Spatial imaginaries: universities, internationalization, and feminist geographies

Abstract

In this article, we conduct a discourse analysis of the strategic plans of two universities, one from the global South and the other from the global North, to understand how the constitution of space and place reconfigures human experience in the two institutions. We argue that universities do not simply respond to dominant logics of globalization but are active participants in its production. We draw on feminist geographers to elaborate how these universities’ discourses of internationalization reify a division of higher education as local ‘place’ and globalization as abstract global space, ‘out there’. This imaginary spatiality obscures the work of the ‘local’ in producing the ‘global’ with important implications for the redefinition of the student-citizen, useful knowledge, and managerial practices.

Keywords:

• globalization
• internationalization
• universities
• feminist geographies
• space
• discourse analysis

Acknowledgements

The writing of this article was supported by Fondecyt (Chilean National Commission of Scientific and Technological Research), Incentive for International Cooperation, Project #7070261. The ideas expressed are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Commission.

Notes

1. Regionalization of trade and economic alliances – such as the European Union, Mercosur, North American Free Trade Agreement, and Central American Free Trade Agreement (not to mention organizations such as the World Bank and the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development) – have been significant impetuses in the ‘harmonization’ of cross-national exchange and collaboration (see Burbules & Torres, 2000; Henry, Lingard, Rizvi, & Taylor, 2001).

2. There is a vast literature, which we do not rehearse here, on what is variously termed the enterprise university, the entrepreneurial university, the managed university, academic corporatization, academic marketization, and academic capitalism. See, for example, Bok (2003), Marginson and Considine (2000), Peters (2002), and Slaughter and Rhoades (2004)

3. All italics in the institutional documents are our emphasis, a means of asking readers to pause at what seem to be commonsense statements. We also note that all quotations taken from the University of the South and University of the North come from their strategic plans. We do not cite specific pages or sections.