ABSTRACT
The tension between the global and the local is an issue of intense debate in thefield of comparative education – like in other social science disciplines that deal with ideas, models, actors, and things moving around the globe. Generally, there is an agreement that the world has been compressed through processes of globalisation (e.g. Robertson 1992). However, this observation triggers different reactions. Often, though not necessarily
outspokenly, different standpoints are tied to different values. The global and the local are seen as constituting two opposite visions of a ‘good’ or ‘bad’world and the two concomitant processes, globalisation and indigenisation, are played out against each other. Or, to use Barber’s (1995) more provocative terming, the perspective is either McWorld or Jihad: it is either the triumph of the homogenising global that is, gladly or not, acknowledged; or the dissolution of all commonalities into particularising local forces.
