Translations and transversal dialogues: an examination of mobilities associated with gender, education and global poverty reduction

Abstract

Commentary on gender equality in education as a global issue often assesses what makes policy work or why certain emphases in policy are selected. The article recasts this division by looking not so much at the separation between policy and its enactment, but at the forms of mobility entailed in the movement between these different poles. It delineates two forms of mobility, termed translation and transversal dialogue. A case study is presented looking at how the idea of gender equality in education moved from articulation as a normative idea in the capability approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, through practical application in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s Human Development Reports, selective appropriation in the Millennium Development Goals, and interpretation by education officials in South Africa and Kenya. Analysis highlights the epistemic resources each form of mobility requires, pointing to different approaches to understanding context and dialogue and the different weightings each form of mobility gives to comparative judgements regarding action.

Acknowledgements

This paper draws on research conducted as part of the ESRC funded study Gender, education and global poverty reduction initiatives (award number RES‐167‐25‐0260). I am grateful to fellow researchers on the project (Veerle Dieltens, Khombisile Dlamini, Jenni Karlsson, Stunkoane Letsatsi, Herbert Makinda, Amy North, Jane Onsongo, and Chris Yates) for work in collecting and analysing data and the collaborative discussions out of which this paper has developed. Preliminary presentations of some of the ideas in this paper were made at a seminar on the autobiographies of gender research held at the Institute of Education, University of London in October 2007 and a panel discussion convened by the PESGB in May 2008 on the use of the philosophy of education in policy. I am grateful to participants in both events for the discussions which have contributed to a further development of the analysis and to Melanie Walker, Jenny Parkes, Bob Cowen and Harry Brighouse for many illuminating conversations on these issues.

Notes

1. This issue (but without use of the metaphor of translation) is the theme of a panel discussion convened by Harry Brighouse at the conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, Oxford, April 2009.