University of Helsinki
Dervin, F. (Forth.). Country ‘hyper-branding’ and the internationalization of Higher Education: Is the ®evolution of interculturality coming?
Abstract: In this article I use the current (r)evolution of interculturality to examine the logics, discourses and situated practices of internationalization in Higher Education. Based on a case study in Finland, different policies are analysed to see if and how the construction of internationalization takes place in these documents and what perspective(s) seem to be preferred. As the results show that no real ‘exhausted’ intercultural discourses and logics, called BOTHOPY in this paper, seem to emerge, I look at peripheral documents related to the internationalization of Higher Education in the specific context under review, namely the intersection between Finnish education export, country branding and the internationalization of universities. These documents prove to follow the usual essentialist and ethnocentric approach to the ‘intercultural’ and contradict somewhat the silencing of this dangerous treatment of self and other as found in the policies. The University under review seems thus to be torn apart between different perspectives on internationalization, which is representative of the global neo-liberal zeitgeist.