Advancing Democracy Through Education? U.S. Influence Abroad and Domestic Practices (PB)

A volume in Education Policy in Practice: Critical Cultural StudiesSeries Editors Bradley A. U. Levinson, and Margaret Sutton, Indiana UniversityThis book explores the diversity of American roles in education for democracy cross-culturally, both within the UnitedStates and around the world. Cross-cultural engagement in education for democracy inevitably bears the impressions of eachculture involved and the dynamics among them. Even high-priority, well-funded U.S. government programs are neithermonolithic nor deterministic in their own right, but are rather reshaped, adapted to their contexts, and appropriated by theirpartners. These partners are sometimes called recipients, a problematic label that gives the misleading impression thatpartners are relatively passive in the overall process.The authors pay close attention to the cultures, contexts, structures, people, and processes involved in education for democracy.Woven throughout this volume's qualitative studies are the notions that contacts between powers and cultures are complexand situated, that agency matters, and that local meanings play a critical role in the dynamic exchange of peoples andideas. The authors span an array of fields that concern themselves with understanding languages, cultures, institutions, andthe broad horizon of the past that shapes the present: history, anthropology, literacy studies, policy analysis, political science,and journalism.This collection provides a rich sampling of the diverse contexts and ways in which American ideas, practices, and policies ofeducation for democracy are spread, encountered, appropriated, rejected, or embraced around the world. This volume introduces concepts, identifies processes, notesobstacles and challenges, and reveals common themes that can help us to understand American influence on education for democracy more clearly, wherever it occurs.