Re-Imagined Universities and Global Citizen Professionals

International Education, Cosmopolitan Pedagogies and Global Friendships

Shanti George

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137358950
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Universities are increasingly criticised for their limited relevance to a globalized and unequal world. Drawing on research from over 27 countries, this bookoutlines new directions for universities and the need to rethink the education that they provide based on the experiences of schools of international development studies.

1

The Politics of the Intellect in the Globalized World

Universities: neoliberal or emancipatory agendas?

In a world of unacceptable inequalities and exclusions, universities as we know them are increasing under fire for being part of the problem rather than part of the solution, as lacking critical engagement with the political and social realities around them and as instead exacerbating the inequalities that they should counter (Aronowitz and Giroux, 2000; Boni and Gasper, 2012; Evans, 2004; GUNI, 2008a; Peters, 2004; Readings, 1996; Selden, 2004; Walker and Nixon, 2004; Walker, 2006; Zipin and Brennan, 2004). If we must then re-imagine universities, where are we to look for pedagogical models that address the most pressing issues of our time, that replace eurocentrism with emancipatory cosmopolitanism (Nederveen Pieterse, 2006) and that nurture friendships which can contribute to transformation of the world as we know it?

The present book argues that a mission to re-imagine universities can learn some useful lessons from the schools of development studies that have existed – more or less uneasily – on the margins of traditional universities, sometimes for sixty years (as with the case study on which this book draws). Schools of development studies attract large numbers of mid-career professionals from Africa, Asia and Latin America, who are familiar with everyday realities that are not visible in most university curricula but that constitute urgent matters which the planet’s citizens should confront together. As such, schools of development studies offer insights into a possible ‘one world education’ (Sanyal, 1990, p. 4) that draws on knowledge from across the planet to address issues that concern us all.

In the world as it is now, however, international higher education tends to be oriented towards attracting foreign students who pay high fees that increase the finances available to universities in rich countries. International education does not yet respond sufficiently to moral responsibilities and civic engagement within the global environment (Stuart, 2008, p. 80), as is illustrated by the following example.

A study was conducted with 79 young men and women from China and India who had availed of international education in Australia, in the fields of engineering, information technology, business and management (Rizvi, 2005). These international students were supported by their families: ‘My parents and I have invested a large amount of money on the assumption that the returns will be considerable. They now want me to take advantage of the globalization in which they have invested’ (op. cit., p. 6). Such a metaphor of investment (Norton, 2000) summarizes ‘the biographical solutions made by the students from Asian nations to plot personal trajectories in a global field of educational opportunities’ (Doherty and Singh, 2010, p. 125).

On the supply side, such ‘international students … have become a major source of revenue for Australian universities’ (Rizvi, 2005, p. 1), as for universities in other rich countries. The explanation provided for the ‘proliferation of foreign, mainly Asian, students on campus’ (Eisenchlas and Trevaskes, 2010, p. 179) is: ‘Universities in Australia have become increasingly dependent on this population of students to supplement their income’ (ibid.), as is also the case in Europe and North America (ibid.).

Rizvi describes the cosmopolitanism of the young people from China and India whom he interviewed as ‘concerned less with moral and political dimensions of global interconnectedness than with its strategic economic possibilities … international education is used by international students to better position themselves within the changing structures of the global economy’ (Rizvi, 2005, p. 9). Two graduates included in his sample have on their return to India set up a hugely successful coffee shop in Bangalore that specializes in Australian pastries: ‘“We are selling something that is global” … “to young people who are citizens of the world.” Note the assumption that in India, to consume Western goods is to be a “citizen of the world” … The underlying logic thus speaks of a space that is … located within the dominant cultural logic of global capitalism that it does not question’ (op. cit., p. 7). Another such graduate is working on ‘an Indian equivalent of Pepsi’ (ibid.).

Rizvi’s analysis ends in regret that international education in this case has yielded consumerist cosmopolitanism rather than critical cosmopolitanism:

If universities are to profit from international education in ways that are not merely commercial, then they have a major responsibility … If they are to be serious about preparing their students for the new world, then they need to teach them not only how to build effective professional careers within the global economy, but also how to lead productive moral lives … global interdependence is … a way of helping students to expand their moral universe in cosmopolitan terms … To produce morally cosmopolitan identities, universities need to provide forms of education, through which students learn about themselves in relation to others, so that mobility and cultural exchange do not contribute to the economic exploitation of others but open up genuine possibilities of cosmopolitan solidarity (op. cit., p. 10).

The contrast that Rizvi highlights – between international education oriented towards successful individual global careers and international education concerned with the morality of global interdependence – parallels the distinction between education focused on increased human capital for economic growth and education assessed in terms of its contribution to human flourishing (Unterhalter, 2009).

Current compilations of writings on cosmopolitanism – even though presented as ‘global’ debates – continue to draw largely on thinkers from Europe and North America (e.g. Brooks, 2008). Analysts, especially those from developing countries, urge that notions of cosmopolitanism should not derive only from Euro-American debates and experiences. Truong envisions cosmopolitanism as the ‘co-creation of conversational space’ (2006, p. 1271, citing Cole and Knowles, 2001) ‘in which experiences and perceptions of ethical lives of communities and nations can be shared’ (Truong ibid.). Giri reminds us of Buddhism’s emphasis on the co-dependent origination of all beings and phenomena and also of Desmond Tutu’s usage of the African concept ubuntu to mean interconnectedness (2006, p. 1286). Ethical cosmopolitanism has been articulated by Nussbaum as follows:

If our world is to be a decent one in the future, we must acknowledge right now that we are citizens of one interdependent world, held together by mutual fellowship as well as the pursuit of mutual advantage, by compassion as well as self-interest … what we have to gain is the biggest thing of all: participation in a just and morally decent world. (2006, p. 524)

Neoliberalism, Brennan (2001) asserts, provides the most powerful present day form of global cosmopolitanism. Gasper concurs: ‘Many national elite and other upwardly mobile groups seem de facto to reject both national and international moral community, except insofar as other people’s claims are heard through market signals’ (2005, p. 19). He gives an example: ‘Mark Rich, the international speculator and market fixer … claims only the same rights as he does for everyone, the right to buy what someone else agrees to sell and to sell what someone else will buy, such as oil to apartheid South Africa, perhaps even a legal verdict, a human organ … He declares himself “a citizen of the world”’ (Gasper, 2006, p. 1230). Such citizens of the world are very different to those that Nussbaum had in mind in the quotation above.

From the perspective of consumerist cosmopolitanism, ‘intercultural literacy’ becomes a tool for ‘relationships of use and manipulation’ (Gregory, 2011, p. 425, citing Nussbaum). ‘The Internet site www.worldbiz.com provides reports on business practices, customs and protocol, cross-cultural communication, negotiating, and etiquette when doing business in more than 120 countries’ (Ng, 2010, p. 41). The established literature on ‘cultural diversity’ in the world of global corporations – for example, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1999) – concentrates on highly qualified people from developing countries who operate in the business sector and especially in multinational corporations. The present book focuses, in contrast, on highly qualified individuals from developing countries who address the underside of global corporate activity, namely problems of poverty and inequity.

Other authors share Rizvi’s regret at the burgeoning demand for a type of higher education that is driven mainly by a combination of individual aspirations and corporate needs in changed international contexts (Nayyar, 2008, p. 46). They urge that higher education orient itself towards collective well-being and equality rather than serve only small affluent segments of the population (Vessuri, 2008, p. 119). Global challenges require global solutions, and higher education must address a global agenda for social and human development (Moja, 2008, p. 161).

The present book enters these debates from a different angle to most adopted so far. Rather than general normative prescriptions about education for global citizens or critiques of universities as serving neoliberal agendas, this book starts with the generally neglected constituency of citizen professionals in developing countries. It addresses questions around international education for people from Africa, Asia and Latin America who wish to undertake an education that tries to embody emancipatory cosmopolitanism rather than capitalist cosmopolitanism (Nederveen Pieterse, 2006). It adopts the viewpoint of individuals from developing countries who seek an emancipatory international education and who look for this in schools of development studies in Europe. This book thus takes a different (but complementary) entry point into the debates from that chosen by Rizvi, who as discussed above studied individuals from China and India who pursued international education inserted within global capitalism.

About the citizen professionals from developing countries who are the main protagonists of this book, these questions are addressed:

• What do we know about the life circumstances, career choices, professional activities and inner lives of such citizen professionals, especially those who engage with the developmental issues of our world and our time, such as poverty, inequality and exclusion?
• What does it mean to be a citizen professional in Africa, Asia or Latin America, within the contemporary globalized world – a world in which the gap has greatly widened between rich and poor countries, between the rich and the poor in the world population and between rich and poor people within countries (Nayyar, 2008, p. 43)?
• How can we illuminate and understand the experiences and perceptions of citizen professionals from ‘developing countries’ who work with ideas and concepts, especially moral ideas, in environments where disparity and deprivation are starkly evident? How can we explore widely different variants of such experience?

There have been few attempts so far to explore these questions. As the following section will demonstrate, very little attention has been paid to intellectuals and professionals in and from developing countries. They are largely missing in the global literature on ‘intellectuals’ although they are not missing in action in the countries where they live. And they are not especially missed in the literature – few voices ask ‘What do they think?’ or ‘Where are they in this discussion?’

How can their voices be more strongly included in what is called ‘global public culture’ (Delanty, 2006, p. 29)? If ‘another world is possible’, how can citizen professionals from developing countries contribute to debates on ‘what these possible scenarios, these possible other worlds, might be’ (Xercavins i Valls, 2008, p. 36) towards a world that is ‘more human, fairer, more equitable, more peaceful, more diverse, more compassionate, more sustainable … (ibid.)’?

Universities should provide fora that encourage the voices of citizen professionals from developing countries, within open plural universities linked to the local that operate within global networks (Escrigas, 2008, p. xxxi), where people learn with, from and through others as they engage together as learning communities (Bawden, 2008, p. 72). In the globalized world, however, higher education has become classified as ‘merchandise’ according to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (Vessuri, 2008, p. 122). The marketization and privatization of higher education can conflict with the goals of equity and access (Altbach, 2008, p. 11), and the global higher education market acts as a powerful mechanism for reproducing inequalities between ‘central’ and ‘peripheral’ universities (Ordorika, 2008), and more broadly between individuals in ‘central’ and ‘peripheral’ parts of the world.

In what ways has globalization opened up new emancipatory possibilities at the same time that it has led to loss of autonomy and the fragmentation of the social world for many (Delanty, 2008, p. 29)? Can universities today become cosmopolitan sites of global public culture that bring together different kinds of knowledge (op. cit., p. 31)? The present book argues that universities can move closer to achieving this ideal if they learn some lessons from schools of development studies, and move towards both greater inclusiveness and greater diversity. To the lively debate on global universities (e.g. GUNI, 2008a), this book contributes insights from international development studies, as experienced first hand by many citizen professionals from Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as by a smaller number from Europe and North America.

Everyday intellectuals in developing countries

When the phrase ‘a developing country’ is used, the rural landscapes often conjured up in the mind’s eye are usually peopled by peasants, and the dense urban landscapes by those who maintain the formal and informal commercial sectors. A contrast is provided by the minority who inhabit islands of affluence. The figure of a civil servant or an academician at a university or an employee of a non-governmental organization is less likely to come to mind. When studying developing countries, ‘the large majority of social analysts has focussed on actors such as large landowners, entrepreneurs, the peasantry, shantytown dwellers, the military or political leaders. Time and again, they have avoided analyzing the role which intellectuals and technocrats play in the development process’ (Galjart and Silva, 1995a, p. 8).

Rather than discuss the intellectual and political giants from developing countries who were prominent in the twentieth century – Castro, Deng, Gandhi, Guevara, Ho, Mandela, Mao, Nehru, Nkrumah, Nyerere, Senghor, Tutu and others, who can be described as ‘towering philosopher kings’ (Mazrui, 2005, p. 64) – this book highlights those who live and work at the everyday level, the ‘uncelebrated men and women’ (Rothschild, 2005, p. x), the average citizen professional. In contrast, Edward Said’s (1994) Reith Lectures were on intellectuals who like himself embodied the heroic or semi-heroic. His emphasis was on high-profile participation in public debate and not on the routine crafting of policy or the everyday activism or the mundane scholarship that typify protagonists in the present study. In the context of Africa, we are told: ‘An exceptional police officer can meet this requirement’ of being an intellectual (Ki-Zerbo, 2005, p. 78). Galjart and Silva are among the relatively few who have written on our subject, and define the group that we are interested in as:

social scientists or intellectuals [in developing countries] who occupy themselves with the development problems of their society … They can be high-level bureaucrats, technocrats, professional scientists, advisers or NGO staff … Not surprisingly, in the course of development new roles are created for academically trained people, and they also increasingly tend to occupy existing roles. New are roles in universities, in the media, in NGOs and as consultants for political authorities. (1995a, pp. 269–70, emphasis given)

‘International development studies’ – the field that focuses on long-term change in developing countries, in relationship to richer and more powerful countries – pays limited attention to the government employees who form the human machine through which much developmental activity is intended to take place, or to those who work for non-governmental organizations and try to provide an alternative or complement to government machinery, or to the many university academicians who directly or indirectly influence the processes of development in the societies around them.

Within the wider category of ‘knowledge worker’ (Fleck et al., 2009, p. 4), or the ‘knowledge class’ (Davis, 2009, p. 262), the focus here is on:

• civil servants (and employees in the public sector and in parastatals), whose daily work consists in addressing the realities of developing countries through systems of governance that are often rather fragile.
• academicians, who are specialized in comprehending or creating or extending knowledge systems that they seek to apply to particular developmental problems in their countries.
• activists linked to non-governmental organizations, confronting long-established social realities, as well as questioning (or promoting) relatively new structures of governance that they feel impede (or facilitate) the transformation of these social realities.¹

Why is there comparatively little research interest in these categories within developing countries? ‘… intellectuals and technocrats … are rarely integrated into the analysis of political elites in developing countries’ (P. Silva, 1995, p. 21), in comparison with the attention paid to military and business elites. Most analyses there, especially of development issues, concentrate on ‘categories at the bottom of the social hierarchy’ rather than with ‘the “educated” people, and the “intellectuals”’ (Bayart, 1993, p. 182, quotation marks given). Such analyses tend to focus on ‘the politics of the belly’, to use the title of Bayart’s book. This focus can be justified by exigent material need in many developing countries; ‘few found the moral case for intellectual freedom where basic freedoms – freedom to live – were severely constrained’ (Mkandawire, 2005b, p. 26). The present book, in contrast, highlights the politics of the intellect and the imagination in developing countries, affirming that everyday intellectuals there can promote human rights and rethink citizenship in their immediate environments, as argued for Africa by Ochwada (2005, p. 201).

Citizen professionals from developing countries too generally concentrate on the poor and the powerless when they join debate on development issues. They do not discuss themselves because they see their position as on the sidelines, compared to actors who play more pivotal roles in struggles for change. ‘… to see themselves as belonging to a strategic group requires them to ta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1 The Politics of the Intellect in the Globalized World
• 2 The Politics of the Intellect in Developing Countries
• 3 Citizen Professionals and Cosmopolitan Identities
• 4 Cosmopolitan Pedagogies for Global Citizen Professionals
• 5 Global Friendships: Hegemonic or Transformative? (I) ‘We Were All Strangers’ at a School of Development Studies
• 6 Global Friendships: Hegemonic or Transformative? (II) Global Capitalism and Exclusion – A New Version of the ‘Harvard Murder’
• 7 The Politics of the Imagination in Our Globalized World
• Cited References
• Index