As noted a powerful idea in contemporary developmental discourse is the need to invest in human capital as a means of making the national economy attractive to capitalist investment (Fine et al, 2001). It has taken on the form of a logical and common sense view of the role of the government in a global economy as being that of the enabling state that provides the infrastructure that makes a national economy attractive to FDI (Wallerstein, 2006). Rather than the state intervening in the economy through the running of public industries it is encouraged to withdraw in favour of a more efficient private sector, adopting policies of privatisation, deregulation and a general liberalisation of its economy. It is this environment that the Libyan state and society is now trying to integrate itself with and in order to do so it means adopting a range of policies that historically have had little part to play in the post- revolutionary Libyan state (Alafi and de Bruijn, 2010, NESR, 2006). A key policy for the Libyan state as it begins to move down this path has been to invest in human capital through reformed educational policies, as we have seen. The educational system has adopted competitive strategies that will help to instil the idea that Libya will become a meritocratic society where jobs are allocated in terms of ability rather than due to social pressures or the state‟s revolutionary desire to guarantee a certain way of life for all Libyans. Culturally this represents a profound change in Libyan state-society relations that will no doubt bring diverse and often problematic responses. Opening up an economy and society in this way cannot easily be controlled by the state as has been shown in other countries, most spectacularly the Eastern European communist states during the late 1980s.
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In this respect even the teaching of English language might produce unintended and unanticipated effects in Libyan culture. My interviews have revealed quite diverse views on this amongst Libyan graduates, state officials and the private sector. Further as Tripasai (2004:02) said: “the significance of English is closely related to the power of the English
speaking countries that were former colonisers”. He added regarding Thailand‟s educational
strategies towards the teaching of English language since the nineteenth century when it was occupied by the British Empire till present that, “the more Thailand contacts the outside
world, the more Western influences come into the country” (Tripasai, 2004:05). Tripasai‟s
judgment concerning the political effects of the teaching of English language in the Third World societies connects with Pennycook‟s perspective (1994 and 1998 cited in Tripasai, 2004:02) who stated that, ―English is not free of political values. Having originated from
colonialism, English and English language teaching are involved in the colonial discourse, in which the power relations between the master and the colonial subjects”. Similar to
Phillipson (2008), Pennycook (1994 and 1998) and Fanon (1965), Tripasai explained that using English in Thailand has not only increased the importance of English, it also made Thai society more subordinate to the West where Western education, culture and capitalism are considered by Thai people as a form of progress that they should imitate. Other studies have also supported this idea that ELA is best viewed and understood in Orientalist terms regarding its impact on indigenous cultures, including Liddle and Rai‟s study (1998:03). Said (1978) in Orientalism had already emphasised that “power or the lack thereof, therefore, lies
at the heart of the Orientalist discourse and allow the stabilization of the consensus that is critical to the maintenance of dominance”. The relationship between power and knowledge in
the Orientalist discourse survives as political and economic language within the developing countries themselves, one which they embrace or have forced upon them in the form of developmental policies. This was supported by Liddle and Ray (1998: 20) when they stated that,
“The power of Orientalist imagination can only be sustained by the continuous
production and reproduction of practices and discourses. This power is both underpinned and helps to maintain the structure inequality between the advanced nations of the west and developing post-colonial states”.
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Hence the argument in contemporary development economics that its prescriptions are scientific and politically neutral but rather an ideological tool to control and subordinate the Third World. This is a point that world-systems writers such as Wallerstein have examined, arguing that the scientific credentials of mainstream liberal economics are bogus, resting as they do on a flawed methodology and asocial and ahistoric view of how an economy functions. Nonetheless these prescriptions serve as an important ideological underpinning and justification of inequality in the MOWS (Wallerstein, 2006). They may work as a form of power/knowledge in the MOWS but their power stems precisely from the fact that to flout these rules means incurring the wrath of the world‟s major IFIs, public and private. The dependent nature of relations between the core and the rest of the MOWS is tellingly reflected in comments made in interview with me by the director of the Libyan Foreign Investments Company Mr. Ramadan Al-Zilitni who stated that,
―We are indeed a crude oil producer, but technically to distribute and refine it, it has been through Western and mainly US companies. Thus, it is they who re-supply it in its final stage to consumers worldwide, and thus English language comes as the language of the final stage of the distribution of industrial goods. For the US it means that they can impose themselves and their language when they supply oil to the world. Thus, today we should think reasonably, we are the producer of the oil, but also the consumer. When it is refined by Western companies, and has added value, then it is sold back to us‖
Mr. Al-Zilitni makes a point long argued by world-systems analysis that development in the periphery and semi-periphery is dependent upon developing countries gaining investment from and access to the core, its markets and its capital. Thus growth for most in the semi- periphery outside of the CRIB (China, Russia, India and Brazil) is always contingent and subject to the power of the core and the states located there. Even the Harvard educated liberal economist Professor Michael Porter who has been employed by the Libyan Government to help it devise its economic strategy concedes that it has a highly dependent economy (Porter, 2007).
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As a country in the semi-periphery of the world-system Libya has certain strategic advantages, but these are largely derived from its hydrocarbon industries. This is a pattern found in many other countries in the semi-periphery such as Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. Access to a vital commodity allows a state in the semi-periphery more space to make strategic-relational decisions about investment and social change than faces those states without such a relationship with the core. Nonetheless these advantages can and often are easily squandered through corruption, incompetence, military rule and unaccountable decision-making by the state, as the situation of Algeria illustrates starkly. Libya‟s revolutionary government has been quite different to other regimes in the MENA, combining its own brand of authoritarian populism with resistance to the MOWS. This has not stopped it failing to make the strategic-relational decisions it needs to about investment and social change in Libyan economy and society. Hence the sudden embrace of neo-liberal policies as a quick fix alternative. An unanswerable question for the Libyan government, more egalitarian and sensitive to social needs than many of its neighbours, is the extent to which in embracing the Orientalist developmental policy discourse of which human capital is a significant part it risks creating social inequality and undermining its social goals in favour of profit for private companies and global capitalist investors. In a sense it appears to have little choice but to adopt these policies and the English language that comes with them in that they are now global policies, as Otman and Karlberg (2007) notes:
―Government across the world, from Chile to China, from Malta to Malaysia, have in the last few years embarked on ambitious educational reforms which will integrate English more deeply into the curriculum. English will cease to be a foreign language for many. Perhaps most of the world‘s citizens as it become repositioned as a ―basic skill‖, to be learned by primary school children alongside other 21st
century skills in information technology (Literacy Trust, 2005)‖.
The next section will investigate the role of the private sector and its strategies for language
acquisition, examining its relationship to the state. This section will discuss the following questions: How has the private sector been encouraged to promote ELA in Libya? How is this viewed by private firms? What is the relationship between the Libyan state and the private sector? What does the private sector tell us about human capital in Libya? In so doing
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this section will consider the significance of this newly formed public-private partnership as a model for Libya‟s new developmental strategy.
6.5 What has been the role of the Private Sector in English Language learning in