Troubling Cartographies and Ambivalent Imaginaries: Using Heuristic Models Heuristically

• In Event: World Education Research Association–International Research Network Global Ethics in Higher Education

Abstract

The EIHE project has enabled a research collective to form around individual and collective ‘imaginaries’ of higher education, exploring associated ideas about global citizenship, interdependence, global change and social accountability. This paper reflects on the use of social cartographies and ‘imaginaries’ as heuristics for analysing qualitative and quantitative data in the project. Social cartography (Paulston, 1999;2000) and the application of the idea of social ‘imaginaries’ (Castoriadis 1987) to higher education informed the development of a heuristic to enable three major discursive orientations - neoliberal, liberal and critical as well as their interfaces- to be mapped and visualized as a tool for analysis. Perspectives emerging from the data could be clarified and compared using the heuristic, which is flexible enough to allow the identification of ambivalent, partial and overlapping positions.

Methods develop in specific contexts and are not context free (Charmaz 2014, 1074). Since its inception, the project’s orientation towards global ethics has been strongly informed by critical postcolonial and decolonial theories (e.g. Bhabha, 1994; Mignolo,2002), and by the concern to identify the persistence of colonial relations of power in academic contexts as the basis for enabling a pluralized and more democratic and inclusive approach to knowledges (Tikly 1999, Hickling-Hudson& Sidhu, 2011).

Nevertheless, the strongly critical, yet solidaristic epistemological commitments of the research group can sometimes sit uncomfortably with the non-normative, neutral character of a heuristic model. The theoretical contrasts appear to be more readily intelligible in some contexts than in others. For example, institutionalist or welfarist theories might alternatively counterpose neoliberalism against conservatism and social democracy (Esping-Anderson 1990), or against socialism and liberalism. In some settings, the latter distinctions may have been more intelligible, but perhaps not as epistemologically challenging. This gap between a heuristic informed by postcolonial epistemological critique and potential preferences for alternative mappings based on alternative institutional or ideological distinctions leads us to consider further theoretical iterations or variations. These might more explicitly engage the differences represented by the diversity and interdisciplinarity of the research group, and give greater consideration to its differentiated contexts as a methodological resource in itself. We explore the possibility for the heuristic to be viewed as a generative tool that provokes further theorizing, deeper conversations and new concepts informing research about the ethical implications of internationalization. We do not necessarily limit our evaluation of the heuristic to considerations of its adequacy for producing generalizing or generalizable knowledge. Seen from different subject positions, desires and contexts, the project heuristic has served to both open up and foreclose understandings of the data and directions for future work in this area.

Reflecting on the contextual heterogeneity of this research project, we might draw from a global perspective on grounded theory that prioritizes heterogeneity (Charmaz 2014). This may encourage new analytical heuristics to emerge, drawing on the interplay of different subject positions and identities, theoretical and disciplinary knowledges. As new interpretations emerge, new routes for critical analysis may be attempted, while continuing to honour the basic principles of intelligibility, dissent and solidarity.

Authors

• Karen Pashby, University of Alberta

• Meeri Hellsten, Södertörn University

• Su-ming Khoo, Sociology and Political Science, NUI Galway