Global Tides, Samoan Shores: Samoan Policy Actors’ Responses to the Shifting Conditions of Education Aid and Postcolonial Possibilities for Education Reform

Abstract

In the years since Samoan independence in 1962, and especially over the past 2 decades, the landscape of education aid to the Pacific Island nation of Samoa has changed dramatically as a result of ongoing geopolitical shifts and emerging global designs. Some of these include: rapid globalization across all spheres of human activity; the economic rise of Asia and the growing economic, cultural, and political role that China is now playing in the region; and shifts in the modus operandi of traditional donors such as Australia, all amidst continued talk of development partnerships and a post-2015 development agenda. These changes have affected Samoa in various ways and will continue to have tremendous implications for future education and development policy and practice. This article examines the emerging context in Samoa by analyzing data from semistructured interviews with a number of policy actors across different sectors of Samoan society, to obtain an understanding of the complexities, opportunities, and challenges that lie ahead. In ascertaining the central themes that emerged throughout these interviews, the article seeks to explore how Samoan policy actors are interpreting, negotiating, and responding to these ongoing shifts, and whether an opportunity exists for progress on the path to continued decolonization as articulated through Mignolo's concepts of “colonial difference” and “border thinking.” This analysis offers initial insights regarding the extent to which education reform based on foreign aid in Samoa can be more closely aligned with local histories and current priorities.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank all participants of the International Exploratory Workshop entitled International Education: Emergences and Future Possibilities, held at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, in May 2015, at which supportive relationships were established and ideas for this article subsequently emerged. In particular, I thank the organizers, Rose Eder and Edgar Forster, for their generous invitation and tireless efforts in bringing their vision to such productive fruition. Edgar Forster, as one of the guest editors of this special issue, has also been a stalwart and kind-hearted mentor throughout this entire process, and I thank him wholeheartedly for his close reading and encouragement. Warm thanks as well to Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, Stephen Chatelier, Nadim Sobhani, Glenn Savage, and Fazal Rizvi for their insights and invaluable feedback throughout the review process. Finally, my sincere gratitude goes to Bob Ale Apineru and the Moghbelpour family for their generous hospitality and loving support during my stay in Samoa, as well as all interviewees for their willingness to speak with me, and to educate me. Fa’afetai tele lava!

Notes

¹Linda Martin Alcoff offers a succinct exposition of the term colonial difference in her 2007 paper: “Mignolo's concept of the colonial difference is thus an attempt to reveal and displace the logic of the same by which Europeans have represented their others. Non-Europeans are seen as existing on the same historical trajectory, but further behind. … In this way, true otherness or difference is invisible and unintelligible. … (Mignolo) seeks both to reveal the way in which power has been at work in creating that difference (that is, the way in which colonialism creates ‘backwardness’ both materially and ideologically) as well as the way in which colonial power represents and evaluates difference” (2007, p. 87).

²Border thinking is alternately described in the literature as “thinking from another place, imagining an other language, arguing from another logic; as a subaltern knowledge… that strives to break away from the dominance of Eurocentrism; not to correct lies and tell the truth, but to think otherwise” (Escobar, 2010, p. 59); in expanding upon this first description, Alcoff delineates that “the idea of border thinking is to specify the locality of subaltern knowledge as a border location rather than simply the beyond of Western knowledge or the site of pure difference. The goal of border thinking is de-subalternizing knowledge itself” (2007, p. 94).

³Such as the Rethinking Pacific Education Initiative for Pacific Peoples by Pacific Peoples (RPEIPP), for example.

⁴The complexities surrounding the notion of decolonization must be noted. According to de Oliveira Andreotti, Stein, Ahenakew, and Hunt, decolonization can be seen as having “multiple meanings, and the desires and investments that animate it are diverse, contested, and at times, at odds with one another” (2015, p. 22). Having acknowledged as such, the concurrent challenge presented by the “impulse to suppress these contradictions and conflicts in order to collapse decolonization into coherent, normative formulas with seemingly unambiguous agendas” (de Oliveira Andreotti et al, 2015, p. 22) must also be considered. Finally, as Chen states, “Decolonization no longer refers only to the objective structure of the historical movement, but also to action, subjectivity, thought, cultural forms of expression, social institutions, and global political-economic structures” (2010, p. 113).

⁵Fiji has experienced numerous political coups over the past 20 years, mainly owing to political tensions between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians; the Solomon Islands erupted into civil unrest and ethnic violence in 1999 for a period of 4 years, requiring the intervention of an international peacekeeping force; and the crime rate in Papua New Guinea is considered to be among the highest in the world.

⁶MESC Education Policies, 1995–2005 / MESC Education Strategies, 1995–2005; MESC Strategic Policies and Plan, July 2006–June 2015.

⁷Samoa Education Sector Evaluation Study: Final Report (Samoa, 2005).

⁸The PRIDE (Pacific Regional Initiatives for the Delivery of Basic Education) Project, comprising 15 Pacific Island countries and instituted by The University of the South Pacific's Institute of Education, seeks to “enhance the capacity of Pacific education agencies to effectively plan and deliver quality basic education through formal and non-formal means, and to improve the coordination of donor inputs to assist countries implement their plans” (About the PRIDE project, 2013).

⁹Rather than a linear and economically driven view of development that considered growth in terms of GDP per capita, human development theory proposed that one should consider the quality of life as the primary objective, with production and prosperity merely as a means to those ends (Sen, 2003).

¹⁰Described as per the University of the South Pacific's web site as “an NZAID-supported (though not led or driven) project in 2001 … initiated and led by a group of Pacific educational leaders. While NZAID's grant support ended in 2007, the influences of RPEIPP have continued on as Pacific educational leaders, scholars and emerging leaders took up the mantle of contextualizing their thinking, scholarship and leadership” (Rethinking Pacific Education, 2015).

¹¹Referencing the Forum Secretariat (2001), Coxon and Munce (2008) state: “The Pacific Basic Education Action Plan (PBEAP), developed as an outcome of the first meeting of the Pacific Ministers of Education Conference in May 2001 … According to the PBEAP, the development of basic education needs to be founded on distinct Pacific values, morals, social, political, economic and cultural heritages, and to reflect the Pacific's unique geographical context while taking account of the global context” (p. 154).

¹²Furthermore, subalternity, as interpreted for the purposes of this article, is concerned with Samoan perspectives considered subaltern in a broader global sense. That is, the power differential with the global/local relation mentioned earlier in this article situates Samoan as subaltern within the global. Yet, it should be acknowledged that some of the policy actors interviewed could also be understood in Fanonian terms as native elites.

¹³For the sake of confidentiality, participants have been given pseudonyms.

¹⁴Portuguese football player Cristiano Ronaldo, two-time winner of the prestigious FIFA (football's world governing body) Ballon d’Or Award, given to the best male player in the world.