Page 46 - Education in a Digital World

Theoretical Approaches 33

In many ways, the post-colonial perspective reinforces the critical and historical
emphases of the political economy approach – making explicit the links between
economic and political history, and patterns of unequal social relations and asymmetries
of power that persist between nations and regions. This is achieved through an explicit
focus on the historical relations that have shaped (and are shaping) the modern world.
These include the European colonialisation of other countries since the sixteenth
century, alongside more recent economic and cultural colonialisations of countries
by so-called ‘superpower’ states such as the US, USSR and more latterly China.
This sense of history can then be extended into examining the political aspirations of
these ‘subordinate’ countries, and mapping their on-going shifts into post-colonial
governance. The post-colonial approach therefore assumes an ever-changing world
order – as evident in the increasing importance of distinct ‘post-colonial formations’
such as sub-Saharan Africa, militant Islam, East Asia and Latin America (Hoogvelt
1997). As such, the post-colonial perspective is often used within the social sciences
as a means of looking beyond the inequalities of the present and past, and towards
ways of addressing these inequalities in the (near) future.
While usually overlooked within discussions of educational technology, these
issues are of obvious relevance to the varied implementation of digital technology in
different educational settings around the world. For example, the post-colonialist
approach makes explicit the linkages between capitalist economic interests and the
fortunes of individual nation states and countries – issues which have a clear bearing
on the deployment of digital technologies in educational systems around the world.
In particular, the post-colonialist approach raises the issue of the possible continuation
of the long history of ‘traditional’ colonialism through the dominant role of neo-
liberal market interests within educational technology formations. As Held and
McGrew (2000, p.5) describe:

The history of the modern world order is the history of Western capitalist
powers dividing and re-dividing the world up into exclusive economic zones.
Today, it is argued, imperialism has acquired a new form as formal empires
have been replaced by new mechanisms of multilateral control and surveil-
lance, such as the G7 and World Bank. As such, the present epoch [marks] a
new mode of Western imperialism dominated by the needs and requirements
of finance capital within the world’s major capitalist states.

As with the political economy approach, post-colonialism can help identify and
expose the power relations that underpin the national and international imple-
mentation of educational technology. These are, of course, complex issues. For
example, although sometimes perceived in straightforward terms of “the emergence
of a new empire based upon the hegemony of the USA” (Hirst et al. 2009, p.6),
these new forms of neo-imperialism are increasingly evident in terms of the domination
and subordination of the ‘poor South’ (i.e. ‘Third world’ states in Asia, Africa and