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Africa Knows! It is time to decolonise minds

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Accepted Paper: D26-03. To panel D26.

Title of paper:

Author:

Iris Clemens (University of Bayreuth).

Short abstract paper:
If futures are cultural facts (Appadurai 2013) and therefore diverse, obvious there must be alternative ways into these futures, too.

Long abstract paper:
Future and education are irresolvable interwoven with each other. Without future aspirations, most probably schools and universities would be fairly empty, as future aspirations feed educational institutions today. However, future is a cultural fact, as Appadurai (2013) puts it, and therefore pluralistic and contingent. To move at least from time to time successful towards a desirable future, one has to develop a navigational capacity lead by future aspirations, according to Appadurai. However, if futures are cultural facts and therefore diverse, obvious there must be alternative ways into these futures, too, and therefore the navigational capacity has to be culturally adjusted. My argument is that there are globally circulating ideas concerning an idea of universal education and a specific desirable future that do not connect well with certain socio-cultural contexts such as e.g. parts of India or some African contexts to avoid the misleading term 'Global South' (the focus on India derives from my personal scientific concentration on this context). In consequence, formal educational institutions (such as schools and universities) are not equally successful in diverse socio-cultural contexts to support the emergence of an effective navigational capacity for the majority of the population. Certain globally circulating aspirations and assumed ways of their fulfilment, e.g. getting a save and highly paid employment through invest in formal education might be part of the problem. They might have little connectivity with actual socio-cultural constellations in non-European-North-American contexts. Accordingly, I want to show that underprivileged in the so-called Global South are discriminated in two ways by these aspirations and the role, education plays in it.

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