The Birth of Academic Subalterns

Abstract

This study analyzes the learning and cultural experiences of Korean graduate students in the United States. Based on 50 qualitative interviews, the study focuses on how global knowledge and the power relations of language determine their education in a transnational system. At a theoretical level, the study criticizes both the functionalist approaches that limit analysis to socialization processes and the pragmatic analyses that seek to solve problems of adaptation. Rejecting these perspectives, this study instead analyzes how a series of power relations based on knowledge and language operate in a global education environment to shape cultural attitudes as well as daily interactions and interprets the result as the daily embodiment of the global hegemony enjoyed by American universities. I explain this mechanism by examining global, national, and local interactions within the global hierarchy of higher education, contradictions within the Korean university system, and students’ transnational learning experiences. During these processes, Korean graduate students, operating as academic subalterns in the global educational system, also contribute to this global hegemony through their active consent to and participation in the assumptions of American research universities. Ultimately, I argue that because the production and consumption of academic capital operates within the power structure of global higher education, we need to pay attention to how various power relations conjoin in transnational learning and teaching, and how they dynamically generate academic domination beyond the functionalist approach.

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