Higher Education in East Asia (Neoliberalism and the Professoriate)

Although scholars in various academic fields have a keen interest in the social institutions that reproduce the university system, generally their gaze has been averted from a close analysis of the professors themselves. This volume aims to initiate a project of describing academic traditions at universities in East Asia. The present neoliberal discourses of university reform amplify the need for just such an ethnographic study of the professoriate. How does change toward institutional models resembling the Western university affect the traditional, local cultures of the professoriate in Asia? The ten authors first document changes to both the workplace and workers and then analyze how these reforms have affected the very nature of academic work and scholarship in East Asia. This volume is of special interest to scholars in the fields of comparative education, Asian Studies, and sociocultural anthropology as well as academic and administrative staff employed at universities in Asia.