196 Book Reviews / Comptes Rendus Stromquist, N.P., & Monkman, K. (Eds). (2000). Globalization and Education: Integration and Contestation Across Cultures. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, Inc. Pages: 363. Price: $ 24.95 USD (paperback). Reviewed by Eva Krugly-Smolska, Queen's University. With all of the recent writing on globalization, it is a welcome addition to find a book that deals comprehensively with the relationship between globalization and education at all levels and comparatively in different countries, both developed and developing. This book is a collection of articles that arose from presentations at the 1997 western regional conference of the Comparative and International Education Society and were later augmented. Given that history, it is unusual for such a book to be a cohesive whole, and yet it manages to be that. The quality of the various contributions is quite consistent and authors acknowledge different contributions and perspectives that appear in other sections of the book. The book is divided into three parts: Conceptual issues (5 articles), globalization impacts in various educational sectors (4 articles) and national case studies of globalization impacts (7 articles). While the first section deals specifically with conceptual issues, all of the articles address them and each makes explicit its understanding of the term globalization. Given the territory covered, it is difficult to present a review of the whole. Let me instead give you a taste of what can be found in this collection. Perhaps with a little tantalizing you will rush out and get the book, which I highly recommend. In his article in the conceptual section entitled "Globalization and educational reform," Martin Carnoy discusses issues with which many of us in the midst of reform are already familiar: decreased public funding for education, privatization, decentralization (except in Ontario?), accountability (educational measurement), labour issues, globalization of markets and skills, the increased emphasis on science and technology. While much of the writing in this area presents a picture of doom and gloom, Carnoy leaves us with a hopeful conclusion: "there is much more political and even financial space for the nation state to condition the The Canadian Journal of Higher Education Volume XXXI, No. 2, 2001 197 Book Reviews / Comptes Rendus way globalization is brought into education than is usually admitted... there is much more political space to develop alternatives than the ideologues of globalization allow" (p. 58). With the proliferation of cross-national testing, especially in the areas of science and mathematics, it appears that there is a trend to internationalization of curriculum. Noel Gough interrogates this trend from the perspective of curriculum studies informed by narrative theory and poststructuralism. He suggests "that the history of global perspectives in curriculum, the anticipated impacts of new information technologies, and efforts to internationalize the field of curriculum studies can be understood as forms of "noise" disrupting and complicating attempts to locate a transnational imaginary in curriculum work" (p. 93). In a similar way, Catherine Odora Hoppers critiques educational development policies in Africa that are influenced by the West and agencies that tie particular governments' hands. The educational sectors addressed in the second part of the book focus on higher education (universities and community colleges), on vocational training and on adult education. Jan Currie and George Subotzky compare responses to globalization in France, Norway and South Africa and in the emergence of the entrepreneurial university. They also feel that the effect of globalization "is neither uniform nor inevitable, and, where conducive political economic and cultural conditions prevail, [the challenges] can be mediated" (p. 142), although there is no question that those challenges and pressures are there. Anne Hickling Hudson provides examples of those challenges in her case study of universities in the commonwealth Caribbean. This area, she argues, has not received adequate attention, yet "demonstrates the intersection of education with postcolonialism in all its complexity" (p. 220). Other case studies deal with Japan, Sub-Saharan Africa, Mexico, South Africa, Malaysia and Australia. While these cases deal with all sectors, the focus is much more on higher education and so will be of special interest to readers of this journal. Certain themes are repeated over and over in each of these case studies, many of which are those that were addressed in the conceptual part of the book. As a result there are many practical examples of the key issues discussed in Carnoy's article The Canadian Journal ofHigher Education Volume XXXI, No. 2, 2001 198 Book Reviews / Comptes Rendus and others. This book is comprehensive in that it deals with socio-political and economic issues as well as how these influence policy and curriculum implementation. There is something for everyone who takes a critical perspective on globalization here. Yet, in spite of the realistic recognition of the forces at play, there is nevertheless a guarded optimism evident in the book. Once again, I recommend it highly. 4? 4? 4? Wasser, H. (1999). Diversification in Higher Education. Kassel: Wissenschaftliches Zentrum fur Berufs und Hochschulforschung der Gesamthochschule Kassel. Pages: 96. Reviewed By Yvonne Brown, The University of British Columbia. This book of nine essays by Henry Wasser is timely. Its publication at century's end is a summary reminder of the philosophical debates about the nature and purpose of universities in Western civilization. The major theme that is developed throughout is that higher education includes more and diversified post secondary institutions than the traditional research university. The variations may be classified into the research university, the comprehensive diversified university and vocational colleges. Professor Wasser's long association with universities in Europe and the United States, in both professorial and administrative posts, provides a comprehensive comparative perspective from which to draw for each essay. A strong sense of history is infused throughout. The first essay entitled "Teaching and Research: Tension and Balance" dissects the symbiotic relationship between teaching and research to reveal the tensions and imbalances which professors have to work through in order to support the research value of universities. Scholarship involves content, structure and process knowledge where research leads to discovery of new knowledge, practices involve the application of new knowledge and teaching the transmission of new knowledge. New knowledge has to be integrated into further inquiry. The Canadian Journal of Higher Education Volume XXXI, No. 2, 2001