In this era institutions located in the United States exercise
an extraordinary global hegemony in higher education, research and codified
knowledge that supports American foreign policy and the world role of that
nation in other spheres. American global hegemony in education and knowledge does not altogether negate the potential for bricolage, local translation
and adaptation, mimed conformities, the diverse editing of universal rules,
and other local variations on identity. But it has set in train powerful material
forces that favour cultural and linguistic conformity and support specifically
American interests, belying the potential of global convergence and integration to operate in a multilateral fashion and carry more plural cultural contents. The first part of the paper considers Gramsci’s theorization of
hegemony in the context of the relational field of higher education and
research. The second part maps the American global hegemony using
selected data, focusing on the structural conditions of hegemony, the global
academic role of the English language, the concentration of leading
researchers and the directions of flows of published knowledge, the attractor
function of US universities as the 'world doctoral school' and in academic
migration, and the normative impact in policy and university management of
models of the research university and commercial vocational education
grounded in American practices. The Americanization of knowledge and
university education sustains an Americanized global civil society, and supports the US domination of global political economy, popular ideas and
images in film and consumption, cultural life and military supremacy in a
mutually reinforcing process. By the same token, achieving a greater plurality
in language, knowledge and research are crucial to a more plural world and
more egalitarian political economy.
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