Globalization on the Margins

Reflecting on 2 decades of postsocialist transformations, Globalization on the Margins explores the continuities and changes in Central Asian education development since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Rather than viewing these post-Soviet transformations in isolation, the authors place their analyses within the global context by reflecting on the interaction between Soviet legacies and global education reform pressures in the Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Notwithstanding the variety of theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and conceptual lenses, the essays have one thing in common: both individually and collectively, they reveal the complexity and uncertainty of the post-Soviet transformations. Instead of portraying the transition process as the influx of Western ideas into the region, Globalization on the Margins provides new lenses to critically examine the multidirectional flow of ideas, concepts, and reform models within Central Asia.

The subtle interplay between local and trans-local elements in the formation of educational policies and institutions calls for analytic approaches that transcend the paradigm of conceptualizing global forces as entering local "places." This much needed volume paves new ground by examining schools and educational practices in Central Asia in all their contingent and emergent complexity. In directing our attention to fascinatingly diverse postsocialist educational trajectories, this collection illuminates the ways that power relations infuse the production of all "places," whether they be centers or margins, and all "forces," whether styled as system-internal and ostensibly local or system-external and putatively global.---Noah W. Sobe, Associate Professor, Cultural and Educational Policy Studies, Loyola University Chicago

There may only be one-way traffic on the old silk road when it comes to ideas about education policy transformation; this has not helped avoid a huge ideological pile up. Silova's exploration reveals how oversold and oversimplified Western policy ideas collide with inertia in education systems in post-Soviet Central Asia. What matters is not the ideological disparities between East and West but when and how these collude to redefine the boundaries for education exclusion and education privilege in Central Asia. Globalization on the Margins helps us to better understand this collision and this convergence, hitchhikers on that road will do well to take along some reading.---Hugh McLean, Director. Education Support Program, Open Society Foundations, London