Complete interpretation of the book Being at Home - Tabensky and Matthews. Chapters in the order of the lectures: introduction, 2, 1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 5, 10, 9, 6, 8, 12, 13, postscript
Introduction
- Renaming of buildings is one of the typical ways in which formerly white South African universities
have been trying to carve out a new post-apartheid identity. Changed names and pictures suggest a
changes institution, from being the preserve of white man to one that celebrates diversity.
- Identity and class remain aligned, but in more complex and ambiguous ways than before.
- Superficial changes sometimes disguise continuities in term of the institutional cultures of formerly
white universities.
- Institutions of South African higher education are transforming their institutional cultures.
- What is meant by transformation is unclear. In its most basic form, to transform means to change
and it suggests meaningful and deep change for the better. In the South African higher education
context, it could refer to attempts to change institutions such that they no longer reflect the values
promoted by apartheid and rather reflect the values embodied in South Africa’s 1996 Constitution, to
address all forms of discrimination that are made illegal by this Constitution.
- Institutional culture is the focal point of this book, it is a more specific term than transformation.
- Themes:
Several author argue that we cannot properly think about how to transform our universities
without relating our attempts at transformation to the very idea of what a university is and
what its ideal aims are
The idea that narratives can help u to understand what we mean by institutional culture and
in sketching out how it functions
We cannot transform our universities without transforming the broader cultures of which
they are a part.
The limit of tolerance and inclusion
- Goals/contributions:
Providing some pointer for policy-makers
Comments on the question of who should be responsible for driving the transformation of
our institutions
Presenting some thought-provoking pieces that reflect on an (incomplete) range of questions
relating to race, institutional culture and transformation in South African universities and
beyond, overview of key questions
Chapter 2 – Feeling at Home – Institutional Culture and the Idea of a University (Vice)
- It is because of the culture of our higher education institutions that so many South Africans who
were disadvantaged under apartheid are still unlikely to leave with qualifications or thrive with them.
The institutions fail to transform
- Focus in this chapter on experiencing the feeling of being at home, its ethical significance and the
challenges it raises for transformation. Interest in this chapter is in our experience of an institutional
culture as homely or alienating. The problem is that culture can be experienced so differently by
people from different backgrounds and with different commitments; some experience it as home,
others not at all. A second concern in with the way of experiencing institutional culture and the
ethical dimension of the experience. ‘Whiteness critique’ is not assumed as racialisation of critique,
and understanding institutional culture is not seen as the only successful key to transformation.
Institutional culture: ‘Feeling at home’ and ‘being in one’s element’
- A transformed culture is one that is unprejudiced, welcoming of diversity in all morally legitimate
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,forms, intent in acknowledging and transforming a damaging legacy, responsive to its history and
context. It is a reflection of a socially and politically transformed society
- Mission statement Rhodes University:
To develop shared values that embrace basic human and civil rights
To acknowledge and be sensitive to the problems created by the legacy of apartheid, to reject
all forms of unfair discrimination and to ensure that appropriate corrective measures are
employed to redress past imbalances
To create a research-based teaching and learning environment that will encourage students
to reach their full potential, that is supportive of students from disadvantaged backgrounds,
and that will produce critical, capable and skilled graduates who can adapt to changing
environments
To promote excellence and innovation in teaching and learning by providing staff and
students with access to relevant academic development programmes
To provide a safe and nurturing student support system as well as a diverse array of
residential, sporting, cultural and leadership opportunities that will foster the all-round
development of our students, the university and the region as a whole
Where appropriate, to assist in the development of the Eastern Cape Province by making
available the university’s expertise, resources and facilities
To play a leading role in establishing a culture of environmental concern by actively pursuing a
policy of environmental best practice
post-oppressive, liberal, democratic, environmentally aware
- The notion of ‘home’ is perhaps more familiar in relation to institutions than to organisations.
Institutions have a social, religious or educational purpose with a tradition and longevity that survives
beyond a particular time and group of people. An organisation in contrast is any organized body of
people with a particular time and a particular purpose, sometimes purely commercial or practical, it
ends when the purpose is fulfilled or is set aside when people leave. This difference is relevant when
considering the ethos of an institution and the challenges it faces.
- Home is one aspect of human emotional territory. Home is a positive space and being at home is a
valuable experience.
- But feeling at home in an institution struggling to transform, people’s comfort impedes change, the
need to be dislodged from their homes for transformation to happen. Sometimes we come to a
greater appreciation and knowledge of home itself by leaving it or interrogating it, accepting the good
of it, while recognising the potential or actual threats within it
- Throughout this chapter the tension between the danger of being inappropriately ‘at home’ and the
real value of that phenomenon is explored
- Being in one’s element: being in a situation or environment that naturally fits one’s fundamental
‘type’ or character. Captures the positive aspects of feeling at home, escapes the problems of the
expression ‘being at home’. To be in one’s element is therefore to be in one’s natural abode,
appropriate to one’s character, nature and activities, and in which one feels secure, enabled and
productive.
- Limits of the expression ‘being in one’s element’:
There is a ‘feeling’ and ‘experience’ of being at home. We are most at home when not aware
of it and most aware of it when it is absent
Feeling at home is enabling and productive, something an institution should care about
The experience of being in one’s element is relational, there is a fit between the person and
the institutional way of doing things.
Feeling at home is a constituent of fulfilment and flourishing
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, - Being in one’s element means one can both do what ones has to do and be who one authentically
is. For many academics therefor, the personal is the professional.
- Being in one’s element refers to successful agency and to the complementary fit between one’s
character and one’s environment, it includes the ability to respond appropriately to changing
circumstances (transforming institutions), being at home does not include that ability
Challenges for transformation
- Chapter concludes with suggesting a way of approaching the challenges
- 1. How we experience an institution is a function of the different spaces within it, perhaps its own
culture, some spaces in an institution may be more experienced as home than others. Is it even
possible for an institution to make everyone feel at home in a sense deeper than being content and
do leaders have a duty to ensure it?
- 2. An institution ought to provide a space for the substantive flourishing of people with divers
capacities and talents, divers conceptions of the good and diverse needs. Universities face the
challenge that people work, study and live within them and not leave it behind at the end of the day.
- 3. To have a character at all is to exclude somethings and make others essential or marked. How
does an institution both have character, stand out as something particular and valuable, and at the
same time accommodate the many needs and values of its members?
- One obvious response to these three problems is that precisely because universities are nested
collections of spaces for different people, we can create different spaces for different people, all
nested within the lager university culture. Transformation is not of just one institutional culture, it is
the transformation or creation of different spaces.
- The deeper problem remains: when there are tensions or clashes between different ways of doing
things, what standard (whose standard) do we use to adjudicate? The way these tensions are
managed have lasting effect on who feels at home and who does not and will reveal the fundamental
reality, beyond the various subcultures of institutional order and institutional home base
- 4. Academics are core to the university’s purpose and functioning. If they are unhappy, alienated or
unproductive, a university cannot function or retain any sense of purpose. (Not to ignore other
employees)
Traditions, articulation and stability
- What should institutions do to make themselves ‘a home for all’ in a way that still expresses
distinctive culture? A review of a way of engaging with institutional transformation
- The ‘idea of the university’ is not a thing that can be fully realized and permanently secured, it is a
regulative ideal that gives us our bearings and against which trends and tendencies are to be judged.
- A university is the bearer and expression of traditions, which partly constitute culture. Tradition is
charged as conservative and unwelcoming, but at the same time essential to maintaining an
institution and giving it distinctive character. The problem lies in the content and inspiration of
traditions, it is not something that can be managed, which adds to the difficulties of transformation.
Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict. When a tradition becomes Burkean (stable and
conservative) it is dying or dead. Constant renewal is necessary
- Articulation and argument are important for keeping necessary traditions supple and responsive, for
helping us to excavate the often inchoate ideals that we pay allegiance to and for remaining them
into better, less debased and more context-sensitive forms. They lead to justice and stability.
- The conception of justice in a well-ordered society is stable, because those taking part in just social
arrangements acquire corresponding sense of justice and desire to do their part in maintaining them
We must at least strive to forge an institution in which a home for some does not mean the
alienation for everyone else.
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