Making sense of the GATS debate

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organization has generated an intense and passionate debate about the relationship between free-trade and education and, specifically, about the effects of trade liberalization in national education systems. This article explores i...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Verger, Antoni|||0000-0003-3255-7703
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2011
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:170040
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/170040
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1080/09620214.2011.621315
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Global Governance
International Organizations
Privatization
GATS
Education
Trade in services
Discourse analysis
Semiosis
Commodification
Descripción
Sumario:The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organization has generated an intense and passionate debate about the relationship between free-trade and education and, specifically, about the effects of trade liberalization in national education systems. This article explores in detail this debate from a critical discourse and semiòtic approach. Its objective is two-fold. First, it aims at identifying and systematizing the core axes of the debate, as well as at confronting ideas within each of the axes. Second, it aims at explaining how and why the agreement has generated such an intense and polarized discussion in the educational field by, among other analytical strategies, appealing to the broader institutional and ideational contexts in which the debate is inscribed. Arguments are based on observation in public debates on GATS and education and a corpus of 86 texts on the topic coming from different sources including academic journals, conference proceedings, policy reports and newsletters of international and civil society organizations