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ABSTRACT
The paper argues that powerful regional knowledge is necessary and possible and that there are historical precedents supporting these claims. Regional knowledge is being used in a double sense: the first Bernsteinian, the second in relation to knowledge generated outside the academy. Both are important if the debate is not to be confined solely to the global north and if the curriculum is to be responsive to geo-political realities. In order to think critically about access to higher education, we need to consider the sorts of knowledge, engagement, and opportunities that are open to newer actors. This includes recognising the contextual nature of professional practice and also that social movements beyond the academy can and do challenge academic knowledge. The paper concludes that many of issues addressed are not capable of theoretical resolution alone and that we need more empirical work to inform curriculum change and renewal.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Although these data are now 10 years old, the most recent UNESCO raw data do not offer a breakdown by region only by country. The broader analysis, however, relating to unevenness still holds.
2. This insensitivity is even more strange as more sophisticated work was available at the time, including the case of British Cultural Studies elaborated in Maton (Citation2014), which Bernstein cites in a then unpublished version. I am grateful to the referee who brought this point to my attention.