Higher Education and the Modern/Colonial Global Imaginary

Abstract

In this article, we complicate common critical narratives about the neoliberalization of higher education by situating more recent trends within the genealogy of a modern/colonial global imaginary. By linking current patterns of “accumulation by dispossession” with histories and enduring architectures of racialized expropriation and exploitation, we consider both the strategic possibilities and inherent limitations of enacting resistance from within this imaginary. In particular, we engage the imperative to contest new configurations of dispossession while grappling with the ways that violent social relations have always subsidized public higher education. We suggest that facing such paradoxes may be instructive and open up new possibilities, and at the same time, this requires examination of existing investments and attachments.

Social cartographies as performative devices in research on higher education

“…However, before we introduce our examples, we should note that our mapping of each cartography was informed by our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of a meta-frame that is common across all of them: the modern/colonial global imaginary. We have explored this social imaginary elsewhere in more detail (see Andreotti, Stein, Ahenakew, & Hunt, 2015;Stein & Andreotti, 2015a, 2015b but, in brief, it naturalizes Western/European domination and capitalist, colonial social relations and projects a local (Western/European) perspective as a universal blueprint for imagined global designs (e.g., Mignolo, 2000;Quijano, 2000;Silva, 2007Silva, , 2013Spivak, 1999;Tlostanova & Mignolo, 2012;Wynter, 2003).…”

The neoliberal turn in Higher Education

“…Not surprisingly, given that the focus here is on English language publications, most contributions have come from English‐speaking countries, notably the United States (152 articles; e.g., Anderson, ), the UK (122; e.g., O’Regan & Gray, ), Australia (50; e.g., Cannizzo, ), Canada (44; e.g., Stein & Oliveira Andreotti, ), New Zealand (16; e.g., Kidman & Chu, ) and Ireland (8; e.g., Courtois & O’Keefe, ; Mercille & Murphy, ). Together, these six countries accounted for over three‐quarters, 76 per cent, of the articles identified.…”

“…In addition to new public management (often, as by Marginson, written with ‘scare capitals’ as New Public Management) and performativity, these terms or discourses include academic capitalism, colonialism (e.g., Stein & Oliveira Andreotti, ), entrepreneurialism (e.g., Steenkamp, ), globalisation (e.g., Amthor & Metzger, ), internationalisation (e.g., Chang, ), managerialism (e.g., Shepherd, ), marketisation, massification and privatisation.…”

Studying to Stay: Understanding Graduate Visa Policy Content and Context in the United States and Australia

“…Both the characterization of OPT programme and TGV subclass 486 focus on temporary skilled graduates can be understood in a global neoliberal competition for internationally mobile talent (Robertson, ; Stein and Andreotti, ). There are two primary reasons why governments might pursue such policies.…”