Short Abstract:

The book explores, using the capability approach framework, students’ perspectives, and experiences for an account of the potential of student activism in the enhancement of student well-being and agency through the formation of political capabilities and functionings for justice, a more robust democracy, and change.

Long Abstract:

This book makes an original conceptual and empirical contribution to debates on the role of student activism in enhancing social justice within the university in the global South, South Africa specifically. The book explores the development of higher education students’ political capabilities through student activism. By political capabilities, the book refers to freedoms to express one’s political ideas and engage in protests, and these include the capability to participate, capability of dialogue, capability for practical reasoning, capability for voice, capability for emotional expression, capability for contextual knowledge and capability for physical wellbeing. It considers the possibility of enhancing justice and democracy within higher education through the formation of such student freedoms. This book arises from an outcome of my empirical doctoral study which focuses on the development of political capabilities through student activism in order to evaluate the extent democratic and transformational change within higher education spaces. Thus, the book provides a compelling informational basis for rethinking our definition and understanding of student activism. It applies a capability approach framework to conceptualise and analyse field work interviews to carefully balance empirical data with a contextual theorising of student activism and their participation in pursuing what they value under current conditions of possibility. The focus here is on student perspectives and experiences in relation to the dynamic processes characterising what we might understand as every day or ongoing student activism.

In South Africa higher education student activism became more prominent again and attracted international interest with movements such as #FeesMustFall, and #StatueMustFall among others from 2015. Activism across South Africa was directed at high tuition fees and at decolonizing the curriculum to remove persistent colonial-apartheid inequalities negatively impacting student’s mobility goals and academic success. As such the book demonstrates how student activism can contribute to the development of students’ political freedoms in transformative ways for university students, the university, or society at large. The book draws on empirical data from in-depth interviews with SRC members, activist organisers, student-participants, and institutional staff members with knowledge of student governance to understand social conditions and arrangements under which political freedoms are developed, both the opportunities and the obstacles. It makes an argument for an original re-conceptualisation of student activism, demonstrating how students’ political capabilities are formed. Through identifying valued political capabilities, the book highlights how their expansion enhances the development of a meta-capability to transform, which in turn is dependent on the development of other capabilities. The book takes account of the intersectionality of conversion factors and processes which work to enable or constrain political participation by students. The role played by agency in student activism is outlined.

Finally, the book captures and demonstrates how working together, these factors of a political capabilities set, working collectively for transformation, conversion factors and agency shape higher education as a potentially transformative political space despite the obstacles, and which can contribute to more democracy and greater justice in the university. This is aimed at contributing to processes and practices in the design, implementation and outcomes of higher education policies aimed at enhancing greater justice, leading us to consider higher education’s potential contribution, as a public good, to human development.

Keywords: higher education, social justice, political capabilities, student activism, democracy