"All of these ways of thinking and acting are carried by new and emerging discourses. These new workplace discourses can be taken in two very different ways—as opening new educational and social possibilities, or as new systems of mind control or exploitation."
The New London Group (1996), "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies" (p. 67)
The New London Group (1996) began "The Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures" with an assertion about the mission of education: "its fundamental purpose is to ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, and economic life" (p. 60). The project initiated by the ten authors of the New London Group (1996) aimed to fulfill that purpose in "the emerging cultural, institutional, and global order [comprised of] the multiplicity of communications channels and media, and the increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity" (p. 63).
While describing the changes taking place globally in people's work, public, and private lives, the authors wrote:
As a clear antecedent to the arguments against a monolingual language ideology and in favor of a translingual approach to difference in writing, the New London Group (1996) highlighted the expanding role of proliferating communications technologies and "market logic" (p. 68) in the everyday experiences of people throughout the globe. The authors demonstrate how the values associated with "fast capitalism" are couched in terms that have taken on positive associations—"adaptation to constant change through thinking and speaking for oneself, critique and empowerment, innovation and creativity, technical and systems thinking, and learning how to learn"(p. 67)—but warn that without vigilance, the educational values of access, preparation, and participation could be abandoned in favor of exploitation.
To exemplify their concerns, the New London Group (1996) offered a succinct interpretation of the fall of communism. They asserted that the end of the Cold War brought with it the reversal of what had been a trend towards "an expanding, interventionist welfare state" and, subsequently, an expansion of "[e]conomic rationalism, privatisation, deregulation, and the transformation of public institutions such as schools and universities so that they operate according to market logics" (p. 68). The recent collapse of the global financial system, the collapse of the real estate market, and the multi-year recessions experienced in the U.S. and the European Union, the deregulation and privatization that preceded it all, and the dramatic transformation of public institutions that we are now seeing around the world demonstrates that "market logic" does not have the welfare of any citizenry in mind.
Through their arguments for a "pedagogy of multiliteracies," the New London Group (1996) reasserted an educational model for transnational writing programs. In a positive sense, the business model of transnational education offers many possibilities for individuals, programs, campuses, and institutions. Susceptible to the whims of the market, the business model of transnational education risks complicity with a "market logic" that values revenue over the expense of quality education, growth over the deliberateness of sustainable development. In light of massive deregulation that is "barely restrained" (p. 67), and the pressure to replicate corporate culture, which "demands assimilation to mainstream norms that only really works if one already speaks the language of the mainstream" (p. 67), the task before writing teachers and administrators is both daunting and thrilling.
Here, as in my edited collection, Transnational Writing Program Administration (2015), I use the term "transnational" to describe the growing phenomenon that Grant McBurnie and Christopher Ziguras address in their book Transnational Education: Issues and trends in offshore higher education as "any education delivered by an institution based in one country to students located in another" (p. 1). But unlike "global" or "international," I use the term "transnational" because it also invokes a more critical, analytical orientation like that described by Rebeca Dingo in her book, Networking Arguments: Rhetoric, transnational feminism, and public policy. Dingo (2012) argued:
The term transnational, while defined in a number of ways, generally refers to how globalization has influenced the movement of people and the production of texts, culture, and knowledge across borders so that the strict distinctions among nations and national practices can become blurred. In the last ten years, disciplines throughout the humanities and social sciences have recognized that increasing globalization and enduring neoliberal economics have changed our understandings of citizenship, place, and texts. Drawing heavily from the fields of political science, sociology, geography, and women's studies, the emergent interdisciplinary field of transnational studies has sought to uncover, analyze, and conceptualize similarities, differences and interactions among trans-societal and trans-organizational realities and dynamics across time and space (Levitt and Khagram, p. 10–11). (p. 8–9)
By considering the infrastructure of transnational writing programs, my aim is to continue a critical conversation about the opportunities and implications for the learning, teaching and administration of writing across borders.
The bitter battle in the state of Wisconsin over the right of public employees to unionize and bargain collectively is now shifted to the courts and yet, the massive efforts to recall elected officials failed. The argument made by the Republican Governor, based upon a kind of market logic, is that after years of recession and continued economic downturns, the salaries and benefits of public employees, which were the result of collective bargaining, were too costly for the state to continue paying. Still, while the public employee unions agreed to reductions of pay and benefits, the governor insisting on his legislation in the Republican controlled legislature, despite the efforts of the minority Democrats to thwart the passage of the law, as well as widespread public support. An example of market logic gone awry: even when the unions agreed to reductions of pay and benefits to help close the budget deficit, the governor signed the law to restrict collective bargaining.