an affirmation
of ethnic identity (Stavenhagen, 1997). Some scholars argue that the renaissance of
the local might be emerging as a defense against the impossibility of joining the global
on favorable terms. In any case, efforts to recapture traditional identities and values
come as unintended effects of globalization.
The prevailing values that are emerging bring a twist to traditional definitions.
“Flexibility,” for instance, means less the ability to accept cultural differences than the
ability to adjust economically and adapt innovations in the production of goods and
services. While there have been significant changes in production processes, which
have moved into “post-Fordist” forms, current labor practices and work organization
continue to have a hierarchical network structure. Large companies in central
countries offer their workers reward systems based on seniority and cooperation with
firm-based unions; but firms in developing countries, which Castells terms those “in
the periphery of the network,” treat labor as expendable and exchangeable, relying on
temporary workers and part-time employees, among whom women and poorly
educated youth are the majority. In other words, production forms seem to have
changed more than the values and norms attached to the way production is
organized.

Culture and Gender

An important dimension of culture regards the formation of masculinity and

femininity. Institutions such as armies, bureaucracies, and even the stock market have
served to export norms of violence, aggression, and domination that established
masculinity as the dominant norm (Connell, 1998). In the globalization era, the mass
media, including social media, function as a source of new ideas regarding gender
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equity but also serve to heighten messages that reproduce gender asymmetries.
The most positive feature of globalization for women has been their incorporation
into the labor market, providing a potential source of economic independence.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),
this incorporation in the seven major national economies grew about 30 percent from
1970 to 1990, a growth that Castells calls a “massive incorporation of women in paid
work” throughout the world (2010, p. 269). Yet, this incorporation has taken forms
that have not been particularly advantageous to women. In Japan, the third major
industrial power in the world, women still massively enter the labor force in their early
twenties, stop working after marriage to raise their children, and return later to the
labor force as part-timers. This structure of the occupational life cycle is reinforced by
 the Japanese tax codes, which make it more advantageous for women to contribute
in a relatively small proportion to the family income than to add a second salary. While
the strict labor participation pattern of Japan is not found to the same extent in the
United States, the U.S. tax code also penalizes two-income families. Globally, more
than 50 percent of immigrants, and 60 to 70 percent in some places, are women;
many end up in low-status, low-wage jobs, often in gender-segregated and informal
economies, and become more vulnerable to exploitation and sexual violence (UN
Populations Fund, 2013). For some, children are left at home while mothers seek
work in the global economy. With border restrictions and tightening migration policies,
transnational family arrangements become more difficult, as fathers and mothers are
often less able to return home and families are separated.
Part-time jobs represent about one-fifth of the jobs in OECD countries; under
globalization, these types of jobs also have a tendency to increase. Women, more
than men, favor flexible time and part-time work because it accommodates their
needs to combine their childrearing tasks and their working lives. It should be obvious,
however, that this “accommodation” tends to reproduce highly gendered social
relations. Craske (1998) maintains that the neoliberal project that accompanies
current globalization processes depends on women retaining their “traditional” family-
oriented identities without undermining their availability for the labor market to provide
low-wage competition.
Jaggar (2001) observes that neoliberal globalization promised that it would
undermine local forms of patriarchy and would make women full participants in politics
and the economy. In her view, as this form of globalization has undermined peace,
democracy, and environmental health, while strengthening racism and ethnocentrism,
it is hostile to women. She further observes that neither technological developments
nor communication developments have altered policy-makers’ disregard for the
private sphere. Today, there is a visible struggle to secure more rights for women;
these demands have emerged primarily from grassroots activism and constitute an
example of globalization from below (Jaggar, 2001; Stromquist, 2007).
Through greater engagement by women’s groups as well as by UN machinery,
considerable attention is being paid to gender issues: domestic violence, women’s
access to property, sexual and reproductive rights, and employment, among others
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have moved to the forefront of social concerns. Women’s movements are increasingly
recognizing on a global scale that to advance the condition of women a
multidimensional approach is required, one that includes not only cultural change but
also reform in the financial, monetary, and trade systems (DAWN, 2013). However,
schooling continues to be seen—by financial institutions, UN and bilateral agencies,
and the women’s movements in general—in uncritical ways. Stakeholders seek
greater access by girls and women to formal education, but do not envisage the
school system as a major venue for transformation through the provision of new
knowledge and classroom experiences. It is assumed that increased access to
education plays a transformative role in the creation of gender identities; this is,
however, amply demonstrated as untrue by the visible reproduction of gender norms
 and practices in most countries. For example, a recent document prepared by UN
Women (2013) on policies to be adopted following the UN Millennium Development
Goals seeks to increase women’s access to secondary education (and thus the goal
goes beyond basic education). Yet, it is mute about the urgent need to train teachers
in gender issues so that representations of femininity and masculinity, domestic
violence and sexual harassment, and women’s assignment to the private sphere may
be challenged.

Transnational Cultural Space, Education, and a Sense of Belonging

Mobility is an emerging focus in studies of education and globalization; it also has

implications culturally. Transnational mobility of people, technology, money, media,
and ideas—or in Appadurai’s (2002) terms: ethnoscapes, technoscapes,
financescapes, mediascapes, and ideoscapes—contributes to reconfiguring social,
political, and economic relations and global positions of influence, situating them on a
global scale and within transnational spaces. Sassen (2012) argues that global power
and processes are increasingly concentrated in “global cities,” within which a
“disproportionate share of the corporate economy … and the disadvantaged” (p. 1)
are strategically situated. Such changes in the global configuration of social,
economic, and political processes reconfigure the spaces within which education
functions and how it seeks to shape societies. Several new trends are worth noting:
transnational forms of education (the international baccalaureate, higher education),
new identities, and the role of schooling in shaping character and a sense of global
citizenship.
Brown and Lauder (2009) have examined the emergence of international
systems of education and “international rather than state-certified forms of
credential[ing]” (p. 130), as manifested in two examples: the International
Baccalaureate (2013) program and in higher education. They argue that control of
teachers and systems (e.g., through credentialing and accreditation) is increasingly
situated beyond the nation state, shaped by the increasing power of the market, and
results in a shift in the “character” (p. 131) of the students produced by these
systems.
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While this population is quite small, there are many more children being
influenced by global media, curricula, testing regimes, etc., thereby promoting an
orientation toward a broader context. The growth in “global education” curricula and
programs, particularly in industrialized countries, reflects concerns about instilling in
the next generation such a broader orientation, one in which children are more
knowledgeable about the world and situate themselves within that broader world,
understand global phenomena (such as environmental sustainability), and develop a
respect for others and a sense of global responsibility. A global notion of citizenship,
however, can also make diversity invisible, particularly as it relates to gender and
minority groups (Arnot and Dillabough, 2000; Robertson, 2009). Teaching children to
be citizens of the world confronts the reality that most formal education systems have
 a primarily national orientation and so, continue to produce citizens who reflect
national identities. Parmenter (this volume) demonstrates this tension in the Japanese
context, where the intended “global” orientation clashes with the concern for national
cohesion.

KNOWLEDGE UNDER GLOBALIZATION

Rapid and sustained change is occurring in the ways we learn and do things.
Boundaries in time and space are being crossed with great ease; people learn of
events much quicker than ever before and they can go to distant places with great
ease. A positive expectation about the new speed of information diffusion and human
mobility is that the invisible hand of the market now also moves faster and with
greater efficiency, which will both increase the satisfaction and welfare of consumers
and exercise pressures for greater efficiency and thus knowledge among firms that
wish to remain in the market.
Globalization increases interaction among people and this creates opportunities
for new learning, but also for old learning. Among the new learning, we have now
what is called the “cult of technology” and conversely the diminution of respect for
spiritual and cultural values (Maugey, cited in Namer, 1999). Similarly, the prioritizing
of STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) diminishes
the perceived value of humanities and social sciences, and increases the focus on
education-for-jobs thereby weakening broader notions of education-for-life. While
some ideas indeed are being exchanged freely, it is a struggle to offer and
disseminate ideas with weak connection to the market.
According to Giddens (1994), with the rise of multiple technologies and
globalization dynamics, there are no permanent structures of knowledge or meaning
today. The process of translation and adaptation calls for many changes and this in
turn produces changes in intended as well as unintended ways. Giddens predicts the
arrival of an era of reflexivity, caused by the growing proportion of people who are
knowledge seekers. Because knowledge will be increasingly subject to revision, we
might find “doubt” to be a feature of globalization. Giddens is perhaps only partly
correct. Science and technology are fields that today receive much respect. But they
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are also fields whose “knowledge” is predicated on positivistic science with claims of
certainty and precision. Such tendencies would generate an impetus for knowledge
as certainty. In the social sciences, in fact, we are seeing a tendency toward the
understanding of knowledge as precise, decontextualized, and thus fragmented. Such
a trend is evident in the current attempts by agencies such as the World Bank to
create “knowledge management systems” whose fundamental premise seems to be
that knowledge can be reduced to a minimal and yet valid expression.
In a globalized world, as technology becomes its main motor, knowledge
assumes a powerful role in production, making its possession essential for nations if
they are successfully to pursue economic growth and competitiveness. This search
for technological knowledge makes sense at one level, but at another perhaps sets
 countries on an impossible path. Often, one hears the assertion that workers can be
transformed into owners of capital as knowledge can be put into their heads (Curry,
1997), an assertion predicated on the assumption that knowledge is more accessible
than the other factors of production: land, capital, and technology (Friedman, 2005).
But what this argument ignores is the great chasm that emerges between the poor
and the international circuits of production, distribution, and access to knowledge.
In addition to the increased speed of circulation of knowledge, there has been a
growth in the quantity, quality, and the density of knowledge embodied in the design,
production, and marketing of even ordinary products (Curry, 1997). Consequently,
knowledge is increasingly being embedded in technical capital. Countries that depend
on natural resources extraction will likely build only minimal technical capital.
Extrapolating from this trend, it follows that the knowledge composition of capital will
be differentially distributed. If so, the fundamental relation between labor and capital
may remain the same as before, even though the knowledge component of capital
may be today far more sophisticated than in the past.
Current technological developments have contributed to a belief that technology
can be used to dramatically improve learning in schools. The presumption that
technology can have an independent effect—independent of how teachers are trained
to use it and independent in design so as not to substitute for classroom activities
normally carried out with paper and pencil—is endorsed even by such institutions as
UNESCO (Kalman and Hernández, 2013). There have been major improvements in
the development of software for educational purposes; problems remain in the areas
of computer training and maintenance. Beyond schools, there is the hope that social
media will generate political change, not unlike the beginnings of the Arab Spring in
2011. Through the social media, other voices can be heard and, concomitantly, other
truths. It remains to be seen how much they can transform the world.
Several communication experts remark that there is a growing contrast between
education and communication, the former being rigid, presenting materials in specific
sequences, and retaining control in teachers, while communication is increasingly
becoming non-linear, informal. Moreover, communication is becoming more visual and
more reliant on multiple media. Sadly, however, communication today—especially
among young people—appears overwhelmingly focused on bits of information,
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entertainment, and social networks rather than critical reflection. A major challenge
will be to exploit the pedagogical opportunities created by multiple potential spaces
and times.
It is not only technology that is shaping knowledge at present. Culture and
politics also have an influence. An example pertains to changes in Islam and related
educational policy changes. Milligan (2008) identifies two trends that are evident: one
is influenced by fundamentalism, and the other by pragmatism. He argues that Muslim
countries, particularly those in southeast Asia, are responding to global forces by
formulating and/or accommodating local education policy in ways which seek “to
sustain local cultural identities while preserving citizens’ opportunities for effective
participation in a globalizing economy” (p. 369). This takes the forms of “Muslim
 modernists [who tend] to view Islam as irrelevant—if not an actual impediment—to
educational modernization” (p. 369) and also “calls to Islamise education” (p. 369) in
several countries. In his case study of the Philippines, he finds active negotiation of
knowledge—Islamic knowledge, and knowledge conveyed through Western forms of
schooling—in a context where the dialectic of the global and the local shapes the
policy dialogue. Milligan’s detailed philosophical analysis of the arguments leads him
to posit that in the Philippines they are more likely to take a more pragmatic path.
Part of the influence on Muslim countries to determine their particular policy paths is
the anti-Islamic sentiment coming from the West, much of which, Milligan comments,
is uninformed and based on stereotypes. As with other situations involving negative
stereotypes, responses often seek to conserve the traditional and accentuate
difference.

GLOBALIZATION AND EDUCATION

Education is enjoying greater salience than it has in previous decades because the
burgeoning global embrace of competitiveness has forced education to become
intimately linked to technological and economic development. Education is now
considered an undisputable pathway to increased social mobility and works in the
global imaginary as key to economic competitiveness of countries. This is the case in
advanced countries, where the income distance between a high school education and
a college education continues to grow (OECD, 2012). The expansion of higher
education has been the result of individual demand in most cases. Consequently, the
expansion has led to greater differentiation so that those unable to qualify for the
more established universities can enter the growing number of less selective or
second-tier private institutions. Of concern, however, is that despite the considerable
expansion of higher education, access still depends on social class. Because the poor
have fewer possibilities of attending college and because the colleges they attend are
likely to be of lower quality than those attended by their wealthier counterparts, higher
levels of education in the population have not produced a more equal income
distribution. This has been documented in the case of the United States (Carnoy,
2011).
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The increasing importance of the global market has had several repercussions on
formal schooling: First, criteria employed in firms for efficiency and productivity are
being extended to schooling, sometimes in inappropriate fashion. Second, focus has
shifted from child-centered curriculum to work preparation skills. This trend is evident
in leading nations such as Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany,
and Scandinavian countries, and in important new players such as China and Russia
(Walters, 1998). Third, education is losing ground as a public good to become simply
another marketable commodity (Benn, 2011). The state has become limited in its
responsibility to schooling, often guaranteeing basic education but extracting in turn
user fees from higher levels of public education, as any other service in the market.
Fourth, teachers’ autonomy, independence, and control over their work is being
 reduced while workplace knowledge and control find their way increasingly in hands
of administrators (Compton and Weiner, 2008; McLaren, 1998).
In primary and secondary education today we see an almost unstoppable trend
toward privatization and decentralization, both of which decrease the collective
concern and bring heterogeneity of purpose and publics as unquestioned values. To
serve the technological needs of the market better, new forms of flexible training in
vocational and technical education are emerging through private offerings. Among the
unintended consequences of these dynamics are (1) fields less connected to the
market losing importance (e.g., history vis-a-vis math and science); (2) pedagogies
less linked to the market also losing importance (e.g., classroom discussions based
on critical theory as opposed to instrumental problem-solving tasks); (3) on a broader
scale, issues of equality and equity concerning women and ethnic minorities are losing
ground to the consideration of such issues as efficiency (often reduced to
performance in math and reading tests).
Much is being made of the need for individuals to gain knowledge, and
particularly technological knowledge, to move their countries into higher levels of
economic competitiveness. But what is not taken into account in this argument are the
contradictory demands that a technological society might make on its internal labor
force. Individuals who will benefit from the new reality by virtue of their mastery of
technological knowledge will likely transfer menial forms of service to others.
Activities such as house cleaning, childcare, laundry, food preparation, and gardening
will not only increasingly have to be conducted by these “others” but will possibly be
subject to demands for higher quality. In other words, a “knowledge society” must
count on a cadre of individuals whose knowledge is low enough to accept menial
tasks or whose social conditions are such that they cannot claim the more dignified,
higher paying tasks for themselves. Extrapolating these dynamics into the future, it
might be said that schooling will be used to differentiate students in early phases and
that, if this does not create a sufficient pool of local workers, migration will supply the
missing labor. There is already evidence of migration of trained people from poor
economies to wealthier countries (Kamat, Mir, and Mathew, 2004). Many such
migrants lack access to jobs that use their skills, such as Peruvians with college
degrees working in Chile as nannies, high-school graduates from Paraguay working in
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menial jobs in Argentina, women from various Caribbean and Latin American
countries serving as maids in Europe and the United States, and Filipino women with
college degrees working as maids in Kuwait. The “brain-drain” phenomenon occurs
because the educated are the ones who will have the most facility in obtaining
information and doing the paperwork needed for migration. But globalization
welcomes them less for their higher levels of education than for their willingness to
take on the low-skill jobs.

Higher Education

The adoption of the “knowledge society” promise has generated substantial

 expansion of universities and other institutions of higher education. But as the state
has been modest in its educational investment, most of the growth has occurred
through private education (i.e., with fee-paying students). Parallel to the universities’
search for revenues, there has been an explosion in the number of international
students, who are subject to intense recruitment. Because most international students
pay their own tuition, special efforts concentrate on countries that can afford U.S.
tuition payments, such as China and India. Not surprising, some 180,000 Chinese
students went to overseas universities in 2007, and half of them were high school
students. In the United States, international students generate revenues slightly above
twenty billion dollars per year.
Across the world, more than 4.1 million higher education students attended
college outside their country in 2010; this brings reputation, particularly in the United
States and Europe. In 2008, a person with higher education in industrialized countries
earned 58 percent more than a counterpart with only a secondary school degree
(OECD, 2012). Despite the widening of access to higher education and its positive
return, access remains affected by social class. Young people from families with low
levels of education are less than half as likely to be enrolled as those with at least
one parent with a tertiary degree (OECD, 2012).
Globalization with its sophisticated use of technology and increasing reliance on
scientific inventions implies a crucial role for postsecondary education. TNCs have
been making broad demands on universities for engagement in research and
development, but it must be remembered that some of these companies are moving
into their own direct involvement in research and development, portending a
consequent reduction of the role of universities in technological development. In the
field of microelectronics, the most definite globalization industry, this is certainly the
case.
In a situation where universities will be linked more to the market and less to the
pursuit of truth, it is likely that the definition and establishment of quality will become
the prerogative of managerial rather than academic enterprise (Cowen, 1996; Currie
and Vidovich, this volume). Universities have become more “client” or “customer”
focused. This orientation is not necessarily deplorable because responsiveness to
adult needs has always been a positive principle, but under globalization it is likely
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that the “client” will increasingly be powerful donors or contractual industrial clients
and students from upper- and middle-class families, who might move the university
toward reproducing distinctions of class or reducing its areas of knowledge to those
research topics of interest to clients and donors (Simpson, 1998). The requirement to
produce “consumer satisfaction” will place further emphasis on market-oriented
effectiveness (Chaffee, 1998).
The university has long been a source of critical insights about its surrounding
society. Dominant globalization ideologies, based on the success of the individual and
the drive for competitiveness, have affected the university, placing its professors into
a constant struggle to secure funds for research and to engage in research to the
detriment of other crucial activities, which range from teaching to participating in
 community organizing. While a critical social science is essential to the understanding
and reconstruction of society, critical educators at the university level find it difficult to
introduce notions of solidarity and collective action. In addition, the salience of science
and technology as a source of revenue and prestige has created a considerable split
between university professors who do “hard” sciences and those who engage in
“soft” disciplines. Fields crucial to the understanding of society such as sociology,
women’s studies, and cultural studies have made a “cultural turn,” focusing on
representation and discourse of the detriment of examining organizations and
economic institutions (Fraser, 2008; Keating, 2013; Moghadam, 1999).
Entrepreneurial cultures now permeate university life in the prevailing
“surveillance/appraisal” practices in British higher education and, in an emergent
fashion, in the United States. In the United Kingdom, there is a well-established
Research Assessment Exercise and a Teaching Quality Assessment program that not
only appraises faculty performance but also reduces such performance to a few
indicators (McNeil, 1999). As universities compete with each other, and intramural
rivalries grow between schools or departments within these universities, this norm of
competitive individualism has gradually limited attention to other areas of academic
life that are not income-producing. Evaluations have an important role to play in
universities, but as conceived in terms of marketability they are leading to distorted
forms of academic performance.
Because the main beneficiaries of globalization are the TNCs as well as
individuals with professional, technical, and managerial skills (Ghai, 1987), the
university is becoming a highly contested terrain. One new form of contestation might
be preemptive, via the creation of a highly differentiated postsecondary system,
characterized by a small number of elite universities with highly competitive
admissions on one side, compensated by an expanding range of other, more
accessible, types of postsecondary education, including for-profit institutions.
This trend of affairs is now quite visible in Asia and Latin America, where
universities are losing their monopoly over higher education. Many new institutions are
emerging, usually simple in character and with no commitment to research. In Latin
America today 85 percent of higher education institutions are not universities but a
mixed bag of institutes and academies; at present 60 percent of the enrollment is still
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in universities, but this is likely to decline over time. Many students are also moving
into private universities, many of which offer relaxed entrance requirements. In
Colombia, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru, more than 50 percent of
the enrollment involves private institutions (UNESCO, 2009). The privatization of
higher education offers several advantages to the proponents of a more competitive
national economy. It reduces the financial burden of the government, satisfies
aspirations for higher education of a large number of students (even though the
prestige of their university may be much lower than that of the established
universities), ensures that fields of study that are directly market-related will be
offered in those institutions, and last, but of critical importance, contributes to the
depoliticization of the university as students in private universities are readily
 inculcated by “careerist” as opposed to “critical” norms. For those concerned with the
role of higher education in defining and supporting societal goals, the privatization of
higher education puts it squarely in the productive sphere and weakens the principle
of education as a public good, for its future marked class distinction will not permit all
graduates to gather knowledge of similar type and quality or to reap similar rewards
from postsecondary education.
Gender or women’s studies in universities tend to be small programs serving a
reduced number of students. But they are also crucial places in the production and
transmission of critical knowledge. In the area of gender studies, globalization is also
producing contradictory effects. With the greater circulation of information, some
values, such as human rights, including the rights of women, are becoming
increasingly accepted as topics to be examined within the academy. There is also a
greater diffusion of gender studies in universities and much more contact among
women-led nongovernmental organizations with each other and with academics in
their national societies. Yet, as Blackmore (this volume) argues, globalization has
affected the ties between feminists and the welfare state, and has weakened feminist
work within the university.

Adult Education

Despite endorsement in principle of “lifelong learning,” such as advanced during

the VI International Conference on Adult Education (2009), attention to adult
education in globalized times is minuscule. To be sure, the neglect of populations who
never attended school or withdrew from it for whatever reason predates the advent of
globalization, but its status has been further diminished by the current emphasis on
the “knowledge society,” which privileges formal education.
Grassroots movements, as reflected in their participation in annual World Social
Forums held in various parts the world, are very active. While they give much
attention to the environment and to the human rights of such groups as women,
indigenous people, and immigrants, these movements also consider education among
their priorities. In the history of many countries, adult education has played a
transformative role in the hands of social movements. Nongovernmental organizations
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and grassroots groups are manifesting a strong voice in favor of adult education;
unfortunately, their voice is not being sufficiently translated into concomitant
government policies to attend their needs and aspirations.

THE STATE AND PUBLIC POLICY

Most discussions of the state under globalization highlight the relationship between
the state and the market and are typified by very divergent views. Neoliberalism
offers a negative view of the state in developing countries, characterizing it as
corrupt, self-interested, and incompetent (Kendall, 2007; Mosley, Harrigan, and Toye,
1991). Measures of privatization, deregulation, decentralization, and integration into
 the global economy have, not surprisingly, coincided with a decrease in public
expenditures (González Casanova, 1996). This decrease is in part fueled by ideology;
in part it is caused by the new economic dynamics. With international pressure
mounting for the free exchange of products (in an increasingly deregulated market),
we see the reduction of taxes on imports and thus less revenue for the state. The
challenge for many governments today concentrates on how to modify the tax
structure to gain greater contributions from domestic sources. Guided by neoliberal
ideology, which supports a reduced state, many governments today declare
themselves to be facing serious financial austerity. Paradoxically, this self-declared
limitation is occurring at a moment when the number of fabulously rich persons has
increased in the world. The causes of fiscal contraction are not clear but statistics
show that the poorest 5 percent in rich countries have an income higher than those of
68 percent of the world’s population (Milanovic, 2010).
Neoliberal ideologies, in existence for almost three decades, have successfully
fostered the practice of providing key services such as education and health care
through the marketplace, making them available according to one’s ability to pay.
Associated government policies such as privatization heighten social class differences
and make education an individual rather than collective right. Education, however, is a
fundamental right and should thus be equal for everyone in terms of access and
quality. But many of the actors now influential in global policies are less inclined to
protect equality than to create an expanding cadre of workers to join the globalized
and increasingly technological society.
There is an increasingly tight connection between powerful business,
philanthropic, and policy-making networks that today constitute the new architecture
of global governance (Ball, 2012). In influential ways these efforts shape economic
and social policies (including education) through an array of legal, financial, and
regulatory prescriptions affecting both advanced industrialized societies and low-
income countries. Often business actors participate in educational networks because
they want to explore further market opportunities (e.g., selling educational equipment
and materials or offering continuous professional development, consulting, training,
and management services). What makes their policy prescriptions problematic is that
they are the product of non-elected bodies and that the networks they comprise are
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characterized by a lack of transparency. Under those conditions, it is not clear who

holds the power to shape educational decisions and, consequently, who is
accountable for policy decisions and policy failures. If decisions are being made by
these informal networks, it must be asked, what are the implications for citizenship,
democracy, and the relationship between citizens and political institutions? These
informal networks, experts, and data are playing a major role in the transformation of
education in Europe (Sum and Jessop, 2013); similar observations can be made
about the United States (Ball, 2012).
Two institutions that have been gaining much traction in the promotion of
education policies are the World Bank and OECD. The first continues to assert itself
as a “knowledge bank” and expands this position through various strategies, including
 its recent Education Sector Strategy (Klees, Samoff, and Stromquist, 2012) and
subsequent lending operations. OECD is asserting itself through the application in
seventy countries of its Programme for International Student Assessment, which
seeks to ascertain student achievement in math, science, and reading. According to
Rizvi and Lingard (2010), “OECD has become the central agency in establishing the
consensus of which it speaks” (p. 130; see also, Meyer and Benavot, 2013).
With neoliberalism and structural adjustment programs in many countries, there
has been a considerable expansion of private investment from north to south and a
simultaneous reduction in public-sector foreign aid programs (McGuire and Campos,
1997; see Mundy and Manion, this volume). State development policies have changed
in nature and today seek to foster skills for economic production and to constrain
dissent, while giving less time to modify or even consider structures of power and
social inequalities. One important development concerns the amount of funds that
now reach developing countries. According to the World Bank (2011), global
remittances in 2010 amounted to $440 billion, of which $325 billion went to developing
countries. This amount contrasts with the approximately $134 billion granted by
Western countries in development assistance (OECD, 2012) and renders puny the
support given by the World Bank through its non-interest loan branch (the
International Development Agency), which in 2011 amounted to $16.3 billion
(International Development Agency, 2013). In light of this, there is a strong mismatch
between the influence of international agencies and the actual economic power they
presently wield.
Significant trends in educational policy are evident. First, the state is altering the
educational labor market in terms of supply by fostering private schools, enabling
parental “choice” through voucher mechanisms, and demanding competitive
performance of schools, and in terms of demand by redefining education as a
commodity or a private rather than social good (Blackmore, 1997). Second, social
expectations regarding educational policies have been transformed. Education used
to be the state’s greatest manifestation of social policy. An inspiring article by Weiler
(1981) noted that the state uses education as a compensatory instrument of political
legitimization, for in so doing it gains the good will of citizens without major changes in
the economic and social structure. Today, such a strategy is no longer seen as
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relevant or crucial to state survival.

It can be asked, “What can education do for the state under globalization?”
Education is being set up as a critical element in economic well-being and
competitiveness, yet—as in the past—it continues to be one factor among several.
With the globalization of labor, TNCs follow the cheapest bidder internationally; while
the skills of the labor force are important usually lower levels of schooling are
sufficient. For those countries able to generate high technical knowledge among its
university graduates, retention of talent at the highest levels is seen as one of the
main challenges of globalization for developing countries. Two factors operate against
retention: one is the imitation factor that leads a professional in a low-income country
to compare him or herself to others in the industrialized countries. For example, a
 Mexican CEO complains that he earns “merely” $450,000 while his counterpart in the
United States earns $1 million per year. The other is the industrialized countries’
ability to attract foreign knowledge producers on instant demand, as is seen in the
current influx of microelectronics engineers.[2] Immigration policies in several
industrialized countries grant preferential treatment to individuals with higher levels of
education.
It also seems that the time and space for educational policies (and other types of
policy) have been drastically altered. Those involved in policy-making observe that
globalization is shortening times and budget cycles; thus, there has been an
acceleration in the design cycles of such policies, with little time to reflect because
responses are needed with greater urgency. While in the past the “horizon” of social
policy was four to five years, today many programs arise and die in a twelve-month
period; these programs also command fewer resources than in the past. Policy has
moved from “strategic planning” to “continued responsiveness” in order to provide
more market sensitivity. Policy formation in an increasing number of countries is
accompanied by “ministerialization” (political appointments [i.e., minister and
advisers]) rather than reliance on bureaucrats (i.e., regular and stable government
officials).

WINNERS AND LOSERS

The prevailing discourse on globalization is still optimistic. By and large, many people
see advantages to the new open, highly connected, competitive, far-reaching process
of economic and cultural exchanges. On closer look, the tidal wave of globalization
has impacted all countries to different degrees and in a mix of positive and negative
directions.
Castells (2010) acknowledges that the global economy is deeply asymmetric. He
clarifies that this asymmetry is not in the form of a single center with semi-peripheric
and peripheric countries or the simplistic opposition of north and south, but rather
more variegated and elusive. Nevertheless, a group of countries that corresponds
approximately to membership in the OECD accounts for an overwhelming proportion
of the world’s technological capacity, capital, markets, and industrial production.[3]
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At one level, the terrain under globalization is “a space of flows, an electronic

space, a decentered space, a space in which frontiers and boundaries have become
permeable” (Robinson, cited in McLaren, 1999, p. 11). But at another level, this
space seems highly fixed. Amin (1996) contends that the center (i.e., the most
powerful industrial nations) holds five monopolies: technology, world-wide financial
markets, global natural resources (in terms of access), media and communications,
and weapons of mass destruction. A crucial question is, Can we change the nature of
these monopolies? A more specific question for us, as educators, is, Can education
help break or at least weaken these monopolies?
Analyses of the distribution of wealth in countries conclude that globalization has
not increased wages except in the United States. Wealth has grown tremendously
 and its allocation has been highly clustered. Within industrialized countries, “the new
and wealthy class is the technological aristocracy and a cadre of business executives
who work in the interests of corporate share price” (McLaren, 1998, p. 434). This has
only increased after the 2008 global economic crisis. Economic growth no longer
guarantees poverty alleviation or employment generation and both developed and
developing regions must face high unemployment and a difficult job market,
particularly among the youth.
Economic changes have altered the relations between human beings and the
nature of their lives. Guided by this awareness, DAWN, one of the largest women-led
nongovernmental organizations, maintains that:

The first decade of the 21st century has been marked so far by two
unprecedented critical events: the “war on terror” and the global financial crisis.
In the wake of these two events, armed conflict, violence, terrorism, national
security, migration and religion; and transnational capital, labour, and economies
have come to preoccupy national and international, regional and national politics
and given rise to public policies that have had an immediate effect on the lives of
ordinary citizens. In their wake, issues of livelihoods, poverty, human rights,
freedom of expression and mobility, identity and sexuality have come under
pressure and been radically altered. (DAWN, n.d., para. 9.)

COUNTER-EFFORTS TO GLOBALIZATION
At present, capitalism is seen as the only economic model. In 1996, Gibson-Graham
underscored that the discourse on globalization presents capitalism as an
undefeatable force. After the 2008 economic crisis, however, scholars from the south
and north alike questioned this as the only way (Faiola, 2008). These authors
encourage us to deny the inevitability and reality of the power of TNCs over workers
and communities and to explore ways in which we can render these TNCs
accountable.
The challenge to seek different development paths and economic identities calls
for the strengthening of the state. About 85 percent of total north-south private capital
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flows to only twelve developing countries. Clearly, state action (read nationwide and
coordinated strategies) is needed to move developing countries to better economic
positions.
The alternatives being proposed are few and need greater development. Over a
decade ago, a UN Development Program Independent Commission argued that a
new social contract is needed and that it must go beyond security, justice, and well-
being to include an expanded citizenship with a sense of belonging, meaningful
participation, and a stronger civil society. Amin, a well-known African scholar, calls for
an “Alternative Humanist Project of Globalization,” attentive to “disarmament;
equitable access to the planet's resources; open, flexible economic relationships
between the world’s major regions; [and] correct management of global/national
 dialectics in the areas of communication, culture, and political policy” (1996, p. 6). In
1996, Cardoso, then the president of Brazil and a former student of development
processes, called for an ethic of solidarity by the governments to create new
associational forms between society and the state, which he sees as the best way to
reduce the marginalization of the poor. The recent demands of Brazilians, however,
for more funding for education and health care instead of support for FIFA and the
Olympics, suggest that these new associational forms have not occurred.
People’s actions such as the participatory budgeting processes occurring in
many cities of the world provide a venue for decisions that foster social inclusion.
Rebellious movements such as the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement may
eventually produce stable ways for democratic participation in governance.

CONCLUSION
Though still not a precise concept, what we understand as “globalization” is bringing
forth numerous and profound changes in the economic, cultural, and political life of
nations. The current globalization context has made education salient, yet education
remains very focused on its contribution to the labor force, less based on democratic
decision-making, and, through the ethos of competition, less supportive of reflexivity
on the directions of contemporary society.
In the fourteen years since we published the first edition of this book, we have
seen a more systematic, pervasive, and stronger attack on public education all over
the world. Neoliberalism has extended its economic features (deeper links between
market and capital and between schooling and the labor force) to adopt cultural (new
values, sensibilities, and relationships) and political features (new forms of governing
—characterized by governance—and new subjectivities). These changes deeply
affect how education is defined, whom it serves, and how it is assessed.
A dichotomous perspective of the effects of globalization, looking only at the
extremes of the globalized and nonglobalized economies, might miss the important
dynamics that occur in both global and local dimensions, and the interaction between
the two levels. Local groups often reshape their local identities when they meet
challenges related to globalization processes, but they do not have to abandon these
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identities to become entirely globally oriented. What was “local” becomes redefined
as a modified form of “local” that can work in conjunction with the supralocal forces. It
is in the way these forces mesh that hope for a positive transformation lies.
Today more than ever, there is a need to ask, “What purposes will education
have in the globalization age?” Will it succumb to pressure to make us more
productive and increase our ability to produce and consume, or will it be able to instill
in all of us a democratic spirit which values the common good. This solidarity will have
to recognize the different interests among men and women and among the dominant
groups and disadvantaged groups; therefore, the new agreement will not be easy to
achieve.