Maria Golubeva, Latvia
New Practices, Old Discourses?
Change and Continuity in Humanities and Social
Sciences in Latvia during the Democratic Transition
Aims and objectives
of the International Policy Fellowship project
:
A. To
produce a research-based
paper that would meet the following objectives:
1. To identify the
factors due to which in some cases academic reform
in Humanities and Social Sciences in Latvia, in which a number of
external
actors were involved, did not lead to the promotion of democratic
discourses in
academic milieu and in society at large, and introduction of new
academic
practices and exposure to international cooperation did not preclude
the
reproduction of exclusionary, racist and nationalist discourses.
1. To assess the impact of international actors – from EU-related to
OSI-related
institutions (Civic Education Project, SCOUT, HESP, Robert Bosch
Stiftung and
others) on academic departments, and to see to what extent this impact
is
visible in the introduction of democratic discourses in the academic
and higher
education milieu, and what counter-currents existed in some cases.
In order to increase the proposed
study’s scope and implications, the case of
Latvia was compared to the case of another transition society,
where
both EU and OSI-related institutions were striving to promote
democratic
agenda through higher education – Romania.
B. On
the basis of research findings, to write policy recommendations for
organisations with democratising agenda involved in academic reform in
transition societies.
C.To present the findings of the
proposed research at various academic and
policy forums in Latvia and beyond, to engage in advocacy based on the
deliverables of the Project.
Research
description
Teaching and research in Humanities and Social Sciences at
university
level has inevitable impact on the reproduction of significant social
and
political discourses in society. The
proposed study will strive to analyse, using as case study the
development of
higher education in Latvia, the causes why involvement of external
actors in
academic reform and transfer of new academic practices from countries
with a
longer experience of democracy does not always lead to the spreading of
liberal and pluralist discourses in Humanities and Social Sciences –
and to
identify the
factors that sometimes obstructed the development of liberal
discourses in
academia.
Having
regained its independence in 1991, Latvia achieved a remarkable
record of democratization over the last decade. Nevertheless, political
elite
still reproduces nationalist and exclusionist discourses that have an
impact on
ethnic polarization of society. Often politicians’
statements in
the media and experts’ observations concerning policy-making processes
provoke
questions about the depth of democratic orientations of the country’s
political
elite. The debate about normative implications of the involvement of
‘external’
actors – such as Open Society Institute - in political agenda-setting
has been
recently sparked in Latvia. This debate has shown that the concept of
open
exchange of normative and intellectual influences across national
borders in
the area of public policy is by no means taken for granted by the
public.
In a society with a certain extent
of ethnic polarization, it is especially
important that intellectual elites and media provide an arena for
political
debate, thus ensuring the existence of what Habermas terms the public
sphere,
where informed and responsible critique of dominant elites would be
possible.
However, it could be claimed that in Latvia so far academia fails to
provide an
alternative arena where elite discourses could be questioned and new
ones
generated.
Scholars of Humanities and Social
Sciences are the ones who produce the bulk of academic texts touching
on issues
of political importance for the whole society. It is important,
therefore, to
see what factors lead to the situation when scholars in this range of
disciplines continue reproducing nationalist or exclusionist
discourses, and to
identify the disciplines where this happens more frequently. The
question
arising out of the mapping of academic discourses is: what role does
academic
institutional involvement with external actors (EU-related,
OSI-related) play
in this process?
The policy-oriented output of this paper would be to assess the impact
of international actors – both EU-related and OSI-related (CEP, SCOUT,
HESP,
Robert Bosch Stiftung and others), on academic activities in Humanities
and
Social Sciences and through them – on discourses produced by scholars
across
this range of disciplines. The aim is
to see to what extent this impact is visible in the introduction of new
discourses in the academic and educational milieu, whether there is a
different
extent of absorption or rejection of liberal discourses in
Humanities versus
Social Sciences, and what factors limited this impact and led to
reproduction
of exclusionary, nationalist or racist discourses in some cases.
The
following methods were used to
achieve the goals of the proposed study:
I. Analysis of discourses produced
and reproduced in academic milieu, particularly in Humanities and
Social
Sciences.
This involves analysis of a
body of texts produced by
Latvian scholars in Humanities and Social Sciences – including
conference
papers, newspaper publications by academics and students and policy
documents
concerning teaching and research in Humanities and Social Sciences
produced by
government institutions in cooperation with the scholars. The method of
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was used to analyse these texts.
Through discourse, social actors
constitute objects of knowledge, social roles,
as well as relations between different social groups. Discursive acts
are
largely responsible for the construction of particular social
conditions. As
pointed out by Wodak, de Cillia et al., discursive acts ‘can contribute
to the
restoration, legitimation or revitalisation of a social status quo’. Analysing discourses produced and
reproduced by Latvian
academics in
Humanities
and Social Sciences, the paper will strive to map the loci where
exclusionist
and nationalist discourses are reproduced within the Latvian higher
education
system (and academic research system associated with it).
II.
Analysis of impact of extra-institutional
actors on
activities of academic
departments.
For this purpose, the
length/intensity of involvement of
EU-related and OSI-related institutions (e.g. CEP, HESP, Robert Bosch
Stiftung
and SCOUT) with local academic departments was be traced and the
scope of their curricular and extracurricular initiatives was
analised. This was done through a
series of interviews with representatives of the same departments where
texts
analysed in Part I were produced.
III. Putting together the results of
Part I and
Part II, the Research Paper tests the hypothesis that the
sustainability/intensity of impact of organisations with an explicit
democratising agenda on the work of academic departments is directly
related to
the reproduction of liberal discourses by scholars. It also identifies the possible factors
that obstruct the
development of internationalisation/ professionalisation discourses
in
academic environment.
A policy paper targeted
at international donor organisations such as
CEP, HESP, and other organisations working in partnership with OSI
(SCOUT,
Robert Bosch Stiftung), as well as UNDP and other international donor
agencies was prapared on the basis of the longer
research
paper.
The resulting analysis could
serve as a tool for education policy
planners, both at the level of individual universities, at the national
level
and in international organizations, for promoting democracy through
academic
agenda and raising awareness of the impact of academic discourses in
democratizing societies. The organizations that could serve as partners
and benefit from the project are
Civic Education Project, HESP, UNDP and other
organizations.
Expected
benefits
for partner organisations:
The
international NGOs and international donor agencies involved
in academic reform in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s have
often had an
articulated democratization agenda, however the impact of this agenda
was
different in different countries across the region. There is still
scope for
country-based in-depth studies that would put the impact of these
efforts in
local context and attempt to explain the interaction of different sets
of
factors that influenced the absorption / rejection /modification of
democratic
discourses and their impact on democratizing societies.
Combining a ‘historical’ perspective
with an assessment of the present
discourses produced in academic milieu, when most of these
organizations have
accomplished their work in the region or are close to accomplishing it,
it
would be useful to assess whether the strategies employed by
international donors (especially, though not excusively, OSI-related
ones) have left
differentiated
impact on Social Sciences and Humanities departments, and to what
extent they
have contributed to democratizing societies through their impact on
higher
education and research.
The results of this assessment would
be useful to the same organizations in
their work in other regions, since the case of Latvia can, despite
some
continuing problems, be described as a democratization success story.
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