Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

THEORIZING THE UNIVERSITY AS A CULTURAL SYSTEM: DISTINCTIONS, IDENTITIES, EMERGENCIES

THEORIZING THE UNIVERSITY AS A CULTURAL SYSTEM: DISTINCTIONS, IDENTITIES, EMERGENCIES Abstract Universities currently face new environmental demands and significant internal complexities that appear to challenge their traditional modes of work and organization — and thus their very identities. In this essay, Mark Considine argues that the prospect of such changes requires us to reflect carefully upon the theoretical and normative underpinnings of universities and to delineate the structures and processes through which they might seek to negotiate their identities. Considine re‐theorizes the university as a higher education system composed by distinctions and networks acting through an important class of boundary objects. He moves beyond an environmental analysis, asserting that systems are best theorized as cultural practices based upon actors making and protecting important kinds of distinctions. Thus, the university system must be investigated as a knowledge‐based binary for dividing knowledge from other things. This approach, in turn, produces an identity‐centering (cultural) model of the system that assumes universities must perform two different acts of distinction to exist: first, they must distinguish themselves from other systems (such as the economy, organized religion, and the labor market), and, second, they must operate successfully in a chosen resource environment. Ultimately, Considine argues that while environmental problems (such as cuts in government grants) may generate periodic crises, threats within identities produce emergencies generating a radical kind of problematic for actor networks. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Educational Theory Wiley

THEORIZING THE UNIVERSITY AS A CULTURAL SYSTEM: DISTINCTIONS, IDENTITIES, EMERGENCIES

Educational Theory , Volume 56 (3) – Aug 1, 2006

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/theorizing-the-university-as-a-cultural-system-distinctions-identities-rbQ4CST6Pg

References (17)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company
ISSN
0013-2004
eISSN
1741-5446
DOI
10.1111/j.1741-5446.2006.00231.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract Universities currently face new environmental demands and significant internal complexities that appear to challenge their traditional modes of work and organization — and thus their very identities. In this essay, Mark Considine argues that the prospect of such changes requires us to reflect carefully upon the theoretical and normative underpinnings of universities and to delineate the structures and processes through which they might seek to negotiate their identities. Considine re‐theorizes the university as a higher education system composed by distinctions and networks acting through an important class of boundary objects. He moves beyond an environmental analysis, asserting that systems are best theorized as cultural practices based upon actors making and protecting important kinds of distinctions. Thus, the university system must be investigated as a knowledge‐based binary for dividing knowledge from other things. This approach, in turn, produces an identity‐centering (cultural) model of the system that assumes universities must perform two different acts of distinction to exist: first, they must distinguish themselves from other systems (such as the economy, organized religion, and the labor market), and, second, they must operate successfully in a chosen resource environment. Ultimately, Considine argues that while environmental problems (such as cuts in government grants) may generate periodic crises, threats within identities produce emergencies generating a radical kind of problematic for actor networks.

Journal

Educational TheoryWiley

Published: Aug 1, 2006

There are no references for this article.