The University as a Public and Autonomous Sphere: Between Enlightenment Ideas and Market Demands
Abstract
This chapter explores the role of the modern university, focusing on the usually neglected areas of the arts and humanities, both as hubs of creativity and innovation and as crucial platforms for questioning societal norms and rules. The point of departure is Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of the university as a public space which promotes the culture of human rights and social justice against the moral blindness of utilitarian sciences. How is the contemporary university, under increasing market demands and pressure from the ‘culture of management’ maintaining this ethos? What does it mean to be a critically engaged university in the era of performance benchmarks and league tables, as universities increasingly opt for a pragmatic curricular approach to meet the expectations of big corporate employers? To what extent are innovative transdisciplinary courses and programmes, focusing on learning-as-process, rather than product, able to act as platforms for critical thinking and debate? How do these learning processes become modes of ‘remixing’ culture and knowledge through performances, public actions, workshops, conferences and seminars to activate different social agents?
References
- Cruz, T. (2012). ‘Democratizing Urbanization and the Search for a New Civic Imagination’ in N. Thompson (ed.) Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991–2011. New York: Creative Time Books,; Cambridge, Ma: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
- Dragićević Šešić, M. (2016). ‘Capacity Building Programs: Keeping Institutional Memory and Regional Collective Consciousness Alive’ in F. Dietachmair & M. Ilic (eds.) Another Europe: 15 Years of Capacity Building in Europe Neighbourhood. Amsterdam: ECF, pp. 100–117.Google Scholar
- Lessig, L. (2004). ‘Free(ing) Culture for Remix’ Utah L. Rev., p. 961. http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/utahlr2004&div=43&id=&page. Accessed 31 August 2016.
- Protherough, R. & J. Pick, (2002). Managing Britannia. London: Edgeways.Google Scholar
- Rifkin, J. (2000). The Age of Access, The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life Is a Paid-For Experience. Tarcher, New York: Putnam.Google Scholar
- Robinson, K. (1999). ‘All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education.’ http://sirkenrobinson.com/pdf/allourfutures.pdf. Accessed 31 August 2016.