M. I. Franklin

Bio: M. I. Franklin is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: The Internet & Subaltern. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 138 citations.

The silence of the archives: business history, Postcolonialism and archival ethnography

Abstract: History as a discipline has been accused of being a-theoretical. Business historians working at business schools, however, need to better explicate their historical methodology, not theory, in order to communicate the value of archival research to social scientists, and to train future doctoral students outside history departments. This paper seeks to outline an important aspect of historical methodology, which is data collection from archives. In this area, postcolonialism and archival ethnography have made significant methodological contributions not just for non-Western history, as it has emphasized the importance of considering how archives were created, and how one can legitimately use them despite their limitations. I argue that these approaches offer new insights into the particularities of researching business archives.

The fallacy of constructing hybrid political orders: a reappraisal of the hybrid turn in peacebuilding

Abstract: This article reviews the recent academic and policy interest in hybridity and hybrid political orders in relation to peacebuilding. It is sceptical of the ability of international actors to manufacture with precision hybrid political orders, and argues that the shallow instrumentalization of hybridity is based on a misunderstanding of the concept. The article engages in conceptual-scoping in thinking through the emancipatory potential of hybridity. It differentiates between artificial and locally legitimate hybrid outcomes, and places the ‘hybrid turn' in the literature in the context of the continued evolution of the liberal peace as it struggles to come to terms with crises of access and legitimacy.

Plague of bureaucracies : producing and territorializing difference in East Africa, 1888-1940

Abstract: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) ; Research Council of Norway ; Nordic Africa Institute ; World Agroforestry Centre

A Critical Ethnography of ‘Westerners’ Teaching English in China: Shanghaied in Shanghai

Abstract: Tens of thousands of Western ‘teachers’, many of whom would not be considered teachers elsewhere, are employed to teach English in public and private education in China. Little has previously been known, except anecdotally, about their experiences, about the effect they have on education in the context, or on students’ perceptions of ‘the West’ that result from this contact. This book is an ethnographic study of Westerners’ lived experiences teaching English in Shanghai, China. It is based on three years of groundbreaking research into the pre-service training, classroom practices, personal identities and motives, and local socially constructed roles of a group of ‘backpacker teachers’ from the UK, the USA and Canada. It is a study that goes beyond the classroom, addressing broader questions about the sociology, and politics, of transnational education and China’s evolving relationship with the outside world.

Asian Americans in American History: An AsianCrit Perspective on Asian American Inclusion in State U.S. History Curriculum Standards

Abstract: Compared to other groups of color, Asian Americans and their perspectives have rarely been given attention in curriculum studies. This article seeks to address the gap in the literature. It uses AsianCrit, a branch of critical race theory, as a theoretical lens to analyze and explicate common patterns across various states’ scripting of Asian American experience in their U.S. history standards. Informed by AsianCrit, the article describes and troubles invisibility and consequent messages about Asian Americans and their experience in the story of the United States told from state U.S. history standards. The study suggests the benefit of AsianCrit as a theoretical, methodological tool to read and disrupt racism embedded in curriculum scripting of U.S. history. The study also adds a new knowledge to the long-held scholarship on inclusion and representation of historically marginalized groups in official school knowledge.