Castells in Africa: Universities and Development

by Johan Muller (Editor), Nico Cloete (Editor)

Overview

Castells in Africa: Universities and Development collects the papers produced by Manuel Castells on his visits to South Africa, and publishes them in a single volume for the first time. The book also publishes a series of empirically-based papers which together display the multi-faceted and far-sighted scope of his theoretical framework, and its fecundity for fine-grained, detailed empirical investigations on universities and development in Africa. Castells, in his afterword to this book, always looking forward, assesses the role of the university in the wake of the upheavals to the global economic order. He decides the university s function not only remains, but is more important than ever. This book will serve as an introduction to the relevance of his work for higher education in Africa for postgraduate students, reflective practitioners and researchers. Includes two previously unpublished public lectures and an Afterword by Manuel Castells.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781920677947
Publisher:	African Minds
Publication date:	11/28/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	258
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Nico Cloete is the director of the Centre for Higher Education Trust (CHET) in South Africa. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Oslo, and extraordinary professor in the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (SciSTIP) at Stellenbosch University. He was general secretary of the Union of South African Democratic Staff Associations (UDUSA), and the research director of the South African National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE). Recent publications include Castells in Africa: Universities and Development.

Table of Contents

SECTION 1: FRAMING CASTELLS IN AFRICA

1 Castells in South Africa

2 Universities and the ‘new society’

SECTION 2: CASTELLS IN SOUTH AFRICA

3 Universities as dynamic systems of contradictory functions

4 The role of universities in development, the economy and society

5 Rethinking development in the global information age

SECTION 3: PUTTING CASTELLS TO WORK IN AFRICA

6 Roles of universities and the African context

7 Universities and economic development in Africa

8 Research universities in Africa?

9 African universities and connectedness in the information age

10 Contradictory functions, unexpected outcomes, new challenges

Afterword 2017 by Manuel Castells

Appendices | References | Index

Editorial Reviews

“The convergence between the shift to a new form of economic organisation, the acceleration of the technological revolution, and the re-legitimation of political institutions, has a site in society: higher education. This is why the university is simultaneously a decisive battlefield and our hope for a better future in the midst of the current darkness.” – Manuel Castells in the Afterword to Castells in Africa

“Castells in Africa is by far the best book-length publication yet on what went wrong with higher education after apartheid and why South Africa struggled to create from among its more promising universities leading producers of new knowledge in this part of the world system. In the work of this incomparable intellectual we find not only powerful diagnoses of what holds back our universities but also compelling solutions about what can (still) be done to harness the intellectual resources of Africa’s best institutions.” – Jonathan Jansen, President of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa

“This book is doubly important. First, it showcases the work of Manuel Castells re-emphasising its continuing endurance as a framework for thinking creatively about the evolution of higher education globally. Second, it focuses on development, a preoccupation that has rather got lost in the self-referential squabbles about tuition fees and marketisation that have obsessed higher education in the developed ‘West’ in these dog days of neoliberalism. This collection brings us back to fundamental issues of reform, social justice and global equity.” – Peter Scott, University College London Institute of Education

From the Publisher