We Took Them On, They Took Us Over: Academic Imperialism and Intellectual Bondage In Asia Dennis Kwek Department

of Accounting, Finance and Management University of Essex Wivenhoe Park Colchester CO4 3SQ Email: Dennis@camlann.demon.co.uk Abstract In the last five years, universities in Asia have been making a concerted effort to capitalise on their core competencies, identified through reviews by panels of invited Western academics as well as strategic planning exercises. The aim of such ambitious projects is to position themselves as the centre of world-class institutions that collaborates and networks with other institutions of quality, often signifying Western ones. In Singapore, for example, the nations political and university leaders are pouring considerable resources and rhetoric to remake and proclaim that the two main universities shall become the Harvard and MIT of the East (Kong 1999). However, despite decades of rhetoric on the subject of nation-building in the postcolonial societies of Asia, and discussions by scholars of the region on processes of modernisation and development, very little theoretical and critical attention has been paid to what is one of the key institutions of modernity - the university1 . Given the fairly recent origin of universities in Asia, their role in anticolonial struggles, the high social status of intellectuals in general, and academics in particular, their (often unsuccessful) adaptation of the Western ideal of academic freedom to detach themselves from the states influence and to act as centres of critique, should make them a hotbed for any attempt to construct critical knowledge in any Asian setting. Oddly, this has not happened. There are very few analyses of Asian universities in their political and sociological settings (eg. Quah 1993) and even fewer of the role that these academic systems play in producing, disseminating and ordering knowledge (eg. Lee 2000). This dearth of critical studies on Asian academies, coupled with their aspiration to emulate Western institutions, provide the context with which to examine academic imperialism and the intellectual bondage that academics in Asian institutions are subjected (and subjecting themselves) to. Asian academia is a product of unique historical, political, social and cultural factors. There exists not only different educational systems but, more importantly, different knowledge acquisition and production systems informed by the specific needs of nation-building in each of the newly independent nation-states. In South and Southeast Asia, the establishment and evolution of academia is grounded and framed within the direct influence of colonialism (Pennycook 1996); while, in East Asia, the relatively less predominant role played by Western imperialism is also combined with the tradition of Confucian practices and institutions (Paik 2000). However, this suffices only as a broad point of departure. In countries where the educational regime was largely established and maintained by colonial administrations, education and research can continue to have colonising functions, long after imperial rule. Even with the rise of nationalism, in each venue, the production of knowledge in these nationstates are based on Western epistemological schema and theories, deeply rooted in and informed by colonial thought (Wallerstein 1996). It also shaped the way individuals within

the nation states perceive and value Western education, expertise and knowledge. The coloniser - colonised nexus in knowledge production was not only sustained, but also strengthened by specific programmes such as prestigious government scholarships which send the crme de la crme of Asian students to universities in the West. In many sense, the imperial knowledge production tradition and orientation still dominate the development of universities in the region, and the shadow of colonialism and modernity remains an ongoing legacy of the present especially since it has institutionalised itself into the socio-political landscape. Therefore, while the phenomenon of imperialism is often examined in terms of social, political and economic aspects, there is now an increasing need to understand and critically examine academic and intellectual imperialism. On one level, this form of imperialism is the same domination of one people by another in its world of thinking an intellectual dependency of the once colonised upon their former colonisers, a tie that binds unevenly and unequally in a world ostensibly decolonised (Jaya 2001). It engenders an intellectual identity based on internalised subjugation, a bondage that denies its very self-existence within the Asian academic communities while at the same time perpetuating itself (Alatas 1998). Intellectual imperialism conditions the mental attitude of those who have been caught in its web. Often, Asian scholars seek to emulate the West in a mimetic and uncritical way (Rahman 2000). We are dependent on our Western counterparts for concepts and theories, technologies of teaching and research, and the prestige value attached to publishing in Western journals (Garreau 1988, Alatas 2000). Our sense of self-worth requires endorsement and approval from the group we look up to the Harvards and the MITs. Academic imperialism is also enacted in another way it is reconfigured in the local Asian context in the form of political and nationalist agendas. The experience of nation-building, the public discourse of nationalism, the politics of the state these can be seen as fundamental features of the politico- institutional landscape that has had a significant influence on the development of academia and its role in the production and regulation of knowledge, arguably more than any intellectual influences (Lin 1991). Academics in Asia are thus often framed, regulated and disciplined by the relationship of the university to the state. Ironically, it is precisely because of the states proclamation of the rhetoric of intellectual independence while being simultaneously reliant on the West, that reveals the presence of imperialism. In Asia, knowledge has never been more politicised, academia has never been more bonded. Relevant to the discussion on academic imperialism is the increasing importance placed by Asian academics on the search for indigenous truths and knowledges as a means to break from the hegemony of the colonial past (eg. Sinha 1998, Choi 2000). What needs to be revealed, however, is that the indigenisation movement in contemporary Asia has more often coincided with the emergence of nationalism than any anti-colonial sentimentalities. Subsequently, the indigenisation of thought and methodology has to be seen in the context of constructing new cultural hegemonies and hence contributing more to the closure of multiple narratives and identities than their emancipation. It is in essence a conflict with the critical and emancipatory elements of postcolonial theory in the West. Asian academias embeddedness in political institutions driven by nationalist imperatives suggests then that the emergence of critical knowledge requires a post-nationalist consciousness that challenges the ideological programme of indigenisation. The paper therefore seeks to theorise the effects of imperialism and colonisation particularly on the Asian academic arena. It seeks the uncover the role of imperialism in the perpetuation

of a global division of labour in the intellectual enterprise. We argue that modern education cannot be separated from its imperial function of acculturating the Other into the languages, modes of thought, systems of value and the norms and ideals of the coloniser. To better understand Asian academia, we need to situate it within the institutional, political, ideological and imperial forces that regulate it. The paper therefore pays attention to the local, historically constituted social and political conditions that have shaped Asian intellectual discourses as well as the development of academic disciplines, and examines how these factors have created a space for the imperial project to persist. The universities and university intellectuals in post-colonial Singapore provide a unique Asian example, as attempts to locate itself from the periphery to the centre of research excellence fail to acknowledge that their colonised mindsets will always situate them in the shadow of the West. In particular, we show how the rationalist epistemology that informed the formation of the modern nation-state has remained the dominant and hegemonic ideological basis of intellectual and academic deve lopment in the country. These structures were put in place during the colonial period but were reconstituted and harnessed, in a politicised intellectual and socio-political environment, by the post-colonial state to create and reinforce an academic/political/bureaucratic complex, one that binds the academics implicitly and explicitly. Furthermore, the dominance of Western approaches of a largely positivist and quantitative nature in the local social and management disciplines is symptomatic of the modernist framework embraced both by society and intellectuals. This only accentuates the difficulties faced by critical academics who call for alternative models of thinking or challenge existing paradigms (eg. Wallerstein 1991, 1996); most conform or risk being rapidly marginalized or worse, their tenures revoked. In a Special Issue of Organization entitled Re-Organising Knowledge, Transforming Institutions: Knowing, Knowledge and the University in the 21st Century, Cals and Smircich pointed out that knowledge production in universities has become a widely contested affair (2001:148). The paper seeks to situate itself within these voices that critique the modes of organising in universities, in this case in Asia. My reflections in this paper on the state of Asian academia are framed by my interest in critical appraisals of mainstream disciplines, by calls to challenge and unthink (Wallerstein 1991) the dominant systems of knowledge production in place, as well as by attempts to conceptualise and formulate alternative approaches to knowledge and higher education. Through examining academic imperialism with particular reference to local management institutions, we are able to recognise its complicity in local/indigenous academic discourses that they not only have their own intellectual and colonial lineages, but also are products of an intertwined collusion between state, academia and imperial forces. Ultimately, the paper hopes to join the chorus of critical intellectuals who seek to understand the complexities of the modern academic world we are immersed in, and more importantly, who realise that decolonisation must occur at the academic and intellectual levels as well. Note: 1. Some exceptions are research on Pakistani universities (Rahman 2000), Korean universities (Lee 2000), and Ashis Nandys critical call for universities to give serious attention to indigenous knowledge and therefore open up different ways of knowing (Nandy 1996, 2000). References:

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