Stephen Carney

Drawing upon the long tradition of recalcitrant thought in Western humanist scholarship, this book rethinks education and educational research at a time of intense social transformation. By revisiting a range of post-foundational ideas and developing their own methodological experiment, Stephen Carney and Ulla Ambrosius Madsen reimagine the possibilities for the comparative study of education. Exploring the experiences of young people in Denmark, South Korea and Zambia, this book illustrates how these very different contexts are increasingly connected by common narratives of purpose, as well as overheated promises of success. Focusing on the writings of Jean Baudrillard, the authors examine them in the context of works by other theorists of modernity, to explore processes of simulation and disappearance that are shaping life worldwide. In the process, the authors paint a rich portrait of education and schooling as a site of joy, hope, pain and ambivalence. Encompassing both theoretical and methodological innovation, Education in Radical Uncertainty provides inspiration for scholars and students attempting to approach the fields of comparative education, education policy and youth studies anew.

Drawing upon the long tradition of recalcitrant thought in Western humanist scholarship, this book rethinks education and educational research at a time of intense social transformation. By revisiting a range of post-foundational ideas and developing their own methodological experiment, Stephen Carney and Ulla Ambrosius Madsen reimagine the possibilities for the comparative study of education. Exploring the experiences of young people in Denmark, South Korea and Zambia, this book illustrates how these very different contexts are increasingly connected by common narratives of purpose, as well as overheated promises of success. Focusing on the writings of Jean Baudrillard, the authors examine them in the context of works by other theorists of modernity, to explore processes of simulation and disappearance that are shaping life worldwide. In the process, the authors paint a rich portrait of education and schooling as a site of joy, hope, pain and ambivalence. Encompassing both theoretical and methodological innovation, Education in Radical Uncertainty provides inspiration for scholars and students attempting to approach the fields of comparative education, education policy and youth studies anew.

This book examines the transformative power and the limitations of one of Europe’s most significant university reforms from an ethnographic and historical perspective. It incorporates voices positioned across university and policy-making hierarchies in its analysis of how Danish universities have been transformed. To do this, the book continually juxtaposes two meanings of ‘enactment’: a top-down view based on laws and institutional power, and a bottom-up view of multiple actors shaping their institution in day-to-day life and in actively contested changes. By conceiving of the university as ‘enacted’ in both ways at once, the book explores how and why the university comes to be imagined and instantiated in new ways. The book traces the arguments for reform through a two-decade long, dynamic struggle between international forums and national industrial, political and academic interests over the definition of the university. It discusses which ideas finally became dominant and how this happened. It looks at government reforms from 2003 onwards, and, by means of notable ‘telling moments’, explains how the governance and management of the university were transformed. It examines how academics found room to manoeuvre between contesting discourses that affect their identity and work. Finally, it shows how students engaged with new versions of historical debates about their participation in shaping their own education, their institution and society.