Page 94 - Transformation Indaba Report

j. Political economies here refer to the circulation of political beliefs and ideologies,
and to the social ‘relations, particularly power relations, that mutually constitute
the production, distribution, and consumption of resources’ […]; social relations
organized around power or the ability to control other people, processes, and
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things, even in the face of resistance’ . These resources and control, in higher
education institutions, are varied. They include material, academic, opportunity
and intellectual resources, and the means to control processes by which the
distribution of privileges is determined.

k. If we view university practices as constituted by these sets of economies, we are
able to cast a framework within which to view a critical thrust of ‘transformation’
across the entire sector; not a single institution escapes this interpretive scheme.
The economies of historically disadvantaged institutions have the same logical
structure of advantaged, previously ‘white’ institutions (although this ‘generic’
structure has been manifest differently as a result of the racial, spatial and
economic inequalities within our university system); they serve historically
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established patterns of interests as distributed across the sector . Though localised
dynamics may differ from institution to institution, and are expressed in
heterogeneous ways, the interests embedded within these economies are
comparable across the sector. We can thus comparatively engage with
transformation matrixes and priorities at institutions that profoundly differ from
one another.

22. Research, Teaching and Learning

One of the most critical aspects of university transformation relates to the core concerns
of teaching, learning and research. The recent report on Baseline Institutional
Submissions for Phase 1 of the Quality Enhancement Project (CHE, May, 2015) suggests
that university teaching is not conceptualised as a profession. Many academics, it is
contended, do not have the tools to respond to the multiple and dynamic learning needs
of diverse student populations because pedagogical approaches are rooted in particular
conventions of scholarship of teaching and learning, largely developed during previous
decades and under different social and educational conditions. Apart from the quantity
and quality of South African based research, thematic areas of research seldom include
careful in-depth studies on the key social justice related questions of our time: race,
racism, diversity, ethnicity, inclusion, etc. The big contemporary social issues dissolve
into epistemic injustice and ‘epistemologies of ignorance’.

11 Mosco, 2009.
12 This sector includes all South African universities: Walter Sisulu University; University of Zululand; University of Fort Hare;
Mangosuthu University of Technology; Rhodes University; University of Limpopo; Tshwane University of Technology;
University of the Western Cape; Cape Peninsula University of Technology; University of Johannesburg; University of Venda;
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University; University of the Free State; Vaal University of Technology; Stellenbosch University;
University of KwaZulu-Natal; Central University of Technology; University of Cape Town; North-West University; Durban
University of Technology; University of Pretoria; and the University of the Witwatersrand.

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NelsoN MaNdela UNiversity • traNsforMatioN iNdaba • 2022 89