Session Information
28 SES 03, Beyond Compliance And Resistance: Actors, Agency, And European Higher Education
Symposium
Contribution
The panel examines diverse concepts of agency brought about by the transformation of the European space of higher education and research. Contributions to the panel aim to open up the field for new and unorthodox conceptualisations of actors, strategies and ‘room for maneuver’ on different levels of this process. The objective of the panel is to contribute to the critical consideration of the dynamics of the relationship between ‘structure’ and ‘agency’, the ‘local’ and the ‘global’, and the role of human (and non-human) actors within it.
Until recently, academic research on changes in higher education in Europe has emphasised large-scale processes such as commodification, internationalisation, or the Bologna Process, with local developments typically understood as a manifestation of or reaction to these processes. In this view, agency is typically ascribed to recognised political actors – governments, representative organisations (including university and student unions), international organisations (UNESCO, OECD), financial institutions (the World Bank) and/or individual actors occupying ‘traditional’ positions of power (rectors, deans, senior managers, etc.) (Elken and Vukasovic 2014; Nokkala and Bacevic 2014; Sarauw 2013; Moutsios 2010; Robertson 2009; Ravinet 2008; Corbett 2005). Forms of agency occurring outside of these frameworks are either ignored, or else conceptualized as compliance or resistance (cf. Posecznik 2014).
This panel aims to challenge this dichotomous conceptualisation of agency. We set off from the premise that understanding changes in the modes of knowledge production requires the development of a more sophisticated notion of the relationship between the classic concepts of ‘structure’ and ‘agency’, as well as of their interaction. Drawing on influences ranging from Bourdieu’s and Archer’s work on structure and agency to Latour’s and Barad’s ideas in the domain of networked or distributed agency, and from Cox’s and Sassen’s work on space and scale to Wright’s concept of ‘studying through’, the presenters question the notion of fixed boundaries between entities who ‘possess’ power and those who do not, and open the floor for the conceptualisation of actors as simultaneously constituting and constituted by the social and political processes in which they participate. In this way, the panel aims to start the discussion on how different perspectives on actors and agency may contribute to a more refined understanding of the sociological, political, and economic aspects of the transformation of education and knowledge production in and beyond Europe and beyond.
The panel combines theoretical perspectives from sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and political economy. Featuring case studies from different European contexts and on a variety of scales (global, regional, national, institutional), we aim, through the panel, to help mature a theoretical understanding of the ways in which developments at particular sites, as well contexts and structures of power, interact with different forms of agency and, in turn, play a role in the (re)production of these processes on the global scale.
References
Corbett, A. (2005) Universities and the Europe of Knowledge. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Elken, M. & Vukasovic, M. (2014) Dynamics of Voluntary Coordination: actors and networks in the Bologna Process, in M.H. Chou & Å. Gornitzka (Eds). Building the Knowledge Economy in Europe: new constellations in European research and higher education governance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Moutsios, S. (2010). Power, politics and transnational policy-making in education. Globalisation, Societies and Education. 8 (1): 121-141. Nokkala, T. and J. Bacevic. (2014). University Autonomy, Agenda Setting and the Construction of Agency: the case of the European University Association in the European Higher Education Area, European Educational Research Journal, 13(6), 699-714. Posecznick, A. (2014). Introduction: On Theorizing and Humanizing the Politics of Complicity in Higher Education. International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences 7(1), 1-11. Ravinet, P. (2008). From Voluntary Participation to Monitored Coordination: why European countries feel increasingly bound by their commitment to the Bologna Process. European Journal of Education, 43(3), 353-367. Robertson, S.L. (2009). Market Multilateralism, the World Bank Group and the Asymmetries of Globalising Higher Education: Toward a Critical Political Economy Analysis, in R. Bassett and A. Maldonado (eds). Thinking Globally, Acting Locally, London: Routledge. Sarauw, L.L. (2013). Qualifications Frameworks and their conflicting social imaginaries of globalization, International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences, 5(3), 22-39.
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