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A meeting on the UNRISD book project on Education and Social Movements
29 Nov 2002
Education plays a very important role in breaking the cycle of poverty and increasing opportunity. Education also helps to shape an ethnic and/or national identity. Civil society has become involved in education; in some cases providing welfare assistance to poor household and, in others, developing education initiatives to provide an alternative to government policy. The edited volume, which is being co-ordinated and edited by Ashok Swain of Uppsala University, attempts to critically review the social actions for education undertaken in various regions of the world. A group of scholars have been assigned to evaluate the relevance of the dominant theoretical discourse to understand the origin and outcome of social actions in education in the regional context. With support from Sida, an authors’ meeting of this book project was organized at Uppsala University, Sweden, on 17 November 2002.
During the meeting the following papers were presented:
Education as an Agenda of Social Action, Ashok Swain, Uppsala University
Social Movement and the ‘Education Revolution’ in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Larry Swatuk, University of Botswana,
Movements among Ethnic Groups for Universal Education in Malaysia, Kamarulzaman Askandar, Universiti Sains Malaysia,
Universal Elementary Education in India, Sudha Pai, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Muslim Madrasas in Contemporary South Asia, Yoginder Sikand, Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, Leiden, Holland
Social Action to Provide Education for African American Community in the US, Donn C. Worgs, Towson University, USA
Education among Indigenous Peoples from Colombia and Peru, Consuelo Uribe, Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia
Social Movement and Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Roland Kostic, Uppsala University
The meeting also discussed the theoretical focus of the book, concluding policy ideas, as well as publication details and a possible publisher. It was agreed that a final version of the book would be completed by March 2003.
Krishna Ghimire participated in the meeting on behalf of UNRISD.