The Theorized Society and Political Action: Effects of Expanded Higher Education on the Polity

2006 ◽  
pp. 49-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
David H. Kamens
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Action Effects

Gender Transformations in Higher Education

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Amy Bell ◽  
Lucy Hawkins ◽  
Lorraine Kelleher ◽  
Cath Lambert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Academic Activism ◽  
Popular Appeal ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Uk Higher Education

This paper offers a critical perspective on issues around gender and sexual transformation within the context of UK Higher Education. Drawing on qualitative data carried out by undergraduate and postgraduate students, the analysis explores some of the diverse and often challenging ways in which young/er women and men are thinking and talking about gender, sexuality and feminism, as well as their strategies for turning ideas into political action. The research focuses on the activities and opinions of students belonging to an anti-sexist organisation within one UK university, who are engaged in campaigns to raise awareness about the damaging effects of gender and sexual inequalities, as well as promoting the popular appeal of contemporary feminisms. Locating the voices and research findings of the students themselves at the centre of the discussion, the paper is produced collaboratively between students and teachers who are involved in both the activist and research elements of this project. The paper also argues for (and provides evidence of) the transformative potential of alternative and critical forms of student engagement and student/ staff collaboration in relation to gender informed academic activism.

Unpacking neo-liberal technologies of government in Australian higher education social work departments

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uschi Bay
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
The Political ◽  
University Staff ◽  
Work Settings ◽  
University Departments ◽  
Rules Of The Game

• Summary: This article analyses how neo-liberal and managerialist policies, over the last two decades in Australia, have positioned university staff as self-managing individuals. Social work academics are positioned as ‘free agents . . .empowered to act on their own behalf while ‘‘steered from a distance’’ by ‘‘policy norms and rules of the game’’ (Marginson, 1997, p. 63, italics added). Using governmentality theories as developed by Bacchi (2009), Burchell, Gordon, and Miller (1991), Dean (1996, 1999a, 1999b), Foucault (1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991), Hindess (1997, 2003), Miller (1992), Barry, Osborne, and Rose (1996) and Rose (1999) and an analysis of how staff are positioned in higher education settings is explored. • Findings: This article identifies the ways neo-liberal policy and managerialism operates to enable power relations that both individualize and totalize academic staff, including social work academics. Efforts to transform power relations require an understanding of how particular situations are problematized and the identification of the governmental technologies employed to constitute the political identities of social work academics. • Applications: Identifying how neo-liberal technologies of government affect social work academics could stimulate a renewed struggle for change and reinvigorate political action in social work university departments and social work settings more broadly.

scholarly journals The future of value in digitalised higher education: why data privacy should not be our biggest concern

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janja Komljenovic
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Data Privacy ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Data Value ◽  
Public Scrutiny ◽  
New Research

AbstractUniversities around the world are increasingly digitalising all of their operations, with the current COVID-19 pandemic speeding up otherwise steady developments. This article focuses on the political economy of higher education (HE) digitalisation and suggests a new research programme. I foreground three principal arguments, which are empirically, theoretically, and politically crucial for HE scholars. First, most literature is examining the impacts of digitalisation on the HE sector and its subjects alone. I argue that current changes in digitalising HE cannot be studied in isolation from broader changes in the global economy. Specifically, HE digitalisation is embedded in the expansion of the digital economy, which is marked by new forms of value extraction and rentiership. Second, the emerging research on the intersection of marketisation and digitalisation in HE seems to follow the theories of marketisation qua production and commodification. I argue that we need theories with better explanatory power in analysing the current digitalisation dynamics. I propose to move from commodification to assetisation, and from prices to rents. Finally, universities are digitalising in the time when the practice is superseding policy, and there is no regulation beyond the question of data privacy. However, digital data property is already a reality, governed by ‘terms of use’, and protected by the intellectual property rights regime. The current pandemic has led to ‘emergency pedagogy’, which has intensified overall digitalisation in the sector and is bypassing concerns of data value redistribution. I argue that we urgently need public scrutiny and political action to address issues of value extraction and redistribution in HE.

scholarly journals Student Protests. Three Periods of University Governance

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 524-539
Author(s):  
Joan Ramon Rodriguez-Amat ◽  
Bob Jeffery
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Political Action ◽  
University Governance ◽  
The Political ◽  
Student Protests ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University

Exploring the idea of student protests as an autonomous object of research and discussion, this paper leads to the understanding that the transforming role of the university and its governance defines the possibilities for the political role of students. In this perspective, there is a particular constellation of the different forms of higher education governance that provides students with the right and even the responsibility of protesting as politically engaged citizens of the university and of the state. Approaching the transformation of the models of university governance as a set of archaeologically organised states this paper identifies the sequential roles provided to the students and the meaning of their protests and demonstrations. After visiting some antecedents of more contemporaneous student movements and protests, this paper focuses on the UK to explore three manifestations of university governance that can be roughly differentiated as the enduring democratic period that extends from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, the globalisation period that extends from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s and as the post-millennial turn. These periods, embodying three different styles of governance of higher education, not only demonstrate conformity with the political and economic contexts in which they are embeded, they also correspond to particular socio-technological and communicative ecosystems and determine the specificities of the role of the students and their capacity for political action.

scholarly journals Contribution of Higher Education Institutions to Social Innovation: Practices in Two Southern European Universities

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3594
Author(s):  
Sílvia Monteiro ◽  
Rosa Isusi-Fagoaga ◽  
Leandro Almeida ◽  
Adela García-Aracil
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Economic Returns ◽  
European Universities ◽  
Innovation Activities ◽  
European Public ◽  
Societal Problems ◽  
Innovation Practices

The interactions between the higher education sector and society and industry have been attracting increased attention in terms of ways to develop social innovation solutions to societal problems. Despite calls from politicians and the existence of some guidelines, we know little about how higher education could incorporate social innovation activities into its structure and missions. This study examines some practice experiences in two southern European public universities in Portugal and Spain. We show that the third mission of universities, which includes social innovation, is both linked to the first two missions of teaching and research, depending on the university’s historical and social context. The high dependence of higher education institutions on economic returns increases the importance of political action to drive the development of social innovation activities. This conditioning factor seems to be intrinsic to some of the barriers that have been identified, such as lack of legitimization and recognition of social innovation practices at the formal governmental level.

scholarly journals The Possibility of Reform: Micropolitics in Higher Education

2002 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Susan Haag ◽  
Mary Lee Smith
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Teacher Education ◽  
Educational Reform ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Systemic Reform ◽  
Teacher Preparation Program ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
K 12

The purpose of this case study was to examine the restructuring of an institution of higher education's teacher preparation program and to assess the possibility for systemic reform.  Although teacher education represents a vital link in not only the educational system but in curricular reform, the increased expectations for educational reform made this institution unavoidably more political.  These conditions meant that the study of micropolitics was critical to understanding how organizations change or fail to initiate change.  Any effort to reform an organization requires examination of the reform effort's underlying assumptions, social and historical context for the reform, and how reform is congruent with the values, ideologies, and goals of the constituents. This case will serve those critiquing reform and also takes the extant K-12 micropolitical research into the heretofore unstudied realm of higher education therefore impacting reform at the post secondary level. Schools are vulnerable to a host of powerful external and internal forces.  They exist in a vortex of government mandates, social and economic pressures, and conflicting ideologies associated with administrators, faculty, and students. Efforts to reform school are confounded by competing political agendas.  At the very least, reform is an opportunity for political action by people in power.  While literature regarding effective schools touts strong leadership and shared values, accomplishing school reform continues to remain problematic. Despite the widespread interest and infusion of resources for restructuring teacher education, the history of educational reform shows that initiatives have often failed.   The study began with the micropolitical hypothesis that the educational system comprises diverse constituencies with differing ideologies regarding schooling.  Qualitative methodology was employed to portray intra-organizational processes, to provide concrete depiction of detail, and to study social change. Micropolitics and symbolic interactionism, the theoretical frameworks for the study, influenced the design and production of research and functioned as the interpretive focus. The study followed a multi method approach to understand meanings in context and to interpret these patterns in light of broader contexts.  We employed the following multiple methods to generate a credible account of constituent ideologies: 23 semi-structured interviews, document review, and observational data.  Data reveal fundamental differences in the images of five constituencies in these areas: curriculum, teachers, pupils, and teacher education and support the micropolitical assertion that systemic reform is unobtainable.

scholarly journals Universities going global?

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (Winter) ◽  
pp. 162-166
Author(s):  
Bernardo Sfredo Miorando
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Educational Institution ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Postgraduate Education ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Doctoral Research

This article presents a doctoral research on how individuals in Brazilian and Finnish contexts of postgraduate education are processing changes in university as internationalization takes place. It problematizes how change, power and political action unfold across the fields of social action – national policy, educational institution, academic work – that  compose each context. The research supporting this dissertation was organized as a comparative case study based on the qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with Brazilian and Finnish policy makers, institutional leaders and scholars involved with the internationalization of postgraduate education. The theoretical background deals with the political character of university and of higher education change, combining higher education studies and Brazilian social thought. It also connects globalization and internationalization from a critical perspective. The interviewees’ perspectives about the relations between their work and internationalization were sought as a source for understanding what changes when universities go global.

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