Civic Engagement in a Cold Climate: A Glocal Perspective

Abstract

This chapter presents both the challenges and the opportunities facing civic engagement in an age of austerity when universities are coming under increasing pressure to become more business oriented. The first section of the chapter discusses the global contexts within which universities operate and poses the need for a closer attention to the politics of scale. Globalization only becomes operationalized at a local level, however, hence our concept of the glocal (at the same time local and global, an hybrid or liminal concept) grounded university that is at one and the same time globalized and embedded locally. The advent of globalization has not done away with the nation-state however, as some early analysts believed, and thus the second section focuses on national mediations. These national contexts are, of course, different varieties of capitalism and thus higher education policy will clearly show national variations. We explore in the section “Local Settings” a case study of civic engagement within North Dublin. In an area where the ratio of access to higher education is the same as the average for sub-Saharan Africa, civic engagement should have a measurable impact. This local area is subject to global forces—not least during the current recession—hence our return to the theme of the glocal, where the global meets the local. It is our argument that civic engagement becomes even more important for higher education in a period of austerity and that we need to be clearer in the way we conceptualize it and embed it not only in our institutions but also in the wider community.