Building U.S.-Based Transnational University Connections: An Ethnographic Content Analysis of Documents of the UCLA Program on Mexico from 1989-2003

Nathan R. Durdella

History M268A-B

Professor Wilkie

June 2004

Abstract

This study examines cooperative between U.S. and Mexican scholars through their work with the UCLA Program on Mexico.  The prevailing model of transnational university cooperation has been a U.S.-European dominance over universities in developing regions.  To explore cooperative transnational university connections, this study examined the collaborative network within the UCLA Program on Mexico, a research unit that promotes research and exchanges between U.S. and Mexican scholars.  The central question that guides the study is: How do scholars affiliated with the UCLA Program on Mexico construct transnational university connections through research and scholarship?  The goal was to examine if this case runs counter to the prevailing U.S. dominant-Latin America subordinate model of university collaboration.  Cultural globalization theory, which advances the ideas that globalization unfolds on many levels and in many ways, was used to analyze the findings and shed light on the issues that confront scholars who cooperate across national borders.      

Building U.S.-Based Transnational University Connections: An Ethnographic Content Analysis of Documents of the UCLA Program on Mexico from 1989-2003

Introduction

            In the postwar period, the U.S. and Mexico have experienced regional economic, social, and cultural integration through industrialization, economic development and cooperation, and immigration (Rubin-Kurtzman, 1996).  The U.S. and Mexican higher education systems have also experienced integration through scholarly collaboration and partnering.  The way that U.S. and Mexican universities collaborate, however, has not been a cooperative, bilateral model.  The dominant model of transnational ^[1] university cooperation has been a U.S.-dominant, Latin-American-subordinate experience where U.S. universities construct and control the terms of collaboration (Balán, 1993).  The result of this model is that Latin American universities have continued to lag in development behind U.S. institutions and have struggled to produce research that is relevant to their local context (Vessuri, 1993).  

Despite this prevailing model, some scholars ^[2] have intentionally built transnational university partnerships where universities work together cooperatively to produce research and scholarship that is relevant for the scholars who participate in the cooperation.  One such partnership is the UCLA Program on Mexico, or POM, which was established in 1982 to organize, coordinate, and encourage “worldwide research on Mexico, faculty and student exchanges for research and teaching, and Mexico-related activities at UCLA” (“UCLA Program on Mexico,” ¶1, 2003). 

This study investigates the cooperative transnational university connections of one case, the UCLA Program on Mexico .  The central question that of this study is: How do scholars affiliated with the UCLA Program on Mexico construct transnational university connections through research and scholarship?  The purpose is to examine if this case runs counter to the prevailing model of U.S. dominance in unversity exchanges.  In so doing, I hope to build a case for how scholars who cooperate across national borders can work more effectively together through an alternative model of transnational university cooperation.

Literature Review on Transnational University Cooperation

The research on both domestic and transnational university cooperation focuses on collaboration as a means of (1) resource management (Enarson, 1963), (2) research collaboration with industry (Arvanitis &Vessuri, 2001; Smith, 2001), and (3) academic program collaboration.  My review of the existing literature turns first to domestic university cooperation, through which I locate the major issues related to transnational university networks.  Next, I discuss the literature on transnational university collaboration, during which studies of regional transnational university cooperation, especially between U.S. and European institutions and institutions in developing areas, will be highlighted.  Finally, I review the research on connections between U.S.-European universities and Latin America and between the U.S. and Mexico in particular.

Domestic and Transnational University Cooperation

University cooperation of all types is characterized by resource-sharing.  Domestic university collaboration is often a result of the need to expand resources in an environment of reduced public funding for universities.  Glazer (1982) reports that U.S. academic institutions collaborate to expand economic opportunities.  Further, Glazer indicates that colleges and universities have become increasingly “dependent on external resources for institutional survival” and often join together to pool resources (p. 179).  Like domestic university collaborations, financial and programmatic incentives seem to dominate the need to establish transnational university cooperation (Arvanitis &Vessuri, 2001; Smith, 2001). 

Research in this area suggests that institutions form partnerships and consortia, joint programs and research projects, and research associations because of the need to increase resources (Arvanitis &Vessuri, 2001; Smith, 2001).  Van der bor and Shute (1991) found that the World Bank’s push to increase institutional efficiency and accountability required universities in developing countries to seek assistance from institutions in developed countries to expand cost sharing.  Further, pressure from governmental and nongovernmental organizations to decrease public funding for higher education has forced universities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to seek funding through cooperation (Van der bor and Shute, 1991; Balán, 1993). 

            Transnational university cooperation between institutions in advanced industrialized and developing countries has been structured by the notion that institutions in developing countries cannot develop without U.S. or European assistance.  As a result, universities in developing countries entering partnerships with fewer resources are often considered partners with little to add.  For example, Arvanitis and Vessuri (2001) report that when French universities approached Venezuelan universities, “the model of the French university institutes” would be the basis of the alliance (p. 207).  In other words, Venezuelan universities would have to follow the French. 

The model that U.S. and European universities assume to be normative for all universities to follow is readily apparent when they participate in scholarly projects with institutions in developing areas.  Thus, U.S. and European universities have not been receptive to the influences that their partner institutions bring to the table when they collaborate.  Hamilton (1985) explains how U.S. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have established cooperative agreements with Nigerian universities to ensure that Nigerian universities “would not lack the necessary experience and guidance” to develop programs (p. 91).  The problem, Hamilton describes, is that the HBCUs have not been open to developing their own institutions as a result of cooperating.  Thus, HBCUs have not expanded, for example, their international and area studies academic programs.

Development and Structure of U.S. and European Cooperation with Latin America

As collaboration have sprung up from a need to share resources, university partnerships have demonstrated a dominant form of cooperation that has advanced U.S. and European university interests to the detriment of Latin American universities.  The dominant form has resulted from a mix of U.S. and European educational systems exported to Latin America.  Among academics at European institutions, perceptions about Latin America have shaped this approach to cooperation.  For instance, Samoilovich (1993) reports that when Project Columbus, a European-Latin American university cooperation program, was launched, “few people believed that Latin American universities could play a significant role” in cooperative agreements (p. 21).  What is even more telling is the mission of the project, of which Samoilovich says, “ Columbus sought to develop a new dimension of university co-operation focusing on the problems of the institution as a whole” (p. 22).  In the context of the program, this meant that “for Latin America, the different European models offered a variety of possibilities for comparison and inspiration” (Samoilovich, p. 22). 

Balán (1993) makes sense of the development of a perception gap among European and Latin American scholars.  The gap in perceptions has been marked by European scholars conceiving of Latin America as requiring assistance to “catch up” to European standards and Latin American scholars believing their region has developed under historical conditions distinct from the U.S. and Europe.  Balán begins, “European co-operation has played changing roles in the development and reform of science and higher education in Latin America throughout this century” (p. 35).  In the first half of the 20^th century, Latin American universities considered “European societies as a model to be copied,” while Europe looked upon Latin America as a region for economic and political expansion that increased European university prestige and power (Balán, pp. 36-37).  Today, Latin American universities often still operate from a deficit when entering into transnational university projects.  Thus, Vessuri (1993) concludes that Latin America still needs “transnational co-operation to refurbish its higher education systems” (p. 56).      

In the context of the U.S. and Latin America more broadly and the U.S. and Mexico specifically, university partnerships have followed a pattern similar to European-Latin American university cooperation.  In leading U.S.-based partnerships with Latin American universities, U.S. universities have promoted their systems of higher education—from administration to tenure.  Adams and Cumberland (1960) report that the U.S.-Latin America university partnerships they studied were largely based on the premise of Latin American institutions’ “need” for U.S. assistance in development (p. 5).  In their survey of selected programs between U.S. and Latin America universities, they indicate that most partnerships initiated by Latin American universities were to “improve education…[and] prestige” (p. 4).  Again, what prevails is a model where U.S. academics export their system to Latin America.

Theoretical Framework: Cultural Globalization Theories

The literature on transnational university exchanges and inter-institutional cooperation reviewed above demonstrate that universities and academics cooperate for a host of reasons.  U.S. and European universities often establish cooperative agreements with Asian, Latin American and African universities to expand their programs, while the latter do so to increase resources, develop academic programs, and gain prestige.  The idea here is that U.S. and European universities have built dominant-subordinate structures of cooperation when that cooperation involves African, Asian, Eastern European, and/or Latin American partners.  The problem with this form of cooperation is that institutions and scholars that are on the subordinate side of the network often do not get to fully participate in the collaboration.  

The literature is full of examples of relationships where the U.S. and Europe dominate the terms and conditions of cooperation.  However, it does not provide alternative models of cooperation.  The result is that we don’t see an alternative model of transnational university cooperastion.  Further, we don’t get a sense of what specifically takes place between scholars, how arrangements are made, what is discussed, and who benefits from collaborations.  Cultural globalization theories, however, could shed light on some of these issues and provide a framework within which we can begin to understand how scholars from Mexico and the U.S. work together in an alternative cooperative model.     

Cultural Globalization Theories: The Local, “Glocal,” ^[3] and Agents of Globalization

In this study, globalization refers to the processes of U.S. and European economic expansion and the integration of economies across the globe, while cultural globalization tackles the issues of how an interconnected, globalized economic system affects cultural processes around the world (Luke and Luke, 2002).  Tomlinson (1999) argues that culture, as a way of making life meaningful, can be analyzed as a dimension of globalization that is distinctive from the globalizing processes of economic exchange.  For example, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has changed the regional economies of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico ^[4] , but economic changes have also produced cultural and educational changes, too. 

Tomlinson (1999) summarizes the objectives of analyzing culture as a process of globalization:  “What we are concerned with is how globalization alters the context of meaning construction: how it affects people’s sense of identity, the experience of place and of the self in relation to place, how it impacts on the shared understandings, values, desires, myths, hopes and fears that have developed around locally situated life” (p. 20).  Thus, people interpret global influences through cultural lenses.  They adapt to changing globalized conditions while continuing to rely on what is culturally familiar to them.  For instance, if we apply Tomlinson’s idea to the U.S.-Mexican context, we would see how Mexican scholars who are trained in U.S. academic institutions and return to Mexico to work carry with them a mixture of U.S.-style pedagogical and research models, adapting them to fit their local contexts in the classroom or the field/laboratory.    

Luke and Luke (2002) explain that cultural globalization “defines globalization more along the lines of a global change in consciousness about changing global conditions—whether local contributions and/or solutions to global…problems” (p. 287).  They contend that instead of a center-periphery, West-East flow of capital and culture, cultural globalization happens on many levels, in many directions, and is diffuse in its effects.  Thus, they assert that there are a “diversity of agents of globalization” and a “diversity of competing, often divergent, discourses of globalization” (p. 289).  Likewise, they contend that “there are other varied agents and objects of globalization acting upon and deployed from smaller regional countries and economies” (p. 289).  Based on these assertions, the transmission of capital and information in the local context has meaning for people in their localized ways of life.  Further, groups in developing countries can affect what happens in advanced industrialized countries, as when Mexican researchers cooperate in joint research projects with their U.S. counterparts and bring their experiences and perspectives to the table.  Whether their experiences and perspectives are received well by their U.S. counterparts is subject to the structure and norms of collaboration.  Here, we are concerned with how U.S. and Mexican scholars structure their collaboration to be inclusive

The local is the unit of concern for cultural globalization theory.  Short (2002) asserts that “ideas, symbols and goods that circulate around the world are consumed in national contexts and in local circumstances” (p. 116).  He continues: “Specific cultural backgrounds are not just empty containers for the receipt of global messages, they are critical to how messages are received and consumed” (p. 117).  Short describes how the global flow of culture unfolds at the local level, where meaning is ascribed to goods and messages.  What Short fails to realize is that the local context is not only important for the receipt and consumption of ideas but also the transmission of ideas, as Tomlinson (1999) argues, particularly in developing areas.

In the case of U.S.-Mexican university research cooperation, the local context can be in the U.S. or Mexico , as many cooperative agreements are fluid networks that span geographic boundaries and are produced, distributed, and consumed by the scholars who participate wherever they are.  Luke and Luke (2002) advance the argument that local contexts are meaningful for constructing local-global realities: “The local-global circuits, or what is now referred to as the ‘glocal’ have been shaped by varied experiences” that “are both/and: center and margin” (p. 291).  In the U.S.-Mexican university context, this would mean that scholars interpret their experiences through their understandings of research, scholarship, seminars, conferences, and academic programs. 

When we consider Tomlinson (1999) and Luke and Luke (2002), we begin to see how cultural globalization theory moves the discussion away from a conception of U.S.-European culture being exported to developing parts of the world; cultural globalization is much more dynamic and complex.  Unlike economic units, they argue for notion of culture that creates meaning for people in their everyday lives, which happens in their local context.  They emphasize the self-empowering, cultural sending-and-receiving function of people in developing areas, so that a global-local culture is constantly defined and redefined.

 What does cultural globalization theory offer an analysis of U.S. and Mexican scholars working together in the UCLA Program on Mexico ?  First, it can help explain the ways that scholars construct exchanges with colleagues with diverse backgrounds and experiences.  By focusing on the ways that U.S. and Mexican scholars understand their work, we can better assess how they engage in projects that validate their realities as Mexicanist researchers.  Second, cultural globalization theory helps us consider the contributions of Mexican scholars in their work with their U.S. counterparts, which has been historically ignored in the literature.  Finally, cultural globalization theory pushes us to include the way that scholars’ professional lives are changed for the better as a result of participating in collaborative research. 

Research Purpose and Questions

Given the history of U.S. dominance in transnational university partnerships and exchanges, I seek in this study to see if scholars who work within the UCLA Program on Mexico fit the prevailing U.S. dominant-Latin America-subordinate model.  If they do not, I want to investigate what makes them different from academics who participate in transnational university networks where the U.S. dominates, a model which we have already seen established by U.S. and European universities in their partnering with universities in developing regions.  The purpose is to examine how scholars document the ways in which they carry out their research, scholarship, and relationships.  In an increasingly integrated region, evaluating the connections of scholars from the UCLA Program on Mexico is extremely important to understand how scholars can work together.  To achieve the study’s objectives, I examined POM-generated documents to look for themes that could help explain how scholars construct their collaboration. 

Research Question

I asked one primary question in the study: How do POM researchers construct transnational university connections through research and scholarship?  This question shed light on the broader issues in transnational university cooperation and will guide data collection and analysis for this study.  I also asked a secondary question: How do POM researchers negotiate and renegotiate terms of collaboration?  To assess how scholars collectively construct collaborative networks, the unit of analysis was the scholar, not POM.  By making scholars the unit of analysis, I wanted to examine why and how they develop a consciousness of globalization and incorporate their own experiences and perspectives into their joint research.  Further, I wanted to gauge how researchers form cooperative, mutually beneficial networks that promote shared values and interests.

Research Design: Ethnographic Content Analysis of Documents of the UCLA Program on Mexico

            This study used the single case of the UCLA Program on Mexico .  I selected the Program on Mexico because it is a bounded, cohesive unit that has engaged in numerous activities over distinct periods of time, which is consistent with what Creswell (2003) classifies as a case study.  Creswell says that cases are “bounded by time and activity, and researchers collect detailed information using a variety of data collection procedures over a sustained period of time” (p. 15).  Further, POM is a transnational, cooperative research unit that has connections to Mexican academic institutions and scholars.  Finally, POM’s affiliation with UCLA was a factor in selecting the case due to its physical locality within my home institution, UCLA.     

Program Description

The UCLA Program on Mexico is an institutionally funded research unit.  POM was established in 1982 and has grown into “one of the most important centers for Mexican studies in the world” (“UCLA Program on Mexico ,” ¶2).POM focuses on collaborative research with Mexican scholars that (1) directly affects Mexico, (2) examines the U.S.-Mexico relationship, and (3) looks at Mexico ’s place in global affairs.  POM sponsors conferences, colloquia, training seminars, lectures, exchanges, and scholarly projects on an ongoing basis.  Through their work, POM has “developed inter-institutional and bilateral research networks to link researchers…at U.S. and Mexican universities” (“UCLA Program on Mexico ,” ¶4). 

Currently, POM is governed by two bodies: a UCLA Faculty Advisory Committee consisting solely of UCLA faculty and chaired by Professors Wilkie, Tornell, and Hernandez; a Council of the Program on Mexico, consisting of prominent U.S. and Mexican government officials and business leaders.  Also, there is a North American Advisory Committee comprised of U.S. , Canadian, and Mexican government and nongovernmental officials as well as Mexican academics.  POM is funded through two primary sources: UCLA and extramural grants.  The primary source of extramural funding has been the respective Hewlett and Ford Foundations.   

Data Sources

I used multiple sources of document data from POM’s office at UCLA for several reasons.  First, archival and document data lend to convenient, time-saving collection.  In my case, I was able to obtain a sample of documents from POM’s UCLA office.  Second, Creswell claims that document data enable “a researcher to obtain the language and words of participants” (p. 187).  This consideration is important, given that most POM publications and documents are in English and Spanish, allowing me to capture how scholars originally had intended the meaning of their work to be understood.  I used these documents as the main source of data as they were readily available and helped answer the study’s research questions.  Table 1 displays the types of data that were collected and lists selected data characteristics.

Table 1. Program on Mexico Document Data Sources

Data Collection

I collected data from December 2003 to February 2004.  I examined documents from POM files at UCLA and refer to my sampling as convenience sampling because I sampled most of the documents to which I could get access.  Among the documents that I found, I selected the items most related to the research questions of the study.  Additionally, I used the Internet to get access to POM’s websites and electronic documents. 

The types of documents ^[6] that I gathered consist of published and unpublished reports, monographs, and journals.  I also collected official communication of POM faculty and staff.  Finally, I found personal notes and correspondence of POM faculty from both UCLA and Mexico .  All of the documents used in this study span the period from 1989 to 2003.  Once all documents and records were organized and indexed, I transcribed them to facilitate data analysis (i.e., to group data together by categories).  By transcribe, I mean that I word-processed the POM-generated documents, which were originally either type-written or word-processed.  I needed to have them in an electronic format in order to manipulate them for analysis.  I transcribed documents in their original language and subsequently translated Spanish-language documents into English for reporting.  

Data Analysis

After transcribing the documents, I began analysis by utilizing ethnographic content analysis (ECA), a type of qualitative document analysis.  ECA allows the researchers to document the meaning of texts and verify theoretical relationships.  Altheide (1996) explains, “ECA follows a recursive and reflexive movement between concept development-sampling-data, collection-data, coding-data, and analysis-interpretation” (p. 16).  This movement allows themes to emerge from the data.  Accordingly, ECA produces quantifiable categories that can be complimented by qualitative categories that emerge from the data (Jerrigan and Dorfman as cited in Hallstone, 1996, pp. 46-47).  The goal of ECA is discovery and verification of themes achieved by counting words, finding patterns, and coding data.  Creswell (1992) enumerates types of codes, of which setting and context codes, codes of perspectives held by subjects, codes of subjects’ ways of thinking about people, process codes, relationship and structural codes, and pre-assigned coding schemes are most relevant here.  Once codes were defined and used in analyzing the data, themes that emerged from the documents were categorized for analysis.  Although ECA requires the researcher to use a grounded approach when analyzing data, it does not preclude the researcher from using theory to inform analysis.  Accordingly, I drew on the theoretical framework, in this case cultural globalization theory, to guide the analysis and to connect the findings with the research questions.

            Before I began to analyze the themes of the documents, I looked at them (1) in terms of their key terms, (2) their treatment of U.S.- and/or Mexico-specific issues, and (3) the language in which they were written.  The terms that researchers employ to describe their exchanges, the focus of the their scholarship, and the language that they use all contribute to their patterns of collaboration.  Thus, I initially analyzed the documents by counting the number of times key words, terms, or languages occurred.  There were three areas that guided this analysis: (1) primary language of the document (how many times documents were written in English or Spanish), (2) major issues or topics treated in the document, and (3) key terms found across all documents.  This method of analysis is consistent with ECA’s idea of finding the importance of authors’ language and words and provided me with a way to contextualize the themes of the documents.  Further, I drew upon these analyses while developing the themes of the study.      

Cultural globalization theory directed the categories that have been constructed for analysis.  The categories are not only grounded in cultural globalization theory but also come from what the broader literature on transnational university cooperation leaves out, namely, a highly cooperative network that scholars build within a system of U.S. dominance.  The categories include the following: (1) a focus on globalizing processes; (2) diversity of perspectives; (3) enacting voice in globalizing processes; (4) redefining locally situated life.  Clearly, cultural globalization theory  the categories through which document data was analyzed so that I could gain an understanding of what transnational cooperation means for the scholars who cooperate. 

Discussion of Findings

            Upon reading the documents in my sample, I began to understand what was important to the scholars who participated in POM’s collaborations.  The documents reveal that they valued deeply personal, highly supportive relationships.  Further, the documents demonstrate that, through their scholarly work together, they constructed cooperative, mutually reinforcing and validating connections across institutional, national, cultural, disciplinary, and linguistic boundaries.  Indeed, their shared values of mutual self-help and aid resulted in the construction of a program with built-in features that guaranteed an intensely cooperative network.   These features included a shared mission, an agreed-upon format for participation at conferences and on projects, and an organizational value of supporting scholars’ experiences and language.  At times, however, the model of cooperation for these scholars primarily benefited UCLA scholars ahead of their Mexican counterparts.  This could be seen through the predominant use of English as the language of communication between scholars and the placement of POM’s interests before the scholars’. 

As already discussed, I analyzed the documents that POM scholars produced in four thematic areas discussed above that—taken together—reveal a highly cooperative, supportive organization.  First, POM scholars focused their research and scholarly activities on the issues that matter most to Mexico and to a lesser degree the U.S., given the events surrounding NAFTA and the integration of U.S. and Mexican economies and societies.  Second, scholars constructed a framework within which they were able to continually work together through “a binational team.”  Third, they worked to get everyone involved with exchanges and projects, building “a common format” that both U.S. and Mexican scholars understood.  Finally, in working together in the U.S. and Mexico, they redefined their professional lives in both countries, crossing physical and socially constructed boundaries of what it means to work at UCLA on Mexican issues, to be a Mexican scholar studying in the U.S., to be a U.S. scholar working in Mexico, and to be a Mexican scholar working on U.S.-Mexican issues.

The Issues that Matter: A Focus on Globalizing Processes

A central theme in the documents is the singular focus on the changing nature of the world through globalization.  POM scholars promoted a consciousness about the globalizing processes within Mexico and between the U.S. and Mexico and constructed new meanings of globalization and regional integration, especially along the U.S.-Mexico border.  To them, globalization meant considering local and regional developments through Mexico ’s experiences.  Thus, scholars describe the focus of their webjournal, Mexico and the World, as “the case of Mexico and its place in the globalization process…[including] economics, politics, society, and culture as well as topics in the medical, biological and environmental sciences” ("UCLA Program on Mexico : POM 25-Year Report, p. 22, 2003).  Scholars view globalization in both a Mexico-specific context and in terms of Mexico’s relationship with the U.S. and the world. 

Mexico and the World states that scholars welcome research on “the course of recent Mexican development; the challenges Mexico faces in the twenty-first century; and Mexico's changing global role” ("UCLA Program on Mexico : POM 25-Year Report, p. 22, 2003). Similarly, a POM grant proposal reveals the importance of defining globalization in relation to Mexico, which has historically been written about in terms of the U.S. promoting economic development in the region and not the effects of U.S. economic dominance: “[Scholars will] participate in seminars analyzing technological change in the World and Mexico's role in the globalization process.”  Among POM scholars, it is Mexico’s role in the region and the world that is important, not the U.S. role in Mexico. 

POM researchers place such great emphasis on Mexico and globalizing processes that their one and only mission has become conducting research, publishing, discussing, and promoting Mexicanist ^[7] scholarship.  That’s there mission and a key feature of their exchanges.  Thus, the importance of Mexico ’s experiences with globalization to both Mexican and UCLA scholars is present in everything that they do together. 

As Table 2 shows, the terms “global” or “globalization” occur more times than any other term in the POM documents that I sampled.  The high frequency with which these terms occur points to the significance of globalization to POM scholars, as they dedicated more research studies, proposed research projects, and published research to this area of inquiry.  Further, that these terms are used 71 times in the sample of documents, comprising almost a third of the total key terms, reveals these scholars deep desire to look at their experiences from a broader perspective of economic, social, and cultural developments in Mexico, North America, and the world in a globalized environment.  Accordingly, in a preface to a POM monograph, one author says “that the perspective of the case of our studies evaluates the recent regional political experiences in Mexico,” indicating the importance of their experiences in Mexico .  

Table 2.  Frequency Counts of Key Terms Identified in POM Documents

POM scholars developed a complex, Mexico-specific focus of globalization that promoted their ideas about how Mexico had been affected by economic and cultural integration within the U.S.   As an excerpt from POM’s website describes, POM scholars looked at globalization from within Mexico , which has historically always been the case, as already discussed:

The Topics include research on important public policy issues such as: Mexican internal economic and social policies; the role of the Mexican public and private sectors in the era of de-stratification, including privatization of industry and land; Mexico's global role in oil policy; Mexico's role as world leader in signing free trade agreements--Mexico is the only country belonging to both NAFTA and the European Union ^[8] ; [and] Mexico's foreign relations and the impact of foreign investment, global changes, and new production factors in and on Mexico.  (“UCLA Program on Mexico ,” ¶1, 2003). 

Clearly, this excerpt places Mexico at the center of inquiry.  Specifically, it shows what happens to Mexico from Mexicans’ perspectives is most important to the researchers.   

What happens to and in Mexico dominates the discourse of research among POM scholars and has become a permanent feature of the program.  As Table 3 points out, the majority, 55 percent, of the sample of documents primarily focuses on Mexico .  What this means is that the context, research questions, research methods, and results concentrate exclusively on Mexico , although other countries may enter analyses.  Given Mexico’s history with the U.S. and the regionally integrating events of the last twenty years, like the adoption of NAFTA, POM scholars also treated issues relevant to both the U.S. and Mexico .  Accordingly, 41 percent of documents in the sample were dedicated to U.S.-Mexico issues, including U.S.-Mexico borderlands issues and the U.S.-Mexico relationship from Mexico ’s perspective.

It is important to note that only 4 percent (3 documents) treated topics relevant only to the U.S. or U.S.-specific issues, even if they included Mexico in the analyses.  Of course, it is not surprising that only 4 percent of documents treat U.S. issues exclusively, given that this is the UCLA Program on Mexico .  However, considering that U.S. researchers are intimately involved with decisions about what to study it is significant.  For example, if researchers wanted, they could focus on U.S.-specific topics like how the U.S. influences Mexico without considering Mexico ’s role.  Thus, U.S.-specific POM documents are written from the U.S. perspective and exclude the Mexican point of view.  This is what distinguishes POM researchers from their U.S. and Mexican counterparts who examine international trends without moving beyond either their own national perspective or a U.S.-centric view.   

Table 3.  POM Documents and Issues by Country

            For POM scholars, globalization is a complex process that unfolds in different contexts in Mexico .  It means what happens to the Mexican people, not just the Mexican economy or Mexican institutions.  Indeed, scholarly focus on the working poor of Mexico is evident in their grant proposal “Urban Grassroots Movements: Dialogues for Policymaking in Mexico ,” which states:

The objective of this project is to analyze various forms of grassroots strategies in Mexico in relation to their social and political impact.  Our goal is to study in detail current responses among the poor in Mexico to various aspects of the economic crisis affecting the country since 1982.  We will also explore grassroots strategies among segments of the Mexican middle class which are undergoing pauperization and are suffering from serious loss of social services (1990, p. 2). 

Here, scholars give priority to the way that the Mexican people organize at the grassroots level, demonstrating their adherence to the idea that globalization affects people in the local context, whether rural or urban, in vastly different ways.  We can extrapolate that scholars considered globalization as part of their study because the period in which they focus finds Mexico locked in the middle of currency devaluation, rising foreign debt, and a rapidly increasing inflation rate, all of which indicate the extent to which Mexico was susceptible to the U.S. and global economies.  Further, the cases that they proposed to study included “urban centers on Mexico’s northern border,” which are the most regionally integrated Mexican regions with the U.S. (p. 1).    

“A Binational Team of Researchers”: A Diversity of Perspectives

In working together on research projects and scholarly exchanges, POM scholars built a bilateral, binational network.  By bilateral and binational, I mean that UCLA and Mexican academics work with each other without a single party dominating the project.  Of course, every project or scholarly work varies to the extent in which U.S. and Mexican scholars participate, but the vast majority of the documents in the sample indicate that all parties contribute to the  final product.  This approach implies a diversity of perspectives in the research and scholarship that they produce, with both UCLA and Mexican scholars giving their input into projects.  Throughout the period under investigation, POM researchers etched a vision of full participation into the network as a key feature of their work together.   

The language that POM scholars used indicates the value that they place on the U.S. and Mexican points of view and demonstrates their commitment to constructing a model of diverse perspectives.  Table 4 displays key terms that POM scholars used to describe their cooperative networks, the meaning that they ascribe to them, and the frequency with which they occur in the documents.  Although only occurring 16 times, the way that POM scholars used “ U.S. and Mexican scholars,” to describe who would participate in the projects, indicates the importance that they gave to both groups of scholars working together. 

Equally significant was the way that scholars used “bilateral” and “binational” to talk about their relationship to each other.  For practical purposes, they defined themselves by their nationalities and then worked within that framework to describe the nature of their cooperation as the work of researchers from two countries forming a single research unit.  When illustrating the way that researchers in projects would work, one grant proposal states, “Each group contains a binational team of researchers from at least three of the six local and regional universities participating in the project.”  In this case, the grant writers were deliberately specific about how members of the project would represent major local and regional areas in Mexico and the U.S. , increasing the diversity of perspectives.

 The frequency with which the terms “cooperative” and “collaborative” occurred in the documents highlights the way that POM scholars perceived the nature of their work together.  Indeed, they believed that they were coming together to work with each other in support of their shared research agenda.  Table 4 also displays the terms used by POM researchers to describe attributes of this collaboration.  Thus, they referred to themselves as “participants” at various times to indicate their active role as co-constructors of projects and publications.  The way that they participate is also an issue in many documents, as scholars talk about engaging in “exchanges” and taking part in “discussion.” 

Table 4.  Frequency Counts of Key Terms Identified in POM Documents

Through purposely building a binational team of researchers, POM scholars actively sought to promote a model of cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico that could be adopted by universities around the world.  This can be seen in one grant proposal:

Because the Project will create a working model for involving scholars and policymakers from both sides of the international boundary in the planning, execution, and presentation of policy research…the Project will also serve as a model for the coordination of multi-university, multi-institutional collaboration for other policy-research activities.

Here, scholars were describing their own cooperative network but also argued for their model to be used more broadly.  They were conscious of what kind of cooperation they had built.

POM scholars envisioned a model of cooperation that included not only researchers from the U.S. and Mexico but also professionals from outside the academy, like U.S. and Mexican policymakers and government officials.  Accordingly, they often extended invitations to these individuals to participate in POM-sponsored seminars, training workshops, conferences, and multi-year research projects.  In a letter from an official of he Ford Foundation to Jim Wilkie, POM’s director, the official remarked: “I was certainly impressed to read about your many interesting ideas for collaborative research and policy exchange among scholars, non-academic and private sector analysts, and government policymakers from Mexico and the United States .” 

By working with U.S. and Mexican citizens in the public and private sectors, POM academics sought to expand their resources and enrich their research.  In a grant performance report for the project “Economic and Social Determinants of U.S.-Mexican Policy Relations,” POM scholars stated:

Toward achieving these goals during the second year of the project, the Program on Mexico coordinated extensive policy research efforts and organized a major bilateral conference on trends in Mexican higher education policy.  The Program also coordinated a series of exchanges which served to develop information resources, facilitate the interchange of ideas among policymakers and academics involved in U.S.-Mexican affairs. 

Here, POM scholars described their efforts to include academics as well as policymakers in their research, increasing the diversity of perspectives from both U.S. and Mexican public policy sectors.  The final grant report for this project included community leaders, too, as participants:

“The Project successfully facilitated productive and mutually satisfactory relations across the U.S.-Mexican border by increasing contact and collaboration among researchers, policymakers, and community leaders.”  Again, including members outside of the academy—especially Mexicans—reveals how inclusive POM researchers tried to be when working together.

            The value that UCLA and Mexican scholars placed on a high level of participation from scholars is not seen in all of the documents.  In fact, some documents demonstrated a tendency for UCLA scholars, and POM as an organization based at a U.S. institution, to favor a U.S. perspective.  For instance, in a grant proposal to the Tinker Foundation, entitled “The United States and Mexico : Industry, Labor, and the Environment,” scholars described their plan for the project:

The research will be carried out by four bilateral research teams, coordinated by the UCLA Program on Mexico. Specific goals include: a) bringing Mexican researchers to UCLA to present conferences and seminars; b) bringing Mexican researchers to UCLA to use the research resources of the campus; c) sending U.S. researchers to Mexico to present seminars at the academic institutions participating in the project; d) sending U.S. researchers to Mexico to use relevant archives and other primary sources; e) in the third year of the project, holding two conferences, one on industry and labor, the other on industry and the environment; f) supporting the distribution of scholarly materials generated by the project’s research. 

Here, there are many instances that call into question the collaborative, mutually beneficial cooperation that has been seen in other POM documents.  First, UCLA scholars seemed to be controlling the cooperation when they say that research will be bilateral but “coordinated by the UCLA Program on Mexico ,” whose directorship and staff are at UCLA. ^[9]   Second, there is a list of Mexican universities to which U.S. researchers would go to present at conferences and seminars, allowing U.S. researchers access to numerous Mexican universities, but Mexican researchers would be restricted to UCLA to do the same.  Third, there is an assumption that UCLA has superior campus resources that Mexican scholars would want to use, limiting their access to other resources in the U.S., while U.S. researchers could travel to any place in Mexico to collect archival and primary resources, continuing the idea that Mexico is still a place to be explored and ultimately controlled.  Even though the Program on Mexico is a UCLA-affiliated research unit, should visiting Mexican scholars not have the opportunity to use resources at other U.S. institutions?      

The control that UCLA scholars had in POM projects can also be seen in one of POM’s evaluative reports: “UCLA serves as the lead institution to coordinate visits to and by U.S. institutions designated to expand research in Guadalajara and Monterrey, the two major regions outside of central Mexico .”  Here, UCLA “leads” the cooperation to expand resources in Mexico .  Why do U.S. scholars need to lead Mexican scholars in Mexico ?  There is an assumption present in this statement, too, that promotes a deficiency model of Mexican institutions that was seen earlier in the discussion of U.S.-European researchers beleiveing that developing areas need to be instructed by a U.S.-European model to develop .  Indeed, this is a feature more constitent with the U.S. dominant-Latin America-subordinate model of transnational university cooperation rather than with the Program on Mexico .  Here, we see an attitude that Mexican institutions need to be expanded (or improved upon), while UCLA does not need the same or similar improvements.  

Facilitating a Voice in Globalizing Processes: “A Common Format” of Cooperation

In working together on numerous projects and programs, POM scholars in the U.S. and Mexico pushed to include their own voices in their scholarship.  By voice, I mean that these researchers have input on what goes into their research and scholarship, from theoretical frameworks to the sampling of subjects to an ideological orientation.  In other words, scholars valued the participation of each member of the research team, facilitating inclusion of their experiences into their research.  To ensure that scholars’ voices are included, they often established “a common format” for their research.  That is, they agreed on a way to conduct, analyze, and distribute their scholarship.  They continue, “The common format will allow the timely publication or dissemination of briefing papers and volumes on various topics.”

In practical terms, POM scholars structured the common format of research in a way that would validate the experiences of U.S. and Mexican scholars.  Here, validate means affirmation and support.  In one grant proposal, they talked about how they were going to set up the common format through “Working Groups”

The objective of the Working Groups is to carry out extensive and in-depth policy research on topics central to public services and environmental issues.  Each group contains a binational team of researchers from at least three of the six local and regional universities participating in the project.  The working-group subprojects represent a large variety of personnel, focus, and methodology.  Because the Working Groups are the core of the Project, their schedule will dominate the dynamics of both research and the dissemination of findings. 

In this project, the Working Groups represented academics from different (1) disciplines and (2) regions in the U.S. and Mexico .  The objective was to “operate under agreed-upon conditions and rules that promoted participation of researchers from different discipline and regions of the U.S. and Mexico , increasing the diversity of perspectives in the project.

The common format that POM scholars often used included more than just research methods and analyses.  They incorporated this feature from a grant proposal into the network to structure decision-making in a way that allowed a group of scholars to come to agreement.  However, democratic group participation was not always possible, given the practical matters that POM researchers faced.  For example, they often had to deal with the issues of what language to write in, where to publish and print scholarly pieces, and how to disseminate their findings once published.  In terms of language, Table 5 demonstrates that the vast majority of POM documents are in English, an indication of how dominant the English language is among scholars.  However, this pattern masks the fact that 6 of the 7 documents in the sample, the monograph series, are in Spanish, published at the University of Guadalajara, and comprise POM’s most important publications.

Table 5.  Proportion of Documents in Spanish and English

            In contrast to the “common format” of cooperation, U.S. and Mexican scholars acknowledged how they were often able to work together through a fluid research process less tied to rules but still effective for communicating each other’s ideas and interests.  In The Internationalization of the Jaliscan Economy, published in Spanish in 1997, the Mexican authors detailed how they were able to develop their own plans in conjunction with POM faculty from UCLA:

The compilers and authors that participated in this book express their gratitude....To the Program on Mexico of the University of California Los Angeles, particularly to Professors James Wilkie and David E. Lorey, and to Professor Clint Smith of Stanford University, with whom we shared together a more developed step of our research plans in the area of Mexico-United States relations.

The Mexican authors here describe how, at one step in the research process where they were developing their research plans, they collaborated with their U.S. counterparts to work through issues they had encountered as their study took shape.  In particular, they expressed their gratitude to U.S. researchers for their input, which was a “shared” experience rather than a disconnected, fractured one.  Here, both U.S. and Mexican researchers arrived at an understanding of what they expected to get out of their work together, “a more developed step” of their research plans.   

Redefining Professional Lives in the U.S. and Mexico

In their work at U.S. and Mexican institutions, scholars affiliated with POM came together with their own cultural, national, linguistic, and institutional experiences.  That is, they participated in POM projects and programs from their local contexts, where they had been trained as scholars and conducted most of their research.  Through the features of POM cooperative network already discussed, we can see how they supported each other as professionals.  In effect, feeling that they were in a familiar, identifiable place enhanced their abilities to establish and maintain contact, reach agreement on “common formats” to conduct research, and meet to discuss their research—all of which advanced their scholarly careers.  Thus, the documents reveal how they redefined the local wherever they produced, distributed, and consumed scholarship through POM.

The local context can be physical, as when POM held conferences in the U.S. and Mexico or when they sponsored exchanges of scholars between UCLA and Mexican universities.  In cultural globalization terms, the “local” is the place where Western cultural forms influence life in the developing world.  However, in the context of the Program on Mexico, the local is not just where you would expect it, namely, in Mexico where U.S. influences are readily felt but is rather constructed wherever scholars find themselves working together.  For example, a grant proposal on U.S.-Mexican policy relations explains how the project would “bring researchers and policymakers together in the United States and Mexico ” (“Economic and Social Determinants of U.S.-Mexican Policy Relations: UCLA Program of U.S.-Mexico Studies,” p. 1, 1992).    

Through consistently getting together wherever they were, whether in Los Angeles or Guadalajara, U.S. and Mexican scholars redefined that place as “local” to work on a joint project.  Redefining the local as either Mexico or the U.S. , scholars facilitated the “shared” values of promoting each other’s work and their common interests to promote Mexicanist research.  In meetings and at conferences in Mexican or U.S. cities, through electronic media, the Internet and email, POM scholars changed their sense of being in a local place, in effect “globalizing” their ideas of what is Los Angeles or UCLA and Mexico.  In the monograph Integrating Cities and Regions: North America Faces Globalization, the authors talk about how they utilized the Internet:

[Regarding the webjournal Mexico and the World] Electronic publication of books and articles in the format of a peer-reviewed web journal not only bridges the gap between completion of the manuscript and its printed publication, [sic] but also bridges the geographical problem (and often impossibility) of shipping the printed publication to far distant worlds of scholarship (p. 11-12).   

Here, the scholars used the Internet to bring their “local” experiences to bear on their projects. 

The collaboration of POM scholars seemed to benefit scholars from both sides of the border.  For UCLA academics, working with Mexican scholars and raising the stature of Mexican studies and U.S.-Mexican borderlands studies to the forefront on campus and in the U.S. has redefined UCLA.  Thus, when UCLA scholars affiliated with POM hosted the “2001: Mexican Government Forum on Mexican Immigration Policy,” they were the first to host such a conference outside of Mexico .  Similarly, UCLA faculty have made POM, according to a POM evaluative report, “the largest research program outside of Mexico itself” (“The UCLA Program on Mexico (UCLA/POM),” p. 2, 1990).  Thus, POM is redefining UCLA not strictly as a U.S. institution but rather as a university with organizational and research ties to Mexico .

POM researchers were deliberate in their commitment to developing a U.S.-based research institute that expanded the definition of what it meant to be a U.S. scholar at a U.S. academic institution.  In “Economic and Social Determinants of U.S.-Mexican Policy Relations: UCLA Program of U.S.-Mexico Studies,” they described their goals:

The UCLA Program on Mexico’s principal goals of the three-year project are five: to focus Program-sponsored research on long-term issues in the U.S.-Mexican relationship; to continue the Program’s development of a multidisciplinary resource base for study and management of U.S.-Mexican economic and social interdependence; to strengthen political science, regional, and comparative analysis in Program activities...and to strengthen the UCLA-based network of policymakers and scholars with expertise on Mexican affairs. 

Below, they detail how they would accomplish these goals later in the grant proposal:

There will be two main forums for study and interchange of ideas on long-term determinants of policy: 1) a series of working-group meetings and conferences to be held in Mexico and the United States to bring academic specialists and policymakers together and 2) an informal exchange program in which scholars and policymakers will be able to spend short research and consultation periods at UCLA and other institutions in Mexico and the United States.  While visiting UCLA, scholars and policy specialists will be given research support in the form of research assistance and will also be able to access UCLA’s library and statistical resources on Mexico .  All of these aspects of the project will serve to strengthen the international policy-research team based at the UCLA Program on Mexico and the Program’s international leadership in the coordination of networking for university research and policy exchanges on U.S.-Mexico relations. 

Here, POM researchers sought to balance the contexts within which they would conduct research by proposing to meet in Mexico and the U.S. throughout the period.  What is even more important in the grant proposal is that POM scholars in the U.S. and Mexico proposed to work together to train Mexican scholars to use UCLA resources, making their institutions and UCLA more seamless.

Like UCLA, Mexican universities redefined what it meant to be a “local” Mexican academic.  For example, in a grant proposal for the University of Guadalajara, POM researchers discussed how the project would “consolidate a group of scholars from the University of Guadalajara who are working on subjects related to United States-Mexico policy relations within a regional perspective.”  Here, faculty from the University of Guadalajara wanted to develop a research unit concerned with U.S.-Mexican relations and with Mexican issues from a regional perspective.  They were able to participate in a joint project with their U.S. counterparts to develop their own local research unit as they had envisioned, not as the U.S. model of research university organization prescribed. 

Conclusions and Significance

            From the products of the researchers who participated in POM projects, I have analyzed a network of scholarly collaboration between U.S. and Mexican academics that represents an example of how scholars can work together without assuming a dominant-subordinate structure.  However, POM scholars were not able to construct a network completely free from the features of a U.S.-dominant-Latin America subordinate model.  Through use of cultural globalization theory, I have been able to examine four themes of the collaboration, all of which have been given meaning through the theory. 

Through POM, we have seen that scholars focused on what is most important to them, globalization and regional integration between the U.S. and Mexico .  They defined globalization in their own way, taking control of how they understood the forces that have shaped Mexico and the U.S.-Mexican borderlands region.  Further, they worked together to increase the visibility of Mexican scholars in the U.S. and U.S. scholars in Mexico by examining Mexican issues in the U.S.-Mexican context through a “binational team” of researchers.  In this way, they recognized the value of what Mexican and U.S. researchers could together add to the body of literature that exists from studies conducted largely by researchers from one side or the other of the U.S.-Mexican border.  At times, though, UCLA scholars placed the interests of their research unit, POM, above the interests of their Mexican partners through the need to “lead” projects.        

In their work, researchers have placed a high value on their own experiences and contributions to their scholarship, facilitating a diversity of perspectives through a “common format” of cooperation.  Thus, they empowered themselves to be participants in their research processes, which were globalizing in the sense that they were crossing national, linguistic, and cultural boundaries.  Finally, they have redefined what it means to be a U.S. research unit on a U.S. campus, a Mexican research unit at a Mexican university, a Mexican academic doing research in the U.S., and a U.S. researcher interested in Mexican issues.  Here, scholars moved beyond cultural globalization theory, that limits the definitional usage of the term “local” as confined to the developing areas of the world.  Instead, it is defined and redefined wherever scholars are situated.     

It is clear that what we have seen here is a different model of collaboration than what we are used to seeing when universities from two countries work together.  POM scholars constructed intense, highly cooperative structures through which they worked together in a fluid, mutually beneficial way.  The way that they collaborated tended to validate the members of the research teams.  To do this, they codified shared values and expectations into permanent but flexible features of the organizational network. 

In some instances scholars favored a U.S. perspective or wanted to develop POM as a U.S.-based research unit, it is normal to expect that they retreated to their experiences when working with people from diverse backgrounds.  Still, it is important to note that even in a network where members valued cooperation, they could not develop an organization free from a dominant-subordinate structure that prevails in many transnational collaborations.  For cultural globalization theory, this observation implies that actors can move towards more equitable structures within a dominant-subordinate framework.  For POM, the point that I want to make here is that even though scholars did not always achieve an ideal form of cooperation they worked to advance issues important to their respective research communities in an intensely cooperative, mutually beneficial way. 

This study intended to contribute to our understanding of transnational university connections.  The backdrop against which this study was situated centered around the dominance of U.S. institutions in collaborative university partnerships and networks.  What has happened in the last quarter century, from increased immigration between the U.S. and Mexico to the adoption of NAFTA, begs for us to consider that the connections between the U.S. and Mexico are increasingly more important.  These connections extend to the college and university communities.  U.S. and Mexican scholars—and the institutions that employ them—have more opportunities to collaborate and form sustaining partnerships.    

In analyzing the breadth and depth of linkages through a case study of scholars affiliated with POM, I argue for a re-conceptualization of existing policy that deemphasizes exchanges for resource-sharing that often lead to U.S. dominance and that instead reconstitutes transnational exchanges as equitable “exchanges for research and teaching,” where scholars develop highly cooperative, mutually beneficial arrangements, a standard to which POM scholars have held themselves (“UCLA Program on Mexico,” ¶1, 2003).  In this case study, however, I only used a single source of data—documents—of the UCLA Program on Mexico , which limited the interpretations that I could make.  If more information were known about how the relationships between scholars from different countries are constructed and sustained it could inform many aspects of academic and campus life at colleges and universities across the region.  Likewise, an increased understanding of transnational university exchanges could support faculty and students with transnational experiences, which is at the heart of this study.

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