Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

48

Postcolonial Studies and Education: Understanding the Past to Inform the Future

RC04 Sociology of Education (host committee)

Language: English

Papers in this symposium address the relevance and value of postcolonial studies for understanding educational activities and undertaking educational research. Postcolonialism is a political project concerned with reconstructing and reorienting Western knowledge, ethics and power structures (Young, 2012). It is not a singular theoretical formation but a broad set of perspectives, concepts and practices developed in resistance to colonialism. The relevance of postcolonial studies and postcolonial theory is not limited to studies of low-income nations, or countries that have cast off the formal shackles of colonialism.  
Most national education systems are postcolonial in that their economic, political and cultural systems sustain the “residues, living remains and lingering legacies” of colonialism (Young, 2012). These residues mutate and proliferate in neo-colonial formations. This session presents papers which address the relationship of education to the interrelated histories of violence, domination, inequality and injustice that remain as remnant aftereffects of settler colonialism.