| This study is an examination of academic representations of education and modern development in subaltern societies through an analysis and comparison of academic knowledge production within two scholarly texts and in relation to the field of international and comparative education. A post-modern analysis of dominant concepts in the discourse on education and modern development from the Comparative Education Review and The Development Dictionary (Sachs 1992) demonstrates how the academic production of knowledge is implicated in relations of power and culture. As a result of examining knowledge production within the discourse on education and modern development in subaltern societies, the power of discourses is explored in terms of the ability of scholars' messages to influence how one knows the world by working through culturally, socially, historically, politically and epistemologically defined concepts which help shape and define views of reality. A comparison of methods, manner, assumptions and values underlying the authors' discussions of dominant concepts shows that, by focusing on particular elements and methods for representing reality, different knowledge about, meanings of, and perspectives on reality are produced. Thus, the study examines and reveals the methods and manner of academic knowledge production through the example of the field of international and comparative education and exposes the socially-constructed nature of knowledge and the potential power of knowledge to dominate and delimit perceptions of reality. Different methods and ideas about dominant conceptions are presented as an alternative way of informing and enriching understandings, interpretations and knowledge of the meanings of realities. |
