Comparative education: and now?

ABSTRACT

This article suggests that, as a field of study, we have accumulated too many routinised ways to legitimate our academic identity; that it is time to step away from comfortable clichés about our past; and to notice that the future is, at least metaphorically, now and urgent. However, while it is easy to illustrate the banalities we use to define our academic identity, it is difficult to turn the metaphor of ‘the future is now’ into a coherent perspective for seeing ‘futures’ for comparative education. Thus the second part of the article sketches choices which stabilise such a discussion and help to avoid vague visions of grand projects. The Conclusion emphasises our classic flaw – failure to notice the political framing of many of our epistemic choices, agendas of attention and action, and institutional identities – before permitting itself to be a little bit excited about ‘the future’.