ABSTRACT

This article suggests that, as a field of study, we have accumulated too many routinised ways to legitimate our academic identity; that it is time to step away from comfortable clichés about our past; and to notice that the future is, at least metaphorically, now and urgent. However, while it is easy to illustrate the banalities we use to define our academic identity, it is difficult to turn the metaphor of ‘the future is now’ into a coherent perspective for seeing ‘futures’ for comparative education. Thus the second part of the article sketches choices which stabilise such a discussion and help to avoid vague visions of grand projects. The Conclusion emphasises our classic flaw – failure to notice the political framing of many of our epistemic choices, agendas of attention and action, and institutional identities – before permitting itself to be a little bit excited about ‘the future’.

摘要

这篇文章表明，作为一个研究领域，我们已经积累了太多常规的方式来合法化我们的学术身份；现在是摆脱关于我们过去的陈词滥调的时候了；并注意到未来，至少从比喻意义上来说，现在是紧迫的。然而，虽然很容易说明我们用来定义学术身份的陈词滥调，但很难将“未来就是现在”的隐喻转变为看待比较教育“未来”的连贯视角。因此，本文的第二部分概述了稳定此类讨论并有助于避免对宏伟项目的模糊愿景的选择。结论强调了我们的典型缺陷——未能注意到我们许多认知选择、关注议程和行动的政治框架，