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Abstract
Globalisation, as described by Appadurai, is the term for a process characterised by disjunctive flows that can generate acute problems of social well‐being. One potential positive force that encourages an emancipatory politics of globalisation is the role of the imagination in social life. Globalisation requires rethinking the role of the ‘research imagination’. Based on some critiques developed by Appadurai and some postcolonial and indigenous cultural theorists, and using education policy research in China as an example, this paper shows how research is both colonised and colonising. It selects and analyses publications in an influential scholarly journal in China during 2003–2004 to illustrate how the imagination is badly needed and seriously challenged in China's contemporary education policy research. It ends up with some discussions of the tensions between the global agenda and the local context in decolonising social research.
Notes
1. After being closed to international intercourse for decades, China adopted its policy of opening to the outside world at the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held in December 1978.
2. However, Confucius and Mencius, two symbolic Confucian scholars, did criticise the state, but they did so in order to help the Emperor find the right direction. They did not seek to challenge the Emperor's political authority or to instigate a revolution. Indeed, Confucius stated quite clearly that the restoration of the authority of the Emperor was his ultimate goal: ‘Just as there are no two suns in heaven, there can be no two kings on earth’ (Fu, Citation1993, p. 30). Mencius shared this idea with Confucius.