worlds of production: united states157979/n13chapter9.pdf · institutions, stanford reflects...

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Chapter 9

Worlds of Production:United States

9.1 Introduction

This chapter completes the analytical work on the micropractices of promotion which has

been the major objective of this thesis. It uses Foucault’s proposition that it is the ‘mundane’

and routine which illuminate or make visible relations of power in order to analyse

institutional discourses of international education. Three institutions form the focus of this

chapter: Stanford University, the State University of New York (Stony Brook) and the Institute

of International Education (IIE).

As with the earlier chapters, I use Foucault’s archaeological method to inquire into what is

visible and sayable about international education. I start my analysis asking the classical

Foucauldian question: “How is it that one particular statement appears rather than another?”

(Foucault, 1972, p. 27). Also, how do particular statements acquire a threshold of respectability

within the international university? Using archaeology, I examine the functions of statements

in promotional materials and their materiality, that is, the regularity with which they appear

and are re-used (p. 115). Here, the intention is to identify the regimes of truth about the

American international university and the international student as produced by promotional

discourses.

Archaeology also enables an analysis of the discursive possibilities that are being created for

student subjectivity1. It highlights the influence of other discourses in associated fields which

may support, or alternatively be in tension with those of international education. An

1. a) The subject in this respect is not the phenomenological subject, offering a speaking consciousness, nor does it refer to the author-function. Rather, it refers to a ‘position’ which can be filled by different individuals depending on the conditions. b) The field refers not to the context in which particular statements are articulated but in terms of the coexistence for other statements; c) materiality – refers to the use and re-use of statements, the extent to which they are institutionalised, appropriated, con-served, or ‘become instruments for desire or incorporated into elements of strategy’ (Foucault, 1972).

Chapter 9 Worlds of Production: United States

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archaeological analysis thus reveals the complex political, cultural, economic, social,

institutional and historical interactions that influence international education networks. Put

simply, this chapter attempts to form some conclusions about the power/knowledge relations

that produce and sustain American assertions of international education. This chapter

therefore follows on from the two previous chapters in its use of promotional discourses as a

means of understanding power/knowledge relations in the contemporary international

university. At the heart of this study is the issue of whether new expressions of international

education are emerging which are better suited to a supraterritorial, ‘global ‘world which is

no longer a collection of territorially-bound, modernist geographies.

As with previous chapters, I begin by mapping the ‘spatial statements’ which I argue,

following Law and Hetherington (2000, p. 37), play a part in influencing the international

student’s experiences of living and studying overseas.

9.2 (Un)Knowing Locations

After nearly 20 hours of travel, I arrive in San Francisco. As I move into another spatiality,

which is by most rational indices similar to the place where I live – English-speaking, western

and ‘democratic’ – I experience quite profound culture shock. Clearly, I have made too many

assumptions of similarities. The shock starts at the airport at Los Angeles (“LAX”), ostensible

gateway to the U.S. for visitors from the Pacific Rim. Approached by two beggars in the

American Airlines lounge while I wait for a delayed connecting flight to San Francisco, I am

struck by the visibilities of poverty in this very public space, a veritable third world in this very

first of first world nations. One man gives me a barely legible pamphlet in very poor English

describing the plight of a group of Korean orphans in Los Angeles. Another addresses me in

Spanish. I am too afraid to reach for my wallet and look away. Two seats away, a physically

disabled Caucasian man in a wheelchair surrounded by plastic bags is engaged in a loud and

abusive conversation with his mother. Exhaustion overtakes me and I doze and wake in fits

and starts, feeling to see if my luggage is still there. I wonder if this picture confronts

international students when they arrive to start their education in America. Do they see the

third world in the first world as I do?

The tensions and contradictions of travelling into a space that is both similar and different

continues, made worse by my body’s physiology which is unconvinced that the ‘constraints

of geography’ have receded. Because of last-minute stresses in preparing for fieldwork, I don’t

spend sufficient time, pre-arrival, to investigate accommodation options. I arrive in San

Francisco and manage to end up in what is known as a ‘tenderloin’ quarter, the SOMA (South

of Market Area) of the city. My room is incredibly filthy and I am reminded of my backpacking

holidays off the beaten track in Southeast Asia except the cost of a room then was more like

60c, not US$60 I have just paid. I collect my bags and manage to negotiate a departure without

penalty. The Irish receptionist is sympathetic as I mumble something about being at the wrong

place, “I haven’t entered your details in yet. So, its OK”. The fetid stench of the shabby street


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hits me as I try to hail a cab. Yet this is a crow’s flight away from the nexus of capitalist

enterprise and wealth, Silicon Valley.

The cab driver who stops is a Palestinian. In between phone calls (he is trying to sell a

restaurant), he tells me that he came to the U.S. in 1976 as a refugee. It is not too bad living

here but he doesn’t like the government’s double standards of appeasing Israel while

punishing the Iraqis. I am deposited at a youth hostel in Union Square, which thankfully has

retained its basic cleanliness since my last visit. My room mates are two other travellers, Hazel,

a Malaysian-Chinese, and Karen, a Norwegian who works as an au pair in London. I start to

feel a bit more connected; I am linked to both places by friendships, family ties, nostalgia and

affection. We make arrangements to go out together the next day.

The next morning, I head for Stanford University where I have an appointment with staff at

the Bechtel International Centre. I end up walking to the train station through SOMA’s streets,

passing many homeless people wrapped in blankets to ward off the first chilly signs of

autumn. At the train station, I experience a ‘dissonant’ encounter where the cashier snaps at

me irascibly for being too slow as I fumble with the ‘new’ currency. I don’t get the accent right

even though we are speaking the same language and the steel security barrier means I can’t

make eye contact to communicate my apology.

I try to connect with ‘my’ spatial world through the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper

during the train journey to Palo Alto. It takes thumbing through pages of advertisements –

Autumn Sales, Halloween Sales, Opening Sales, Closing Down Sales – to finally find The

World squeezed into two pages in an obscure part of the paper. Arriving at Palo Alto station,

I board the Marguerite bus, a free service to Stanford University. I find myself next to a Thai

doctor who has come to Stanford on a government training programme to specialise in

ophthalmology. Does he like it here, I ask? “It is very competitive”. His smile betrays the

anxiety in his eyes. He gets off at the Stanford Medical Centre and the bus drives on for several

kilometres. I have to get off and catch a connecting Maugherite bus to get to the Bechtel

International Centre. I am no stranger to universities having at various times visited friends

and family at the ‘elites’, but even so, I am unprepared for the size of Stanford, which brings

a new meaning to the term ‘greenfields’ campus.

To Singaporeans, who are savvy practitioners of consumer brand names, Stanford University

represents a desired university in which to study. Along with the East Coast Ivy League

institutions, Stanford reflects Singapore’s romance with the American mindset in education.

It is sufficiently academic to receive the recipients of private sector and Singapore government

scholarships – a good sign of quality in the eyes of many Singaporeans. It also retains its

positional status, as it is not frequented by the average Singaporean. No chance of

encountering ‘Ah Bengs’2 out here.

2. The term Ah Beng is used to refer to the lower echelons of Singaporean-Chinese society. An Ah-Beng is usually a Hokkien-Chinese, working class Singaporean who is thought to lack cultural capital.


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For a novice researcher like me, with limited time and worse, a limited budget, the sheer size

and complexity of Stanford presents several problems in identifying who to speak to.

Negotiating the maze that is Stanford’s website yields few clues as to who might be

responsible for promoting the institution to international students3. While some departments

list staff names and contact details, this is not a uniform practice across the university, making

entry into this space difficult. I eventually end up at the Bechtel International Centre

(I-Centre). The Centre was built by donations from the Bechtel Corporation, an

engineering-construction firm which also has telecommunication interests and significant

investments in developing countries4. The I-Centre serves as:

a focal point for interaction among foreign and U.S. students and visiting scholars at the

university…It provides opportunities for direct international experiences which

contribute to an international understanding, an important component of education at

Stanford... (Bechtel International Center, 2001, p. 4).

A handsome white building, the I-Centre is located near the Staff Club, close to the student

amenities area with its cluster of cafes, the sports centre and bookshop. Its foyer opens to a

handsome, bright and airy drawing room. In one corner, there is a beautiful grand piano, at

the end closest to the foyer are two well-appointed sofas. There are no artefacts that may

suggest the non-western world adorning the walls or coffee tables. However, I later find out

that the clock which shows the times in various cities around the world (I note Sydney) was a

present from the Japanese Student Association in the early 80s. Also due to Japanese largesse

is a large screen TV and VCR, which is connected to the University cable system to allow

international news shows to be viewed and recorded at the Center. The rest of the ground

floor is occupied by meeting rooms for student use. At one end of the ground floor, a set of

doors connect to a paved courtyard which leads to a hall. An elderly American woman,

immaculately groomed, with well-coiffured hair, sits behind a beautifully crafted

antique-looking table in the foyer. She directs me to the staff offices upstairs, a warren of

rooms which are less impressive and staff who are friendly, although obviously overwhelmed

with work.

International education is more than the production and consumption of information,

knowledge and credentials. It also presents rich possibilities to develop networks of human

relationships although the complexities and ambiguities of spatial and cultural displacements

can act as deterrents. At 10.30 a.m., I join the Spouses group – all women – for morning tea.

They are wives of postgraduate (graduate) international students and Visiting Fellows. The

room and its multicultural, international occupants represent a warehouse of cross cultural

scenarios. There are a large number of Japanese and German wives, some from Sweden and

3. The institutional complexity of Stanford seemed to baffle even insiders. The coordinator of the Over-seas Visitor programme at Bechtel International Centre for example, was unaware from her inquiries about the existence of a marketing, external affairs, or international relations division.

4. The Bechtel Corporation was established in 1898. It is a a fourth generation, family business with an annual turnover in 2000 of US$14.5 billion (Bechtel Corporation, 2002).


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Finland, one woman from Morocco, Muna, one woman from Portugal and a few women from

Korea. This is the first meeting for the new academic year, to welcome the new arrivals. A

programme of activities for the semester is announced. The first workshop for spouses will

focus on Christmas wreath-making. A “Potlatch” has also been organised where the visitors

will be matched with an American family for Thanksgiving dinner. The announcer, an elderly

volunteer, with just the faintest hint of disapproval in her voice tells the “ladies” that “this is

a nice opportunity but no one took it up last year”. They must “bring a plate of food to share”

and must register no later than Monday. I am amazed that the announcer has not made any

attempts to historically and culturally contextualise ‘Potlatch’ and ‘Thanksgiving’ for the

visitors. Perhaps, their meanings have eclipsed for Americans too, or perhaps the assumption

is that everyone has these celebrations. A future workshop will be belly-dancing, to be

conducted by Muna. To an outsider like me, the activities appear extraordinarily

old-fashioned, hearkening back to another era where gender roles were fixed, with women

centred around home life. It is not what I would have associated with an intellectual centre.

A children’s playgroup, organised by some of the German ‘wives’, is running at one end of the

hall. The Japanese women cluster together, speaking to each other in Japanese. They have to

be reminded by discreet coughs from the International Student Advisor not to speak to each

other while she is addressing the group. By contrast, the European women in the group are

much more confident. They all speak fluent English and in conversation with them, I find that

most are professionals in their home country. For some, it is their second trip to Stanford,

having first accompanied their husbands when they were undertaking doctoral studies. It

has not been easy to establish friends with the Americans, “They are not friendly. They will

say, ‘hi.’ But they are not interested in making friendships”. They are mystified about why

Americans have such an aversion to paying taxes. This seems to be an ideological point of

contention and Muna joins in as well. The tea ends after about an hour and a half, with some

women lingering on to chat.

Having started with a snapshot of informal social relations within this international

university, the next section provides an analysis of Stanford’s informational archive of

websites and promotional brochures. It examines discursive practices as a means of revealing

the workings of power within this international university.

9.3 Stanford University

A standard search of the World Wide Web normally offers a profusion of extraneous and

unrelated information. However, my search under ‘Stanford’ yielded a perfect match with the

educational institution, Stanford University. Is this coincidental or is it suggestive of an

elaborate legislative and organisational ensemble which works to protect the marque,

‘Stanford’?


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Established in 1891 by Leland Stanford, in memory of his deceased son, Stanford University

was intended to be:

a great university, one that, from the outset, was untraditional: co-educational, in a time

when most were all-male; non-denominational, when most were associated with a

religious organization; avowedly practical, producing "cultured and useful citizens"

(Stanford University, 2002

Leland Stanford was noted as a keen proponent of liberal education, which he associated with

“business capacity”:

I attach great importance to general literature for the enlargement of the mind and for

giving business capacity. I think I have noticed that technically educated boys do not

make the most successful businessmen. The imagination needs to be cultivated and

developed to assure success in life. A man will never construct anything he cannot

conceive (ibid).

Stanford was part of a group of 19th century American industrialists, along with JP Morgan,

Carnegie, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt, who were described as `Robber Barons'. Altenberg

(1990) makes this observation of the Barons,

After a lifetime of accumulating untold sums of money, many came to be

philanthropists...This certainly softened the image of the Robber Baron, and these

exercises of noblesse oblige had the effect of demonstrating that the Robber Baron

might promote the general welfare as well as appropriating it for himself.

Names such as Carnegie and Rockefeller continue to be associated with higher education

philanthropy today5. This long historical association between higher education and the

largesse of entrepreneurs is notable in normalising the links between American universities

and the business community. As the Robber Barons demonstrated, entrepreneurial

appropriations no matter how duplicitous, can still deliver productive possibilities for the

recipients of their largesse.

In 2000/2001, Stanford University had 3,127 international students ( see Table 1). Most (78%)

were enrolled in the graduate (postgraduate) programmes. There were 1394 international

Doctoral and 1056 Masters students. 31.8% of the graduate cohort was international. 28.6% of

all ‘foreign’ students at Stanford were women. The total number of Singaporeans studying at

Stanford was 122. The Singaporeans were outnumbered regionally by students from China

(428), Korea (295), India (273), Taiwan (147) and (Japan 134). Students from Asian countries

5. For example, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is a national and international center for research and policy studies about teaching; the Carnegie Institute of Washington funds and is engaged in basic research and advanced science education, particularly in biology, astronomy, and the earth sciences. The Rockefeller Foundation funds various overseas development projects.


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outnumbered other student nationalities with two exceptions: the Canadians (278) and the

Germans (126)6.

Not surprising given its size, there is a high level of faculty and departmental autonomy

within the university. Typically, each department formulates its admissions criteria and

exercises responsibility for all aspects of administration from application to graduation. This

style of governance means that the recruitment and admission of international students,

particularly postgraduate students, is largely administered by individual departments.

Table 1: International Students At Stanford University 2000/2001

Foreign Total % in University

Graduate Students 2450 7700 31.8

Undergraduate Students 314 6548 4.7

Postdoctoral students 322 1281 25.1

Non-matriculated students 41 673 6.0

6. All statistics are from the Bechtel Centre (I-centre) website. See (Bechtel International Center, 2001).

Figure 48: Stanford University Homepage


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9.3.1 Persuading Without Promotion: Marketing to the Elite

An enduring impression gained from thumbing through Stanford’s promotional literature is

that its seeks to inform rather than to market the institution. A turgid textuality characterises

the university’s print and web-based materials. With a few exceptions, such as the home page,

which features a graphic of the university’s main buildings in warm terracotta and sandstone

shades, there are few colour images in either the print and electronic materials (see Figure 42).

Where images exist, these are primarily of Stanford’s buildings and grounds. Overall, the

institutional preference leans towards using a non-human semiotic materiality to showcase

their institution.There are only incidental images of students, for example, if they are featured

next to a building being photographed. A virtual tour of the university treats viewers to an

impressive vista of buildings and grounds, once again, free of students. There are no student

testimonials or personal endorsements either, although a few discreet references are made to

Stanford’s illustrious alumni which include the ‘Father of Silicon Valley’, (Bill Terman),

various entrepreneurs (e.g., Jerry Yang of Yahoo fame) and writers (e.g., Vikram Seth). There

are also a few references to its proximity to Silicon Valley, although again, relatively muted.

At first sight, most tools of persuasion appear to be absent from Stanford’s promotional

ensemble: publications are printed using ordinary paper; there are no elaborate or

sophisticated graphics to grace its digital and print texts. Through the classic colours – black,

white and red – the institution conveys understatedness, even bordering on the drab. At work

here is an intertextuality which suggests that Stanford does not have to ‘brand’ itself through

arresting logos and bold colours. The absence of ‘hard sell’ and strongly persuasive ‘why

choose Stanford’ messages speaks to a selective group with certain desires and ambitions. Its

‘recruiting geography’ is an elite constituency which has the means to pay the yearly charges

of US$35, 000 to attend Stanford. It is possible too, that Stanford’s primary target is not the first

generation customer, and certainly not the ‘average’ young person. Possibly, the institution

seeks to promote and reproduce itself through its network of alumni and benefactors.

I encountered this ‘non-marketing’ orientation in my attempts to find out which part of the

university was involved in the coordination of international recruitment and marketing, with

several staff repeating the general mantra, “We don’t market”; “We have no need to market”;

“Students come to us”7. Although marketing and promotional activities appear to be

disavowed by the university, there are nonetheless, hints that some discreet recruitment and

promotional activity does take place, as this comment from a staff member from the I-Center

shows:

… I think Stanford does send people to certain schools and certain places in Europe and

Asia. Because I think that some schools are known to send a lot of students…there is a

school in Singapore that is known to send quite a lot of students here…

7. Excerpts from interviews with staff at from the Bechtel International Centre on 22 October 2000.


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Where an ordinary place-based university may focus on the local high school, for Stanford

international recruitment involves linking up with clusters of geographically dispersed feeder

schools, which include the networks of overseas American schools which cater to the

educational needs of American expatriates.

Kotler and Armstrong’s (1991) dictum that service marketers are noted for extravagant use of

physical imagery in their advertising while product marketers tend to use abstract ideas offers

some hints on the discursive constructions of this university (see Maguire, Ball and Macrae,

1999, p. 2). Any notions of the student as a customer who is purchasing an educational service,

is patently absent from Stanford’s promotional texts. The university does not perceive itself as

part of a service industry. Stanford is secure in the knowledge that it offers a particular type

of education, the benefits of which need no promotion or public explanation.

9.3.2 Education for Enterprise: Constructing the competitive, universal expert

These excerpts from the Stanford Business School’s website offers further glimpses of how the

university constructs itself and its students (See Figure 49):

Stanford Business School students come from all over the world. They have done every

type of job and activity imaginable. Students are competitive, but they benefit from a

supportive, cooperative environment. The Business School community provides ample

opportunities for students to share and learn from one another, as well as work closely

with a superb faculty (Stanford Business School, 2002).

Figure 49: Stanford Business School Website


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The lexical devices in this text suggest the Stanford Business School values competitiveness

which is constituted as a universal trait: “Students come from all over the world…Students are

competitive”. Presumably competitiveness has its limits and this is where the “superb”

“Business School faculty” step in to facilitate the creation of opportunities for “students to

share and learn from one another”. The Business School is constructed as having global

appeal. It attracts students who are geographically and occupationally dispersed: “they come

from all over the world” and “…have done every job and activity imaginable”. The intended

audience of prospective applicants is thus not only those working within the

Business/Economics/Commerce fields, but in any other ‘imaginable’ domain. The

suggestion is that Stanford’s Business credentials and its attendant knowledge can contribute

to virtually any “imaginable job or activity”. At work here is a discursive logic which seeks to

reproduce and consolidate the dispersion of ‘business’ rationalities into social relations and

practices in every geographical and occupational discursive domain.

Instrumental outcomes are important to this university, evident in habitual references in its

websites and brochures to the types of careers their graduates have achieved. The School of

Education for example, tells us that their doctoral graduates “become university faculty”, “do

research in for-profit and non-profit research firms”; are engaged in policy making roles in

college and universities or have “executive roles in colleges and universities” and in

“community or private foundations”.

Although the text discursively links education with work, the nuances of language are

manipulated to vest the agency for career success in the individual rather than the Stanford

credential. Here, an institutional prudence is discernible: the routes to career, economic and

personal success cannot be mapped by a linear route from Stanford credential to positional

goods. It is after all, a highly complex world and the university’s credential articulates with

other forms of cultural and social capital to negotiate the powerful and pervasive macro-social

forces of supply and demand in employment markets.

The School of Education’s Mission Statement offers further insights into the types of

subjectivities that the School seeks to construct:

Toward the ideal of enabling all people to achieve maximum benefit from their

educational experiences, the Stanford University School of Education seeks to be a

world leader in ground-breaking cross-disciplinary inquiry that shapes educational

practices, their conceptual underpinnings, and the professions that serve the enterprise.

The School also seeks to develop the knowledge, wisdom, and imagination of its

students to enable them to take leadership positions in efforts to improve the quality of

education around the globe (Stanford University School of Education, 2002).

This statement functions as a broad endorsement of human capital theory. It points to

articulations of power and knowledge which are premised on universalism, individualism

and instrumentalism. The Stanford credential is assumed to have universal use-values. By

implication, a presumption is made that educational needs across different spatialities are


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identical and that a homogeneous approach to educational quality will do. The Mission

Statement also constitutes and reinforces a governing or leadership subjectivity for its

graduands. Thus, they are “enabl[ed] to take leadership positions in efforts to improve the

quality of education around the globe”. There are no stated visions for educational equity or

social justice and no references to the need for cross cultural educational philosophies or

pedagogies. Neither is there acknowledgement of the constitutive role of power in shaping,

excluding, transmitting, and reproducing particular knowledges.

9.3.3 Living with the Other in the International University

Although the university appears to be encouraging diversity in its student body, it is not very

clear from official textual materials why this is a desirable outcome. This statement extracted

from the website link titled Campus Life embodies this ambivalence:

[The University] believes in the value of diversity and seeks a graduate student body

that is both highly qualified and diverse in terms of culture, class, ethnicity,

background, work and life experiences, skills and interests...African Americans,

Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Puerto Ricans as well as others whose

backgrounds and experience provide additional dimensions to the University’s

programs (Stanford University Registrar’s Office, 2002).

What is unarticulated is how diversity in the student body can “provide the additional

dimensions to the University’s programs”. Furthermore, an institutional desire for a

“graduate student body that is both highly qualified and diverse”, implies clear limits to

affirmative action initiatives. In other words, the desired subjectivity is the elite ‘other’ who

has the ‘right’ qualities to assimilate into Stanford’s sociocultural and academic milieu.

A clearer rationale for engagement with diversity is provided in this description of the

university’s liberal education programmes:

...an education that broadens the student’s knowledge and awareness in each of the

major areas of human knowledge...to understand the important ‘ways of knowing’ to

assess their strengths and limitations, their uniqueness, and no less important, what

they have in common with others…(Stanford University, 2000, p. 21).

There are hints here of an institutional acceptance of multiple ways of knowing. Also, a

suggestion that a Stanford education aims to steers its students away from narrow

specialisations by exposing students to different ideas and different ways of thinking. This is

commendable. However, a closer reading reveals the absence of an institutional recognition

and vision for new ways of ordering, producing, representing and applying knowledges that

are required in a world that is becoming global. The university’s emphasis is on an education

that focuses on “the important ways of knowing”. It is power and its myriad relations which

will ascertain what are the important ways of knowing. The discursive space for alternative

canons may well be present in the workings of the university, however, there is little attempt

to publicize this. Rather, there is a definitiveness in Stanford’s references to “the major areas


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of human knowledge”, which suggests an intertextuality which is informed by notions of a

singular, universal knowledge.

Less veiled in admitting to the tensions arising from self-other differences is Stanford’s

Orientation Handbook for International Graduate Students. I analyse a section titled, ‘How to

adjust successfully to a new culture and feel comfortable’, to identify how statements

discursively construct the intercultural encounter. Fairly early on, the Handbook warns of

‘culture shock’,

You may start to feel homesick, miss your family and friends, idealize your life back

home while being highly critical of life in the US...Some term this as culture shock and it

can include frustration,anxiety, anger, minor health problems, difficulty in forming new

friendships, lack of motivation, disruptions in eating and sleeping patterns... These are

natural reactions to living in a new culture (Bechtel International Centre, 2000, p. 10).

This statement ‘medicalises’ the turbulence of the intercultural encounter by alerting students

to the emotional and physical health problems arising from entry into a new cultural space.

The ‘stranger’, in this instance, the international student is also warned about

emotional-cognitive dissonance, which includes frustration, anxiety and a tendency to

“idealize your life back home while being highly critical of life in the U.S.” (ibid). A series of

‘suggestions’, framed in the imperative instructs students to “take responsibility to get

through this period”:

• Make contact with students and scholars from your home country.

• Ask questions. Most U.S. students are very willing to answer questions.

• Try not to evaluate and judge.

• Show openness and curiosity; be open to new experiences

• Show a sense of humour. If you can laugh at your mistakes it will ease your anxiety

(ibid, p. 11).

These statements locate the responsibility for intercultural understanding firmly in the hands

of the stranger-subject who is exhorted to ‘make contact’, ‘show openness’ and ‘humour’ and

ask questions of ‘willing’ U.S. students.

A subsequent section titled ‘American values and assumptions’ purports to offer advice on

American values as a means of promoting ‘adjustment’: “To help you adjust, we have

compiled a brief explanation of why Americans behave as they do”. A list of American values

follows: individualism and privacy, equality, achievement, informality and attitudes to the

future, change and progress:

The most important thing to understand about Americans is probably their devotion to

“individualism”. They have been trained since early in their lives to consider

themselves as separate individuals who are responsible for their situations in life and

their own destinities. They have not been trained to see themselves as members of a

close-knit family, tribe, religious group, nation or other collectivity (ibid, p. 12).


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The American subject emerges as a responsible, independent-minded individual who

exercises agency over her or his destiny. These statements do not acknowledge the tenacious

hold of American exceptionalism on the national psyche. It is beyond the scope of this study

to undertake a deconstruction of American nation-building and citizen-formation

technologies aside from noting that this statement celebrating the rugged American

individual clearly functions to neutralize any assumptions that ‘others’ may hold about

American nationalism and its military, political, and economic hegemony.

Not all constructions of the American subject in the Handbook are positive. This is evident, for

example, in references to their “superficial friendliness”, and a tendency to: “... sometimes

violate the ideal of equality in their daily lives, particularly in matters of interracial

relationships” (ibid, p. 12). However, such violations are constructed as occasional

transgressions (“sometimes”) rather than a reflection of a systemic and institutionalised

culture of violating the ‘other’. By far and large though, the nation and its people are

discursively constructed as progressive and dynamic: “They look ahead. They have the idea

that what happens in the future is within their control. They believe that people can change

most aspects of their physical and social environment” (ibid, p. 13). The future is not

problematised: the assumption being that there is only one future.

The statements in the Handbook also construct Americans as honest and hard-working by

using a collage of lexical items such as: “achievement-centred”; “hard workers”, “approach a

task conscientiously and persistently through to successful conclusion”. They are noted for

inspiring awe from foreigners: “Foreign visitors commonly remark that Americans work

harder than I expected them to”. Americans are “frank, open, direct in their dealings with

other people” (ibid). A number of statements work to consolidate the American subjectivity

by contrasting it with a less favourable ‘other’ who is not as wise as Americans in the use of

time, and not as authentic in the communication of emotions. Thus,“Americans are not taught

as people in many Asian countries are, that they should mask their emotional responses”. And

In their efforts to use their time wisely, Americans are sometimes seen by foreign

visitors as automatons, inhuman creatures who are so tied to their clocks and their

schedules that they cannot particiate in or enjoy the human interactions that are the

truly important in life. “ They are like little machines running around,” one foreign

visitor said”. For Americans, time is a “resource” that can be used well or poorly....The

future will not be better than the past or the present...unless people use their time for

constructive, future oriented tasks... One of the most difficult things many foreign

busines people and students must adjust to is the notion that time must be saved

whenever possible and used wisely every day (ibid, p. 14).

Importantly, these statements indicate a persistent rationalism with its attendant beliefs of

individualism and instrumentalism, depicted here in American understandings of time. In all,

the statements in the Handbook succeed in constructing an American subjectivity that is

‘wise’, dynamic and achievement-centred. American values emerge as culturally exceptional


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while a series of warnings and admonitions to the foreign student construct ‘foreign’ values

as problematic. In other words, American exceptionalism functions as a governmentality

which seeks to reinforce the uniqueness of American norms.

Leaving aside the textual constructions of the university for the moment, I analyse student and

staff narratives to examine how this international university facilitates transnational and

transcultural engagements, how complex (‘deep’) and enduring these engagements are, what

impact they have on student subjectivities and how they influence self-other relations in the

university.

As an expression of globalisation, international education can reasonably be read as altering

the experiences of proximity and social connectedness. Waters (2001, p. 5) typifies the stance

taken by many theorists who associate globalisation with transnational and transcultural

social relations: “...relationships between people in disparate locations will be formed as easily

as people in proximate ones”. Hence, we could reasonably expect that in an international

university like Stanford, with its seemingly ‘cosmopolitan’, intellectually ‘elite’ group of

people who are consumers of global symbols, signs and norms, that territorially defined

boundaries between people will be removed. People who speak a common language and who

have shared aspirations would surely find territorially constructed distinctions of self and

‘other’ unsatisfactory. However, my exploratory study suggests that perhaps there is a

contrast between what social theorists are saying about the impact of globalisation on

supraterritorial social relations and the accounts of international students and university staff.

The official perspective is that the presence of international students on campus provides rich

possibilities for interactions and the flow of cultural information. The university’s ethos, the

liberal education programmes it offers and residential arrangements were perceived to

support engagement with ‘the other’ as revealed by an International Student Advisor at the

I-Centre:

Undergraduate education is a very broad education where people are being exposed to

the whole world and are interested in something like cultural differences... A lot goes

on in the Residences...There are houses on campus that are designated the French

House, Italian House, House Europa, East House – where students study East Asia. I

think the university realises that the real education goes on in the Residences. And the

friendships that develop and so on (female, International Student Advisor).

To obtain priority status for a place at one of these ‘academic theme houses’, requires a level

of scholarly engagement with the discipline in question, although it is unclear what level of

competence is required. At La Casa Italiana, the requirement is to finish the entire first-year

Italian series. Similar requirements govern entry into East House (East Asian Studies) and La

Maison Francaise8.

Stanford’s two year liberal education requirement is perceived as facilitating openness:

“people are being exposed to the whole world and are interested in something like cultural


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difference”. Yet, barriers to intercultural relationships on campus were also identified. First,

there was a perception that international students tended to cluster together. The uneven

spread of graduate students in particular disciplines, was also held responsible for impeding

interactions across diverse student groups: “people may be working in a lab where there are

more international students than Americans...”. Overall, the implicit message is that social

agency for developing intercultural relationships lies with international students who were

perceived to be reticent about stepping out of their comfort zones. The I-Centre encouraged

international students to raise awareness about their cultures and their countries by

performing in cultural shows and by conducting seminars:

...we…work carefully with the student groups and we have a fund that encourages

student groups to put on programmes for the campus about their culture, and things

like a Persian film series….we have Indian dancers coming, a variety of cultural

programmes like this… We have an International Speakers Bureau, that we ask

international students if they are willing, to make a presentation in a classroom here, or

a high school classroom, or a local community programme…(International Student

Advisor, I-Centre).

Are these displays simply attempts at image management, ostensibly aimed at ‘showcasing’

cultural difference as a ‘spectacle’ featuring the display of ‘others’ on an imagined

cosmopolitan stage? (see Appadurai, 1996). Clearly by themselves these spectacles of self

display are not a sufficient indicator of institutional commitment to education about

difference and otherness. It is not entirely clear here what the institutional position is,

although comments like the following hint that the possibilities offered by international

education for transcultural exchanges may not be fully appreciated by Stanford’s leaders:

…sometimes universities think of globalisation as their relationships overseas... And I

think the challenge is to help universities to see that in fact, the international students

on our campus are a very important aspect of globalisation ...Our students don’t have

to go overseas to talk and have in-depth conversations with students from other

countries…(ibid).

Doubts about this international university’s effectiveness as a site for learning about cultural

and social diversity resurfaced in interviews with international students. Their accounts point

to the enduring symbolisms of national identities which they argue are framed by broader

politico-economic factors and which manifest in asymmetrical relations amongst the

American and non-American student body. These asymmetries are premised on and affirm

insider/outsider binaries and as such reduce the possibilities for building a supraterritorial

community.

8. The requirements for priority residence is: twenty units of courses in East Asian Studies, a declared a major or minor in East Asian Studies; or significant living experience in Asia and have made a written commitment to share this knowledge with EAST House in a manner approved by the Resident Fellows and the Academic Theme Associates”. Similar requirements to that of the other academic theme houses are in place for La Maison Française, described as ‘the oldest academic theme house’. See http://www.stanford.edu/group/resed/row/italiana/life/info.htm


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The students that I interviewed for this study included three Chinese-Singaporeans of whom

two were females, (Mei-ling and Yoke Lan), and one male (Michael); a Malay-Malaysian

female student (Salmah), and a Hong Kong Chinese female student who was born in

Indonesia and completed a large part of her education in Toronto, Canada (Moira) 9. While

conceding that some of their international student peers were more concerned with acquiring

a high status educational credential as a means to acquire positional goods, their own

motivation to study overseas was more complex and included a curiousity to live and study

in another cultural setting. They had not arrived with the intention of re-constructing home

and community at Stanford and as such they tried to avoid clustering with their own

national/cultural group:

...because that kind of defeats the purpose of starting out on any exploratory or

discovery journey… If you wanted to do that you could have stayed at home…

(Salmah, female, Malaysian student)

How did this group of students experience transcultural and transnational relations in this

elite, American university renowned for its international reputation? All five reported

experiencing significant barriers in their social relationships with Caucasian Americans in

comparison with their relations with students from the international community and ‘Asian

Americans’. They saw their daily interactions and social relations with Americans as indexed

by power relations which they attributed to an American disinterest in the non-American

world. Targetted for criticism was a strongly insular orientation which they perceived as

“extreme ignorance” of the global, including their cultures and their countries. Their

comments suggest that even though geographical distances had been obliterated by

on-campus living and studying arrangements, these spatial barriers had managed to re-assert

themselves into the social spaces of this international university. Here are some comments

made by the international students which describe intercultural interactions on campus:

… where is Singapore exactly? Do you have McDonald’s in Singapore? And do you

speak English in Singapore? (Michael, Singaporean Chinese)

It was orientation day… Because international students arrived first and I pretty much

knew where things are. And there is this… this… hick. from Illinois ! I don’t know

where !…. They were looking for the bookstore and I overheard them. I went and told

them and she is, like, ‘you speak English? ‘Yes’. ‘You speak good English! Where are

you from? I [said] am from Hong Kong....‘Oh, Hong Kong ! I have been to Hiroshima

and Tokyo too’... They didn’t even know that I was from Hong Kong. Just because I

look Chinese... (Moira, Hong Kong and Canadian nationality, born Indonesia).

9. All names have been changed. Michael, Mei-ling, Yoke Lan and Salmah were recipients of private sec-tor scholarships. Salmah, Yoke Lan and Moira could quite reasonably be classified ‘cosmopolitan’. They were well-travelled and multilingual, had attended school in different countries and counted themselves as part of several different spatial communities.


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Thus, while this group of international students may have been motivated to acquire

‘exposure’ to different worlds, ideas and people it cannot be assumed that their American

peers held the same expectations. When read against the ‘othering’ statements of the

Handbook, these student narratives suggest that the nation-state (America), continues to shape

commonsense understandings of ‘outsiders’ or ‘strangers’ from ‘other’ territorial spaces. The

discourse of American exceptionalism (‘America’s manifest destiny as world leader’)

described in Chapter Five, is expressed not only in media discourses and in popular culture,

but also in the social spaces of this international university where it reaffirms boundaries

between the American nation-state and ‘others’.

Notably, personal interpretations of globalisation revealed an awareness by the students of

spatially differentiated power relations which not only span the world of international

relations, but are also expressed within Stanford. The students made references to unequal

cultural transactions, to “economic and military power” and to “cultural imperialism” when

describing globalisation. They observed technology as having limitations in establishing

relations with the ‘other’: “technology…allows you to bring people closer together but only if

the people want to.…Its your choice”. In short, they understood globalisation to be a process

indexed by uneven power relations.

As I noted in Chapter Six, in the geopolitical chess games of the Cold War era, Singapore

proved itself to be a keen supporter of America. Today its romance continues, notably in the

discursive domain of higher education, where there is an official commitment to adopt an

‘American mindset’ (Cohen, 1997). However, the responses of the Singaporean students

outlined below dispel any notions that they may be passive, inert subjects whose imaginations

have been colonised by ideoscapes of American exceptionalism:

I think it is quite hard not to be bombarded by American culture…I mean that… it is the

dominant thing, power...Basically…everything is derived from their economic and

military power. That gives them…They can say what they want-lah. Basically. Because

they are rich and powerful...Right ? (Michael, Singaporean-Chinese student)

But you don’t see America being bombarded by Indian culture right?

(Yoke Lan, Singaporean-Chinese female).

In an era of globalisation it is very important to be aware what is going on in the world.

Even if it is Pakistan or Cambodia. I find it fascinating how uninterested they are in

international affairs...They are so insular. It really baffles me completely…But we were

not put here to educate them, so…I think the whole insularity and the

inward-lookingness is just not healthy… (Mei-Ling, Singaporean female)

In short, the students’ views do not suggest a passive, compliant and inert subjectivity which

is entirely accepting of broader geopolitical power relations. Rather, the experiences of living

and studying in America had demystified the country, its people and the ideals associated


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with it. This was evident in the terms and phrases used to describe America: “protectionist”,

“glorified”, “propaganda”:

My dorm-mate came out with the most stupid thing, ‘ What does it matter? America is

always right anyway...’ I think he was saying it partly in jest but he was saying it

because I was saying something completely irrefutable.

Because it is the propaganda… I think it is because, America is such a big power and

they have done such a good job. Like the last century was Britain’s century and this one

is America’s. They have done a really good job… (Mei-Ling, Singaporean-Chinese)

Interestingly, American exceptionalism and its superpower status was associated as a

historically specific phase, the implicit assumption being that it would pass:

...Like in Britain’s century you had all this colonialism… like Hong Kong and

outposts… In the American century, everyone just wants to adapt…adopt their

values…(Moira, Hong Kong student)

Yet, as with most cultural transactions between different national and social groups, the

exchanges experienced by these students during overseas study, yielded disjunctions and

ambivalences. These contradictory impulses were evident in the students’ keen appreciation

of American economic achievements along with their desire to emulate these achievements

despite their reservations about American values and ideologies.

...if you look at the Internet boom and all these entrepreneurial things…’we are going

to achieve the world’.. and amazon dot com… and even how their country started...I

think that is something that Asia can do with. And it is something that you can’t do by

giving a billion dollars and a technopreneur fund or 10 million dollars and a life

science fund... So…that is very interesting (Yoke Lan, Singaporean female)

The rationalities which delivered the ‘Internet boom’ and ‘entrepreneurial things’ are

accorded the status of received wisdom: “that is something that Asia can do with”.

Furthermore, globalizing flows and processes are considered ‘natural’ and ‘evolutionary’;

delivering changes to beliefs:

...I think a lot of people will be confronted with their beliefs, when they interact with

other people…they will be forced to change. Like how in Malaysia and Singapore, they

are saying that westernisation is a bad things… but I think that it is just a natural

process…like it’s evolutionary…(Salmah, Malay-Malaysian female)

In their entirety, these accounts raise the possibility that self-other identifications are still

being defined by territoriality, despite the considerable mobility enjoyed by people including

this intellectually elite group of international students. As I detailed in my analysis of the

Handbook for International Graduate Students, international students are discursively

constructed as ‘others’ from a less developed spatiality, through comparisons with

‘achievement-centred’, ‘responsible’, ‘independent-minded’ ‘hard working’, efficient

Americans. It is against this backdrop that a remoulding of student subjectivities takes place.


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It is entirely possible in some cases, for this remoulding to take the form of a renationalisation

of student subjectivities. In the case of this group of students though, the subjectivity

reconfigurations that have arisen from studying overseas appear to have involved greater

engagements with the responsibilities of critical citizenship, rather than the consolidations of

ethnocultural and nationalist reifications. This was particularly evident in the case of the two

Singaporean women who were sceptical of their government injunctions against

“westernisation”, and its attempts to steer their thinking on a range of issues. They recognised

and resisted the use of an ‘East versus West’ discourse, as a means of steering them towards

loyal and nationalistic subject positions:

If you talk about it in terms of core values, the way that we behave…I don’t think that

we are that westernised….What they are afraid about is that we are suddenly going to

think for ourselves and that is what we are going to learn from overseas… Yes, maybe

that is something to be afraid of ! Yes, that is what they don’t want …for us to think for

ourselves ! (Yoke Lan, Singaporean female)

There were other signs of resistance to normative values within their home countries:

...that is something I would like to change about Singapore. I would like young people

to make a difference. That they would go out and distribute flyers and put out notices

on the internet. Like we want to save the spotted salamander…That would be cool.

Instead of saying I want to make…a five figure salary ! (Mei-Ling, Singaporean female)

Like in very local Hong Kong culture,...they go along with whatever is popular ! Let’s

say in Japan, whatever is popular, whatever is popular in the U.S. … and…people

won’t open up to other alternatives…like… ‘people are going to do that…let’s do that !.’

I want them to think for themselves...what is right for them…I want them to be more

individual…(Moira, female, Hong Kong)

These accounts can be read as a broad resistance to the market-like subjectivities and

politically passivity that predominates in the hypercompetitive, commercially oriented

societies of Hong Kong and Singapore. As I noted in Chapter Six, the 5 C’s (credit card, cash,

condominium, car, country club membership) constitute the grid against which success is

evaluated in the Singaporean context. For Moira, the desire for self-determination and

individualism is realizable by rejecting conformism and hyperconsumption. The small sample

of students interviewed for this study means that any conclusions which arise are necessarily

provisional. This stated, there are suggestions from these narratives that the experience of

studying overseas can influence the development of a new student subjectivity which is

critical of norms encountered in the home and host countries – insularity, conformism,

hyperconsumption and authoritarianism.

In summarising, three sets of conclusions can be drawn from this snaphot of Stanford

University. First, my analysis of institutional micropractices suggest an international

university which operates within a broader discursive field of American exceptionalism.


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International students are constructed as ‘external others’ whose subjectivities are compared

somewhat unfavourably with the individuated qualities of the American subject. Similarly, an

archaeological reading of Stanford’s promotional discourses problematises the notion that

transcultural exchanges as inevitable. Student ethnoscapes do not necessarily enable

ideational synergies, particularly not on the parts of hegemons who are secure in their

positions of relative dominance. This is supported by the international students’ observations

that broader social, cultural, historical and geographical contexts were pivotal in how they

were perceived and how they participated in on-campus networks.

Here, Cadman’s (2000) and Smart, Volet and Ang’s (2000) observations that the difference and

diversity within intercultural encounters often yields a performative indifference are

instructive. For the American ‘hosts’, this indifference functions to reinforce their position of

relative dominance. For international students, the same indifference enables them to manage

the turbulence of the intercultural encounter, to retain their ‘core values’ and to resist

ethnocentric stereotyping. Amin and Hausner’s (1997) caution to attend to the qualitative

features of networks is worth keeping in mind. Thus, networks vary according to the

behavioural rationality of their actors, their situatedness or contextuality and the relative

strengths of ties and power relations between their different nodal points.

In spite of official pronouncements on the value of diversity within the university, the

dominance of a discourse of American exceptionalism functions to reinforce self-other

binaries. Against this backdrop, the possibilities of reconstituting subjectivities which express

supraterritorial or postnational imaginations may not achieve realization. So, although both

globalisation and international education are rhetorically framed as contributing towards a

dissolution of boundaries, institutional micropractices and student narratives suggest that

‘geographies of differences’ remain, and that these are profoundly influential on social

relations within Stanford. To some extent transnational and transcultural flows are impeded

by discursive practices which fix international students into imagined spatial identities. This

‘fixing’ can take myriad forms – one such form was featured in Moira’s indignant account of

being categorized as Chinese and by extension, as a non-English speaking person.

Furthermore, phrases such as ‘foreign student’, which abound in official terminology work to

reinforce this subject position of ‘outsider’.

Yet, being ordered into a ‘stranger/outsider’ category also provides a space for resistance to

American norms as this comment suggests:

I think there is some kind of bond [between international students]. Just to know that a

lot of things will probably strike the two of you as being somewhat misplaced and

being able to vocalise that...is very reassuring. And not having to confirm to the general

bias... (Salmah, Malay-Malaysian)

The paradoxes and contradictions of transcultural and transnational exchanges that

Appadurai (1996) describes so elegantly are also mirrored here in the students’ desires for an

American education. Although critical of American “insularity”, nevertheless they have been


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impelled to study in a high status American university. As consumers, they regard the

Stanford University credential to be an ‘immutable mobile’: it is sufficiently stable and robust

to be able to move through multiple contexts without losing its legitimacy and authority. More

importantly, the Stanford credential is seen to retain its exchange value and as such continues

to offer access to positional goods as it moves across spatialities. Clearly then, these productive

dimensions to the overseas study sojourn are attractive, despite the phenomenological

disjunctions experienced and identified by the students.

A second finding that arises from this analysis of micropractices concerns the persistence of

the instrumentalist theme in Stanford’s constructions of higher education. There are few

concrete indicators that the university is providing a discursive space for alternative

knowledges, and educational visions. Notably absent are vision statements which seek to

challenge the reigning episteme of rationalism and its manifest discourses of instrumentalism

and individualism. Questions about the values, beliefs, assumptions and ideologies

underpinning this epistemological orientation are left unexplored. Stanford constructs the

educated subject as an individual who is ‘competitive’ and who has acquired “the knowledge,

wisdom and imagination...to take leadership positions in efforts to improve the quality of

education around the globe”10. Understood in Foucauldian terms, the power/knowledge

relations that are supported and sustained through Stanford’s promotional micropractices are

resonant with the values of individualism, competitiveness and American exceptionalism. As

such these values suggest a discursive continuity with a neoliberal ideology.

My third set of concluding comments concerns the discursive practices which function to

brand Stanford as an elite university and which contradict contemporary conceptualisations

of higher education as a service enterprise. Stanford’s prospectus and information brochures

are not image-building tools of persuasion aimed at building name recognition. Its reputation

is secure and it does not have to market itself as a ‘brand’. It has already defined the students

it seeks. In a discursive field noted for ‘enrolment consultants’, ‘recruitment specialists’ and

‘college marketing companies’, where positions such as Provost of University Enrolment exist,

and where publications like the Journal of College Admission and the Journal of Higher

Education Marketing aim to produce a science of marketing, Stanford stands aloof from the

herd of universities striving for competitive advantage by aggressive marketing. It does not

need to employ geo-demographic data, personality inventories or statistical tools to find the

students it wants. It is part of a qualitatively different network (see Sevier, 2000; Hite and

Yearwood, 2001; also Marginson, 1997c).

From this west coast, private and elite university, I now examine the promotional discourses

of an American public university, the Stony Brook branch of the State University of New York.

All the State Universities of New York enjoy a high profile in Singapore although Stony

Brook’s sibling at Buffalo is the more popular choice among Singaporeans.

10. See Mission Statement (Stanford University School of Education, 2002).


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9.4 Negotiating Distances

Three days after my interviews at Stanford, I travel to the east coast of America. On an autumn

November morning, I arrive at the Penn Station in New York to catch the train to Long Island.

What I perceive to be poor signposting, the absence of monitors on the platforms and virtually

no railway staff in sight, sees me waiting at the wrong platform. I miss the Long Island Rail

Road service. Secure in the knowledge that there are nearly three hours before my interview,

and labouring under the illusion that a major public university close to one of the world’s

largest metropolises will be well serviced by public transport, I decide to wait for the next train

only to find out that it runs bi-hourly. I will miss my 11.30 a.m. appointment. I ring the

university to apologise and try to re-schedule my appointments. “Oh, that train. Yes, I missed

it too on my first day at work What about 1 p.m. then? You will be here by then”. I locate the

right platform, dose myself with caffeine to calm my nerves and prepare to wait.

This time I have more luck with rail staff and Eric, a Caucasian American assures me that I am

waiting at the right platform. “Born and raised in New York”, he gives me his opinions of the

oncoming election. “I think Hilary Clinton will lose. I don’t like her. She should just go back

to Arkansas because this is New York and we don’t appreciate the likes of her“. What about

her policies? Isn’t she campaigning for more affordable health care for working Americans?

Eric is unimpressed and states that he will cast his vote for the Republican candidate who is a

‘real’ New Yorker. He couldn’t afford a college education but hopes that his children will be

able to get the education he didn’t.

The train passes through magnificent country-side; the trees dotting the landscape are

shrouded in golden autumnal shades. Aesthetically, it is a long distance from the squalor of

the tenderloin district of SOMA. Every house that I see is tastefully large and surrounded by

spacious grounds. Eric returns to join me. He is very curious about Australia, about working

conditions which he has heard are good. He also tells me that his father does not have health

insurance cover because he is a blue-collar worker.

9.5 The State University of New York at Stony Brook (SUNY)

The State University of New York (SUNY) is a state (public) university, which is located in

four different sites: Richmond, Buffalo, Albany and Stony Brook. My case study of the

university’s Stony Brook campus is an ‘accidental’ choice prompted by my minuscule

fieldwork budget and the offer of free accommodation in New York. This deciding factor,

coupled with the prompt response from staff at this university, led me to include SUNY Stony

Brook in my study.

Stony Brook was established in 1957 and in 1962 moved to its present campus on Long Island.

In 2000/2001, the University enrolled 17,831 students, of which 1,700 were international

students. Aspiring to be a major research university, it points to its success in attracting

external research funds of US$100 million in 2000/2001 (SUNY Stony Brook, 2001c). It is this


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aspiration which has led Stony Brook to brand itself as “The University with a Mind of its

Own”.

International student fees contribute a modest revenue to the university’s budget,

approximately US$8 million11. Not all the students classified as ‘foreign students’ at Stony

Brook are fee paying students. A significant proportion of its doctoral students, particularly

those in the technosciences and biomedical sciences are scholarship recipients. In this respect,

Stony Brook reflects the norm among American research universities: the recruitment of

international students is not run along the commercial lines favoured by British and

Australian universities. The recruitment of international students is more likely to be regarded

as furthering longer-term American foreign policy and economic objectives, than providing

short-term cash injections for cash strapped institutions. In the 1998/1999 academic year,

approximately 46% of international graduate students at American research universities were

supported by their university (IIE, 1999).

9.5.1 Harvesting Knowledge Goods: The International Student as Human Capital

Like many American universities, Stony Brook targets international [post]graduates rather

than undergraduates. This decision is governed by the university’s academic priorities, as this

comment from the university’s Dean of Graduate Studies indicates:

...we find that the interest from domestic students in going into the physical and

applied sciences is way down. They have halved. In those disciplines… they are only

kept alive by international students.

Describing the university’s strategy as “arm chair marketing”, the Dean noted: “we have lots

of international applicants without doing very much. Twenty years ago we had no Chinese

students and now we have 500-600”. Advertising to attract international students is the

exception rather than the rule due to the considerable costs involved in advertising. When it

does take place, careful attention is given to where advertisements should be placed. For

example, in a drive to recruit PhD students in the biological sciences, the university placed an

advertisement in the New Scientist magazine. A budget of US$50,000, described as

“shoe-string” by the Dean of Graduate Studies is provided by the Provost’s Office and this

represents approximately half the cost of producing its prospectuses, which are available in

both print and electronic formats.

As with Stanford University, Stony Brook does not produce brochures specifically for the

international student market. Generic brochures are produced for undergraduate and Masters

level students, while department-specific prospectuses are produced for doctoral students:

“Choosing a place to do a PhD is a serious business…generic brochures don’t make much

sense for PhD students…[these]... give an outline of faculty expertise and interest”.

11. Interview with Dean of Graduate Studies, 27 October 2000.


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The layout of the promotional brochures for Stony Brook’s doctoral programmes is indicative

of the university’s desire to attract the ambitious and enterprising researcher. More than half

the brochure (i.e. 18 pages out of a 33 page prospectus) is devoted to describing the profiles of

the university’s academic staff (see SUNY Stony Brook, 2001a). The aim is clear: to promote

Stony Brook’s academic capital as a means of increasing its critical mass of talented and

ambitious doctoral students, wherever they may hail from. Portrait-style photographs of the

culturally diverse, international academic staff feature along with descriptions of their

research interests and their contact details (See Figure 50).

Postgraduate international students in market-attractive disciplines are considered valued

human capital. Their research is expected to yield knowledge goods for the university and

therein lies their attractiveness12. Although the higher education system in the U.S. is largely

local or national in its orientation and focus, it is not averse to overseas recruitment to acquire

the requisite human capital for furthering the aims of a knowledge-based economy. To this

end, a political rationality is at work which over-rides local trends and idiosyncracies to

ensure national and institutional competitiveness in the face of global forces:

Much of the very best science gets done by graduate students, many of whom are from

overseas…A lot of these people are supported on federally funded research

finance…Some may say that our mission is primarily to train PhDs with particular

emphasis on citizens in the USA. We don’t think that that makes much sense because

we are competing in a world system...(Dean, male)

Figure 50: Distinguished Faculty

12. As discussed in Chapter One, the desirability of knowledge goods lies in their status as intellectual property with market value. Knowledge goods can include patents, copyrighted publications, soft-ware and so on (see Marginson, 1997a, p. 38).


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The British-educated Dean, who is from a family of British academics, compared American

higher education policies with the rest of the Anglophone world, noting:

It is a good deal for the U.S., I mean you get…all the way through the Bachelor’s Degree

at somebody’s expenses. And then you pick the very brightest in to do a PhD for 5 years

and then they go on to start up a multimillion dollar company or some ‘dot com’ or

work in health care or work in universities…So we are getting the very brightest people

around…

These statements are illustrative of the power/knowledge relations which not only constitute

the political economy of research and development but also shape the recruitment of

international students. In this case, the recruitment of valued foreign human capital is

prompted by a national desire to build a more competitive economy. America’s research

enterprise draws heavily from the intellectual labour of non-Americans because they are a

readily accessible and presumably cheap pool of talent. Staying competitive in a world system

is a primary consideration which overrides the responsibility to nurture and develop ‘local’

talent. At the same time, an ‘internal market’ is operational in selective, market-desirable

disciplines, which forces Stony Brook to compete with other American universities for

talented graduate students. Those students at the ‘high end’ of human capital are in a position

to benefit from the competitive dynamics of this internal market:

…it’s market driven as much as anything else. Every other American school is offering

the same thing. So, if you are going for the high end students, the students from the best

university in China…whatever…they know that they are getting offered free tuition

plus a stipend everywhere they apply in the U.S. and…they compare how much they

get offered. This year in Molecular Biology we pay $ 18, 000 salary after we pay the

tuition fees. That is income. I think that the rest of the Anglophone world will have a

very tough time competing for those kind of students (Dean, male).

It is this emphasis on the international student as valued human capital which informs Stony

Brook’s promotional discourses. Unlike much of the Australian place branding discourse

which focuses on beaches and wildlife attractions, Stony Brook’s drawcard is its proximity to

a grid of academic capital. It markets itself as an intellectual hub which is part of a network

which features “renowned” research institutions like the Cold Springs Harbour Laboratory.

Much is made of the “rich and informal interactions” assumed to occur with large

concentrations of scholars in a small geographical area:

...east of Stony Brook is the Brookhaven National Laboratory, an internationally known

centre of research in physics, biology, chemistry and other disciplines, ...To the west... is

Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, well known for its excellence in the biomedical

sciences...Long Island region [where Stony Brook is based] is home to growing

electronics and biotechnology companies. Many of these have been started by Stony

Brook faculty and maintain close ties with the university...Stony Brook is fortunate to be

close to two New York cities which provide…countless opportunities for

collaborations... (SUNY Stony Brook, 2001a, p. 6).


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A cluster of statements within its promotional literature, function to position Stony Brook as

the ‘centre’ of research and development, with little acknowledgement of the contributions of

its international partners. Rather, it is the institution’s ‘leadership role’ in the international

arena which is celebrated: “We play leadership roles in the international search for the top

quark in particle physics, the molecular basis for genetic forms of diabetes, the cause of Lyme

disease, and the psychological causes of domestic violence” (SUNY Stony Brook, 2001b, p.3).

Like Stanford, there is an emphasis on the instrumental dimensions of learning, evident in a

series of statements which work to highlight the education-economy symbiosis: “Stony Brook

graduates find that their schooling has prepared them to find places in the world of work”;.

“Schools and divisions enjoy long-standing partnerships with local and regional businesses”;

“Students gain work experience, make useful business contacts, and have an edge when

leaving their coursework behind” (ibid, p. 4).

Frequent references to league table rankings in Stony Brook’s promotional literature are

instructive of an institutional rationality which takes its market profile seriously (see SUNY

Stony Brook, 2002):

The university generated more than $11 million dollars in royalties licensed to industry,

edging out Harvard as 12th among colleges and universities nationwide in 1998.

Stony Brook is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a Type 1 research university –

the highest distinction granted to fewer than 2 % of all colleges and universities

nationwide.

A study published by the John Hopkins University Press (The Rise of American

Research Universities), place Stony Brook among the top three public research

universities in the country – second only to the University of California at Berkeley and

tied for second with the University of California, Santa Barbara – in research per faculty

member.

Stony Brook faculty rank 12th nationwide among their academic colleagues on “citation

impact” – the frequency with which their work is cited by other scientists.

These pronouncements construct an institutional subjectivity which is competitive,

market-savvy and claims membership in the club of elite American public universities. Much

has been written about the use of market analogies to construct audit criteria and thereafter to

evaluate a university performance’s against these criteria. Such criteria work as technologies

of government to steer academics (faculty) towards market-economic behaviours (Badley,

1998; Ball, 2000; Rose, 1999a) Not only do these technologies of government shape the

subjectivities of individual staff but they also produce new institutional structures which are

lean, fit and ‘flexible’ while simultaneously producing epistemological shifts in the

university’s teaching and research activities (Lemke, 2001, pp. 202-203). The resultant

governmentality tends to marginalise the more abstract, albeit critical functions of the


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international university, including those that impinge on its civic responsibilities (see

Halliday, 1999).

9.6 Expand Your Universe: Engaging with the Other

Expand Your Universe is a generic promotional brochure produced by the Office of

Undergraduate Admissions. Its objective is to provide an overview of the disciplines taught

and researched at Stony Brook. The front cover of Expand Your Universe carries the profile of a

female student. A constellation of stars is projected onto her head (See Figure 51). The

describing text inside the brochure states:

Swirling inside the head of Jennifer Jacobs, class of ’97, is a photo of the most distant

objects ever seen in space. Recently discovered by Stony Brook professors Kenneth

Lanzetta and Amos Yahil and a colleague from Spain, the galaxies are so far away that

they may have existed when the universe had been barely born (SUNY Stony Brook,

2001b, p. 1).

Here, a series of enunciative practices construct an uneven positioning of the subjects of

discourse. Thus, Jennifer Jacobs, a ‘97 student and two Stony Brook professors Kenneth

Lanzetta and Amos Yahil are provided with an identity and a legitimacy not conferred to the

Spanish researcher (“a colleague from Spain”). By default, the exceptional American effort is

consolidated.

The attractiveness of studying a course of uncertain market value – “far away galaxies” – is

increased by discursively linking the study of galaxies to science, space exploration and

American exceptionalism. Set against the background of the ‘space race’, a course of dubious

market value is rapidly elevated to front-page status. The image of a young woman with stars

in her head, could be read in a number of ways, not all positively. For example, as a signifier

Figure 51: Promoting Stony Brook


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of frivolity, or alternatively, to construct the student as a space-cadet. However, the

university’s position as a institution of learning and research reduces the image’s ambiguity.

The use of stars as a promotional metaphor also elevates students into the subject position of

‘star’ discoverer and innovator.

Unlike Stanford’s brochures, Expand Your Universe is packed with images of a diverse student

body and diverse faculty in terms of gender and ethnicity/culture. Phenotypically diverse

Stony Brook faculty are described as “Stimulants of the First Rank” and are pictured along

with a list of awards they have won. As with the brochures promoting doctoral programmes,

the captions accompanying the images suggest a university keen to showcase its

multidisciplinary and multicultural talent (SUNY Stony Brook, 2001b, pp. 4-5).

A bold institutional effort to link cultural diversity with excellence is less successful, leaving

more to imagination than to elaboration:

At Stony Brook we believe diversity is a necessity for intellectual excellence. Since a

third of our graduate enrollees are African American, Latino, Native American, and

international students, our university is a place where cultures converge for the mutual

enrichment of all (SUNY Stony Brook, 2001d, p. 7).

The construction of a text population of myriad ‘others’ – international students and

America’s ‘internal others’ ends up being discursively provocative. There is an implicit

suggestion here of a shared subject position of ‘outsider’. All are assumed to belong together

under the category of “diversity on campus” despite having spatially different origins and

cultures. Perhaps they share a position of being outside a Caucasian-American sociocultural

normativity. The diversity on campus theme appears several times in numerous other sites,

although like the Stanford prospectus, there is the merest of hints that the aim is to recruit a

high achieving ‘other’: “high achieving students from underrepresented groups”, rather than

to institute a bold affirmative action programme.

A less ambiguous and more positive institutional attitude to international students is

discernible in Stony Brook’s literature for international students, suggesting a markedly

different attitude in comparison to the impressions created by the Stanford materials. The

International Student Services website, pictured in Figure 52, carries numerous suggestions

for “making a smooth transition to American life” and “having an exciting and rewarding stay

in Stony Brook”. Positioned next to the university’s logo is a colonial map of the world with

Great Britain positioned as the centre of the world. A minor detail, perhaps, but nonetheless

indicative of the resilience of imperial cartography.

Importantly, the hectoring style found in Stanford’s materials on how to adjust to American

ways, is absent. However, links to the web site Guide for New International Students reveal a

change in language from a chatty and informal tone to a more impersonal, bureaucratic

register, with references to lengthy checklists of required pre-arrival documentation, visa and

health requirements and proof of finances. The references to immigration and financial


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matters are particularly salient. In all, the impression that is created here is that mobility sans

papier is not available to the many who aspire to leave the third world (Bauman, 1998, p. 87).

National boundaries remain firmly in place and the ‘average’ international student will

require an ensemble of documentary evidence to successfully negotiate these boundaries.

Stony Brook’s Host Family Programme, which is offered by the International Student Services

office, offers an insight into how self-other relations are understood and reinforced by the

university13:

The majority of international students are in graduate programs with high academic

aspirations and achievement. They are bright, talented young men and women from

different countries who will generally be in positions of leadership upon return to their

home country…(SUNY Stony Brook, 2000).

Here, a statement seeks to construct the international student as a member of an intellectually

elite group, illustrated by the use of such lexical choices as “bright, talented’, “high aspirations

and achievement”. The American host is constructed as diplomat, pastoral carer and friend.

Figure 52: Stony Brook’s International Services Web Site

13. I have selected the Host Family Programme which commenced about 25 years go for analysis as it is a programme which has the potential to develop social capital networks between international students and Americans. The Programme recruits families, single people, and couples from the community. The frequency of contact varies with the parties involved and can be anything from sporadic to regular.


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The benefits of hosting an international student are described in reciprocal and

non-instrumental terms using lexical devices such as ‘respect’, ‘friendships’ and so on.

You can fulfil the mission of a private ambassador for a better future when international

students experience your warmth, and acceptance in the community...Long-time host

families will tell you that some of their warmest memories are of times spent with their

international student and of the rewarding experience of developing long-lasting

friendships in the process...

Children who have contacts with international students are more aware of the world

around them and will be able to use such experiences to their advantage as they learn to

respect and interact with people with different ideas, practices and values.

However, as the female Assistant Dean for International Affairs observed:

… most of our [international] students don’t participate in this programme...Students…

think they don’t need to, or think that they are going to be too busy and a lot of our

graduate students that sign up for the host family programme really do become too

busy with research and do have enough friends and so on not to feel that they want to

maintain that contact.

Commenting on the on-campus intercultural exchanges, she noted:

I don’t think that we do enough actively to help that kind of interaction. I think it is

more by luck and chance than by sheer number of opportunities for students to mix.

Other comments challenge the prevailing notion that the friction of nationality,

culture/ethnicity and language can be eliminated simply by being at the same place at the

same time. Furthermore, the economic and political rationalities underpinning international

education were perceived to be impediments to attempts to reconfigure self-other relations on

campus:

What really drives it [international education] in this country…the strongest selling

point for international education...It’s more about learning other people’s customs so

that we can continue to have the upper hand in the global economy. I mean, that is the

bottom line and the harsher reality. If Congress for example, is going to call for an

International Education Week, it would be, ‘Americans need to learn other languages so

that they can compete in the global marketplace’. It is not because they can make

friends with other people.

A list of barriers to transcultural relations are noted including: workload demands on

international students who have strict time-lines for completing their studies, vastly different

communication styles and a desire to remain within culturally comfortable groups where

dissonance from the failed intercultural encounter is less likely (“...a comfortable place to find

folks from your country...make fewer mistakes.”), and finally, different expectations of

friendships (“a lot of students encounter false friendliness from Americans that doesn’t have

anything behind it”). Finally, there is the matter of the host students who may have been


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socialised to accept assimilation as the norm, and thus bring this expectation to their

intercultural interactions:

The American way is…that everybody will come here and learn English and learn our

way…So everyone will do things our way and everything will be our way…

(Assistant Dean, International Services).

Personal interpretations of globalisation held by both the Dean and Assistant Dean raise the

possibility of an American-inspired homogeneity. The plural challenges and possibilities

offered by the cultural dimensions of globalisation do not receive a mention:

Globalisation sounds like maybe, something that is OK. It is hard to be against

something that is ‘world this’ and ‘world that’. But I think that it is more of a

development of a pervasive one-culture…Definitely the American culture…

(Dean of Graduate Studies, male, white, British).

Globalisation ? From my perspective it means exchanging ideas or goods across

regional boundaries and cultural boundaries. So, it is like everything looking like plain

vanilla in the end... (Assistant Dean, female, International Services).

In summarising, several points can be made about how Stony Brook discursively constructs

itself. First and in comparison to Stanford, there is an increased promotional emphasis on

constructing the university as a user-friendly, welcoming and receptive institution. The

brochures illustrate this student-centredness textually through the use of accessible language,

diverse typefaces and quirky textual constructions of knowledge and learning. For example

by using cartoons to establish discursive links between the abstract world of university

knowledge and everyday life. Also, the use of student testimonials, the larger ratio of images

of people to images of buildings, captions such as ‘Taking Students Seriously’ and ‘A

Stimulating Environment’, all work to construct Stony Brook as a student-friendly institution.

The sole exception to the cheerful, student-centred information is the Guide for New

International Students where bureaucratic demands such as visa and financial requirements

have produced an impersonal and didactic tone.

Second, in terms of facilitating engagements with the ‘other’, the stridently ethnocentric tone

found in some of Stanford University’s promotional materials is absent. However, traces of

the discourse of American exceptionalism are evident in archaeological readings of Stony

Brook’s promotional literature. There are hints of an institutional desire to build an identity of

achievement, even if it requires reducing the contributions of the ‘other’. Whether or not the

discourse of exceptionalism is aimed at maintaining the “upper hand in the global economy”

as suggested by the interview data, analysis of its micropractices suggest that the discourse of

American exceptionalism has filtered down into Stony Brook’s institutional culture.

Perhaps one indicator of the pervasiveness of the discourse of the nation in university life, is

provided by the image in Figure 53 which appeared on a webpage titled Messages Related to the

Twin Towers Tragedy, which is linked to Stony Brook’s home page. Eight months after the


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September 11 terrorist attacks, the presence of this webpage featuring the seat of American

power, Capitol Hill, and the American flag symbolises the resilience of the discourse of nation

and nationalism, even in an intellectual centre like a university. The two flags flanking Capitol

Hill, can be read as symbolizing the use of military power to defend American national

interests. The Foucauldian question seems appropriate and well-placed here, ‘how is it that

this particular statement has appeared and not some other?’ The university’s proximity to

New York suggests that its community would have been affected by the Twin Towers tragedy

and involved in the aftermath of recovery. However, there could have been any number of

alternative images which could have been utilized to reflect the university’s humanitarian

sentiments at the tragic loss of life.

Having analysed the micropractices of two international American universities, the next

section analyses the promotional literature of the Institute of International Education, an

organisation which recruits international students for government and non-government

sponsors and member universities.

Figure 53: Flying the Flag for the Nation


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9.6.1 The Institute of International Education: ‘Investing in People, Linking Na-tions’

Developed in 1919, the Institute of International Education administers a range of programs

on behalf of both government and non-government sponsors. Its sponsors include the U.S.

Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), various

foundations (for example, the right wing Freeman Foundation), multinational corporations

international organizations and various development assistance agencies. In some respects, its

role approximates that of IDP Education Australia, and the British Council’s Educational

Counselling Service (ECS). It organises overseas educational exhibitions for American

universities seeking to recruit international students.

In a number of respects, the diversity of programmes it administers are far greater than those

run by either ECS or IDP. A significant proportion of the 250 programmes that the IIE

administers are backed by private sector sponsors. For example, the IIE administers the

Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Program aimed at “ensuring visionary leadership for the new

century by nurturing talented young people from across the globe”. It also organises short

term Professional Exchange Programs aimed at providing “professional development for leaders

and specialists from other nations”; and it administers government-sponsored programmes

like the Fulbright Programme.

Compared to either IDP or ECS, the IIE offers a more comprehensive ‘service’ to international

students, one which extends from recruitment to job-seeking assistance. A series of additional

services which it runs include the Freeman Foundation’s AsiaJobSearch, a web-based

employment search service which links Asian graduates of U.S. colleges and universities with

employers in East and South-East Asia14; and Global Partners, which matches

American-educated international employees with U.S. firms undertaking global operations. It

also runs Global Careers Service which has the stated aim of “assisting fellowship recipients in

programs administered by the IIE, to obtain leadership-track positions in their home countries

in important fields in the business, non-governmental, non-profit and higher education

sectors”. A cursory mapping of the network of programmes offered by the IIE, its sponsors,

their interests and their links with circuits of power, influence and capital would appear to

confirm Foucault’s account of systematic yet dispersed discursive practices. The capillaries of

educational assistance and influence that the IIE presides over are clearly extensive.

A close reading of the IIE’s official literature is illustrative of the complex discourses which

inform its mission, namely, ‘market economics’ and free trade. Its mission statement declares:

IIE believes that the means for creating a better world community is investing in people

through international education. Since our founding the Institute has fostered the free

flow of knowledge and ideas across national boundaries, in the conviction that no

14. The Freeman Foundation is part of the The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). Established in 1946, it describes itself as a research and philanthropic organization which is aimed at promoting indi-vidual freedom, private property, limited government and free trade (FEE, 2002).


320

nation can prosper economically, culturally, or intellectually in isolation from the rest of

the world (IIE, 2001).

By discursively linking isolation with poverty, the Mission Statement suggests that no country

can prosper in isolation from American enterprise. The Institute’s espousal of internationalist

goals is discursively expressed as the “free flow of knowledge and ideas across national

boundaries”. However, there is little in the Mission Statement to suggest that these ‘free flows’

are reciprocal.

The largely unidirectional flow of international students to the U.S. in comparison to the

reverse flows of American students overseas, is a case to point. On its website, the IIE

acknowledges the huge disparity between the number of Americans who travel overseas to

study, compared with international students who study in the United States, citing statistics

like these,”in 1999/2000, 5,000 Americans studied in East and South-East Asia compared to

the 250,000 students from this region who studied in the United States” (ibid).

Several programmes are offered by the IIE’s sponsors, which are intended to reverse the

direction of flows by increasing the numbers of Americans who study overseas. However, this

quest to know the ‘other’ is largely linked to a national desire to consolidate America’s

geoeconomic interests and preserve its position in the New World Order. Thus, “Asia is of

increasing importance to America's economic well-being and global security, making

knowledge of Asia increasingly vital to our future success”. By linking ‘America’s economic

well-being’ with ‘global security’, this statement resurrects an earlier discourse which is

resonant with the Cold War era when American-sponsored educational aid schemes were

intended to consolidate its political and economic hegemony. A close reading of the IIE’s 2001

Annual Report reveals a national desire to resurrect America’s role as global policeman:

In a world rapidly changing due to technological innovation, economic globalisation

and national, ethnic and regional re-alignments, others [sic] problems were increasingly

becoming our own (IIE, 2001).

Here, America is discursively constructed as an innocent bystander which has been drawn

into the maelstrom of ‘others’ problems. Left unexplored and unsaid is America’s agency for

driving technological innovation and economic globalisation. Also not acknowledged are the

complex webs of post-Cold War coalitions and influences, politics, and ideologies which link

American foreign policy with ‘national, ethnic and regional re-alignments’. This statement

then, reflects and reinforces the discourse of American exceptionalism: the United States has

a manifest destiny ‘to solve others’ problems [which are] increasingly becoming our own’.

The 2001 Annual Report goes on to propose a number of solutions designed to “make the

world a less dangerous place”. Three strategies are proposed. First, to increase awareness by

the ‘other’ of America’s values by sponsoring education exchange programmes, “...when

more international students, scholars and future leaders are given the change for meaningful

study and gain an appreciation of our society, there will be less misunderstanding of our


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values and way of life”. Here the international student is constructed as a subject to be

educated about American values so that they will not lapse into ‘misunderstanding’15.

A second proposal is to send more Americans overseas, ostensibly so that they can “...have an

opportunity to gain an appreciation of different cultures and learn about the many different

ways that people see us and the world”. Also, sending Americans overseas will enable the

other to,”share American values and aspirations”. The American student is constructed as a

learner of different cultures and as an educator of American values and aspirations. A clever

play of words positions ‘America and the world’, the implicit suggestion here is that American

ways and values are those of the world. So, there can be no difference in how the other sees

‘America and the world’. A third proposal outlined by the Annual Report seeks to position

America as a humanitarian educator, charged with the goal of ‘human capacity building’ by

“open[ing] educational doors that would normally be closed to people because of their

gender, birthplace or ethnicity”. What is left unsaid is the constitutive role of power in

identifying just what qualifies as ‘human capacity building’.

By linking ‘prosperity’ and ‘enterprise’ with the ‘free flow of ideas’, the IIE’s official literature

seeks to normalise ‘free trade’ and capitalism. This is evident in the numerous programmes

that it administers aimed at ‘helping’ other countries to ‘open’ their markets. Programs such

as the Emerging Markets Development Advisers Program (EMDAP) which is described “as an

opportunity for U.S. graduate business students to provide management assistance to small-

and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries”.

Visual statements complement the textual statements in constructing the U.S. as educator and

facilitator of ‘free ideas’. Figure 54 is fairly typical of the types of images found in IIE’s

promotional materials. In all these images, a Caucasian-American is depicted ‘educating’ the

‘other’. Featured within these images are the icons of modernity which function as

aspirational symbols for the underdeveloped world: a laboratory and a laptop and printer

connected to the ultimate signifier of American life, the automobile. Visual statements like

these express a discursive continuity with the corpus of modernization theories, except that

here it is America and the American way which hold out the promise of modernity. The

power/knowledge relations function to consolidate American exceptionalism.

A cluster of statements within its promotional literature reveals the IIE’s mission as

ideologically driven by capitalism: “The IIE is initiating programs for leaders, managers,

professors, and students in formerly Communist countries to learn about market economics

and democratic institutions”. The pairing together of the lexical items of ‘market economics’

and ‘democratic institutions’, discursively links capitalism with democracy. Capitalism is thus

re-terrritorialised as democracy. Programs like Ecolinks Partnership Grants are promoted to

“...build the capacity of businesses and municipalities in [Central and Eastern Europe] to

15. The irony is lost on the IIE that several of the hijackers who crashed into the World Trade Centre had studied overseas in western countries, including the United States.


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develop market-based solutions to environmental problems”. The power/knowledge

relations here are aimed at consolidating the authority of market-produced and inspired

knowledges and facilitating their dispersal into all facets of the physical, cultural and social

dimensions of life. In short, power/knowledge relations seek to support a neoliberal ideology.

Statements which link the IIE and by extension, the U.S., with the expertise and commitment

Figure 54: Educating the Other


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to tackle global issues and problems are commonplace. Bold to the point of audacity are

propositions like this one:

Our work on energy and the environment is becoming increasingly important as

developing countries grapple with energy shortfalls and the world seeks solutions to

global climate change.

Put simply, the IIE has discursively linked ‘human capacity building’ with democracy and

economic well being. It has manufactured market solutions as the answer to tackle the

growing gap between rich and poor countries and the globalisation of poverty and economic

injustice. It produces a discourse which is resonant with an earlier modernizing discourse,

linked to the sibling discourses of national interest and national security. There is no

engagement with issues of sustainability and inequity.

The front cover of the IIE’s 2001 Annual Report departs from its tradition of representing the

world in an abstract cartography. The semiotics of the 2001 cover can be read as suggesting a

new mission for the IIE in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The cover

features half the face of a green-eyed, smiling Caucasian boy (see Figure 55). He embodies the

nation. The fingers of his hand are partly spread over his open eye. Positioned at the foot of

the cover is a caption in a bold and colourful typeface, ‘Opening Minds to the World’. Its

meaning is ambiguous as we are not sure whose minds are being referred to here. Is it a case

of opening American minds to the world or opening the mind of the ‘other’ to the world,

which elsewhere was linked to America? Just one half of the child’s face is visible to the

viewer, suggesting an embodiment of a part perspective or viewpoint. He exemplifies the

choices facing the United States: to close its eye and therefore choose isolationism or to

continue with its mission to ‘open minds to the world’. Significantly, this eye to the world is

white, young and male which suggests America’s alter ego.

The IIE’s unabashed promotion of American exceptionalism suggests that its promotional

materials are intended for a predominantly domestic audience. However, their accessibility

through the Internet opens the Institute to a wider audience, including elements of the

international community who may not agree with the doctrine of exceptionalism. To

summarise, two legacies inform the ‘human capacity building’ of educational exchanges and

both seek to instill notions of progress as the foundational assumption of all intellectual

knowledge. First is an ideological legacy that produces market solutions to all problems and

second is an historical legacy which aims to revivify human capital and modernization

theories, while ignoring the mutually reinforcing relations between knowledge and power.


324

Figure 55: ‘Opening Minds to the World’.


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9.7 Concluding Comments

This chapter began by analysing the promotional discourses of two American universities,

Stanford University and the State University of New York (Stony Brook). It also analysed the

discourses of the Institute of International Education. All three institutions offer the discursive

spaces for engagement with the other, although the terms of these engagements are clearly

scripted by a discourse of American exceptionalism. Allied to American exceptionalism is an

imperialising discourse which propagates the values of ethnocentrism and assimilation. In all

three institutions, promotional materials reveal links between international education and the

ideological preoccupations of the nation-state. In the case of the United States, it is an ideology

which seeks to install ‘market economics’ or free trade and to consolidate America’s position

as a world leader. Against this background, the American international university emerges as

an agent for inculcating values which are resonant with market liberalism, individualism,

educational instrumentalism and human capital theory.

Does a more market-like system like the American higher education system offer greater

discursive possibilities for multiple subjectivities? My findings, provisional as they are, would

suggest not. The subjectivities implied for and imposed on international students take two

broad forms. First, the international student is constructed as an ‘other’ who is to be educated

to accept the exceptionalism of the American way. Second, the student is constructed in

promotional materials as valued human capital, with a role to play in the American research

enterprise. There is a difference here compared to how the international student is constructed

by British and Australian discourses where a human capital discourse is used to recruit

students to purchase a British or Australian education, rather than viewing students as

intellectual labour.

As Foucault’s work has demonstrated, power and knowledge exist in a relation of immanence

and set the limits of what is visible and sayable. Not everything can be spoken about; some

utterances invite the risk of appearing odd and irrational. In the academic world speaking

about topics such as American hegemony, neocolonialism or imperialism has for some time

now been seen as part of ‘old’ and discredited discourses of Marxism and development

theory. Analysing micropractices offers the opportunity to reveal the resilience of these

hegemonies, which have not disappeared in the so-called New World Order.

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