World Culture Re-Contextualised

Meaning Constellations and Path-Dependencies in Comparative and International Education Research

Jürgen Schriewer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317358633
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Impressive strands of research have shown the emergent reality of increasing world-level interconnection in almost every field of social action. As a consequence, theories and models have been developed which are aimed at conceptualising this new reality along the lines of an 'institutionalised' World Culture. This offers a new understanding of the worldwide diffusion of specifically modern – i.e. mainly Western – rules, ideologies and organisational patterns, and of attendant harmonisation and standardisation of fields of social action.

World Culture theories have not gone unchallenged. Rather, cross-cultural studies have revealed much more complex processes of regional fragmentation and (re-)diversification; of the refraction, appropriation, and hybridisation, through distinct socio-cultural conditioning, of world-level models and ideas; and of the ongoing effectiveness both of structural path-dependencies and of specifically cultural aspects such as collective memories, social meanings, and religious (or ideological) belief systems. Comparative research has thus highlighted an intricate simultaneity of contrary currents: of the increasing world-level interconnection of communication and exchange relations on the one hand, and, on the other, the persistence of context-specific interpretations, translations, and deviation-generating re-contextualisations of world-level forces and challenges.

This research provides the theoretical problematique that animates this volume. The chapters explore the conceptual tools and explanatory power of theories and models which do not just oppose or reject World Culture theory, but are instead suited to complementing and differentiating it. The volume offers an enlightening conceptualisation of the intricate interaction of global processes with local agency, and of world-level forces with the self-evolutionary potentials inherent in specific contexts, socio-cultural structures, and distinctive meanings constellations.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Comparative Education.

Meaning constellations in the world society: revisited

Schriewer Jürgen

Humboldt University, Berlin

Theorising world society as a global entity

The concepts of ‘globalisation’ and ‘world-system’ (including their derivatives such as ‘global education policies’ or ‘world-class schooling’) have undoubtedly moved into the very core of the educational debate internationally. A perusal of the topics of, and the papers read at, education conferences held over the past two decades at the national, the regional, and the world level testifies to this tremendous shift in interest and discourse. However, all too often globalisation accounts are nothing more but interpretations devised with a view to making sense of a social reality consisting of an overwhelmingly complex interconnectedness of relations of communication, interchange and interaction in nearly all fields of social activity. Such accounts often remain largely implicit, theoretically unexplained and commonplace schemata of communication, laden, moreover, with normative undertones. The social sciences, by contrast, have given rise to an impressive range of elaborate theories of globalisation that take up suggestions from fields and strands of thought as different as economic history, political economy analysis, social geography and theories of communication, social differentiation or organisation (cf. the overviews by Rossi 2007 and Middell and Engel 2010). Quite naturally, such theories have then been adopted, to varying degrees and with varying success as regards the advancement of knowledge, by educational studies in general and comparative education in particular (e.g. Stromquist and Monkman 2000; Resnik 2008).

More than most other globalisation or world-system theories, however, it is neo-institutionalist world-culture theory that has achieved particular prominence in the field. On the one hand, this may be due to the fact that, in the body of theory and research developed by John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez and their associates, education and its status in society have always been topics of fundamental significance. On the other hand, neo-institutionalist world-culture theory meets particularly well epistemic expectations that, according to a broad consensus among philosophers of science, are directed towards any social theory. These legitimate expectations are twofold. They mean, firstly, that mere interpretations are transposed into conceptually elaborated sets of propositions whose underlying assumptions are made explicit and which are aimed at providing convincing explanations of social reality. Secondly, these expectations imply that theories of this kind also serve as research programmes that allow researchers to point out specific follow-up problems, raise novel questions, formulate new hypotheses, and set up further research. In the light of these expectations, neo-institutionalist world-culture theory has indeed proven to be extremely successful. This holds true with respect to both the imaginative explanations of a globalising world it has provided and the tremendous amount of – mostly quantitative – empirical research it has brought about [cf. Baker and Wiseman (2007) and, in a more critical mood, Carney, Rappleye and Silova (2012)].

The chapter by Francisco O. Ramirez in this volume masterfully expounds this theory, covering its major theoretical and methodological aspects as well as its underlying assumptions rooted in the phenomenological or constructivist traditions of social theorising developed by Schütz as well as Berger and Luckmann (cf. also Krücken and Drori 2009). It will suffice, therefore, within the limits of this chapter, to highlight those explanatory and research aspects that will be of particular pertinence for the debate documented in this volume.

World society as a ‘symbolic universe’

First and foremost, John Meyer and his associates do not conceive of the emerging global world in primarily structural terms, for example, as defined by economic conditions, inequalities and stratification or by the prevailing scheme of the differentiation of society. Rather, they conceive it, in accordance with the constructivist understanding of society as a system grounded on cognitive rules, collectively-shared assumptions and corresponding patterns of expectation, in primarily cultural terms. The ‘world polity’ or ‘world culture’ – as Meyer originally denoted it – is seen as constituted and reiteratively re-constituted through the socio-communicative ‘enactment’ of recognised interpretations of reality (accounts) and regulatory ideas (rules). Regulatory ideas such as those of the individual, of socialisation and life-cycle continuity, of the nation as an aggregate of individuals, of social progress and justice as well as the model of the national state acting as the guardian of a nation figure prominently among what Meyer and his co-authors also characterise as ‘rationalised myths.’ Such ‘accounts’, ‘myths’, and corresponding programmes for action (ideologies) are held to have become self-evident, legitimate and, in this sense, ‘institutionalised.’ In contrast to the Wallersteinian ‘world system,’ which originates in the expansionist incorporation dynamics of a capitalist world economy, the neo-institutionalist ‘world culture’ is thus seen as the totality of globally accepted patterns of expectations and systems of rationalised meaning whose legitimacy lends them virtually normative claims regarding the structuring of actorhood. ‘World society,’ the explanatory argument goes, constitutes a ‘transnational cultural environment’ (Boli and Ramirez 1986: 80) or ‘symbolic universe’ (Ramirez in this volume) similar, as it were, to the omnipresent, taken-for-granted cultural environment constituted, for individual and collective actors alike, by medieval Christendom. Precisely, in view of this all-encompassing nature, the ‘symbolic universe’ makes it possible, then, to explain a good many salient features of today’s global world, such as the dissemination of ideas, expectations and models that are apparently shared all over the globe or the existence of, at first sight, ‘isomorphic’ structures in a considerable number of different organisational fields (Meyer and Ramirez 2000: 115f.).

Diffusion processes subject to historical transformation

The above argument does not rely on unhistorical assumptions, however. In other words, world society in the neo-institutionalist understanding of an all-encompassing ‘symbolic universe’ is not just a late twentieth-century phenomenon, nor is it a mere projection of Western accounts, rules, and ideologies, as some critics would see it. While the original formulations of the specifically modern ‘myths’ of the individual, of progress, were, indeed, closely intertwined with the processes of Western rationalisation and secularisation propelled from the Renaissance and the Reformation onwards, these myths and ideas have subsequently developed in a decidedly universalistic direction (Ramirez and Boli 1987). They have acquired an astonishing degree of global validity and acceptance through diffusion processes that have intensified over time. Fuelled, from the eighteenth century onwards, by an intensely competitive ‘inter-state system’ as well as by nineteenth-century processes of nation building, these diffusion processes time and again went hand in hand with a wide variety of inter-societal observations and evaluations, cross-references and imitations as well as with varying forms of more abstract constructions of reference societies and model-states (Boli and Ramirez 1986; cf. also Schriewer 2004). New and even more dynamic mechanisms of diffusion developed over the twentieth century, due to the increasing scientisation, professionalisation, and ‘theorisation’ of models, ideologies, and policies (Meyer and Ramirez 2000; Strang and Meyer 1993). Finally – through reiterated congresses, symposia, declarations, manifestoes and programmes for development duly published at the international level – all these mechanisms and channels of diffusion have combined, from the 1950s or 1960s onwards, into intrinsically trans-national socio-communicative clusters (cf. Chabbott 2003, especially figure 1.1). Within these clusters, it is now predominantly regional and inter-regional networks of intellectuals and experts as well as international governmental (IGOs) and non-governmental organisations (INGOs), which collaborate in increasing numbers and with unprecedented intensity in defining trans-national bodies of regulative ideas, criteria, classifications, statistics, models and policies, whose impact on particular nation-states is no longer based on imposition, let alone coercion, but relies on normative pressure (Boli and Thomas 1999). These expert networks and international organisations shape, then, according to world-culture theorists, a truly world-level corpus of ‘myths’ and models and, in so doing, lay the foundations for a ‘world-societal construction of reality’ – to use a formulation patterned upon Berger and Luckmann (1967) – which increasingly takes a life of its own.

Legitimation, actorhood, and education

What, then, is the understanding of ‘actors’ commensurate with this theoretical framework? In other words, how is ‘actorhood’ conceptualised so as to warrant the transition from the encompassing totality of the ‘symbolic universe’ to the particular spheres of political and/or social action? The key concepts chosen to bear consistent answers to these questions are ‘legitimacy’ and ‘legitimation.’ Obviously, these are concepts drawn from the sociology of organisations, that is the second of the two major strands of theorising which have given rise to neo-institutionalist world-society theory. Just as – at a general level – organisations derive their legitimacy from conforming themselves to the rules, requirements, rituals, and expectations institutionalised in their respective organisational environments, modern actors do not – Ramirez explains in this issue – ‘operate in a vacuum,’ but are framed by their ‘cultural matrix.’ In other words, modern individuals, whose nature as independent actors is in turn the result of extended processes of rationalisation and secularisation, cannot set their goals and make use of their means as they like – at their own convenience, so to speak. Rather, they are recognised as ‘legitimate’ actors only when conforming to socially enacted rules, culturally institutionalised models, and external expectations. To put it even more bluntly, the ‘agentic’ nature of modern actors does not arise

out of the raw (untutored, unscripted) social experience of actors [but from] the devolution of external authority, and […] the external legitimation and chartering of activity (Meyer and Jepperson 2000).

Consequently, and quite in line with the holistic style of theorising proper to neo-institutionalist authors, it is not individual actors who make up society, but it is the cultural environment that constitutes those actors who are considered legitimate. ‘The modern “actor” – Meyer and Jepperson emphasise – is a historical and ongoing cultural construction’ (2000:101). In this sense, the actors of the modern world society – individuals, organisations, and nation-states alike – have to be seen both as ‘embedded’ in a world-level cultural environment and as ‘scripted’ by the models of reality and the universalist rules that have evolved in, and in turn constitute, this ‘symbolic universe.’

It is also legitimation, and the need for legitimation, that – at a more specific level – explains the particular importance ascribed in this conception to education and development. Both education and development are highly legitimated in the modern world. Accordingly, a ‘world-level developmental cultural account and educational ideology,’ as Fiala and Lanford (1987) once couched it, has emerged and has rapidly assumed the status of a cultural vision of the modern world. Nation-states are embedded in this environment and, consequently, strive for world-level legitimation. They have therefore enacted, with increasing intensity in the course of the twentieth century, these education-and-development myths and models – a process that has found expression not only in the developmental and educational policy goals enshrined in national constitutions and legislations on every continent, but also in the tremendous mass expansion that has taken place at every level of educational systems worldwide (cf. inter alia Boli and Ramirez 1986; Meyer, Kamens, and Benavot 1992; Meyer and Ramirez 2000; Chabbott 2003).

Three lines of neo-institutionalist ‘world-culture’ or ‘world-society’ theory have been summarised so far: (i) the conceptualisation of ‘world-society’ in constructivist terms as an essentially ‘symbolic universe;’ (ii) the global institutionalisation of ‘myths’ and ‘models’ through intensifying diffusion processes and multi-level communicative networks; and (iii) the conception of the ‘constructed’ actor whose legitimation derives from his/her being ‘embedded’ in and ‘scripted’ by a universalist ‘cultural matrix.’ These lines of theorising as well as a considerable body of more specific propositions and hypotheses have not only succeeded in shedding new light on significant aspects of our present-day global world (Thomas et al. 1987). Well beyond the field of education proper, they have also been extremely successful in stimulating and informing research on areas as different as political organisation and the nation-state (e.g. Meyer et al. 1997), science and academic institutions (e.g. Drori et al. 2003; Frank and Gabler 2006), organisational change and management (e.g. Drori, Meyer, and Hwang 2006), environmental issues (e.g. Bromley, Meyer, and Ramirez 2011), law (e.g. Boyle and Meyer 1998), and children’s and human rights regimes (e.g. Suárez 2007).

The research-induced construction of the global/local problématique

However stimulating the theses and explanations developed within the world-culture framework may be, and whatever the plausibility of the impressive research work conducted by neo-institutionalist authors, comparative studies not committed to the predominantly phenomenological and diffusionist assumptions which are typical for this approach have unearthed in much more complex findings. Such studies have indeed displayed a wide array of national, regional or context-specific – in other words, ‘local’ – interpretations, appropriations, and implementations that are at variance with purportedly global development trends, policies, and models. Within the limits of this chapter, a few highlighted cases in point will suffice.

Inquiries into a broad range of public policies – regarding industry, industrial relations, production and employment as well as social welfare, family, and training systems – cannot summarise their analyses except in constellations that, to varying extents, confront ‘convergent’ development trends and policies at the international level with definitely ‘divergent’ manifestations at the nat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Meaning constellations in the world society: revisited
• 2. The world society perspective: concepts, assumptions, and strategies
• 3. Complicating the concept of culture
• 4. The global/local nexus in comparative policy studies: analysing the triple bonus system in Mongolia over time
• 5. World culture with Chinese characteristics: when global models go native
• 6. Structural elaboration of technical and vocational education and training systems in developing countries: the cases of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh
• 7. Exploring the interweaving of contrary currents: transnational policy enactment and path-dependent policy implementation in Australia and Japan
• 8. Globalisation and regional variety: problems of theorisation
• 9. Institutional theories and levels of analysis: history, diffusion, and translation
• 10. The historical construction of social order: ideas, institutions, and meaning constellations
• Index