عنوان

Globalization, Policyscapes, and the Complicated Work of NGOs for Education 'Development' and Rights in Urban Pakistan

Number

TLpq2385399788

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Globalization, Policyscapes, and the Complicated Work of NGOs for Education 'Development' and Rights in Urban Pakistan

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Saba, Alexis M.

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Levinson, Bradley A

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Indiana University

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2020

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

306

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

Indiana University

Text preceding or following the note

2020

Text of Note

According to recent reports, Pakistan has approximately 23 million out of school children (UNICEF, 2019), the second highest number in the world. In order to get more children into schools, Pakistan has partnered with international development agencies and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), all of which are extremely diverse. As NGOs, in particular, take on an ever-increasing role in the provision of schooling and education (not just in rural areas of the global South), it is vital to understand these as complex organizations, situated in historical, socio-cultural, and political contexts, that produce contradictory and even paradoxical educational outcomes. This research is an ethnographic comparative case study that explores the complex environments and social worlds of four NGOs working for education reform in urban and peri-urban Pakistan. The study draws on nine months of ethnographic field work in Lahore. Relying primarily on participant observation and interviews with staff members, leadership, and volunteers of all four organizations, this research reveals the meaning-making practices of daily work within complex organizational environments, and the multiple performances that took place during evaluations of programs and program implementation. Situated within the international development policyscape, all four education NGOs promoted a rights-based approach that understood access to formal education as a basic right through which children and communities could achieve upward social mobility and/or poverty alleviation. Implementation of education policies, including Education for All and the Right to Education, varied depending on the organization and on individual staff members' biographies and class, gendered, and educated subjectivities. I argue that NGO staff and volunteer intermediaries played a significant role in shaping and/or reproducing the ways in which the purpose of education, and what it means to be an educated person in Pakistan, are understood. The study thus illuminates the ways that meaning-making practices on the ground impact the process of policy appropriation for education reform as a "human right" in the urban and peri-urban global South.

Cultural anthropology

Education policy

International relations

Levinson, Bradley A

Saba, Alexis M.

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y