A historical analysis of academic development using the theoretical lens of Pierre Bourdieu |
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| Authors: | Bruce Charles Kloot |
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| Institution: | Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, Cape Town, South Africa |
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| Abstract: | This paper provides a history of academic development by examining how a South African institution coped with the potent social forces confronting it before the collapse of apartheid. Theoretically, it draws on the framework of Pierre Bourdieu and engages with a paper written a decade ago by Naidoo, who also used Bourdieu to understand institutional change in South Africa in the late 1980s. Through contrasting the habitus of two professors, it is argued that academic development helps to preserve the autonomy of the university field by refracting forces impinging on it from the economic and political realms. |
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| Keywords: | academic development Bourdieu habitus refraction South Africa institutional change |
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