Eight - (Re)Assembling Comparison

Summary

We began this book by problematizing comparison, the very notion central to the being of comparative and international education (CIE). Building on many scholars before (and no doubt, yet to come), we argued that CIE has conventionally undertaken comparisons between supposedly fixed entities (for example, nation-states, time periods, school sites) for the purpose of determining difference from some prior notion of unity, and then identifying the possible cause(s) and effect(s) of this divergence (for example, culture, policy settings, practices). We posited the limitations that this can place on thinking in general, and particularly in relation to education policy. Finally, we reflected on how our own encounters with(in) CIE and policy – and our own engagements with onto-epistemologies relegated to the side of the ‘abyssal line’ historically made invisible by Enlightenment forms of thought – has stimulated this thinking.

In response, we offer policy mobilities and assemblage theory (PMAT) as an attempt at creating an approach that adopts a different view and purpose towards comparison. It does not presume that you can compare two things for the purpose of determining causality (that is, Place A does Thing X, which accounts for Outcome Y), or to understand one thing through the lens of a different other (for example, understanding Place A as being similar to Place B). Rather than reducing uncertainty, PMAT sees comparison as an inherently disruptive activity, in which encountering the outside of one's territory (that is, the psycho-social assemblage we inhabit) provides different opportunities for sensing things differently, and thus makes possible new ways of thinking, relating and doing. This is not to say that nothing comes from comparison, but it is more about explicitly reframing the purpose for which comparison is undertaken, and the desire to which comparison is responding. Put differently, we must think about what comparison does, as well as which possibilities are enabled by doing comparison. If CIE (and the social sciences more generally) are indeed at something of a crossroads in having to reckon with issues relating to the broader politics of knowing and being, then we must consider whether, and if so how, the ‘redemptive’ purpose of CIE (that is, the desire to improve educational opportunities and outcomes by reference to other places and times; see also Ball, 2020) can continue to exist alongside the decentring of previously privileged (and often unquestioned) epistemologies and ontologies.