Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > ‘We are helpless, we are not the authority'

Electronic data

  • WeAreHelplessAuthAccepted

    Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Compare on 18/01/2021, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057925.2020.1867827

    Accepted author manuscript, 250 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

‘We are helpless, we are not the authority': colonial governmentality in a Sri Lankan transnational education institution

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>17/11/2022
<mark>Journal</mark>Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education
Issue number8
Volume52
Number of pages18
Pages (from-to)1351-1368
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date18/01/21
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This study examines colonial governmentality in a Sri Lankan partner institution of University of London (UOL) through semi-structured interviews with students and faculty. UOL began administrating colonised educational spaces in the 19th century, and now governs approximately 80 partner institutions throughout the global South. Its governmentality structures an arterial topology of power that grants limited inclusion to students while excluding their lecturers from formal recognition. Faculty at partner institutions do not assess students. Instead, assessment consists of annual British examinations, effectuating rote pedagogies that centre European knowledge. This extraction of faculty authority shapes delegitimated and disempowered subjectivities. The same process augments UOL’s expertise on Southern educational spaces, contributing to a broader project of universalising Western epistemology. The findings suggest a need for further research that examines colonial governmentality in international education, and particularly its mechanisms of epistemic extraction

Bibliographic note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Compare on 18/01/2021, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057925.2020.1867827