Author(s):
Madeira, Ana Isabel 
Date: 2011
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/7164
Origin: Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa
Subject(s): Educação Comparada; História da educação; História da educação colonial; Circulação conhecimento educacional
Description
Ver, em anexo, o sumário, o índice e a Apresentação da obra. This book aims at enlightening the process whereby comparative knowledge and comparative practices were developed as part of a mechanism of world description. Comparison, it is argued, is part of a process of confrontation producing particular notions of self and other, of similarity and dissimilarity, either this relates to contrasting mores, cultures, Civilizations, Nation-states or educational systems. Despite great changes in world history in the past centuries, be it in religious, economic or political terms, the comparative mind has had enormous difficulties to approach difference. From the Greeks to the Middle Ages, from the Portuguese discoveries and travel narratives up to modern globalization times, comparative practices have tended to systematically normalize discrepancy by means of producing intellectual tools aimed at identifying differences which can be permanently re-conducted to sameness. Narrative descriptions, naturalist historiography and later on the social sciences all share comparative discourses that criss-cross our knowledge building processes. The intellectual and methodological tools that were developed along with disciplinarization processes in order to analyse and decompose the complexity of the self/other equation belong, in fact, to pre-scientific times. By underlying the processes of discourse formation in comparative education this work attempts to look inwards not only into the disciplinary field but also to the theoretical mechanisms at work (concept formation, analytical procedures, scientific validation) that perpetuate tenets, representations and ideological stances from early comparative times. Three moments in time-history are to be considered as turning points: the time of experience (the comparison that emerges out of confrontation), the time of science (the nature as a metaphor) and the time of Man (the emergence of the social sciences). From these critical turning-points the discussion pursues on determining potential breakaways to the comparative mind, calling forth new comparative approaches in face of the acute internationalization of the educational systems.
