Shaping global education: International agendas and governmental power

Abstract

This paper takes as its starting point Bill Gould's (1993) People and education in the Third World and examines changes in education systems in the Global South over the two decades since the book's publication. It focuses particularly on the role of global institutions and the ways in which they exercise control over and through education. Outlining the key processes shaping education in the 1980s and early 1990s, and those operating today, the paper argues that global institutions increasingly operate through the subtle but pervasive technologies of power associated with neoliberal governmentality.