This document defines the most important characteristic of postmodernism as an ontological shift from an essentialist view of one fixed reality to an anti-essentialist view where reality resists closure and consists of multiple diverse truths positioned amid continuous conflict. Five knowledge communities, based on postmodernist notions, and their…

Structures of multiple education and knowledge systems can be recreated in maps, in a social cartography where the space of the social map reflects effects of social changes in real space. Such maps allow social research to escape from modernism's positivist restraints, improve comparative educators' understanding of the social milieu, and open…

This paper examines the postmodern challenge to how we have come to see, represent, and practice comparative and international education, beginning with the 1977 "State of the Art" special issue of the "Comparative Education Review" and up to the contributions of the Social Cartography Project at the University of Pittsburgh in…

Examines the postmodern challenge to the representation and practice of comparative and international education. Reviews the literature to identify major positions or arguments in the postmodern debate in comparative education. Maps these positions or knowledge communities as a discursive field of diverse perspectives and draws conclusions about…

How might comparatists view and image the world as a visual dialogue? How have representations of visual culture in comparative education discourse changed since the 1960s? This paper identifies, types, and maps the scopic regimes of modernity (that is, the technical and critical rationalist, and the hermeneutical constructivist) and postmodernity…

Asks how mapping changes in the visual culture of comparative education before and after the postmodern turn could increase understanding about the emergence of social mapping. Illustrates modernist scopic regimes, describes how social cartography has elaborated a new social mapping rationale, and notes implications for theory and practice of…

This document demonstrates how social cartography can be used in social research to include individuals and cultural clusters who want their own narratives included in the social discourse. Social cartography is defined as the creation of maps addressing questions of location in the social milieu. Visual images, depicting on the two dimensional…