On 24 September, the iPhone 5 was launched in the first nine countries/areas, America, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Singapore, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong. It was then launched in 22 more countries in the week beginning 1 October. The first weekend’s sales were very impressive, reaching 5 million. This number already broke Apple’s previous record for first-weekend sales of all previous models of iPhone. In this guest post, Chun-Yi Lee wonders whether any of those Apple fans, who were camping outside to be ‘the first customer’ or at least ‘first group of customers’ to buy the iPhone 5, had thought about the making of this most advanced, light, cool gadget? This paper links the hot-selling phenomenon of the iPhone 5 to Chinese workers, for the very reason that most of Apple’s iProducts are manufactured in China.

Every time when I use my mobile, my friends make disapproving remarks: ‘Why are you still using such an old-fashioned mobile? You are always on the move so you should get yourself an iPhone.’ I thought the function of a mobile was to call and text people when one is on the move. I agree that smart phones seems to make life easier in this internet-connected world, but why does it have to be an iPhone? My friend who works in a hi-technology company in Taipei told me: ‘Because the iPhone represents a life-style, you are different from other people because you have an iPhone, or put in another way, you belong to a certain group because you have an iPhone.’ After seeing the first launch weekend of iPhone 5, recorded sales of five million, and long waiting lines outside shops on the streets of London, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo, I finally understood the meaning of my friend’s words. Those five million people (actually even more, because many others didn’t manage to buy iPhone 5 on the first weekend because of limited supply from Apple) all believe that they are in a certain group, advanced and globally connected online all the time, the group of the Information Elite. I guess very few of this Information Elite group’s members will look closely at the making of Apple’s iProducts, the majority of which come from a giant assembling factory, Foxconn in China.

Foxconn workers are not unknown to the world. In late May 2010, Foxconn faced a string of thirteen workers’ suicides in the southern part of Shenzhen. The death toll of Foxconn workers finally reached seventeen between 2007 and 2010. Foxconn, which was founded in 1974, belongs to Hon Hai technology group, a Taiwanese-owned giant contract electronic manufacturer which produces devices for Apple’s iProducts, Dell and Hewlett-Packard. Foxconn is a leader in design, manufacturing and after-sales services for computer, communication and consumer-electronics companies; it has 420,000 employees in Shenzhen, in the southern part of China, 300,000 of them at Longhua factory. As a Taiwanese processing company, Foxconn is by far the biggest in China, with more than 820,000 employees. Furthermore, the Hon Hai Technology group has factories around the globe, for instance, in the Czech Republic, Hungry, Slovakia, India, Mexico, Malaysia and Brazil.

Because of the string of suicide cases, Foxconn became iconic for scholars working on Chinese labour. The most famous is the work of Prof. Pun Ngai’s team on Foxconn workers, published in book form as ‘To Survive, Foxconn Workers’ (in Chinese活下來, 富士康工人). There is also a documentary film about Foxconn workers by Ivan Franceschini (a PhD candidate at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) and Tommaso Facchin (a freelance translator and documentarist), called Dreamwork China. I was moved deeply by this book and documentary before I went to China in May this year, so I made an effort to meet some Foxconn workers in Shenzhen.

After I chatted with some workers at Foxconn, I realised how young and inexperienced they actually are. Like many of my Information Elite group’s friends, they have their dreams. Most of them are 18–25 years old, which is certainly an age to have dreams about the future. Nevertheless, their life at Foxconn is very boring, with endless day and night shifts. One may argue that it is the reality that workers spend their working life with machines: there is not much fun in those kinds of jobs. I agree, different jobs have different contents, but I would argue, Foxconn workers’ life actually represent the greatest alienation from their production. They produced all the iProducts, but when I asked them, “Would you like to buy an iPhone or iPad?”, they shook their heads shyly: that is impossible on their wages. Those young people also have smart phones, but they are ‘fakes’, copied from branded models. They told me the functions of ‘faked’ smart phones are quite similar to real ones, and the price is much more affordable. Certainly one may also argue that this is an appalling infringement of copyright, but if Apple only share 1.8% of the profits with the Chinese workforce when they sell an iPhone and 2% when they sell an iPad, how could one expect millions of Chinese workers to pursue their online dream with genuine iProducts?

More importantly, workers in Foxconn are not passively accepting their excessive working hours and low wages. There have been many strikes in different Foxconn factories, the most recent being at Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province in the North of China. The Taiyuan unrest only lasted for around 24 hours and it is claimed as a management problem. However, the timing of the protest coincidentally clashed with the launch of the iPhone 5. When I consulted the Human Resource Manager at Longhua Foxconn Factory, he told me that before each launch schedule, workers and factories endured great pressure to meet the deadlines. Though so far there is no report about what kind of agreement was reached between workers and management at the Taiyuan Foxconn factory, certainly workers knew that by protesting at this crucial moment they would increase their bargaining power. This point actually expands on what Eli Friedman argued in her seminal paper, ‘Insurgency and Institutionalisation: The Polanyian Countermovement and Chinese Labour Politics’ (forthcoming in Theory & Society). Friedman observes in her paper that workers (from Naihai Honda Strike) have realised that as soon as they stop their work on the production line, management will immediately look into the problem. Millions of Information Elite groups might not care about far-away Chinese labourers down there in some unknown factories; however, when the Apple fans cannot get their hands on iProducts because those Chinese workers simply walk out of their factories, it would be a problem. Therefore, can the Chinese workers eat Apple?

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In 2015 the current global run out. 2012 has seen the process of replacing them start in earnest with the Rio+20 summit and its proposal for sustainable development goals, and the appointment of the UN High Level Panel on post-2015.  More recently, there has been a wave of sectoral and overall consultations that are ongoing as I write towards the end of the year.

Like others interested in development I have been involved recently in several processes about the “post-2015 agenda”, including helping to organise a meeting between the UK Forum for International Education and Training, DfID and various NGOs and thinktanks (see www.ukfiet.org/cop), designed to help develop a lobbying position on the place of education in any post-2015 set of goals.  Yet, I can’t help thinking the heretical thought: do we really need a new set of goals?

In the current climate of positioning sectors, organisations and ideas to be at the top table of the post-2015 discussions, it is rather less than fashionable to question the success of the MDGs. However, development progress has been uneven and much of this progress cannot easily be attributable to the MDGs or the processes that have surrounded them.

If we look specifically at my own sector, education, then we know that there has been some progress towards the goal of universal primary education.  However, we also know that the target still is far from being met.  Moreover, there is overwhelming evidence that this goal was misspecified and that inequity of access, retention and achievement remain very serious problems in much of the world.  As I noted in a previous blog (https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/aworldincrisis/2012/09/21/what-can-we-learn-from-the-past-50-years-of-education-for-development-in-africa-for-the-beyond-2015-debate/), this failure needs also to be placed in the context of repeated failures to meet international educational goals. Why would we expect any post-2015 goals to be any more successful?

The educational goals experience also points to one of the widest spread critiques of all such targets: that they generate unintended consequences. Focusing attention on any set of goals, target or key performance indicators brings in its wake a strong tendency for behaviour that focuses on achieving these goals regardless of the costs that are generated.  Thus, it does not seem to matter enough that a focus on those things that can be targeted by goals leads to other important objectives being marginalised or undermined. For instance, did the obsession with educational enrolments undermine learning achievement? More generally, can goals cause more harm than good?

There are also a set of concerns about MDGs as an approach to development.  Even if many did subsequently sign up to them, the MDGs were an idea of the OECD and were pushed by a set of powerful governments and agencies, and heavily linked to aid conditionalities. Although there are attempts to make the current round more inclusive in their leadership, it is also possible to see the search for new goals in part as an attempt to maintain the global significance of the UN and certain of its specialised agencies, and of the traditional large donors.

Yet, the world of development has radically changed even since 2000 and many new actors are now involved in development practice, with a concomitant weakening of the historical power and influence of the old bilateral and multilateral agencies. Indeed, is the time for an MDG II approach passed: is it a vinyl solution in a digital world?

There were major problems too in the big development account that underpinned the MDGs, particularly when tied to the grandiose visions of people such as Jeffery Sachs. In the week the Albert Hirschman died I can’t help recalling his cautions against visions of development that far outstripped national capacities for delivery.

Moreover, the MDGs lacked a theory of development, being a political compromise built on an incoherent mix of human rights, human capital and global public goods. Crucially, they were not grounded in a model of how developmental change takes place. Moreover, it was not through focusing on the MDGs that those countries which have done development successfully in the past 50 years have progressed.  Is it really likely that new goals and process will be the route for the next wave either?

Finally, although the MDG discourse has talked about poverty, it is clear that inequality is rising and that social justice was not sufficiently addressed.  Unsurprisingly, the MDGs didn’t address the way in which underdevelopment exists in a dynamic relationship with development or the vested interests that exist in rich countries in limiting development gains elsewhere.  Can we really expect anything different post-2015? Rio+20 correctly tried to put sustainability at the core of a new set of goals. However, is it likely that a genuinely sustainable account can be developed given our experiences of Kyoto and Copenhagen?

So, I remain at my core very sceptical about the juggernaut of the post-2015 debate. Nonetheless, it seems likely that a set of goals are going to be developed regardless of my misgivings. In such a context, I suspect that 2013 will find me back engaged in trying to argue the case for education, work and human development as being central to any sensible and sustainable development vision and, thus, part of any post-2015 approach, goals or no goals.

Simon McGrath (Director of Research and Professor of International Education and Development – School of Education)

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One of the biggest challenges globalisation brings to Western democracy is the threat it poses to the future legitimacy of Western governments, as a result of its role in undermining the relevance of the processes and institutions of electoral politics.

Evidence from the Hansard Society’s Audit of Political Engagement series of polls shows that this response is particularly strong amongst the young. In 2003, 2006 and 2009, the Audit asked which institutions respondents felt had the most influence over daily life.  Taking these three surveys together, an average of 47% of 16–24 year old’s said that business was one of the most influential institutions, and 63% said the media. Only 13% mentioned the UK Parliament.  But of those over-65, the figures were just 29% who said business, 47% the media, and 32% the UK Parliament.

This awareness leads to young voters being more likely to turn away from institutions which focus on the control and policy of the national government, particularly elections and political parties. Throughout the 9 years covered by the Audit series (2003–2011), the average proportion of 16–24 year old’s who said they would definitely vote was 27%, compared with 58.3% of over 25s. The average proportion of 16–24 year olds who had at least some interest in politics was 37.6%, compared to 52.5% of over 25s. And the average proportion of under 25s who had donated money or paid a membership fee to a political party within the last year was 2.7%, compared with 5.3% of over 25s.

It is clear that the youngest cohort is disengaging from electoral politics to a much greater extent than their elders, and it appears that at least part of this disengagement is driven by the realisation that the national government is not the most influential institution in their lives. There is evidence, therefore, that the real threat of globalisation to democratic legitimacy may be realised in thirty years when today’s young people come to dominate the electorate. Ultimately the question of whether or not this threat will materialise will be answered by the capacity of the key institutions of electoral politics – particularly the political parties’ – to engage future citizens with the democratic process.

Stuart Fox is a PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham’s ESRC Doctoral Training Centre. His research focuses on young people’s engagement with formal politics in the UK.

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In all the talk about international development targets beyond 2015, I am particularly concerned about two things.  First, that the voices of educationalists regarding the nature of education and its role in development are being reduced to simple soundbites based on overstatement of certain effects of education. Second, that the discussion on what works is based on a focus on a narrow sense of what counts as evidence; who counts as authorities; and when matters in our telling of the story.

The occasion of the 50^th Anniversary of the Centre of African Studies in Edinburgh, therefore, seemed to offer a perfect opportunity to address some of these issues, and to counter the “permanent present” of much of current debate with a review of 50 years of possible lessons on the relationships between education and development in Africa. The fuller account, written with Kenneth King, is available online so here I will try to quickly summarise our main arguments.

I’ll begin with a challenge to international education researchers, my own community of practice. Over the past 50 years development theory has made a useful move away from a narrow faith in the trinity of economic growth, industrialisation and modernisation. However, none of the currently competing accounts satisfies as an account of development in all its richness.  Moreover, in spite of being an integral part of the current international development targets, education’s position in the major development theories is insecure or marginal. At best, education appears in these accounts as a human right and/or an instrumental tool for meeting larger developmental goals.  The risks of further marginalisation of education are heightened as donors look for scientific certainty and short-run value for money in an area characterised by long-term effects and huge complexity.  Yet learning is a central facet of being human and of achieving progress.  Thus, for those of us working on education and development, there is a pressing need to articulate better our accounts of the crucial role of education in promoting human well-being and building and sustaining economic success.

However, there are also problems beyond our own doorstep. Aid policy remains wedded to targets and indicators, regardless of 50 years of their failure as a global policy technology.  For all the language of national ownership, such targets are still predominantly being developed in places such as Washington and Paris.  Even where the targets are increasingly being localised in other places, such as Addis Ababa – home of the African Union, they seem to largely be drawn from an externally produced script and based in an implausible faith in currently almost absent capacities to collect and use the necessary data.

The current international fascination with the next development agenda seems a world away from the realities and challenges of education-and-development in Africa. The continent remains one of regions where the EFA/MDG targets are not being achieved in many countries. Equally, the few available indicators of skills development would suggest that Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole is one of the least well served of any region, even if there are pointers to improvement. At the same time, it needs remembering that long-term capacity building in science and technology are crucial to securing any of the MDGs or other meaningful development targets. Of course, the message that education should be understood as a whole sector, and not just primary schooling, was evident at World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, but it has been forgotten subsequently in the rush to set and meet targets. For targets cannot cope with coherent sectoral strategies.

However, the main argument of our paper was that Africa has not been well served by the largely externally determined targets for education, which initially promised universal primary education by 1980, not 2015. These targets have altered the structure of African education, as did other once-fashionable priorities such as non-formal education and manpower planning. But they have continued a history of Africa being largely a recipient of external agendas for its education and training, in a tradition that stretches back to the missionaries, colonial governments and the Phelps-Stokes Commissions of the 1920s. There is little indication that Africa will play a key role in setting the next international development agenda, and in particular any education targets.

This is deeply problematic, for securing education for all of high quality in African nations cannot be the result of external international targets or even of external aid. National funding, supported by national research evidence on the role of education and training, must be central, and we must give much more thought to the mechanisms that facilitate the development of these.

Our longer paper, King & McGrath- Education and Development in Africa: Lessons of the Past 50 Years for Beyond 2015, is available at http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1640/

This blog first appeared at Norrag Newsbite on September 21st.

Simon McGrath (Director of Research and Professor of International Education and Development – School of Education)

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The euro zone crisis rumbles on. Just when European policymakers reach a semblance of consensus, further twists emerge, rendering each action one step behind the rapidly unfolding events.

At a recent meeting of the Integrating Global Society Priority Group at the University of Nottingham, several academics warned that European policymakers are unlikely to resolve the crisis without the assistance of non- European states. What role then, if any, will the major powers outside of Europe be prepared to play?

For all the talk of globalisation and integration, awareness of the global reach of a full-blown euro crisis is not sufficient to galvanise a global effort to pre-empt it. The political barriers to American or Chinese intervention are high and few other countries have the capacity to make a significant contribution.

China has become a disenchanted supporter of the European Union. Its criticism of the EU focuses on the region’s perceived pursuit of policies designed to secure short-term gain at the expense of long-term security. It does not accept that developing countries should subsidise wealthy Europeans for their extravagant and irresponsible lifestyles. China sees the EU’s commitment to unsustainable entitlement programmes, namely generous pension schemes and unemployment benefits, as prime examples of this, blaming them for the erosion of the region’s economic efficiency and competitiveness. And the Chinese government is yet to be truly persuaded that common global interests are sufficient for China to risk its hard-earned reserves to bail out the euro zone.

Academics at the priority group’s meeting agreed that China has a considerable stake in the resolution of the current crisis – the European Union is its biggest trading partner – but political realities present considerable obstacles to Chinese action.

There is a sense that China lacks political incentives to act. Without the existence of a single European authority, any financial intervention would fail to meet with the political recognition China craves. If China is to invest in distressed European assets, it must receive something in return that can be cashed in at a later date, which is in alignment with its long-term strategic objectives. This approach was on display at the recent G20 summit in Mexico where China offered US$43 billion to the International Monetary Fund’s crisis-fighting reserves. Here, China allied itself with the emerging world as part of a wider bid to secure greater voting rights within the IMF, further evidence that when China offers financial assistance, it expects its pound of flesh.

Political considerations aside, China faces considerable economic challenges of its own. Recent economic data points to growth declining towards 7 per cent and Premier Wen Jiabao has spoken of the large “downward pressure” on the national economy. The ability of China to deploy reserves to stabilise the European economy is limited. Savings generated by large trade surpluses have already been invested and are held in a form that cannot be realised for swift deployment. Perhaps the biggest role China can play in resolving Europe’s economic woes is to address trade imbalances through monetary policy, rather than through the provision of direct financial assistance.

At the roundtable at Nottingham University, consideration was given to the role that Brazil, as representative for a number of developing countries, might play in any co-ordinated action. The overwhelming conclusion was that Brazilian support would be limited. Its funding capacity is small, economic growth has slowed to 4 per cent and intermediation costs in Brazil are high, making the country an unlikely source of cheap credit. Moreover, Brazil’s aims when setting aside funding for international financial stability are, similar to China, primarily political. Funds are channelled entirely through the IMF as part of its efforts to secure greater voting rights.

So what of the world’s only superpower? Again, any role the United States might play will come with a high degree of conditionality. The dynamic between the US and the euro zone is on a parallel with the relationship between Germany and Greece: no money can be expected by the latter without agreement on conditions set by the former. A significant political intervention by the United States is unforeseeable in the short term. It will only come about should the euro crisis generate a degree of contagion that imperils the US financial system and, at present, US officials believe the EU has sufficient policy tools at its disposal. The US is also in the midst of an election cycle, weakening the likelihood of financial support for European governments or institutions.

And while the effect of an acute financial crisis in the EU could affect Wall Street, it would have a more limited effect on the US “real economy”. The EU as a whole is America’s largest trading partner, but this statistic misrepresents the nature of US economic links. Individually, America’s major trading partners are Canada, China, Mexico and Japan, with Germany fifth. This dynamic reduces the likelihood of the US judging that the economic benefits of providing funds to the EU outweigh the negative political consequences of authorising such a move.

US action, or lack of it, is intertwined with that of China. If China proves resistant to providing financial assistance, the US will argue that the responsibility should not fall on its shoulders alone. There is also concern in Washington that if the US offers its public support for a particular course of action, it could make EU member states less willing to adopt a plan deemed to have been “made in America”, and, in turn, China would be less willing to support it.

Global economic interdependency may be at its height but, if Europe is to pull through this crisis it has little option but to find the strength within.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post on 12th July.

Steve Tsang is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Studies and Director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham

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This post from Professor Simon McGrath first appeared on the Network for Policy Research, Review and Advice on Education and Training (NORRAG) blog about international education, training and development aid and policy. NORRAG is a focus and a forum for the analysis of international cooperation in the education and training field. Simon is one of the co-authors of the UNESCO World Report and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Development. However, he is not a UNESCO official and is not writing here in an official capacity.

One of the most important contributions of the UNESCO World Report on VET is its argument that the purposes and performance of VET should be viewed through three policy lenses. The economic lens is the most conventional one used to analyse VET, but the equity lens is also very well-established in some parts of the world. To these, the World Report offers a third lens: that of VET transformation. The Report argues that there is no correct mix of the three lenses. Rather, the importance given to each lens is a matter for national dialogues. What the Report does insist upon, however, is that they must be seen as interlocking and not as policy alternatives.

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The Integrating Global Society Priority Group and the China Policy Institute held a roundtable to brainstorm the Euro crisis and its implications in May. We examined the issues involved from both European and global perspectives, and reached the following conclusions:

1.  A Greek exit from the Euro is now a real possibility and such an eventuality has significant long term downsides, including inflation within the country, reduced trade, and a high risk of contagion. Much has been done in the last two years to build up ‘firewalls’ to prevent financial risk spreading from a Greek default, or a Greek exit prompting additional withdrawals. But the viability of the ‘firewalls’ remains uncertain. The inherent complexity and scope for the unexpected of any Greek withdrawal should not be overlooked.

2.  The Euro-crisis is primarily ‘Europe’s problem’, even if its ramifications are global in impact. An awareness of the global reach of a full blown Euro crisis is not sufficient to galvanize a global effort to pre-empt it. The political barriers to an American or Chinese intervention are high, and few other countries have the capacity to contribute more than marginally. Even though growth rates in developing countries are high, they are not always reflected in real terms increases in prosperity. Domestic political considerations further limit the scope for developing countries to play a major role. Since the origins of the crisis lay in the Euro’s design flaws, it is incumbent upon Eurozone countries to formulate a solution.

3.  There is no real alternative to Germany taking on the leading role in resolving the current crisis. Without the economic and financial resources of Germany the Eurozone does not have the capacity to sustain the Euro. But domestic politics in Germany makes it difficult for Germany to take on the leadership role and financial costs for defending the Eurozone.  Doubts over Berlin’s determination and commitment to do what it takes will undermine market confidence and reduce the effectiveness of ‘firewalls’ in containing the contagion effect of a Greek departure from the Eurozone.

4.  EU institutions will need to be strengthened to sustain the Euro and steer the Eurozone out of the crisis but this will require a longer timeframe than is available to confront the impending crisis that a Greek departure may trigger in the near term. The EU is at the moment too consumed by the day-to-day events of the Euro crisis to be able to work out a long term strategy to make the fiscal union work as well as boost growth and employment

5.  The EU also has a serious communications problem. Despite the almost daily coverage of the Euro crisis insufficient efforts have been made to explain the crux of the matter to members of the public, or prepare them for considerable re-evaluation of living standards that may come with economic rebalancing and consolidation. The prospect as well as the pros and cons of fiscal transfers within the union as part of the solution in both the short and the long term have not been adequately explained to the general public in the EU.

A full report of the IGS-CPI roundtable summarising the main issues debated and basis for the conclusions drawn is available from either the IGS website or the CPI website. You are welcome to download the report in full for personal, academic or professional use but acknowledgement will be required.

Steve Tsang (Director of the China Policy Institute and Professor of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham)

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I must admit to being particularly unimpressed by the thrust of the recent student piece on the Impact (‘The University of Nottingham’s Official Student Magazine’) website, entitled Don’t Mention the Tuition Fees: British Students Silenced at Malaysia Campus Talk. The article bemoans the fact that UK students at UNMC were not allowed to attend the recent UNMC-hosted foreign policy discussion held by Malaysian PM Najib Razak and UK PM David Cameron in order to air their grievances over UK HE fee-hikes.

For anyone who knows me, and my research, this disapproval may seem counter-intuitive. I’m interested in (nay, obsessed with) protest and activism, disruptive, small ‘p’ politics – particularly hacktivism and online protest dynamics and mobilization. I’m usually head of the queue of those standing up for the rights of freedom of expression and protest, and it’s part of the reason why I applied for (and accepted) a job at UNMC – because there’s real work to be done here. But it’s this research interest, and in particular the work done on radical conceptions of the public sphere and on democracy and difference  that underpins my reception to what I call the Don’t Mention article.

Iris Marion Young’s work on activism and protest, and on the somewhat uneasy relationship that these forms of political communication have with traditional or Habermasian conceptions of the public sphere and deliberative democracy has been one of my theoretical touchstones since I first encountered it, and remains so here.

Her perspective on the significance of protest, or aesthetic-affective communication, as opposed to the pure legitimation of rational-critical political communication is essentially that:

“…the enlightenment ideal of the civil public sphere citizens meet in terms of equality and mutual respect is too rounded and tame an ideal of a public. This idea of equal citizenship attains unity because it excludes bodily and affective particularity, as well as the concrete histories of individuals that make groups able to understand one another. Emancipatory politics should foster a conception of the public which in principle excludes no persons, aspects of persons’ lives, or topics of discussion and which encourages aesthetic as well as discursive expression. In such a public, consensus and sharing may not always be the goal, but the recognition and appreciation of differences, in the context of confrontation with power.”

I’m in total agreement with this perspective – the lines of power and dominance that structure our socio-political existence are too extreme for the argument that we must all attempt to operate as rational-critical equals, or to mutually “self-abstract” ourselves from our particular and dis/em/powered realities – to hold much, if any, water. The ability to self-abstract is a massively differentially distributed resource, and this, along with the fact that arenas for political communication are so heavily controlled by the already-powerful, means that any self-respecting democracy should enshrine the rights to freedom of expression and protest within its constitution (or legislative equivalent).

So the question remains – having just espoused my support for the right to protest, why then turn around and express disapproval for these students’ ‘thwarted rights’? The answer is, as it so often is, to do with context.

As Young argues, our goal should be “the recognition and appreciation of differences, in the context of confrontation with power.” My interpretation of this is that it can, and should be read both ways. We should recognize and appreciate  the ‘ineradicable other’ – and there should be space for the expression of that ‘otherness and difference’ through ‘other and different’ modalities.

However, I think it can also be read that amongst us – with ‘us’ being the collective of variously oppressed and subordinated others differentially yet simultaneously confronting power – we should recognize and appreciate that we are internally heterogeneous, and have different realities and oppressions to live within and through. A core aspect of this ‘mutual recognition of the oppressed’ should be the acceptance that some oppressions are more severe than others, and that given that we are often only presented with very limited chinks in the strategies of power within which to engage in tactical resistance, we would likely do well to dedicate our resources intelligently.

It’s worth reflecting upon the relative and differential ‘powers of the disempowered’, and the way in which certain counterhegemonic discourses may in fact silence or marginalize the voices of even more oppressed and subordinated others and issues. The following might serve as ‘reflection aids’:

• Don’t Mention the Fact that Cameron Did a Traditional ‘Walkabout’ Around UNMC: Could Have Been Asked Anything

• Don’t Mention the Protesters at the Gate:  None of the Mainstream Media Did Either

• Don’t Mention the Absence of any Student Protest on the Grounds of UNMC: Isn’t That A Bit Odd?    and
• Don’t Mention the Fact That One Malaysian, One Iranian and One Burmese Student Wanted To Protest: The Rest of the UNMC Student Body Was Too Scared To Speak Up (also known as):
• Don’t Mention the Fact That Any Politician Visiting a UK Campus Anticipates At Least One Protest Group
• Don’t Mention the Words ‘Self-Censorship’
• Don’t Mention the UUCA Bill
• Don’t Mention Bersih or the Lack of Electoral Reform in Malaysia
• Don’t Mention Tear Gas and Water Cannons
• Don’t Mention the Malaysian Peaceful Assembly Bill
• Don’t Mention the Government-Controlled Media
• Don’t Mention Corruption
• Don’t Mention the Current PTPTN #Occupation in Dataran Merdeka

I could continue, but hopefully you begin to see my point.

The original Don’t Mention article seems to me have committed a cardinal journalistic sin – they didn’t invert their ‘pyramid’, and what I think is the most significant information of the whole piece in the final paragraph/s. Beyond that, it simultaneously displays a staggering lack of solidarity with and empathy for the subjectivities of fellow students and the citizens and democratic struggles of Malaysia.

So, as I said, I’m unimpressed, but I’m also not particularly surprised. This article, and the corresponding dearth of any ‘local’ or ‘international’ student representations of the event in Impact or anywhere else, seems to me to be yet another iteration of the ‘mothership’/’rule Britannia’ postcolonial complex proving particularly difficult to eradicate from the ‘global Nottingham’ endeavor.

As of yesterday, I note that there is a new article on the Impact website, entitled The Global University: Are We Really Inclusive Of Our Internationals? Although this article engages with a different set of microcosmic Nottingham University-attempted ‘integrations of global society’, I can only agree with The Global University’s authors’ conclusions.

No.

If we still think that our #firstworlddemocracyproblems trump all else, we’re really not all that inclusive, and we need to do, and think, a lot more.

Dr. Tessa Houghton (School of Modern Languages and Cultures at The Univeristy of Nottingham Malaysia Campus)

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Friday 16 March. To the Malaysia Ministry of Education/University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus event ‘Transnational Education: Opportunities and Challenges in the 21st Century – Malaysian and European Perspectives’, at the Kuala Lumpur Conference Centre. After the necessary pleasantries and platitudes from the diplomats and politicians we were treated to some searching, provocative reflections on the Bologna process, and the meanings of internationalisation, or transnational education, in both the Malaysian context and the European. Of particular interest, for me, was a presentation by Prof. Tan Sri Dato’ Dzulkifli Abdul Razak.

In 2011, Dzulkifli stood down from the University Sains Malaysia after a decade as Vice Chancellor to lead a new initiative, Albukhary International University, a not-for-profit, philanthropic institution dedicated to opening the path to Higher Education for underprivileged students from around the world. He’s a well-known figure in Malaysia for his intelligent and often trenchant commentaries in his column for the New Sunday Times, collected as a series of volumes entitled Voicing Concern, as much as for his enlightened stewardship of USM and thoughtful contributions to Education policy debate in the region and, indeed, internationally – he was recently nominated First Vice-President of the International Association of Universities (IAU), having previously been President of the Association of Southeast Asian Institutions of Higher Learning (2007-2008).

Dzulkifli raised some challenging questions. The core of his talk was a valuable warning that for the most part ‘transnational education’ has been, and continues to be, coterminous with ‘western’ (or ‘northern’) educational modes being transposed to ‘eastern’ (or ‘southern’) peoples and contexts. Both ‘first wave’ internationalisation (the migration of eastern/southern students to western/northern institutions), and ‘second wave’ internationalisation (the proliferation of western/northern branch campuses, partnerships, franchises in the east/south), have been consistent with the extension of western political and economic hegemony, above all the export of a neoliberal, marketized and commodified approach to learning. This is not simply an ideological issue, it is also experienced in the predominance of a wide range of ‘western/northern’ disciplinary, theoretical and ethical assumptions about educational purposes and practices. Whole intellectual traditions, associated with what we might call Muslim, Confucian, Asian, or African ways of seeing and knowing, have been at once absorbed and effaced, have been quite literally written out of history. We need reminding, Dzulkifli rightly maintained, of values and insights which flourished in what the eurocentric Enlightenment laughingly called the ‘Dark Ages’, work which still continues, struggling for articulation and recognition at the margins of the contemporary educational hegemony. The West/North ignores these counter-currents and alternative histories, and the disenfranchised and culturally marginalized peoples they represent, not only to its intellectual and scholarly detriment, but also at its peril. Internationalisation, in the classroom as much as the street, can involve many and often violent forms of debate.

These are important positions to reaffirm, and Dzulkifli’s closing remarks about the objectives of the Albukhary Foundation, and a need to promote ‘Education for Being’ as opposed to ‘Education for Having’ were powerful and moving. But the contrarian in me felt that he skated over some important contradications and caveats, and was also himself guilty of overlooking strong counter-hegemonic currents, both emergent and residual, within the history of internationalisation and transnational education.

First, there is the familiar allegation that quibbling about values and epistemology butters no parsnips, much less brings water to the thirsty, food to the starving, electricity to the powerless. For the time being, our modes of researching and teaching the core competencies in engineering and hard sciences must suffice, given the pressing threats we face. There are urgent questions of priority, particularly in regard to development, and the place of education in development, and well-intentioned hand-wringing about university policy and practice is to many a distraction from more immediate tasks. Jacques Derrida’s thoughts about poisons and cures in Plato’s Pharmacy come to mind (we may have to swallow something we don’t like in order to achieve goals which we do – though it’s also possible it might poison us in the long run), along with Raymond Williams’s insistence, in ‘Culture is Ordinary’ and elsewhere, that the ‘preservation’ of cultural values should never be at the expense of fundamental improvements to material standards of living.

Second, inherent in Dzulkifli’s position is the risk that his plea for a return to the discourse of values and ethics might in practice be associated with forms of conservative nationalism and religious exceptionalism severely in tension with the hospitable position he apparently espouses. Dzulkifli made a comment, in passing, about the coincidence, in February 2011, of the assertion by British Prime Minister David Cameron that ‘multiculturalism’, as a policy and project, had failed in the UK, with a march by the English Defence League against Muslim immigration. This conjuncture, Dzulkifli suggested, was symptomatic of the inherent orientalism, islamophobia and chauvinism of the West. The same argument could be levelled at his own appeal to ‘Muslim’ and/or ‘Malay’ values. The company he keeps could be both Malaysian Prime Minister Najib, with his troubling rhetoric of defending Putrajaya [the seat of government] to the last drop of Malay blood sitting uneasily with the vagaries of his ‘1Malaysia’ concept, and Ibrahim Ali, head of the ultra-nationalist Perkasa organisation, mouthpiece for some revolting and extreme Malay supremacist dogma. This is not unconnected with concerns about the Albukhary Foundation itself. The source of its vast resources are, in many eyes, at best ethically suspect, given the business career of the eponymous benefactor. In Q&A, Professor Dzulkifli declined to comment on this issue.

These contradictions are not new, and have been the staple of much debate – East, West, North and South – about the internationalisation of Higher Education, just as much as they have been at the heart of postcolonial and subaltern studies for many decades. These are debates of which I am confident Professor Dzulkifli is most fully aware – it was, indeed, pleasing to see a Vice Chancellor engaging with them. What he might also have conceded is that the Bologna process, for all its potential problems of standardisation and homogenisation, was also born of the desire for enduring peace in the European area after the disastrous experience of near-total war. ASEAN performs a similar function, and has one of its goals a collective and supra-national resistance to the very hegemonic forces Dzulkifli outlines. The ‘harmonisation’ process in the European Higher Education sector has lessons for us all, not all of them positive (at the same conference, Professor Morshidi Sirat, from the Malaysian Department of Higher Education, in the Ministry of Higher Education, reflected on precisely these issues), but there is maybe more to learn from the long years of wrangling over definition and implementation than he allows. Moreover, there are strong and widespread currents of educational thinking, of theoretical and methodological innovation, quite openly resistant to the Northern/Western educational hegemony, indeed very strongly represented in the contemporary academy. One need go no further than the powerful and enduring examples of Paolo Freire or Franz Fanon to point to whole traditions of postcolonial and cosmopolitan thinking which have resisted, and continue to resist, the prevailing dominant.

Dr. Sean Matthews  (Director of Studies of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus)

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