ABSTRACT
The analysis of the nature and evolution of comparative and international education presented so far demonstrates how the field has repeatedly responded both to changing geopolitical realities, and to theoretical and paradigmatic shifts within the humanities and social sciences. Such changes are reflected in the efforts that have been made over the years to identify phases of development for the field as a whole. While we recognise that there are significant teleological and intellectual limitations with such categorisations, they can provide helpful analytical frameworks especially for newcomers interested in an introduction to shifts in broad historical and epistemological trends in a chosen field. We will therefore return again to the dilemmas of the chronology of distinctive phases for comparative and international education in later chapters. Here, however, it is first pertinent to explore, in more depth, how late twentieth century and contemporary geopolitical and intellectual developments fundamentally challenged the current scope and nature of the field; the appropriateness and continued legitimacy of the dominant forms of empirical social sciences; and, what Samoff (1992) calls the hegemony of the ‘intellectual-financial’ complex in much globally focused educational research and international development work in general.
