Education & countering violent extremism: western logics from South to North

This paper explores the way education and conflict have become entangled during the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ response to ‘radical Islam’ at home and abroad. The paper charts the complex ways that education has been deployed to serve Western military and security objectives in multiple locations in the global south and how these strategies have now returned to the ‘ West’ in the form of ‘countering violent extremism’ interventions. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of the ‘boomerang effect’ I will explore whether and how education techniques and strategies deployed abroad in pursuit of imperial interests return to the West and are deployed to monitor, control and suppress marginalised communities in a form of ‘internal colonialism’. Finally, the paper brings the two sections together in the Findings to explore commonalities and divergences.