Science and education in (semi-)authoritarian systems

Contact: Ece Cihan Ertem and Barbara Schulte

In recent years, new technologies and new ways of social networking have transformed the possibilities to make knowledge accessible to a wider public. However, these changes have also created new boundaries and factions within society, and have contributed to the creation, reproduction, and consolidation of fake facts.

'Post-factual' tendencies can be found in all societies; however, we are interested in particular in how (semi-)authoritarian political systems make use of these new possibilities, in order to forge their own sciences, academics and researchers, and facts. This includes research into recent infringements on academic freedom internationally, as well as rights-based approaches to education.

Ongoing projects:
Postdoc project (Ertem) on academic freedom and "academic hybrids"
Network of Academic Freedom (NAF) (Ertem)

Selected publications:
Ertem, E. (2019). Raising a religious generation as a primary target: Quran kindergartens in Turkey. Paper presented at 14th European Sociological Association Conference (ESA), Manchester, August 20-23.

Schulte, B. (2004). East is East and West is West? Chinese academia goes global. In J. Schriewer, C. Charle, & P. Wagner (Eds.), Transnational intellectual networks. Forms of academic knowledge and the search for cultural identities (pp. 307–329). Campus.

Schulte, B. (2008). “Für den Fortschritt der Menschheit”: Die chinesische Kulturlinguistik erfindet sich selbst [’For the Progress of Mankind’: Chinese Cultural Linguistics Invents Itself]. In M. Lackner (Ed.), Zwischen Selbstbestimmung und Selbstbehauptung. Ostasiatische Diskurse des 20. Und 21. Jahrhunderts [Between Self-Determination and Self-Assertion. East-Asian Discourses of the 20th and 21st Centuries] (pp. 239–259). Nomos.

Schulte, B. (2017). Hochschulen Chinas. Zwischen Traditionen und Reformen im Kontext der globalen Wissensökonomie [Universities in China. Between Tradition and Reform in the Context of the Global Knowledge Economy]. In Joachim Freimuth & Monika Schädler (Eds.), Innovationskompetenz in der chinesischen Industrie und die globale Wissensökonomie [Innovation Skills in Chinese Industry and the Global Knowledge Economy] (p. forthcoming). Springer-Gabler.

Schulte, B. (2019). Innovation and control: Universities, the knowledge economy, and the authoritarian state in China. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 5(1), 30–42. doi.org/10.1080/20020317.2018.1535732

Svensson, M., & Schulte, B. (Eds.). (2021). Visions of the Internet in China (Vol. 50).