Education, Gender and Development

This essay reflects on the origins and development of my core research interests in education, gender, and development. These interests emerged in my De La Salle college years in Manila, persisted through graduate studies at Stanford, and continue to characterize my ongoing scholarship. In the 1960s I gravitated toward a nationalist perspective and assumed that education was the key to national development and that amoral familism was a major stumbling block. My undergraduate thesis advisor, a Harvard trained economist, no doubt facilitated my internalizing the “education as human capital” assumption. Though I had not encountered “the moral basis of a backward society” idea, the notion that excessive loyalty to family and kinship undercut civic mindedness and other modern values was a compelling one. These were, of course, not abstract research interests but the personal concerns that lead an eighteen year old to declare (as only the young can!) that he would pursue sociology. Familial reaction was initially less than positive, but ultimately familial resources (and even blessings) facilitated this pursuit. The Prodigal Son has since morphed into the Stanford Professor. All’s well that ends well.
It is not clear why I chose sociology instead of some other social science discipline. It is also not clear why I accepted an admissions offer from Stanford in lieu of one from a then much more highly regarded department. I knew little about the discipline and less about the profession. In the summer of 1967 what I knew was that I was on my way to becoming a well-educated sociologist who would subsequently launch the first Department of Behavioral Sciences in the Philippines. The declaration of martial law in the Philippines in 1972 derailed that plan. What I now know is that planning a life is mostly an illusion.
In what follows I trace the development of my research interests in graduate school and in my years in the Sociology Department at San Francisco State University. I refer to this period as the education and development and women in education projects. I then focus on my first decade in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford and the authority of science and human rights studies. Lastly, I turn to the textbook analysis project and to the emerging university organization research. The latter in good part reflects my experiences as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, a position I will have cheerfully vacated by the time this book is published.
All of these studies entailed explicit macro level cross-national comparisons. This innovation is today commonplace in sociology. Since most innovations fail, it is perhaps surprising that the cross-national comparative approach flourished. Two reasons come to mind. First, this research strategy was compatible with different theoretical perspectives, not solely with the neo-institutional world society one that has informed my studies. Second, more cross-national data on multiple societal dimensions and over extended time periods has been more systematically collected and disseminated. This worldwide development invites and fosters a range of diverse FRANCISCO O. RAMIREZ cross-national investigations. None of this was predictable in the 1970s when some of the initial cross-national studies in sociology were undertaken (see the papers in Meyer and Hannan, 1979). Then, a hostile reviewer could dismiss cross-national comparisons by uttering the magic words “one cannot compare apples and oranges”. Not anymore!