Social Theory and the Politics of Higher Education

Critical Perspectives on Institutional Research

Mark Murphy, Ciaran Burke, Cristina Costa, Rille Raaper, Mark Murphy, Ciaran Burke, Cristina Costa, Rille Raaper

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781350197442
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350141575
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Social Theory and the Politics of Higher Education brings together an international group of scholars who shine a theoretical light on the politics of academic life and higher education. The book covers three key areas:

1) Institutional governance, with a specific focus on issues such as measurement, surveillance, accountability, regulation, performance and institutional reputation.
2) Academic work, covering areas such as the changing nature of academic labour, neoliberalism and academic identity, and the role of gender and gender studies in university life.
3) Student experience, which includes case studies of student politics and protest, the impact of graduate debt and changing student identities.

The editors and chapter authors explore these topics through a theoretical lens, using the ideas of Michel Foucault, Niklas Luhmann, Barbara Adams, Donna Massey, Margaret Archer, Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, Hartmut Rosa, Norbert Elias and Donna Haraway, among others. The case studies, from Africa, Europe, Australia and South America, draw on a wide range of research approaches, and each chapter includes a set of critical reflections on how social theory and research methodology can work in tandem.

1

Introduction: Theorising the University in an
Age of Uncertainty

Mark Murphy, Ciaran Burke, Cristina Costa and Rille Raaper

Introduction

The purpose of this book is to deliver a critical examination of the changing politics of higher education through the intellectual prism of social theory. For a long time academics have applied a wide variety of social theories to help understand the workings of power in social life. This book turns the focus around and instead shines a theoretical light on the politics of academic life. Social theory and its erstwhile concerns with power and knowledge, privilege and authority, autonomy and control, is the ideal toolkit through which to deliver such an examination, and the book combines the power of theory with a wide range of methodologies, case studies and research topics.

This book is significant for a number of reasons. The higher education sector is experiencing change at a rapid rate internationally, with universities in particular pushed and pulled in various policy directions and in some regions involved in real political turmoil. There have been dramatic changes in the financing and governing of universities; alongside this, institutions have witnessed protests from students about their experience and the quality of their courses. Consumerism and marketisation have become part of the fabric of institutional and academic life, and academics in many countries consider their work and profession to be under threat and changing beyond recognition.

Based on an ever-increasing evidence base, this is all true. It is also true that modern higher education provision has a lot to live up to – it is easy to forget that, alongside the pressures of accountability, regulation and competition, universities still answer to a set of other alternative demands and desires. For all the debate over consumerism and neoliberalism, the university is still expected to assist in creating generations of independent thinkers, which in turn are expected to provide a sound basis for a critically-reasoning public that can speak truth to power. It is also expected to act as an institutional powerhouse of ideas, a prized space within which the relation between theory and practice can test itself out across a wide range of disciplines. As well as these not insignificant expectations, the university, and higher education more generally, is still judged against the once-revolutionary ideals of democracy, reason, truth and justice, ideals which uphold the university as a publicly oriented institution. This public character for many represents the beating heart of the institution (Murphy 2011; Zumeta 2011), a publicness that positions the university as a trusted broker of political, economic and cultural life.

This collection of interlinked ideals represents the counter-argument to the prevailing tendencies of control and compliance, a normative grounding for a persistent critique that has never disappeared in the discourses over academic life. But these ideals are under threat from the forces of marketisation, competition and privatisation, with critics suggesting that these combined forces leave little room to breathe for alternative forms of governance to take hold. Social theory is the vessel through which this critique makes itself heard, itself a vehicle for the upholding of enlightenment values and the ideals of justice. It is a vital set of tools by which to ‘test’ the sector against its most cherished values. These factors, alongside the ongoing and often fractious debates over academic freedom and the legitimacy of expert knowledge, indicate that this collection is a timely one, as it aims to examine these and other issues conceptually and to make sense of them holistically.

The book explores these topics through a theoretical ‘wide lens’, putting to work the ideas of Michel Foucault, Niklas Luhmann, Barbara Adam, Doreen Massey, Margaret Archer, Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, Hartmut Rosa, Norbert Elias and Donna Haraway, among others. The collection incorporates a wide variety of social theories to help deliver a critical examination of the politics of higher education. Alongside this, the case study chapters draw on a range of approaches to research, and each chapter includes a set of critical reflections on how they have sought to relate social theory and research methodology. There are also a number of excellent examples of hybridised approaches to theoretical work, with one chapter, for example, exploring governance through the dual lens of Luhmann/Foucault.

In terms of contributors, the book draws on the expertise of researchers from a wide range of geographical contexts, including authors from the UK and Australia, as well as countries in South America (Brazil, Peru, Chile). The book includes a set of case studies of higher education from three different continents (Europe, Australia, South America), thereby shining a light on the international context of higher education. Researchers from all career stages are represented, including a number of early career researchers who can talk to their experience of conducting PhD research. Diversity is also evident in the selection of topics as case studies, which range from gender and identity, casualisation, research performance through to student protest.

The book offers a close fit to the series in which it is published: Social Theory and Methodology in Education Research. One of the ways in which this fit is delivered is the requirement that every case study chapter includes a section entitled ‘critical reflections on social theory and methodology’. This provides a space for contributors and readers to consider the ways in which the research evidence bridges the gap between theory and method – a key objective of this book and the series more generally.

Pedagogical features

The book has a strong pedagogical component, designed to assist the reader in understanding the relation between social theory and higher education research. This is reflected in the design of key aspects of the book, which include:

Context chapters: As well as this more general introduction to the book, each section has an opening chapter which provides an overview of some of the major political and theoretical issues that impact institutional governance, academic work and the student experience. This will offer the reader a strong basis from which to engage with the subsequent chapters in each section.

Focus on theory and method: Each case study chapter includes a section entitled ‘critical reflections on social theory and methodology’, which provides a space for contributors and readers to consider the ways in which the research evidence bridges the gap between theory and method – a key objective of the series in which this collection belongs.

Consistent focus: A consistent and recurring theme throughout the content is the ways in which a changing political landscape has impacted on institutional life, whether this be in relation to institutional governance, academic work or the student experience. This shared focus allows the reader to build connections between conceptual frameworks and to enhance their knowledge of the relationship between social theory and methodology across the research field.

Organisation and content of the book

The book is organised into three sections, preceded by an introduction. The three sections are:

1.Social theory and university governance

2.Social theory and the politics of academic work

3.Social theory and the politics of student experience

The content of the book covers three key areas: (1) institutional governance, with a specific focus on issues such as measurement, surveillance, accountability, regulation, performance and institutional reputation; (2) academic work, covering areas such as the changing nature of academic labour, neoliberalism and academic identity, and the role of gender and gender studies in university life; and (3) student experience, which includes case studies of student politics and protest, the impact of graduate debt and changing student identities. Each section begins with an introductory chapter, designed to ‘set the scene’ for the case studies that follow. With this structure, the book identifies how the changing politics of higher education has impacted on institutional governance, as well as the two main groups of people affected by these politics: academics and students. This offers a form of research triangulation, providing a privileged vantage point from which to assess the various ramifications of changing political imperatives. The structure also allows readers to compare and contrast different conceptual and research approaches within their own specialised research field.

Section 1: Social theory and university governance

The section on social theory and university governance introduces the reader to three pertinent ways of exploring the field of academic governance whilst applying different theoretical lenses. The works of Nobert Elias, Michel Foucault and Niklas Luhmann are put to work with the intention of promoting critical debate about different issues currently impacting the academy. These include: (1) a discussion of emerging managerial hierarchies as a by-product of increasing external and internal pressures placed on the academy; (2) the deconstruction of student satisfaction data as a key indicator of quality and governing strategies; and (3) an analysis of accountability mechanisms that foment a type of performativity that undermines the conventions associated with the university. All three chapters speak to key issues currently affecting academia internationally and all three chapters make use of social theory to emphasise the importance of these tools in fostering deeper understandings of the issues at hand. Two of the chapters in this section combine the work of different theorists in the search for new, original perspectives, thus breaking away from a monological approach to theorising to which the field of education research has grown accustomed. This is particularly visible in two of the chapters in this section (Chapters 4 and 5), as detailed below.

Chapter 2 sets the scene for the section, providing an introduction to key issues pertaining to the governance of universities. Mark Murphy opens the chapter with a succinct account of how university governance has changed in the last decades to embrace a business-oriented and marketised model. The ‘traditional’ collegial model of institutional governance, he argues, found itself marginalised in the face of managerial imperatives such as efficiency and performance, alongside heightened ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• 1 Introduction: Theorising the University in an Age of Uncertainty
• Part One Social Theory and University Governance
• 2 Governing Universities: Power, Prestige and Performance
• 3 University Management as Court Society: A Processual Analysis of the Rise of University Management
• 4 Tales from the Matrix: Student Satisfaction as a Form of Governmentality
• 5 What Does it Mean to Assess Quality? A Socio-historical Analysis of Quality Assurance Systems in Chilean Higher Education
• Part Two Social Theory and the Politics of Academic Work
• 6 The Politics of Academic Work: Professional Identities and Intellectual Selves in Neoliberal Times
• 7 The Experimental Rhythms of Academic Work
• 8 Exploring Academic Identities in the Neoliberal University
• 9 Gender and the University: Stories So Far and Spaces Between
• 10 On Epistemonormativity: From Epistemic Injustices to Feminist Academic Caringzenship
• 11 Governing the ‘Good’ Casual Academic: Institutionalised ‘Othering’ Practices
• Part Three Social Theory and the Politics of Student Experience
• 12 Student Politics: Resistance, Refusal and Representation
• 13 Habermas and Foucault: Understanding Hostility to Higher Education and Graduate Debt
• 14 Neoliberal Governmentality in Higher Education in Peru: An Example of Students’ Unions’ Resistance and Conflict
• 15 The Space of Authoring in Constructing Student and Graduate Career Identities
• Index
• Copyright