WESTERN DOCTORAL PROGRAMMES

AS PUBLIC SERVICE,

CULTURAL DIPLOMACY

OR, INTELLECTUAL IMPERIALISM?

CONSIDERATIONS OF A CANADIAN

TEACHING EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP

IN THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

• Multi-dimensional: economic, political, religious, cultural, educational, familial, etc.

• Highly dynamic: UAE one of most rapid & profound changes in World History

• Unique features: Emirati culture, geopolitical position

• High level of multiculturalism: 80+% immigrant workforce; 202 nationalities

OR, HOW TO CONCEPTUALISE COMPLEX EDUCATIONAL

CHANGE IN THE UAE?

DEDICATED TO MY EDD STUDENTS,

ONE AND ALL

DUBAI – 40 YEARS AG0

DUBAI - NOW

• They drive • Are increasingly in workplace

(although glass ceiling)• Travel abroad (many regularly)• 80% Emirati grad students women• Assertive in doctoral seminar

(sometimes a force of nature)• UAE is a (relatively) uxorious

society

MYTHS TO DISPOSE OF:

WOMEN IN THE UAE

MGMT, ADMIN & LEADERSHIP:

HISTORICAL COMPLEXITY

Colonial Heritage

Tribal Traditions

Post-Unification Monarchy

(Shaikh Zayed)

Western Education & Consultancy

MULTIDIMENSIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF

CRITICAL METAPHORS:An Interdisciplinary

Field of Critical Concepts

INITIAL THEORETICAL SCAFFOLDING

Goffman Microinteractionist Metaphors

Weberian Value-

orientation & Ideal Typing

Saidian Humanistic Critique of Orientalist Hegemony

Bourdieuian Intellectual Field

LEVELS OF A PERSONAL VOYAGE FROM WEST TO

MIDDLE EAST

ExperientialPedagogical

Political

• “Ideal”: analytical (not normative or empirical)

• One-sided accentuation & synthesis of diffuse, discrete, present & absent concrete individual phenomena

• Arranged into unified analytical construct (Gedankenbild)

IDEAL TYPICAL METHOD A LA

WEBER

• Contextual shaping of human interaction

• Dramaturgical presentation of self with others

• Self & identity shaped, reshaped in the process

• Groups & larger structures rest upon this basis

SOCIAL INTERACTION METAPHORS OF

GOFFMAN

• Stereotyped individual characteristics of “orientals”: sensuality, despotism, aberrant mentality, inaccuracy, backwardness

• ‘Locale requiring Western attention, reconstruction, even redemption’

• Constructed through scholarship, industry, “pioneers” to the Orient – now transplanted uni’s & programmes

ORIENTALISM AS IMPERIALISM IN SAID

• Cultural capital • Intellectuals - creators of symbolic

power• Reproduction of self-perpetuating

hierarchies of domination• Shaping of politics through symbolic

power• Political economy of symbolic interests,

power (violence), capital power structures (habitas, fields)

INTELLECTUALISM AS SYMBOLIC POWER:

BOURDIEU

• Public Servant

• Cultural Diplomat

• Intellectual Imperialist

THE THREE ATTITUDINAL METAPHORS

• Derived from Weber• Patrimonial traditionalism

combined with charisma

IDEAL TRAITS OF PUBLIC SERVANT, MANDARIN CLASS

• Substantive rationality (higher order political end values)

• Aspires to gentlemanly ideal• Traditional ethos governing life &

circle of contacts• Ethos: “official duty” & “public weal”

(the public interest)• „Lives for the state, rather than from

the state“

VALUES

• Personal qualities: resilience, independence of mind, intellectual prowess, sound judgement & discrimination, loyalty, integrity

• Through „moral courage“ „speak truth to power“

• Responsibilities tied to legitimacy of ruling elite (individual ministers of cabinet)

• Protected by anonymity• Oversees national interests for political

authority

AUTHORITY & ROLE

• Derived from Freeman, Arts of Power: Statecraft & Diplomacy (1997)

• Patrimonial traditionalism combined with instrumental, legal-rationality

CHARACTERISTICS OF IDEAL DIPLOMAT

• Strategic state interests (security, econ, political)

• Strategic & tactical master in international arena

• Power ethos & formal, informal networks (overt & covert)

• Ethos: Manoeuverability through exaction, accommodation, appeasement, coercion, etc.

• Lives for the state, rather than from the state

VALUES

• Medium of communication between states

• Authority to speak as representative & pursue state interests

• Scholars: informal diplomats of countries & disciplinary traditions

• Universities: site of formal & informal diplomatic activities & agent of foreign policy (sometimes: unwittingly, hidden curriculum, extension Cold War role)

AUTHORITY & ROLE

• Derived from Max Weber• (disenchanted) Entrepreneurial

rationalism

ESSENCE OF IMPERIALISM

• Economic Hegemony• Formal rationality; suppresses value

issues, indifference to ends• Entrepreneur, “leadership,” or

consultancy ideal (mercentary competitive self-interest)

• Ethos: efficiency & technical effectiveness

• Lives from the state, rather than for the state

VALUES

• Personal qualities: impersonal rules, objective competence, business-style mgmt, goal-oriented accountability

• Adherence to entrepreneurial leadership & obedience to political authority

• High mobility between private & public sectors• Technical managerial elite („new nomenklatura,“

„technical intelligentsia“ or „consultocracy“)• Value-for-money, cost-effectiveness & market

testing• Aims at strategies of control• Are „doers“ rather than „thinkers“

AUTHORITY & ROLE

I. PERSONAL LEVEL:

Existential, Phenomenological,

Hermeneutic

THE METAPHORS CULTURALLY EMBODIED

Does it close one’s world – negative Western stereotype

ABAYA COMPLEX

Or, does it open a new world?

ABAYA “UNVEILED”

Public Servant

Cultural Diplomat

Intellectual Imperialist

As Clothing

As Ceremonial Costume

Abaya Untouched (untouchable?)Two Solitudes

ATTITUDES TO ABAYA CORRESPONDING TO

METAPHORS

DIMENSIONS OF THE PERSONAL

Values Identity

Professional Qualities

Social Interaction

• Values: local culture dominates; serves new state’s strategic goals

• Identity: participant-observer (lives in liminality)

• Social Interaction: immersion, engagement• Professional Qualities: international

standards ethno-hermeneutically reconstructed to meet local terms of respect

PUBLIC SERVANT(AS FOREIGN ACADEMIC)

• Values: representative of one’s own & local culture; mediates between 2-state strategic goals

• Identity: retains nationality – engages with local

• Social Interaction: mediated style of presentation of Self

• Professional Qualities: represents “home” qualities of professionalism

CULTURAL DIPLOMAT

• Values: home values exclude local values

• Identity: unchanged, in tension with local conditions

• Social Interaction: socialising locals into foreign patterns

• Professional Qualities: replacing indigenous conceptions

INTELLECTUAL IMPERIALIST

II. PEDAGOGICAL LEVEL:

Hermeneutic, Interactional, Legitimating, Reproductive

DIMENSIONS OF THE PEDAGOGICAL

Scholarship

Curricular Principles

Teaching Styles

• Friere: colonisation through language (ontological & epistemological reconstruction)

• Giroux: hidden curriculum• Habermas: communicative action• Said: no clash of civilisations• Et alia

ADDITIONAL CRITIQUES

• Inclusive Synthesised Scholarship: dialectically mutually informing intellectual history

• Combined Western-Arab curriculum aimed at UAE national goals & independence

• Recombinant teaching style inclusive of arab communicative interaction, sociability, temporally structured around calls for prayer

PUBLIC SERVICE

Al-Khalili, J. (2010) Pathfinders: Golden Age of Arabic ScienceCrone, P. (2005) Medieval Islamic Political ThoughtFreely, J. (2009) Aladdin’s Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic WorldLyons, J. (2009) The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western CivilizationMasood, E. (2009) Science & Islam: A HistoryMorgan, M. (2007) Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and ArtistsO’Leary, D. (2003) Arabic Thought and Its Place in History

“LOST HISTORY”: THE WEST’S ADOPTION OF ARAB

SCHOLARSHIP

SYNTHESISED SCHOLARSHIP

Common Heritage: e.g., Plato, Aristotle

(history, politics, sociology, cultural analysis)Arab Scholarship:

e.g., Al-Farabi, Al-Ghazali, Ibn

Khaldun, Islamic Humanist tradition

Western tradition built upon Arabic: e.g., Renaissance scholars, Weber,

Heidegger

• Dialogue between traditions or Attempt to subjugate arab scholarship: knowledge transfer unequal bi-directional

• Aims at educational reform serving international & local goals

• Tolerance of teaching style diversity

CULTURAL DIPLOMACY

• Exclusive use Western scholarship• Knowledge transfer uni-directional• Almost exclusive use western curric creating UAE

dependency• Emiratis aren’t taught UAE history

(“golemisation” of history & scholarly trad’s)• Arab scholars used to illustrate western adoption• English-language replacement of Arabic (religious

implications)• Globalised educ with strong market model:

Hidden curriculum of capitalism & consumerism

INTELLECTUAL IMPERIALISM

III. POLITICAL LEVEL:

Entente, Rapprochement, or Global Monopolism?

DIMENSIONS OF THE POLITICAL

Socio-cultural Impact

Sovereignty

Globalisation/ Commercialis

ation

The “Reproductive” Role of Educational Institution

• Mutually enriching, celebratory traditions, designed to sustain Emirati culture as priority

• Establishes distinctive Emirati scholarship & education

• Education to serve intellectual, cultural, religious, social, political and economic traditions

• Reproduction of modern Emirati social classes and status groups

ENTENTE:EDUCATIONAL COALITIONS/

ALLIANCES BETWEEN EQUALS

• Multicultural society retaining its “Solitudes”

• Segregated education – Western vs. Islamic

• Western serving globalised & foreign interests

• Entrenching tiered structure to society

RAPPROCHEMENT:EDUCATIONAL MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL EVOLUTION

• Necrocapitalism – dispossession modified to “social” or “cultural” death (Banerjee, 2008)

• Cultural & intellectual colony• Commodified education• Reproduces foreign educational

structures, governance, responsibilities, roles, practices

GLOBAL MONOPOLISM:EXACT EDUCATIONAL MARKET