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The intervention of international organizations in the development of the Global South has been credited with expanding the freedoms, capabilities, and well-being of people so that they are more able to lead valuable and flourishing lives. There are, however, critical issues that need to be considered regarding the extent to which powerful donor countries of the Global North shape educational development work in the Global South. The need for education might be universal, but local communities should have a leading role in shaping its content and determining its goals. Drawing on postcolonial perspectives, we raise questions about northern involvement in educational interventions in the Global South including the role of loan conditionalities; the gradual encroachment of international business and corporate interests; the hegemonic control of knowledge; the dismantling of cultural values and ways of life; and the stereotype, racism and deficit perspectives that are frequently perpetuated. We argue for the need to rethink, reframe and reconstruct educational development in a way that will place the Global South at the front and center of the education process.

The aim of this chapter is to investigate the potential of the disruption brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic to break the stagnation in the field of comparative and international education, detected on many fronts of the field by various scholars in the field. The chapter commences with a survey of the historical evolution of the field of comparative and international education, showing how the field has historically come to be defined by contextually induced discourse. At the same time, the historically trodden furrows have resulted in the field becoming trapped by historical forces, resulting in some stagnation in the field. It is argued that impediments to progress in the field of comparative and international education are the severance from practice, the “black box” syndrome of paying more attention to the societal context than to education, the tenacious attachment to the nation-state as the sole geographic level of analysis, the lack of an autochthonous theory, persistent Northern hegemony, and the regression of space and infrastructure at universities. Thereafter, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact thereof on education are discussed. In conclusion, the potential of the disruption brought about by the pandemic for the revisitation of comparative and international education is assessed.

The authors suggest that their recently developed curriculum guidance on multidisciplinary working for DipSW students in Northern Ireland raises some key issues of relevance to health and social care professionals coming to grips with the integrated‐working imperative of the new NHS Plan.

Purpose – Child sponsorship programs have been accused of representing children from the developing world in a manner described as “development porn” in their marketing communications, and of operating in such a way as to reinforce beliefs that people in the global South are powerless, dependent on help from the developed North. This research takes a critical, historical approach to investigating the marketing practices of Plan Canada, a subsidiary of one of the oldest and largest child sponsorship-based development agencies, in order to evaluate outcomes of charitable giving at the social and ideological level.

Methodology – We adopted a consumer storytelling theoretical lens to conduct narrative analysis of letters written by donors upon their return from visiting their sponsor children.

Findings – We reveal how even if aid recipients are treated with respect in marketing communications, ideological outcomes which reinforce Northern hegemony may still result.

Social implications – Although charitable acts by individuals are commonly encouraged and lauded, marketers may play a role in perpetuating negative outcomes that result from this consumer action, such as reinforcing notions of cultural difference and superiority.

Originality/value of paper – Only a few researchers have investigated the social and ideological outcomes of charitable giving. We investigate the outcome of charitable giving on the donor and recipient communities and relationship between these communities. Models of charitable giving need to be revised to include these outcomes.

The Bandung Conference played a constructive role in mobilizing a movement against the bipolar hegemony of the post World War II period. This period, from Yalta (1945) to Malta (1989), can be characterized as an international neo-colonial regime in a post-colonial world. Despite political, economical and cultural differences, the Third World states represented at Bandung called for a counter hegemonic alliance based on the principles of peaceful coexistence (The Pancha Sila).¹ These principles enabled cooperation among the states and peoples of Asia and Africa. The Latin American states later joined this non-aligned movement. The principles of peaceful coexistence, which were first proclaimed by India and China, represented an imaginative reformulation of the modern Western framework of international systems established initially by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. This new framework, which based cooperation among the recently independent states on the Western principles of national sovereignty, stressed mutual respect and benefit in place of the Westphalia premise of international anarchy.

This essay considers the relationship between global sociology and sociological theory through an examination of the critique of Northern Theory developed by Raewyn Connell. The author accepts many of Connell’s criticisms of the formation of the Northern Theory canon, and of the false universalism of contemporary Northern Theory, but disputes the degree to which Connell has succeeded in finding a replacement for the “ethnosociology of the metropole” provided by current sociological theory. In particular, the author suggests that, in Southern Theory, Connell pursues an intellectual history of world philosophies instead of the development of theoretical concepts that could provide a more adequate global sociology from a Southern perspective. Connell leaves the reader with a reconstructed canon of classics, but without a new repertoire of middle-range explanatory and interpretive concepts with which to reconstruct our understanding of history itself. The former may be the necessary first step toward the latter, however, rendering Southern Theory an important moment in the global turn in sociological theory.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the weaknesses of Nigerian social and political institutions.

Thematic analysis of interview and questionnaire data was undertaken.

The paper locates the Nigerian State as a weak state.

The paper adopted a qualitative research approach which is not generalizable.

Nigeria needs to restructure her social and political institutions otherwise the likelihood of becoming a failed state is indeed very high.

The prevalence of insecurity to lives and property as well as a growing level of poverty in Nigeria will lead to the failure of the Nigerian State.

This paper has immense value for social and political policy in Nigeria.

This conceptual paper aims to problematize interculturality and intercultural communication within the conditions of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and today’s circumstances. In spite of the new emphasis on intersubjectivity and non-linearity in intercultural communication studies, TESOL seems to still perpetuate hyper-solid and essentialist representations of interculturality. This paper argues for the necessity of altering common perceptions of TESOL students by critically considering the imbalanced sociopolitical realities that may be reflected/encouraged in classrooms. Without accounting for the additional factors involved in using English while interacting with the culturally different other, TESOL may not be able to ensure mutually satisfactory communicative experience.

Closer inspection is paid to intercultural communication research/pedagogy in TESOL to delineate the inaccuracies that have pervaded interculturality narratives and encourage sociopolitically conscious teaching that recognizes discourses of power and justice.

A simplistic/positivist consideration of interculturality in TESOL is rather unresponsive to possible unfair treatment of students’ cultures and the current circumstances, which are imbued with a high sense of complexity and non-linearity, resulting in producing ready-made conclusions.

This paper proposes embracing more complex approaches in accounting for the complexity of interculturality in TESOL pedagogy and research by taking into account intersubjectivity, suspending native-speakerism normativity, western hegemony and non-linearity of intercultural interactions.

This paper recognizes the inefficiency of presenting interculturality as a matter of conforming to communication standards of Anglophone cultures but rather argues for the need of promoting inclusive education that appreciates cultural diversity and considering the conditions (identity and culture) of non-native speakers in TESOL.

This essay responds to comments on Southern Theory by Mustafa Emirbayer, Patricia Hill Collins, Raka Ray, and Isaac Reed as part of a larger discussion about the future of postcolonial sociology. It clarifies aspects of Southern Theory that are commented upon while stressing the big claim of Southern Theory, which is that the periphery produces social theory that sociology should take seriously in order to make for a more global and democratic intellectual project of social change.