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This chapter examines Cuba's unique experience of socialism/post-socialism in the two decades since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Cuban case of post-socialist transformation is extremely instructive, both for what is anomalous about Cuban post-socialism and for what is similar to other post-socialist contexts. Cuba's experience raises a set of questions regarding how social science and education researchers should conceptualize “transformation” and it also suggests that considerable attention to be paid to the ways that change and transformation are represented and contested in the local political discourse. Cuba's unique position vis-à-vis neoliberal and state socialist modes of governance puts lie to any claims that there are any necessary and predetermined “paths” of post-socialist political and economic transition. Cuban education has changed over the past two decades in connection with regime legitimation strategies, projects of national self-determination, and global economic pressures – a combination of interests, actors, and institutions that suggests that it is the particular intersections and trajectories of both “local” and “global” transformations that demand analytic attention in post-socialist, as well as in any other, political, cultural, and social setting.

The study of (post)socialism has always had a complicated relationship with comparative education. Tracing the changing emphases of research on (post)socialism during and after the Cold War, this chapter highlights how (post)socialist studies moved from being highly politicized during the Cold War, to becoming subsumed by convergence and modernization theories after the collapse of the socialist bloc, to reemerging as a part of broader “post” philosophies reflecting the uncertainties and contradictions of social life. This chapter proposes to treat post-socialism not only as a geographic area, but also as a conceptual category that allows us to engage in theorizing divergence, difference, and uncertainty in the context of globalization. It is a space from which we can further complicate (not clarify) our understanding of ongoing reconfigurations of educational spaces in a global context, and ultimately challenge the evolutionary scheme of thought and established concepts of Western modernity. For comparative education and social theory more broadly, post-socialism can thus become a challenge (or an agenda) for future debates – whether theoretical or methodological – about global processes and their multiple effects on education and societies today, in the past, and in the future.

Olga Bain teaches at the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University, Washington, DC. Her research interests include educational policies in post-socialist countries, internationalization and globalization of higher education, faculty productivity and women's advancement in academia, and higher education financing. Olga Bain has consulted for the American Council on Education, the Academy of Educational Development, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Council of Europe, the Salzburg Seminar, and others. She authored the book University Autonomy in the Russian Federation since Perestroika (2003, RoutledgeFalmer) as well as book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals. She holds a Ph.D. degree in social foundations of education, comparative and higher education from the University at Buffalo, NY, and a candidate of sciences degree in sociolinguistics from St. Petersburg University, Russia.

Purpose – We examine electoral politics in the City of Atlanta, GA, and shed light on the prospect that in 2009 Atlanta elected its “last Black mayor.”  We consider how African American tensions around class and social identity may demobilize key constituents of the Black electoral coalition while an increasing Black out-migration and White in-migration had changed the city’s racial balance of electoral power. Recognizing the margin of victory in the 2009 mayoral election between Kasim Reed (an African American) and Mary Norwood (a White challenger) was small (714 votes), we examine how electoral and demographic characteristics explain this result.Methodology – We utilize (1) the 2009 State of Georgia Board of Elections voter demographic file; (2) 2010 Census data (ACS 5 year estimates), and 2009 Mayoral Election count data. We presented descriptive statistics, comparing community level factors and voter characteristics.Research implications – The limitations of this work is that it is exploratory and thus we do not statistically isolate the effects of class and social identity.Findings – Our findings indicate that Reed and other Black elected officials will have to make concerted efforts if they hope to “retain” the Black poor as well as gay and lesbian citizens within a progressive electoral coalition.