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This paper discusses tensions and identity resistance in a cross-cultural educational context in the United Arab Emirates. It focuses on how Emirati students, living and socialised in a conservative Arabic-Islamic society and shaped by Islamic values and epistemologies, construct their cultural identities while learning English with their Western-trained teachers, who are influenced by liberal ideologies and secular epistemologies. To understand the complex engagement between Emirati students and their Western-trained teachers this article uses both phenomenography and reflection on critical incidents to explore, investigate and interpret Emirati students’ intercultural experience with their Western-trained teachers and to highlight the tensions and identity resistance that arise from this educational encounter.

Microfinance, despite its mixed results in economic literature, continues to proliferate in many developing countries. This research project investigates the relationship between collectivism and microfinance. It analyzes the question: how does a collectivist culture and its norms influence the ways in which borrowers spend loaned funds and interact with microfinance institutions (MFIs)? The authors generate a theoretical model for how norms of informal redistribution affect borrowing decisions and use a robust dataset of all of the loans facilitated by Kiva, a global MFI, to compare microloan borrowing in countries with different cultures of collectivism. A case study of Senegal, a culturally collectivist country, includes surveys and detailed interviews of individuals and MFIs. The authors find that the strong social networks associated with collectivism are well adapted to the structures of many MFIs. However, the authors also uncover that some of the collectivist social norms, such as norms of informal redistribution, can deter individuals from using microfinance.

In Senegal, the government has encouraged private investment in agriculture and biofuel production since the 2000s, generating several attempted or effective large-scale land acquisitions by domestic and international investors. In reaction to these projects, local groups of opponents have joined forces with national peasant organizations, civil society associations, and think tanks to resist perceived land grabs. This article examines the emergence of this social movement and explains why anti-land grabs campaigns were successful in halting some projects, but not successful in others. I argue that four main factors are at play: a strong mobilization of local populations measured by group cohesion and level of determination; the assistance of national and international NGOs in scaling up protests beyond the local level; the capacity of opponents to harness the support of influential elites and decision-makers; and the legal status of the land under contention. This paper draws on an analysis of secondary data, qualitative interviews, and field observations carried out in Senegal for several months from 2013 to 2018.