Mapping Visual Culture in Comparative Education Discourse.

This study selected 28 illustrative examples of the visual culture in comparative education used since the 1960s. Journals examined are the "Comparative Education Review"; "Comparative Education"; "Compare"; and others. From visual analysis of these sources, four scopic regimes or visual subcultures are identified. The paper is organized in three parts. Part 1 illustrates how the three scopic regimes of modernity (the technical rationalist, the critical rationalist, and the hermeneutical constructivist) each has its own favored rhetoric and forms of representation, as well as utilities and limitations. Part 2 presents a personal narrative of how the social cartography project has sought to elaborate and implement a new social mapping rationale and methodology. Part 3 notes possible implications of this study and the new social cartography project for current theoretical debates, representational practice, and new opportunities to reposition the field with the human sciences in the coming millennium. Contains 50 notes and a list of sources for 29 figures. (EH)