Modernization theory

About: Modernization theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 14641 publications have been published within this topic receiving 232469 citations.

African Feminism: Toward a New Politics of Representation

Abstract: I am convinced that I am observing the birth of feminism on the African continent-a feminism that is political, pragmatic, reflexive, and group oriented.' These observations have grown out of my work in various parts of West Africa, in the 1970s and 1980s, and in South Africa, in 1992; out of my dialogues with women from Kenya and other parts of the continent; and most recently out of workshops on women and legal change that I conducted in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria during May 1994. My research and involvement with Africa goes back to the early 1970s, when the charismatic energy of nationalist leaders like Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere had faded, the disillusionment with modernization and the capitalist economy was strong, and a rash of military coups marked the emergence of a new crisis orientation. In the nationalist phase, women had played crucial roles, but their importance in politics had waned by 1971 when I began research on cocoa farmers in Ghana and visited many West African countries. I have watched the episodic rise of women's movements during the United Nations Decade of Women (1975-1985) and during the difficult economic crises and structural adjustment program experiments of the 1980s, but I see the peaking of a new feminism now as African states reinvent themselves in the 1990s. This recognition of an emerging African feminism has been met with unanticipated enthusiasm by some of my Japanese, female, African studies colleagues who pursue autonomy within their own unique cultural environment, with ambivalence by some colleagues who work in Africa, and with amused tolerance on the part of many Western feminists who saw it as a

Globalisation in Education: Process and Discourse:

Abstract: The article draws on comparative analyses meant to investigate both the degree and the dimensions of the 'internationalisation' of educational knowledge in societies that differ considerably in terms of civilisational background and modernisation path. In so doing, the article seeks to put forward two essential ideas. These refer, first, to the importance that educational discourse plays in shaping the educational reality of the present-day world. In this sense, in educational research as in social science in general, the (increasingly numerous) analyses of the socio-economic processes bringing about world society have to be complemented by (hitherto under-represented) research into the semantic construction of world society. Secondly, taking the above analyses and their conceptual design as an example, the article is meant to underscore the theory- dependency of our observations on, and of the resultant knowledge of, phenomena and processes of globalisation.