western doctoral programmes as public service, cultural diplomacy or, intellectual imperialism?
TRANSCRIPT
WESTERN DOCTORAL PROGRAMMES
AS PUBLIC SERVICE,
CULTURAL DIPLOMACY
OR, INTELLECTUAL IMPERIALISM?
CONSIDERATIONS OF A CANADIAN
TEACHING EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP
IN THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
• Multi-dimensional: economic, political, religious, cultural, educational, familial, etc.
• Highly dynamic: UAE one of most rapid & profound changes in World History
• Unique features: Emirati culture, geopolitical position
• High level of multiculturalism: 80+% immigrant workforce; 202 nationalities
OR, HOW TO CONCEPTUALISE COMPLEX EDUCATIONAL
CHANGE IN THE UAE?
DEDICATED TO MY EDD STUDENTS,
ONE AND ALL
DUBAI – 40 YEARS AG0
DUBAI - NOW
• They drive • Are increasingly in workplace
(although glass ceiling)• Travel abroad (many regularly)• 80% Emirati grad students women• Assertive in doctoral seminar
(sometimes a force of nature)• UAE is a (relatively) uxorious
society
MYTHS TO DISPOSE OF:
WOMEN IN THE UAE
MGMT, ADMIN & LEADERSHIP:
HISTORICAL COMPLEXITY
Colonial Heritage
Tribal Traditions
Post-Unification Monarchy
(Shaikh Zayed)
Western Education & Consultancy
MULTIDIMENSIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF
CRITICAL METAPHORS:An Interdisciplinary
Field of Critical Concepts
INITIAL THEORETICAL SCAFFOLDING
Goffman Microinteractionist Metaphors
Weberian Value-
orientation & Ideal Typing
Saidian Humanistic Critique of Orientalist Hegemony
Bourdieuian Intellectual Field
LEVELS OF A PERSONAL VOYAGE FROM WEST TO
MIDDLE EAST
ExperientialPedagogical
Political
• “Ideal”: analytical (not normative or empirical)
• One-sided accentuation & synthesis of diffuse, discrete, present & absent concrete individual phenomena
• Arranged into unified analytical construct (Gedankenbild)
IDEAL TYPICAL METHOD A LA
WEBER
• Contextual shaping of human interaction
• Dramaturgical presentation of self with others
• Self & identity shaped, reshaped in the process
• Groups & larger structures rest upon this basis
SOCIAL INTERACTION METAPHORS OF
GOFFMAN
• Stereotyped individual characteristics of “orientals”: sensuality, despotism, aberrant mentality, inaccuracy, backwardness
• ‘Locale requiring Western attention, reconstruction, even redemption’
• Constructed through scholarship, industry, “pioneers” to the Orient – now transplanted uni’s & programmes
ORIENTALISM AS IMPERIALISM IN SAID
• Cultural capital • Intellectuals - creators of symbolic
power• Reproduction of self-perpetuating
hierarchies of domination• Shaping of politics through symbolic
power• Political economy of symbolic interests,
power (violence), capital power structures (habitas, fields)
INTELLECTUALISM AS SYMBOLIC POWER:
BOURDIEU
• Public Servant
• Cultural Diplomat
• Intellectual Imperialist
THE THREE ATTITUDINAL METAPHORS
• Derived from Weber• Patrimonial traditionalism
combined with charisma
IDEAL TRAITS OF PUBLIC SERVANT, MANDARIN CLASS
• Substantive rationality (higher order political end values)
• Aspires to gentlemanly ideal• Traditional ethos governing life &
circle of contacts• Ethos: “official duty” & “public weal”
(the public interest)• „Lives for the state, rather than from
the state“
VALUES
• Personal qualities: resilience, independence of mind, intellectual prowess, sound judgement & discrimination, loyalty, integrity
• Through „moral courage“ „speak truth to power“
• Responsibilities tied to legitimacy of ruling elite (individual ministers of cabinet)
• Protected by anonymity• Oversees national interests for political
authority
AUTHORITY & ROLE
• Derived from Freeman, Arts of Power: Statecraft & Diplomacy (1997)
• Patrimonial traditionalism combined with instrumental, legal-rationality
CHARACTERISTICS OF IDEAL DIPLOMAT
• Strategic state interests (security, econ, political)
• Strategic & tactical master in international arena
• Power ethos & formal, informal networks (overt & covert)
• Ethos: Manoeuverability through exaction, accommodation, appeasement, coercion, etc.
• Lives for the state, rather than from the state
VALUES
• Medium of communication between states
• Authority to speak as representative & pursue state interests
• Scholars: informal diplomats of countries & disciplinary traditions
• Universities: site of formal & informal diplomatic activities & agent of foreign policy (sometimes: unwittingly, hidden curriculum, extension Cold War role)
AUTHORITY & ROLE
• Derived from Max Weber• (disenchanted) Entrepreneurial
rationalism
ESSENCE OF IMPERIALISM
• Economic Hegemony• Formal rationality; suppresses value
issues, indifference to ends• Entrepreneur, “leadership,” or
consultancy ideal (mercentary competitive self-interest)
• Ethos: efficiency & technical effectiveness
• Lives from the state, rather than for the state
VALUES
• Personal qualities: impersonal rules, objective competence, business-style mgmt, goal-oriented accountability
• Adherence to entrepreneurial leadership & obedience to political authority
• High mobility between private & public sectors• Technical managerial elite („new nomenklatura,“
„technical intelligentsia“ or „consultocracy“)• Value-for-money, cost-effectiveness & market
testing• Aims at strategies of control• Are „doers“ rather than „thinkers“
AUTHORITY & ROLE
I. PERSONAL LEVEL:
Existential, Phenomenological,
Hermeneutic
THE METAPHORS CULTURALLY EMBODIED
Does it close one’s world – negative Western stereotype
ABAYA COMPLEX
Or, does it open a new world?
ABAYA “UNVEILED”
Public Servant
Cultural Diplomat
Intellectual Imperialist
As Clothing
As Ceremonial Costume
Abaya Untouched (untouchable?)Two Solitudes
ATTITUDES TO ABAYA CORRESPONDING TO
METAPHORS
DIMENSIONS OF THE PERSONAL
Values Identity
Professional Qualities
Social Interaction
• Values: local culture dominates; serves new state’s strategic goals
• Identity: participant-observer (lives in liminality)
• Social Interaction: immersion, engagement• Professional Qualities: international
standards ethno-hermeneutically reconstructed to meet local terms of respect
PUBLIC SERVANT(AS FOREIGN ACADEMIC)
• Values: representative of one’s own & local culture; mediates between 2-state strategic goals
• Identity: retains nationality – engages with local
• Social Interaction: mediated style of presentation of Self
• Professional Qualities: represents “home” qualities of professionalism
CULTURAL DIPLOMAT
• Values: home values exclude local values
• Identity: unchanged, in tension with local conditions
• Social Interaction: socialising locals into foreign patterns
• Professional Qualities: replacing indigenous conceptions
INTELLECTUAL IMPERIALIST
II. PEDAGOGICAL LEVEL:
Hermeneutic, Interactional, Legitimating, Reproductive
DIMENSIONS OF THE PEDAGOGICAL
Scholarship
Curricular Principles
Teaching Styles
• Friere: colonisation through language (ontological & epistemological reconstruction)
• Giroux: hidden curriculum• Habermas: communicative action• Said: no clash of civilisations• Et alia
ADDITIONAL CRITIQUES
• Inclusive Synthesised Scholarship: dialectically mutually informing intellectual history
• Combined Western-Arab curriculum aimed at UAE national goals & independence
• Recombinant teaching style inclusive of arab communicative interaction, sociability, temporally structured around calls for prayer
PUBLIC SERVICE
Al-Khalili, J. (2010) Pathfinders: Golden Age of Arabic ScienceCrone, P. (2005) Medieval Islamic Political ThoughtFreely, J. (2009) Aladdin’s Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic WorldLyons, J. (2009) The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western CivilizationMasood, E. (2009) Science & Islam: A HistoryMorgan, M. (2007) Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and ArtistsO’Leary, D. (2003) Arabic Thought and Its Place in History
“LOST HISTORY”: THE WEST’S ADOPTION OF ARAB
SCHOLARSHIP
SYNTHESISED SCHOLARSHIP
Common Heritage: e.g., Plato, Aristotle
(history, politics, sociology, cultural analysis)Arab Scholarship:
e.g., Al-Farabi, Al-Ghazali, Ibn
Khaldun, Islamic Humanist tradition
Western tradition built upon Arabic: e.g., Renaissance scholars, Weber,
Heidegger
• Dialogue between traditions or Attempt to subjugate arab scholarship: knowledge transfer unequal bi-directional
• Aims at educational reform serving international & local goals
• Tolerance of teaching style diversity
CULTURAL DIPLOMACY
• Exclusive use Western scholarship• Knowledge transfer uni-directional• Almost exclusive use western curric creating UAE
dependency• Emiratis aren’t taught UAE history
(“golemisation” of history & scholarly trad’s)• Arab scholars used to illustrate western adoption• English-language replacement of Arabic (religious
implications)• Globalised educ with strong market model:
Hidden curriculum of capitalism & consumerism
INTELLECTUAL IMPERIALISM
III. POLITICAL LEVEL:
Entente, Rapprochement, or Global Monopolism?
DIMENSIONS OF THE POLITICAL
Socio-cultural Impact
Sovereignty
Globalisation/ Commercialis
ation
The “Reproductive” Role of Educational Institution
• Mutually enriching, celebratory traditions, designed to sustain Emirati culture as priority
• Establishes distinctive Emirati scholarship & education
• Education to serve intellectual, cultural, religious, social, political and economic traditions
• Reproduction of modern Emirati social classes and status groups
ENTENTE:EDUCATIONAL COALITIONS/
ALLIANCES BETWEEN EQUALS
• Multicultural society retaining its “Solitudes”
• Segregated education – Western vs. Islamic
• Western serving globalised & foreign interests
• Entrenching tiered structure to society
RAPPROCHEMENT:EDUCATIONAL MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL EVOLUTION
• Necrocapitalism – dispossession modified to “social” or “cultural” death (Banerjee, 2008)
• Cultural & intellectual colony• Commodified education• Reproduces foreign educational
structures, governance, responsibilities, roles, practices
GLOBAL MONOPOLISM:EXACT EDUCATIONAL MARKET