TEXT III

HOW ARE WE DOING HIGHER EDUCATION
INTERNATIONALISATION?

Internationalisation has become a mantra in higher education. The knowledge economy is a global network, we are told, and universities across the world are encouraged to ‘plug in’ in various ways in order to reap the benefits of global interconnectedness, as well as to avoid the perils of parochialism.

Rankings are the new currency of quality, English the official language of science – there is a discourse of convergence that promotes the inevitability of a singular vision for university structure, function and aims.

In this sense, a unitary metric for quality would seek to impose one context upon another. The idea of a ‘world-class university’ is one way in which developmental contexts are ignored in order to export a particular model of university function.

The existence of these kinds of tensions around internationalisation opens the question: when we talk about measuring the value of internationalisation, whose internationalisation are we talking about?

From the rapid growth in internationalisation initiatives over the past two decades, we have seen a recent turn to questioning the ‘value’ of internationalisation projects. Universities are strapped for cash and have to make decisions about which international projects they want to invest in, and which projects provide the most value for institutions’ own aims and ambitions.

Internationalisation takes many forms, including co-taught courses and degrees, massive open online courses (MOOCs), collaborative research projects and student exchanges. Maintaining international partnerships can be costly, and many are, for various reasons, not particularly productive.

In the current context, many universities are reaching a ‘saturation point’ with their international partnerships and have now begun the process of strategic culling and reinvestment. The very idea of which international projects are valuable, and why, is up for grabs.

From a practical point of view, we can ask: where and by what means are international projects being valued? In this sense, attention is drawn towards those spaces where international projects are formed and promoted, and here we can examine their basis and logic.

These ‘spaces of internationalisation’ are everywhere and diffuse – from websites and organisations such as University World News and The Chronicle of Higher Education, to international development institutions such as the OECD, World Bank, national governments and even regional organisations such as UNESCAP (UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.) or APAIE (Asia Pacific Association for International Education).

There are also international consortia that universities themselves control, such as Universitas 21, the Association of Pacific Rim Universities and the World Universities Network. These kinds of spaces are ‘listening posts’ as well as broadcasting centres through which ideas about internationalisation (and its aims and value.) are promoted and normalised.

What is the knowledge economy, and how should universities respond to it? What is a world-class university, is it desirable for every country, and how can a country acquire one? Should universities cooperate to advance alternate concepts and metrics of productivity and ‘innovation’ in order to change the playing field for all, or should they cooperate with select partners in order to secure competitive advantage against others in a global market?

Whether or not such questions are engaged by university heads or administrators, the answers will always emerge in practice through the way things are done. Whether a vice-chancellor rhetorically promotes holistic concepts of academic work is less materially significant than what the staff and faculty act out in the ways that they assess and articulate the value of their international projects.

Should universities be critics and consciences of society, should they critically evaluate the ‘ethic of global citizenship’, and how can these rationales be evidenced and articulated in these spaces?

Perhaps different kinds of metrics may be needed, or perhaps a different way of thinking altogether. Whatever possibilities might be explored, they will ultimately need to be storied and embedded into investment narratives that flow through these emerging international spaces.

For those concerned about internationalisation being conducted through exploitative and narrow competitive rationalities, and who wonder how we might instead mobilise an ethically grounded and pluralistic vision for internationalisation: let’s look to the spaces where the ‘value’ of internationalisation is currently being made, and then make it differently.

(Marc Tadaki. University World News. Edited. June 1st, 2013. Issue 274)

TEXT II

PEACE TALKS IN MYANMAR JEOPARDIZED
BY KILLING OF REBELS

BANGKOK — Ethnic minority groups in Myanmar said on Thursday that peace talks with the government, one of the cornerstones of the country’s reform program, were in jeopardy after at least 23 rebel cadets were killed in an attack by the military.

The shelling on Wednesday, which struck an officers’ training facility near the Chinese border that is run by the rebel group, the Kachin Independence Army, was the most severe flare-up of violence since rebels and government troops battled around the rebel capital, Laiza, two years ago.

The shelling, which rebel officers said killed men from a number of different ethnic groups, cast doubt on the government’s ability to bring about a nationwide cease-fire, a plan that has been repeatedly postponed in recent months after skirmishes.

“This has caused a tremendous obstacle in building trust,” the United Nationalities Federal Council, a coalition of ethnic groups, said in a statement on Thursday. The group said the military had “deliberately planned and fired” artillery at the Kachin facility and questioned the “genuine desire” of the military for peace.

Photos of the rebels’ corpses were widely circulated on the Internet.

“We are outraged,” said Mong Gwang, a captain with the Kachin Independence Army, which controls large swaths of territory along the border with China. “This means further conflict is coming.”

The escalation of violence came just daysafter President Obama visited Myanmar and warned of backsliding in the country’s transformation from dictatorship to democracy.

Myanmar has been locked in an intermittent civil war from its earliest days of independence from Britain in 1948, and a cease-fire is considered a crucial part of President Thein Sein’s stated desire to deliver it from its abject poverty and dictatorial past.

U Hla Maung Shwe, a director of the Myanmar Peace Center, which is coordinating talks between the government and ethnic groups, sought to play down the shelling, calling it a response to a rebel attack.

“The Tatmadaw shelled back,” he said, using the formal name for the army. “I think this is just an accident.”

The Kachin, who inhabit the resource-rich highlands in the foothills of the Himalayas, are among 16 ethnic groups negotiating with the government for a cease-fire.

Negotiations have stumbled over the fundamental question of whether Myanmar will remain a united and highly centralized country controlled by the Burman ethnic group, or whether power will be devolved to minority groups.

U Saw Than Myint, a representative of the Shan ethnic group, said talks faltered in September when the military pulled back from an offer to create a federal army.

Mr. Saw Than Myint said he believed that Wednesday’s attack was an effort to put pressure on the Kachin to agree to a cease-fire.

“This is unacceptable, and it could backfire for the overall peace efforts,” he said.

Myanmar’s military, which has a powerful and largely unchecked role in the nominally civilian government, has become increasingly assertive in recent months. Military officers in Parliament recently proposed that the National Defense and Security Council, a powerful and somewhat secretive body in which the military is heavily represented, be granted more power.

(Thomas Fuller. The New York Times. Nov. 20th 2014.)

“[…] the military pulled back from an offer to create a federal army” means that:

TEXTO 2

A ALMA DO CONSUMO

Todos os dias, em algum nível, o consumo atinge nossa vida, modifica nossas relações, gera e rege sentimentos, engendra fantasias, aciona comportamentos, faz sofrer, faz gozar. Às vezes constrangendo- nos em nossas ações no mundo, humilhando e aprisionando, às vezes ampliando nossa imaginação e nossa capacidade de desejar, consumimos e somos consumidos.

O consumo não pertence a todas as épocas nem a todas as civilizações. Somente há pouco tempo histórico é que falamos e entendemos viver numa sociedade de consumo, onde tudo parece adaptar-se à lógica dessa racionalidade, ou seja, à esfera do lucro e do ganho, à ética e à estética das trocas pagas. É uma singularidade histórica. Tornamo-nos Homo consumericus.

Para uma psicologia arquetípica, há deuses em nosso consumo: Afrodite da sedução e do encantamento pela beleza e pelo prazer, Hermes do comércio e da troca intensa, Cronos do devoramento, Plutão da riqueza e da abundância, Criança Divina da novidade, Dioniso do arrebatamento, Narciso ensimesmado, Herói furioso, Eros apaixonado, Pan, Príapo, Puer, quem mais? Que pessoas arquetípicas estão na alma do consumo?

Ao buscarmos pela alma do consumo, lançamo-nos, sempre mais desconfortavelmente, no jogo entre necessidade e supérfluo, entre frívolo e essencial. Não sabemos ao certo onde termina a necessidade, onde começa o supérfluo, onde estão as fronteiras entre consumo de necessidade e consumo de gosto, consumo consciente e consumo de compulsão.

A era hipermoderna se dá sob o signo do excesso e do extremo, que realiza uma “pulsão neofílica”, um prazer pela novidade que se volta constantemente para o presente. O consumo acontece ao lado de outros fenômenos importantes que marcam e que estão no centro do novo tempo histórico: o espetáculo midiático, a comunicação de massa, a individualização extremada, o hipermercado globalizado, a poderosíssima revolução informática, a internet. O consumo cria seus próprios templos: os shoppingcenters, as novas catedrais das novas e velhas igrejas, e também, a seu modo, a própria rede mundial de computadores.

Consumo: tantos são seus deuses que é preciso evocá-los com cuidado, sem voracidade, para sentirmos sua interioridade, sua alma, sem sermos pegos em sua malha fina.

Consumo de utensílios domésticos, eletrodomésticos, eletroeletrônicos que liquidificam, batem, moem, trituram, misturam, assam, limpam, fervem, fritam, amassam, amolecem, passam e enceram para nós – sem nossas mãos, sem contato manual. Tocam sons, reproduzem imagens, processam informações. Excesso e profusão de automatismos também funcionando para a era da autonomia.

Organizo e escolho as músicas que quero ouvir – a trilha sonora da minha vida – sem surpresas desagradáveis ou diferentes, simplesmente baixando arquivos de áudio da internet e armazenando-os em meu iPod. A telefonia está em minhas mãos, em qualquer lugar, é móvel, e com ela a impressão de contato por trás da fantasia de conectividade. A comunicação está toda em minhas mãos. Minha correspondência, agora por via eletrônica, está em minhas mãos (ou diante de meus olhos) na hora que desejo ou preciso, em qualquer lugar do planeta. E está em minhas mãos principalmente tudo aquilo que posso comprar pronto (ready-to-go): desde a comida – entregue em casa (delivery), ou então ao acesso rápido de uma corrida de carro (drive-through) – até medicamentos, entretenimento, companhia, sexo e roupas prêt-à-porter.

Percebemos a enorme presença da fantasia de autonomia. E esta autonomia está a serviço da felicidade privada.

O nosso tempo é um tempo de escolhas. A “customização” cada vez mais intensa da maioria dos bens e dos serviços de consumo permite que eu diga como quero meu refrigerante, meu carro, meu jeans, meu computador.

A superindividualização também leva à autonomia, ou vice-versa, e impõe processos de escolha cada vez mais intensos e urgentes: “Os gostos não cessam de individualizar-se”.

O senhor dos Portões (Mr. Gates) abriu as janelas (Windows) de um presente que requer, sim, definições (escolhas) cada vez mais “altas”, mais precisas, mais particularizadas, em quase tudo.

A própria identidade torna-se, no mundo hipermoderno, uma escolha que se dá num campo cada vez mais flexível e fluido de possibilidades: tribos, nações, culturas, subculturas, sexualidades, profissões, idades. Personas to-go. Autonomia: nomear-se a si mesmo.

A lógica consumista parece ser a de um hipernarcisismo. Se existem deuses nas nossas doenças, quem são eles no consumismo?

Comecemos pela necessidade: temos necessidade de quê? De quanto? Quando? Não sabemos mais ao certo, é claro. As medidas enlouqueceram. Movemo-nos agora num mar de necessidades: pseudonecessidades, necessidades artificiais, necessidades básicas, necessidades estrategicamente plantadas pelo marketing, necessidades que não sei se tenho, necessidades futuras, até chegar ao desnecessário, o extraordinário que é demais. A necessidade delira.

A compra é a magia do efêmero. É asa, é brasa. É futuro, promessa, desejo de mudar, intensificação, momento de morte. É o fim da produção, quando as coisas são finalmente absorvidas pela psique.

A compra, ao contrário do que se poderia pensar, dissolve o ego em alma, dissolve o ego heróico em sua fantasia de morte. Comprar é o que resta. Comprar é nosso modo de fazer o mundo virar alma.

BARCELLOS, Gustavo. Disponível em:

http://www.diplomatique.org.br/artigo.php?id=291 Acesso em: 04 dez. 2014. Texto adaptado.

A expressão sublinhada no trecho exemplifica uma figura de linguagem.

“O senhor dos Portões (Mr. Gates) abriu as janelas (Windows) de um presente que requer, sim, definições (escolhas) cada vez mais “altas”, mais precisas, mais particularizadas, em quase tudo”.

Marque a alternativa que nomeia corretamente a figura de linguagem.

In “Should universities be critics and consciences of society, should they critically evaluate the ‘ethic of global citizenship’, and how can these rationales be evidenced and articulated in these spaces?”, the words in bold face are, respectively: