Assembling Comparison

Abstract

This book introduces a Policy Mobilities and Assemblage Theory (PMAT) conjoined approach as a way to think differently about policy and do policy research in comparative education. Our purpose in bringing together policy mobilities and (Deleuzian-Guattarian) assemblage theory is to open up new lines of flight: to facilitate understanding policy through a lens attuned to movement, difference and becoming. This enables different answers to existing questions and different ways to ask these questions, including questions of ourselves as researchers and policy practitioners. It is in this vein that we present PMAT as an approach, not the approach. It is decidedly not something that is definitive, fixed and complete, but rather something that might help to open different lines of thinking and questioning. After detailing the key points of synergy between policy mobilities and assemblage theory, the book then delimits the key features of PMAT, presented as a series of four distinct but related Orientations for Thinking. Each orientation offers some specific research questions to help demonstrate how PMAT might be applied to a given research problem. The book concludes with reflections on the potential uses and limits of PMAT for the research of policy in comparative and international education.