International networking in the United Arab Emirates higher education system: global–local tensions

Abstract

This paper provides a description of the international networking tensions involved in the recent development of a higher education system in the United Arab Emirates (UAE): a single context offering distinct and variable constructions of ‘local’ and ‘global’. The paper explores contextualised associations of these concepts—or instances between localism and fundamentalism, focusing on pan‐Arab and Egyptian influences in the country as key to understanding the variable boundaries of these networks that support a relativist, situationally constructed reading of the ‘global networking phenomenon’. Within this context, the paper also explores connections between higher education networking, collective identity and state governance; it offers a version of modernism in which nation‐state sovereignty and a networked society, facilitated in a range of ways by a uniquely outward‐looking approach to higher education, are integrally linked, and not dependant on the existence of such ‘global’ norms as constitutional democracy.

Keywords:

• Higher education
• Transnational networks
• Globalisation
• Nation statehood
• Developing world
• Culture
• Language
• Collective identity

Notes

1. Ra's al‐Khaimah did not join until the following year.

2. The Federal National ‘Council of Ministers’ is traditionally headed by the Ruler of Abu Dhabi.

3. It is not clear from the statistics provided whether or not these include non‐national GCC citizens.

4. Exact numbers of ‘private institutions’ are hard to pin down, partly due to definitional niceties.

5. A traditional Arab system of mediators as social, economic, legal or political currency.