Education, Marginality, and Multiple Modernities: Experiences from Tea Garden Children in Sylhet

Md Ataur Rahman, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology

Modernity has long been understood as a process originating in Western societies and spreading to other parts of the world through institutions such as formal education, economic development, and state governance. However, scholarship on “multiple modernities” challenges this linear and Western-centred understanding by emphasising that societies experience and negotiate modernity through diverse historical, cultural, and social contexts. This paper examines the relationship between education, marginality, and multiple modernities through the experiences of children in tea garden communities in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Tea garden communities in Bangladesh have experienced long-standing social and economic marginalisation rooted partly in colonial labour structures and continuing inequalities in access to resources and public services. Children growing up in these communities encounter educational challenges shaped by poverty, limited educational opportunities, inadequate resources, and their broader social environment. Drawing on qualitative field experiences from several tea estates in Sylhet, including interviews, focus group discussions, observation, community engagement, and educational initiatives, this paper explores how children and their communities experience and negotiate education within conditions of marginality. The paper argues that education in tea garden communities is not simply a process through which a standardised model of Western modernity is adopted. Rather, educational experiences are shaped by an interaction between formal schooling, local knowledge, community values, and everyday social and economic realities. Education therefore becomes a site where different forms of modernity are negotiated and adapted. By focusing on the experiences of marginalised children in tea garden communities, this paper contributes to the broader discussion of decentering modernity and highlights the importance of recognising diverse and locally grounded pathways of social change in the Global South.

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 Presented in Session 139. Governing Childhoods: Labor, Discipline, and Marginality in South Asia