Discourses of reforms and questions of citizenship: the university in Jordan

Abstract

Jordan, as almost all other countries in the broader Middle Eastern region, has witnessed in the last decades an impressive growth in the higher education sector, both in quantitative terms and in terms of an increased differentiation within the university system itself. Drawing from a fieldwork lasted one year and a half in Amman, between 2003 and 2005, and from subsequent periods of comparative research carried on in Egypt, in this paper I discuss the importance of the higher education system in Jordan, a small country usually taken as an example of the success of educational policies by the international agencies, and the social and political relevance the system has in its context. I explore the details of the university systems in the country, with the aim of showing, with an in-depth ethnographic analysis, how this system works, how it shapes and rebuilds the educated part of the population, and what the differences within the systems mean in the broader political and social context.

Keywords

• citizenship
• Jordan
• higher education
• reforms
• youth