Understanding #FeesMustFall: Starting a qualitative data analysis

My interest and that of other researchers into the student movement - like Tanja Bosch, a professor and expert in communication studies, media studies and youth at UCT - is in the different uses of different platforms of social media during movement campaigns like #FeesMustFall; the different audiences, etc.; and the significance of the use of social media for the specific character and successes and failures of the student movement.

Just yesterday, my colleague Nkululeko Makhubu and I got an interesting lesson in social movement theory by Luc Chicoine, a visiting scholar from the University of Quebec, Montreal, Canada, - remember the Maple Spring? He introduced us to the concepts of 'framing' and different types of frame alignment, cycles of protests and contention (by Makhadam as he pronouces it), etc. all adding to the seminar he gave earlier this week at the HSRC on protest event analysis. Yes, it is acronymed to number 1.

Today now, Travis Noakes (nope, he is not banting at the moment I asked :), gave all of us, that's Prof Bosch, Makhubu and me, a workshop in using Nvivo 12 for analysing our data. It's a process - and it has it's own language... nodes, nodes, child nodes, parent nodes. Seems very time-consuming, but, as the wordcloud above shows, it may actually be worth it.

What's the point? Eventually, the close to 500k tweets we got as digital trace data from the net will be connected to a qualitative database, and all that feed into getting a better understanding of the amazingly creative way, student activists in 2015 invented a South African 'internet-age networked student movement' (yes, I coined that term :). Never mind the remarks about the 'anti-social media' by Prof Jonathan Jansen in his 2016 book. The point is, listen and you won't get burnt - as by fire. But it has always been difficult for principals to listen to the children in their care...

As we are starting to talk to student leaders at UCT about the use of social media during the 2015/16 South African Student Spring (as Ferial Haffajee calls it in her first excellent book What if there were no Whites in South Africa) we are getting a striking cloud of words. This is very, very rough. But I thought it is worth sharing... That students see their movement as a social movement first and foremost, linked with Twitter and Facebook, Rhodes, leadership, and so forth.
Follow our project @osphera #FeesMustFall

Internet-age student movement research in the era of big data and social media

I have written previously about the South African student movement (of 2015/16) and the way social media use by students and others during the movement signaled a new era in student politics - and possibly grassroots politics overall in South Africa, making it the first 'internet-age student movement in South Africa' (see publications). As it was during the Arab Spring, Facebook and Twitter, along with other platforms (like WhatsApp) were used prolifically by activists, sympathizers, as well as journalists to inform on the movement.

This Wednesday at the HSRC, Nkululeko Makhubu and I got really excited to receive the raw data of all tweets with hashtag #feesmustfall in an excel file from the period of 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2016 to analyse. It is extremely exciting to have such big data to work with - it is also a bit scary to think how much information about a person remains stored in the 'cloud'. Today it is almost exactly three years since the start of #RhodesMustFall, and two and a half years since that of #FeesMustFall. Yet, with the right extraction tools, it is possible to get information to the most miniscule datum.

For instance, in our dataset, we have for every one of the 576,000 tweets extracted so far the exact date and time when it was tweeted, location, language, user name of tweeter, twitter handle of tweeter, gender; mentions (handles of others mentioned in the tweet, the actual tweet content including links to pictures, videos, websites etc. in the tweet), other hashtags, and so forth.

Even though this is open, publicly accessible data, it still requires of the researchers to be extremely sensitive to the ethics of research. Thus, how one treats matters like the identity of a tweeter, is really an important question; after all, using certain data in ethically questionable ways may have very real-life implications for the tweeter. What I tweeted in the hype of activism in 2015 must be seen in that context... and such big data sets do not provide such context. As a young student being thrust into the midst of student activism and protest, I may have said (or rather: tweeted) things that I may very well want to disown now; the university experience - including participating in a student protest - is, after all, a learning experience and it is part of learning that one makes mistakes... 

Pear factor, a media monitoring, research and analysis company, sent me last year a 'teaser' of their capabilities when it comes to doing social media data analysis and infographics (Thanks very much!). I included (above) two snips of those infographics.

We will be doing different kinds of analysis on our own data set, but this just illustrates how, in an aggregate fashion, much can be learnt about the 'virtual'/online dimension of the student movement. The timeline indicates here that tweeting using their keyword and hashtag spec 'exploded' mid October 2015 - coinciding with the national timeline of #FeesMustFall (i.e. March to Parliament on 21 October, March to Luthuli House on 22 October, March to Union Building on 23 October 2015). It also shows the geographic spread of tweeting centred on South Africa and the main metropolitan centres in particular, but spreading around the globe, including English-speaking Africa, Europe (especially UK) as well as the United States, India, Middle East and Australia.

I will be documenting the progress with this study in detail on the Osphera.net website and make regular updates via @osphera and on my own blog, facebook and twitter accounts.

 

The African Renaissance - and its Buildings

The duomo cathedral in Florence

Walking through Florence in November 2017, the history and legacy of the European Renaissance is omnipresent. Not only that there are, of course, specific museums and exhibitions, and then there is Michelangelo's David and the Uffizi, and so on. But what is so fascinating to me is also the architectural legacy. Wikipedia says that "Italy of the 15th century, and the city of Florence in particular, was home to the Renaissance. It is in Florence that the new architectural style had its beginning, not slowly evolving in the way that Gothic Architecture grew out of Romanesque architecture but consciously brought to being by particular architects who sought to revive the order of a past Golden Age. The scholarly approach to the architecture of the ancient coincided with the general revival of learning." The renaissance there was multilayered; it also span as a period several hundred years.

New houses in a typical township

As I walked through Florence, Italy, while visiting for a conference at the Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) of the Scuola Normale Superiore (which is a number of posts worth on its own), looking at the magnificent buildings I could not help but thinking. First, most of those buildings are churches, cathedrals (such as the famous Duomo) and other religious institutions. The second most magnificent buildings, to me, were the 'government' buildings and those urban palaces built by the dominant families of Florence... like the Medici's, and their rivals, like the Strozzi family. 

Wits University in Johannesburg

What the architecture of the African Renaissance does and will look like is somewhat peripheral. What I was rather wondering is, if the 'dominant ideological apparatus' at the time was the catholic church and that is clearly reflected in its enduring buildings, what is the African Renaissance's equivalent and what buildings are we talking about? This assumes for the moment that the African Renaissance does and will have a 'built environment' dimension. I immediately thought about universities and other educational institutions, and seeing that Florence in the 14th to 17th century was pretty much Khayelitsha on steroids, I had to ask myself again. Why oh why are we not building magnificent universities and TVET colleges etc. in the erstwhile townships? Why not having in Soweto etc. also iconic university and educational buildings that become central focus points, like a cathedral in keeping with what I perceive as the 'education'-bias in popular (and political) African 'ideology' during these renaissance times.  

Student Politics and Protests: International Perspectives

New book out, edited by Rachel Brooks
Student Politics and Protests: International Perspectives

Student Politics and Protest: International Perspectives explores a number of common themes, including: the focus and nature of student politics and protest; whether students are engaging in fundamentally new forms of political activity; the characteristics of politically engaged students; the extent to which such activity can be considered to be ‘globalised’; and societal responses to political activity on the part of students. 

Student Politics and Protest: International Perspectives does not seek to develop a coherent argument across all its chapters but, instead, illustrate the variety of empirical foci, theoretical resources and substantive arguments that are being made in relation to student politics and protest.

International in scope, with all chapters dealing with recent developments concerning student politics and protest, this book will be an invaluable guide for Higher Education professionals, masters and postgraduate students in education, sociology, social policy, politics and youth studies. The book includes the following chapters, including a chapter on student politics in Africa co-written by Manja Klemencic and me, based on our work and that of our authors published in the book Student Politics in Africa: Representation and Activism (2016) which can be purchased from ABC or downloaded for free from African Minds.

1. Student Politics and Protest: an Introduction. 
2. Campaigning for a Movement 
3. Student Struggles and Power Relations in Contemporary Universities. 
4. Neoliberal Discourses and the Emergence of an Agentic Field: the Chilean Student Movement 
5. Affinities and Barricades. 
6. Student Politics and the Value(s) of Public Welfare 
7. The Politics of Higher Education Funding in the UK Student Movement 1996-2010 
8. Student Power in 21st Century Africa 
9. Students’ Associations 
10. ‘If Not Now, Then When? If Not Us, Who?’ Understanding the Student Protest Movement in Hong Kong 
11. Student Mobilization during Turkey’s Gezi Resistance: From the Politics of Change to the Politics of Lifestyle 
12. Network Formation in Student Political Worlds 
13. Conclusion

Online / Blended Learning Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education Management - from University of Stellenbosch

The University of Stellenbosch Business School is offering a post graduate diploma in Business Admin and Management (PG Dip BMA HEM) which has the Specialization in Higher Education Management: enrollments are now open for 2018.

This post graduate diploma is the academic degree in the professionalization of the various functions that support HE in South Africa. Our modules focus on:

Higher Education Perspectives, Governance and Policy Frameworks, Human Development and Learning Theories, Diversity and Equity, Internationalization, Change Management and Transformation.

I will be lecturing the introductory "Higher Education Perspectives" course. :)

The qualification is relevant for colleagues in Student Affairs, International Offices, Registrars, Administration, Marketing and Alumni, Social Responsibility and Impact, Transformation and Institutional Research and Planning. It is also essential for anyone who seeks to make a career in supporting HE and student and institutional success.

 We invite colleagues from the DHET, from the private sector as well as NGOs and Social Responsibility Foundation and we hope that we have a wonderfully vibrant and diverse group of students who make up our first cohort in 2018.

The PG Dip HEM is one year, offered in blended learning (can be done while you work), and you will be part of a small group of students who get supported by a dynamic set of experts who are specifically chosen to teach the modules.

Basically: every Tuesday from 4-8pm either online or if in Stellenbosch at the centre.
plus two teaching blocs of 1 week each - one in the first semester, one in the second.

For any information, you can either contact the USB directly for all the information (see link), or  email the convenor Dr Birgit Schreiber.

Now this PG Dip is really interesting - but it is different from the PG Dip in Education (Higher Education) that I have been doing at the University of Free State, which is targeted more towards academics, teaching and learning managers, and all those who are less interested in the 'management' side and more interested in the teaching and learning side of higher education. 

Reflections on the Student Experience and Student Life in Europe in the 20th Century - J Burkett Book is out!

It's quite unusual for me to publish a chapter in a book on student life in Britain and Ireland in the 20th century... after all, my work is typically about the student experience, student life and student politics in South Africa and other African countries.

But that has to do with the 'evolution' of this book as a whole (which has been several years in the making), and my specific contribution which is theoretical and structured in terms of ten propositions about student politics in the 20th century. 

The ABSTRACT of the chapter

Student activism is ‘a highly complex, many-faceted phenomenon’ for which serious systematic efforts at understanding it only emerged as a scholarly response to the student revolts of the twentieth century. Until the mid-1960s, student activism was thought of as more characteristic of developing countries than the industrialised countries of Western Europe and North America, even though students had historically been part of the political equation there, for example during the Bourgeois revolutions of the 1840s. The student activism of the late 1960s stands out, however, as perhaps the most significant student political period of the twentieth century in Europe and North America. Philip Altbach was there. As a student at the University of Chicago, he was part of the anti-war Student Peace Union (SPU) from its establishment in 1959 and served as national chairman of the SPU from 1959 to 1963. In the early 1960s he turned his attention to studying student politics rather than actively participating in it. During this period he produced his PhD thesis, Students, Politics and Higher Education in a Developing Society: The Case of Bombay, India, and began to make a name as an emerging scholar on student politics in America, India and the developing world (working on related topics with Seymore Martin Lipset), and he tried himself as scholarly commentator on matters such as the civil rights movement in the US. This chapter sets out to order Altbach’s theoretical contribution systematically, by formulating ten propositions for understanding student activism in the twentieth century based on his work.

Altbach’s Framework for Studying Student Activism in ten Propositions

Conceptual points of departure

Proposition 1: Conceptual frameworks matter

Proposition 2: Political development and legitimacy matters

Proposition 3: Higher education matters

Proposition 4: Institutional characteristics matter

Proposition 5: Discipline matters

Proposition 6: Students’ backgrounds and experiences matter

Proposition 7: Ideas matter

Proposition 8: Student agency matters

Proposition 9: Conjuncture matters

Proposition 10: The response matters

Conclusion

Contents

1 Introduction: Universities and Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland (by Jodi Burkett)

Part I Student Experiences and Day-to-Day Life

2 On Going Out and the Experience of Students (by Matthew Cheeseman)

3 Prisoner Students: Building Bridges, Breaching Walls (by Daniel Weinbren)

4 ‘Education not Fornication?’ Sexual Morality Among Students in Scotland, 1955–1975

(by Jane O’Neill)

Part II Student Organisations and Unions

5 ‘Forgotten Voices’: The Debating Societies of Durham and Liverpool, 1900–1939 (by Bertie Dockerill)

6 The National Union of Students and Devolution (by Mike Day)

7 Investigating the Relationship Between Students and NUS Wales (by Jeremy Harvey)

Part III Student Networks and the Wider Community

8 Sound, Gown and Town: Students in the Economy and Culture of UK Popular Music (by Paul Long and Lauren Thompson)

9 The National Union of Students and the Policy of ‘No Platform’ in the 1970s and 1980s (by Evan Smith)

10 ‘Don’t Bank on Apartheid’: The National Union of Students and the Boycott Barclays Campaign (by Jodi Burkett) 

Part IV Student Activism: Practice and Theory

11 Rebels and Rustici: Students and the Formation of the Irish State (by Steven Conlon)

12 ‘Women Are Far Too Sweet for This Kind of Game’: Women, Feminism and Student Politics in Scotland, c.1968–c.1979 (by Sarah Browne)

13 Altbach’s Theory of Student Activism in the Twentieth Century: Ten Propositions that Matter (by 

Thierry M. Luescher)

ISBN 978-3-319-58241-2

Sol Plaatje University - a new diamond in Kimberley

Kimberley in the Northern Cape in South Africa is a sorry old mining town, but at the same time has the charms that you only find in a former mining community. The Kimberlite diamonds that made Rhodes, de Beers and the Oppenheimers some of the wealthiest people in history are mined out, and for a hundered years what has remained is literally a big hole, high unemployment, poverty and the inequality that is so prevalent across the country, but maybe even starker here. The Kimberley mine is the deepest hole in the world, and the 'former' here is ubiquitous. Everything seems to remind of something former... That 'former' includes some remaining gems too, like De Beers' stunning (but still private) mining archive, an excellent Africana Library, a resourceful museum, but nothing new.

Something is new.

In 2013 a new public university was established in Kimberley named after its most famous son: Sol Plaatje. In 2017, Sol Plaatje University (SPU) has over 1,000 students and at the end of the year, it will celebrate its first degree graduation. The SPU students are pioneers, indeed, who study in a stunning facility and with academics that are fully invested in their students' success.

Today was my fourth time in Kimberley (visited the 'Great Hole' like any good tourist with my dad in 1999 on my first visit), and it was my second time at Sol Plaatje University. I spent the day as part of the HSRC delegation to SPU, exploring potential collaborations in research with colleagues here.

We heard Prof Yunus Ballim,  the first Vice-Chancellor of SPU; we were hosted by Jerome September, the Head of Student Affairs here, and we had great discussions with the SPU colleagues  who were mostly from the School of Humanities.

Prof Crain Soudien, the CEO of HSRC gave a most engaging presentation on the long transition and struggles in SA higher education, pointing out some extraordinary data like the 260% increase in black student enrollment since the 1990s, and  more generally, the massive expansion of the black South African middle class since the end of apartheid. Universities are doing there part. SPU wants to do more.

Sol Plaatje University is a city university and the first brand new university built in democratic South Africa. And she is beautiful. Some new buildings have gone up and they are just absolutely amazing. But the 'pioneering spirit' here is indeed ingrained, and the idea not only to be a university in the city, but a university that makes this city great, and this time focuses on unearthing and polishing the real gems: the people of Kimberley and the Northern Cape, so that like the Kimberlites of old, they may sparkle a precious light from Africa.

Re-Thinking Student Politics through the Lens of Student Life Cycle Models?

The occasion of giving an address to the student affairs practitioners at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), Pretoria, a few weeks ago, provided an opportunity to think through the question of how to better understand the student experience and its impact on student political culture. Particularly TUT has been affected by a great deal of student activism, and notwithstanding students' legitimate demands, one dimension is how student affairs can create the conditions and provide the kinds of services (including advocacy services, counselling services, transition into and through university like orientation programmes etc.) to better support students and improve the student experience. This then also sparked the question, what the bigger issues are: the student life cycle not only from a student affairs and services perspective, but also from an institutional policy, national policy perspective, and in relation to academic life, social life, and so on of students. A first cut of my thinking, which really started to take shape ahead of and during the TUT conference, has been reworked and published in this short and catchy HSRC Review article. 

Student Affairs Voices from Around the Globe

The Journal of Student Affairs in Africa (JSAA) has become an amazing success. Vol 5 Issue 1 has just been published and includes contributions from as far off as the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, PR China, Canada, the USA, as well as from the African continent itself: Ethiopia, Botswana and South Africa.

This is a special issue. JSAA has been seeking to provide an opportunity for Student Affairs professionals and higher education scholars from around the globe to share their research and experiences of student services and student affairs programmes from their respective regional and institutional contexts. This has been given a specific platform with the guest-edited issue “Voices from Around the Globe” which is the result of a collaboration with the International Association of Student Affairs and Services (IASAS), and particularly with the guest editors, Kathleen Callahan and Chinedu Mba.

Available free online at Stellenbosch University.

I like the bookshelf rule! 10 rules of writing and some more

Here then are the 10 rules of Prof Amitava Kumar (full details at the bottom)

1. Write every day. This is a cliché, of course, but you will write more when you tell yourself that no day must pass without writing. At the back of a notebook I use in my writing class, I write down the date and then make a mark next to it after the day’s work is done. I show the page to my students often, partly to motivate them, and  partly to remind myself that I can’t let my students down.

2. Have a modest goal. Aim to write 150 words each day. It is very difficult for me to find time on some days, and it is only this low demand that really makes it even possible to sit down and write. On better days, this goal is just a start; often, I end up writing more.

3. Try to write at the same time each day. I recently read a Toni Morrison interview in which she said: “I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are at their best, creatively.” It works best for me if I write at the same time each day—in my case, that hour or two that I get between the time I drop off my kids at school and go in to teach. I have my breakfast and walk up to my study with my coffee. In a wonderful little piece published on The New Yorker blog “Page-Turner”, writer Roxana Robinson writes how she drinks coffee quickly and sits down to write—no fooling around reading the paper, or checking the news, or making calls to friends, or trying to find out if the plumber is coming. “One call and I’m done for. Entering into the daily world, where everything is complicated and requires decisions and conversation, means the end of everything. It means not getting to write.” I read Robinson’s piece in January 2013, and alas, I have thought of it nearly every day since.

4. Turn off the Internet. The Web is a great resource and entirely unavoidable, but it will help you focus when you buy the Freedom app. Using a device like this not only rescues me from easy distraction, it also works as a timer. When you click on the icon, it asks you to choose the duration for which you want the computer to not have access to the Net. I choose 60 minutes and this also helps me keep count of how long I have sat at my computer.

5. Walk for ten minutes. Or better yet, go running. If you do not exercise regularly, you will not write regularly—or not for long. I haven’t been good at doing this and have paid a price with trouble in my back. I have encouraged my students to go walking too, and have sometimes thought that when I have to hold lengthy consultations with my writing class, I should go for walks with them on our beautiful campus.

6. A bookshelf of your own. Choose one book, or five, but no more than ten, to guide you, not with research necessarily, but with the critical matter of method or style. Another way to think about this is to ask yourself who are the writers, or scholars, or artists, that you are in conversation with. I use this question to help arrive at my own subject matter, but it also helps with voice.

7. Get rid of it if it sounds like grant talk. I don’t know about you, but I routinely produce dead prose when I’m applying for a grant. The language used in applications must be abhorred: stilted language, jargon, etc. I’m sure there is a psychological or sociological paper to be written about the syntax and tone common in such things—the appeal to power, lack of freedom—but in my case it might just be because, with the arrival of an application deadline, millions of my brain cells get busy committing mass suicide.

8. Learn to say no. This applies equally to the friendly editor who asks for a review or an essay, even to the friend who is editing an anthology. Say no if it takes you away from the writing you want to do. My children are small and don’t take no for an answer, but everyone who is older is pretty understanding. And if they’re understanding, they’ll know that for you occasional drinks or dinner together are more acceptable distractions.

9. Finish one thing before taking up another. Keep a notebook handy to jot down ideas for any future book, but complete the one you are working on first. This rule has been useful to me. I followed it after seeing it on top of the list of Henry Miller’s “Commandments”. It has been more difficult to follow another of Miller’s rules: “Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.”

10. The above rule needs to be repeated. I have done shocking little work when I have tried to write two books at once. Half-finished projects seek company of their own and are bad for morale. Shut-off the inner editor and complete the task at hand.

http://indianquarterly.com/10-rules-of-writing/

African Research Universities need tech-savvy, ICT-enhanced African University Presses: The Report

Scholarly presses in general, and university presses (UPs) in particular, are in trouble. The old 'commercialised' model of scholarly book publishing is not really working anymore: open access has eaten into the revenue from scholarly book sales, and more and more UPs have had to adjust their production processes, gone digital, buy into the latest technologies to be able to produce e-books, enhance their visibility and marketing strategies by including social media, and drastically reduce print-runs. The cost of producing a top-notch scholarly book is high; while returns are low. New technologies such as print-on-demand (POD) as close as possible to the point of sale to minimise printing, warehousing and distribution costs are a must. Some large UPs have been able to make the transition; others have ceased to produce or become but an imprint of a larger publishing house.

Two contrary developments can be observed internationally: On the one hand, there are perceptions in academia of ‘robber capitalism’ on the part of the large commercial publishers as they protect their oligopoly in the face of dissolving spatial barriers and diminishing value add. On the other hand, we are witnessing a contrary trend: the emergence of the knowledge commons. However, this emergence takes place in an institutional context long dominated by an editorial logic and, in more recent times, by the logic of the market.

In the midst of these are African university presses (AUPs) - some over half a century old, others started in the last decade - who have an important mission and unique contribution to make to the African knowledge base. How are AUPs faring under the changed 'market' conditions and contradictory developments of 'robber capitalism' and hyper-marketisation on the one hand, and the emergence of 'social capitalism' and open access knowledge sharing on the other hand? What do they make of the challenges and opportunities presented in the scholarly publishing realm within their contexts? Are they deploying the technological changes in production, distribution and marketing made possible by digitisation and network effects of the internet? Are they surviving, dying or thriving?

A holistic way of approaching the question of how African university presses can reposition themselves in support of the broader shift of some African universities towards a greater focus on research, is to consider shifts in the dominant institutional logic in the academic publishing industry. Based on a baseline survey of university presses in Africa, in-depth case studies of selected university presses, and an analysis of the publishing choices made by African academics, this research project examined the opportunities and constraints faced by university presses in Africa. It provides an overview of the African university press landscape and shows that there is a small, active group of university presses. University presses in Africa are not yet making use of technological advances to reconfigure their production, distribution and marketing processes, nor are they experimenting with new publishing models such as open access. While case studies of selected university presses surfaced unsurprising challenges (such as scarce resources and limited capacity), they also show that university presses in Africa are constrained by institutional logics that are holding them back from experimenting with new ways of doing things. The research also reveals that an alarmingly high number of academic authors at one flagship research university in Africa are choosing to publish monographs with predatory publishers. The report concludes with a set of pragmatic recommendations; recommendations that are simultaneously attuned to the opportunities and to the realities of African university presses as revealed by the research conducted.

The African University Press Report is available for free download here.

Fresh off the Press: "Student Leaders and Political Parties at Makerere University in Uganda"

A fascinating story: the relationship between student leaders and political parties at Makerere University in Uganda.

From a South African perspective, it is perhaps an indication what may come, if competition between ANC, DA and EFF etc. or their respective student organisations on campus, such as the Progressive Youth Alliance (ANC YL, SASCO, YCL), the EFF-SB and DASO are starting to take this competition over SRCs a step further and monetise the electoral processes at universities the way it has happened at Makerere University.

The new article published in SAJHE 31(3), 2017, "Student Representation and the Relationship between Student Leaders and Political Parties: The Case of Makerere University" shows that the relationship is not all bad; indeed it is important for the renewal of political parties. The article concludes by recommending electoral rules for student elections that ensure that some of the excesses that Mugume and I observed at MAK can be contained. Enjoy open access :)

Conference call: The Contentious Politics of Higher Education. Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism

I feel very honoured to be giving a keynote at the 2017 conference of the Centre on Social Movement Studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy, later this year. Another keynote will be given by my dear friend, Manja Klemenčič, with whom I had the pleasure of working together on the project "Student Politics in Africa" from which we published the book Student Politics in Africa: Representation and Activism in 2016. Please, make sure you are there - the conference does not charge fees but you'll have to get there! Abstracts are due on 15 July 2017 (see call for papers below).

Call for Papers

COSMOS CONFERENCE

The Contentious Politics of Higher Education: 

Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism

15-16 November Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS), Florence

Conveners:
Prof. Donatella della Porta (SNS); Dr. Lorenzo Cini (SNS); Dr. Cesar Guzman-Concha (SNS)

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Thierry M. Luescher (Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa)
Manja Klemenčič (Harvard University, United States)

Abstract:
University students have traditionally engaged in contentious collective action. New generations of political leaders have emerged out of the student movement, often associated to broader hopes of renewal and regeneration. The events of 1968 show students as a key actor committed to a varied program of progressive change which included issues such as the fight against bureaucratism, oppression, and imperialism. The most common depiction of students doing radical politics stems from the images of rallies and clashes with the police in the streets of Paris or Los Angeles. To be sure, education has been traditionally a contentious issue. The right to attend educational programs was one of the core demands of worker movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries all over the world. The origins of the welfare state are closely related to the granting of primary education and the idea of minimum levels of compulsory instruction. Education systems have been one of the components of the welfare state, although scholars have paid far more attention to other aspects such as health and pension systems. In historical perspective, the granting of access to higher education to the lower classes was the culmination of the extension of demands that consolidate the access to education (and state provision of it) as social right.

Student activism has been sometimes related to the emergence of new middle classes and the expansion of the public sector but also as expressions of demands of emerging sectors so far excluded from the political system. Over the course of the twentieth century, and in successive waves which combine contentious and non-contentious mechanisms and their participation in broader struggles along with other actors such as labour unions, women and peace movements, and left parties, student political activism has resulted in democratization (either restoration or further consolidation), the expansion of the welfare state, and overall in the creation of more opened and inclusive societies. Several recent episodes of massive student protests in countries in Europe, Latin America and Africa, have triggered questions over the main characteristics of a new wave of campus activism taking place across the world. For sure, these protests address the neoliberal transformations of the system of higher education, enacted by governments of all political leanings, promoting the outsourcing of personnel, the managerialization of governing bodies, the introduction of tuition fees as well as cuts to public funding. The outburst of the economic crisis in 2008 has represented a decisive watershed in this process of marketization: as many governments across the world have adopted the neoliberal and pro-austerity agenda as a way out of the crisis. These measures accelerated the implementation of neoliberal reforms in countries where they previously did not exist. Although differences between countries continue to be pronounced, national higher education systems are becoming more alike in the sense of being more market-oriented, even in countries with a strong state intervention tradition. Such transformations were not only aimed at meeting effective and well-structured policy designs, but they were also triggered by the logic of vested interests, power relations, and social conflicts. This is where our research interest comes in with our focus on the contentious politics of higher education. Over the past ten years, students of all around the world have indeed contested these policies and their implementation with different degrees of success.

Submission Details:
The Centre on Social Movement Studies (COSMOS: http://cosmos.sns.it/), directed by Professor della Porta, calls for papers addressing the recent global wave of student protests for a two-days conference at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS) of Florence to be held on 15-16 November 2017. We look for research contributions, both from junior and senior academics (especially sociologists and political scientists), who have worked on this topic over the last years. We are especially interested in contributions that link protests to policy transformations within the broad arena of higher education. Abstracts should be 300-400 words and suitable for a 15-20 minute presentation. Please send your abstract and contact details to Lorenzo Cini (Lorenzo.Cini@sns.it) or Cesar Guzman-Concha (cesarguz@gmail.com) by the deadline of July 15th. Decisions on abstracts will be made by July 30th. The conference is organised under the auspices of the Centre On Social Movement Studies (COSMOS) at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, SNS. Unfortunately, we are not able to cover travelling costs, but we will offer coffee breaks and light lunches. No conference fees are demanded.

During the conference, we will also present the findings of our two-years research project, entitled “The Contentious Politics of Higher Education. An International Comparison of Student Movements”, whose aim was to compare and assess the political and policy outcomes of the recent student protests occurred in Chile, Quebec, England, and Italy.

Contacts:
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact either Lorenzo Cini (lorenzo.cini@sns.it) or Cesar Guzman-Concha (cesarguz@gmail.com).