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Franklin Book Programs: Imperialism, State, and Knowledge Production
Abstract
The Franklin Book Programs (FBP) was a private non-for-profit US organization founded in 1952 during the Cold War, subsidized by the United States’ government agencies as well as private corporations. This program initially intended to promote US liberal values and also to create appropriate markets for US books in ‘Third World’ countries (Robbins, 2007). However, from its initial objective of exporting US culture to rival the influence of the Soviet socialism, FBP evolved into an international educational program publishing university textbooks, schoolbooks, and supplementary readings (Laugesen, 2012). As the FBP moved to become the most important organization of the Cold War with a global focus on ‘educational material’, its activities broadened from the ones specifically related to translation to those related to the development of printing, publishing, book distribution and bookselling institutions. Therefore, FBP started to build and expand printing plants; it encouraged library development and more importantly undertook the training of teachers as textbook writers. Using archival study, textual and historical analysis, this paper intends to answer the following questions: What were the social and political conditions that contributed to the establishment of the FBP? What were the cultural, educational and political goals of the FBP and how did these goals shape the FBP’s structure and policies? How did the FBP evolve in the course of its history in terms of its scope and function? How did the FBP affect education and textbooks in the Middle East? What were the ideological goals that US imperialism pursued in the developing countries in the Middle East? How does a dialectical explication of the history of FBP can advance our knowledge of the relationship between state, education and imperialism? Through the historical and archival study of the international role of the FBP (1952-1977) on the print and publication industry and educational policies of the Middle East, my research examines the interrelation between imperialism, state, and education. Criticizing the prevalent understanding of imperialism as an economic system, I will show the ideological functioning of imperialism in its cultural and publication policies in the Middle East. Using a dialectical and historical materialism approach, I will show that the print, the production, and the distribution of a wide range of liberal literacy, educational and school texts throughout the Middle East was a continuation of US anti-communist policies during the Cold War.
Discipline
Education
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries