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