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Abstract
Examining some of the specifics of educational ‘reform’ in the post-state socialist political landscape, this article argues that the reproduction of Western hegemony in Eastern Europe and within the academic global political economy is more complex than we can grasp through idealist critiques of travelling theory and of representations alone. We need to attend to the materiality of hegemony, including institutional and financial practices; the travels of theory, the importation of Western higher education structures, and the dissemination of interdisciplinary programs reflect a complex relationship between theory, ideology and funding in academic political economy. Acknowledging this reality helps us to better map the form post-Cold War Western dominance is taking in the name of ‘education reform’.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Gender Studies doctoral students and faculty at Central European University who made many useful points and shared experiences relevant to some of the issues in this article at the October 2007 faculty/graduate research seminar. And I would like to thank Almira Ousanova for her help.
Notes
1. Like many scholars working on the region, I use the terminology, ‘state socialism’ instead of communism since these countries never really achieved communism. State socialism is believed to better describe the system that incorporated elements of socialism but still retained a very strong and central role for the state.
2. See Dorothy Smith (2004) for an example of this original argument made by standpoint theorists. See Kornelia Slavova (2006) for an example of a CEE scholar who reworks this argument in analyzing the relationship between Western feminist theory and CEE feminists.
3. This phrase comes from Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (Citation1993), In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out of the Way Place. Tsing makes an argument very much in line with my position in this essay. She argues that ‘marginal’ locations are connected to other places in the world and must be understood in terms of their connectedness, not only in terms of their assumed isolation or marginality.
4. For compatible critiques, see also Frunză and Văcăresscu (Citation2004) and Watson (Citation2001).
5. The analysis in this section focuses on CEE scholars because this is the group I am more familiar with. Additionally, and importantly, Russia is large enough that it has been able to develop/maintain somewhat isolated academic communities. Further, there is a fairly strong nationalist and anti-Western discourse that has prompted scholars to maintain a strong focus on Russian language scholarship and to be less interested in engaging in Western scholarly communities. Of course there are exceptions to these patterns.
6. I wish to thank my colleague Erzébet (Zsazsa) Barát for drawing my attention to this issue.
7. Cultural Studies is a little different in so far as the major conference, ‘Crossroads in Cultural Studies’ is often held outside of the US, and frequently in Europe.
8. This statement is made based on the reports of funded projects by CEE participants in the Higher Education Support Program funded meeting titled, ‘Gender Studies – the state of the discipline’. It was held at Central European University, October 12–15, 2006. The participants were researchers active in gender research at various universities and institutions across the region.
10. As cited and discussed in more detail in Zimmermann (2007).
11. Documents from the European Council in Copenhagen 21–22 June 1993. http://ue.eu.int/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/72921.pdf;13-14 (accessed 25 January 2007) as cited in Zimmermann (2007). See also Haug and Tauch (Citation2001).
12. See http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/educ/bologna/bologna.pdf (accessed 2 February 2007).
13. See http://www.auca.kg/en/about_auca/Nmission#N5 (accessed 26 December 2007).
14. See the European Humanities University website page entitled ‘EHU in Minsk’ http://en.ehu.lt/about/history/minsk/ (accessed 26 December 2007).
15. See http://en.ehu.lt/about/history/conflict/ and http://www.ehu-international.org (translation of Lukashenko's exact quote from the Russian by Tamás Krausz in Zimmermann (2007, p. 27)).
16. See “Rector's Letter on EHU website http://en.ehu.lt/about/rector_letter/ (accessed 26 December 2007).
17. See ‘Chronicles of the Conflict’ http://en.ehu.lt/about/history/conflict/ (accessed 26 December 2007).