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This special issue contributes to the vibrant debates concerning the 'responses and intensifying inequalities in the Global South' underway with regard to COVID-19 and the subsequent crises of higher education. With neoliberal globalization in a deeper crisis by the pandemic, transforming higher education and teaching configurations in ways that appease the rich and powerful players, while simultaneously seeking to neutralize forms of equity in education. Rather than pointing fingers at the broken structures and wider external economic framework, we argue that re-centring the humanistic, holistic and bottom-up approach that frames the post-pandemic higher education offers a more useful framework for understanding educational transformation in the contemporary period. more...

Bangladesh's post-secondary education has become a hunting ground for local economic conglomerates and their transnational allies. Applying a holistic lens helps to understand the factors and short-term effects of blindly applying neo-liberal induced deregulation and privatization that constructed a mushrooming "McDonaldization" culture in the local post-secondary setting (Ball, 2003; Levin, 1998). The findings of a six-week-long study on Bangladeshi private universities, involving 32 interviews with students and faculty, civil society, and business community representatives and over 100 hours of ethnographic observation, contradict the ideal roles of universities in Bangladeshi society as they lead to demands that neither the universities nor the society can satisfy (Boulton and Lucas, 2011; Collini, 2012). These findings indicate this system constructs "zombie graduates" (Husain, forthcoming), who are entitlement happy yet lack critical understanding and suffer from acute "philosophical poverty" (Husain, forthcoming). In addition, this paper highlights the psyche of upper-middle-class local students and how they reinforce a "habitus" for effective domination (Bourdieu, 1989, 1997). Finally, this paper critically analyses the imbalanced application of economics and philosophy in higher education governance and argues that the outcomes can hurt post-colonial Bangladeshi culture and society in the long run (Harvey, 2005; Sen, 2006). Critically, these impacts contribute to two arguments: White Men's Germ on Brown Men's Body (Husain, forthcoming) and Betrayal by the Intellectuals (Chatterjee, 2004; Orwell, 1949). more...

This article problematizes the relationship between neoliberal economic policies and the resurgence of a certain kind of Islamic religiosity in contemporary Bangladesh. It reflects the findings of an empirical study based on a multi-method approach to explore the macro-cultural impacts of the relationship between neoliberalism and Islam in the country and the embedded, nuanced, and complex set of economic and political relationships that appear to fuel social inequality, engender inequitable distribution and growth, and facilitate an ongoing marginalization of minority groups, in which "othering" among the equals emerge as a cemented outcome. Empirical findings suggest that premature or unplanned applications of neoliberal economic policies based on client-patron relations are the main precursors behind these outcomes and they continue to adversely affect Bangla language, Bengali cultures, the country's advanced education sector, and the overall ability for Bangladeshis to think critically and form and produce social relations. Evidence further indicates Bengali cultures appear to become increasingly embedded in a number of rituals in the name of Islamic principles and philosophy. The article refers to this phenomenon as the "great" transformation of contemporary Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...