Everyday Privatization

This chapter provides an overview of the concept of everyday privatization, connecting it to education generally and anthropological literature on village life in Cambodia specifically, as well as provides a methodological overview of the research. Educational privatization is often examined as part of government policy reforms. This “top-down” approach focuses on particular government policies such as the school-based management approach to decentralization or the growth of private universities. This book uses an alternative theoretical framework to understand the structures of privatization and the agency of those involved in the process. This framework can be conceptualized as a “bottom-up” approach that focuses on social practices. In this perspective, it is the very social interactions that constitute the phenomenon of privatization. Privatization is thus not only a government policy, but also a complex set of social practices, which influence and are influenced by historic patterns of culture and society. By looking at the histories, biographies, and social relations of a group of people in one community, Preah Go, the book explores the way in which everyday life constitutes privatization

The challenges of human rights education in the Mekong: Disputed histories, contested identities

This chapter explores curricular challenges to multiculturalism in the Mekong subregion of Southeast Asia by looking at human rights and history textbooks in Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. Although these countries are part of an elite effort aimed at constructing a multicultural regional identity through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which partly relies on common educational practices and policies, the countries are perhaps best known for their human rights abuses, illiberal policies, and undemocratic polities. These issues are counter to much thinking on human rights and are revealed by analyzing textbooks. To unpack the curricular challenges, this chapter looks at the disputed histories and contested national identities in short case studies from each country’s upper-secondary history textbook. In Laos, the conflation of socialism and capitalism is contextualized to the changing geopolitical realties of the country. This is the explicit curriculum – that which is purposefully taught as mandated by the government. In Thailand, the xenophobic origin story of the Thai race shows a negative historical memory toward migration and mobility. This is the implicit curriculum – that which is hidden inside the curriculum. In Cambodia, the selective history of the Khmer Rouge offers an entry point into the disputed histories among countries in Southeast Asia. This is the null curriculum – that which is not taught for political reasons. Collectively, the three cases of the explicit, implicit, and null curriculum underscore the challenges facing supranational efforts to create a curriculum advancing human rights – and therefore multiculturalism – in the Mekong

Learning from Philanthropy: Tax Avoidance Strategies by the Ultra-Wealthy

Philanthropy has been used as a tax avoidance strategy since its inception. This article details the history of such strategies, which have evolved as tax law changed, primarily in the USA. The contemporary era of philanthropy is dominated by strategies that further the privatization and financialization of public goods, such as education