ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes approaching context as more a "matter of concern" than a "matter of fact". The categories "political", "economic" and "cultural" also merit examination as forms of big "C" Context. To use the categories in the making of context underscores the ways that the categories of big "C" Contexts create knowledge about characteristics over which rule can be exercised. The features of big "C" Contexts are the black-boxed units of reference that often appear in research studies in a short-hand manner, as if possessing unquestionable and stable analytic power. The chapter also proposes several strategies for reworking how context is articulated in comparative and international education. It considers the challenge of social embeddedness an ongoing problem. As an issue at the core of changing space-times of education, contexts – both big "C" and little "c", interwoven and entangled assemblages – remain an important matter of concern for the field.
