Session Information
07 SES 01 B, Empirical Studies into Careers, Identities and the Capacity to Aspire
Paper Session
Contribution
Background:Due to globalization, Egypt, like other countries, liberated its foreign trade and shifted its public spending from sectors like education and health to more productive ones. This economic liberation coupled with other factors led to the spread of private schools and universities. By the beginning of the 1996-97 academic year, four private universities had been established (Cook, 1999). The establishment of these universities was cheered by investors and educators, who saw it as a good solution for the complex educational problems, but it also raised neo-colonialism and cultural imperialism concerns because these universities were affiliated with American and British universities and the admission criteria included an English language exam (Cook, 1999, p. 100). These concerns were to become more alarming with the establishment of foreign universities; especially if we take into consideration that Egyptians had already been discontent with the national system of education on the grounds that it is too westernized (Cook, 1999). Up till then, the American University in Cairo (AUC), founded in 1919 was the only foreign university in Egypt. However, in the last few years, Egypt has witnessed an unprecedented spread of “foreign” universities; namely, the German University in Cairo (2003), the British University in Egypt (2004), Al-Ahram Canadian University (2005), the French University in Egypt (2006), The Egyptian Russian University (2006), and Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (2008). The language of instruction in all these universities is English with the exception of the French university that teaches in French, English and Arabic. This sudden consecutive emergence of private universities that adopt foreign curricula has heated the already existing debate about “international schools” in Egypt.
Globalization is seen as a threat to the cultural identities of many people (Kale, 2004, p. 98) for whom, as Appadurai (1992) argued, "the search for identity becomes one of the moral resources for attaining security." Castells (1999) also contended that "[i]n a world of global flows of wealth, power and images, the search for an identity, collective or individual, assigned or built becomes the fundamental source of social meaning"(cited in Bokser-Liwerant, 2002, p.259). The vision of identity that this paper adopts is a most-modernist one in which one is not born with a set identity, for identity "is built up and changes throughout a person's lifetime." A person "is not himself from the outset; nor does he just "grow aware" of what he is; he becomes what he is. He doesn't merely "grow aware" of his identity; he acquires it step by step"(Maalouf, 2000, pp. 20-1) .
Research Questions: The following research, therefore, aims to investigate the effects that the AUC has on the Egyptian students’ identities. It specifically attempts to answer the following research questions: 1) What effect(s) does the American University in Cairo have on Egyptian students’ national, religious, and linguistic identities? 2) How do the students construct and negotiate their national, religious, and linguistic identities in the context of this foreign educational institution? In this sense, the study has been conducted within the framework of interpretivism and constructionism. Interpretivism is "often linked to the thought of Max Weber (1864-1920), who suggests that in the human sciences we are concerned with verstehen (understanding)"(Crotty, 1998, p. 67). On the other hand, as Crotty (1998) has explained, "social constructionism emphasizes the hold our culture has on us: it shapes the way in which we see things [. . .] and gives us a quite definite view of the world"( p.58). Therefore, my interpretation and construction of meaning is influenced by my background and experiences as is the meaning constructed by the participants.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bokser-Liwerant, J. (2002). Globalization and collective identities. Social Compass, 49(2), 253-271. Crotty, M. (1998). The Foundations of Social Research. London: Sage. Larrain, J. (1994). Ideology and Cultural Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lash, J. W. (2001). Exporting Education: The Case of the American University in Cairo. Maalouf, A. (2000). On Identity. London: Harvill.
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