Towards a University of the Common: Reimagining the University in Order to Abolish It with the Really Open University

Abstract

The autumn of 2010, in the UK, was characterised by a series of protests against the proposed tripling of university tuition fees and the removal of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA). These protests were set within a broader international background of contestation around universities and higher education reforms. This article focuses on the activities of a group, which emerged within this context, called the Really Open University (ROU), and its efforts to engender a reimagining of the university. Specifically, this article argues that the activities of the ROU were attempts to create new, radical imaginaries of the university and were linked to broader efforts to re-conceptualise knowledge production and pedagogy. The central point is that ultimately the ROU's invitation to 'reimagine the university' was a provocation to abolish the university in its capitalist form, through a process of reimagining the university, exodus from the university machine and the creation of a university of the common. Amsler, S 2011 Beyond all reason: spaces of hope in the struggle for England's universities. Representations, 116(1): 62-87. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2011.116.1.62 Amsler, S 2014a 'By ones and twos and tens': pedagogies of possibility for democratising higher education. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 22(2): 275-94.

The common in higher education: a conceptual approach

“…It is a material dimension that binds socio-economic actors together. Higher education, seen from this angle, flows beyond its institutional or system-wide form to embrace different grassroots educational and knowledge-production activities that take place beyond the market and the state (Kamola and Meyerhoff 2009;Roggero 2011;Pusey 2017).…”

“…The view of politics that is drawn by higher education researchers who refer to the concept of the common (Roggero 2011; Neary and Winn 2012; Pusey 2017) is rooted in its antagonistic relation to both the private and the public, the market (or capital) and the state, pictured as institutions that continuously transcend the realm of the social. Adopting this perspective gives a chance to conceptualize and outline an alternative to the university trapped in a vicious cycle between the order of public scrutiny and marketization, as well as to capitalism itself (Kamola and Meyerhoff 2009;Berardi and Ghelfi 2010;Roggero 2011;Pusey 2017).…”

“…In contrast, the common in higher education is not a new kind of property (Hardt and Negri 2017: 97); it is instead viewed as a drive towards the conversion or dissolution of both public and private property relations within higher education-or the creation of more common relations beyond it (Neary and Winn 2012). This conversion movement is organized through democratically run and owned autonomous educational initiatives (Kamola and Meyerhoff 2009;Pusey 2017) or networks of teaching and learning cooperatives (Cook 2013;Jossa 2014;Neary and Winn 2017). Examples include different grassroots initiatives that have emerged from the waves of students' and academics' protests, like the University of Organized Optimism (Hall and Winn 2017), diffused and networked research structures such as Italian UniNomade (Berardi and Ghelfi 2010) or the Japanese student-run SHURE university (Li 2017).…”

“…Whereas some scholars try to overcome the theoretical impasse caused by the insufficiency of public/private dichotomy by cautiously indicating the significance of the concept of the commons for higher education research (Roxa and Martensoon 2014;Marginson 2016: 85), this approach is often overlooked. Nevertheless, the commons and the common are gaining increasing attention among scholars interested in exploring alternatives to neoliberal and competition-driven higher education (Roggero 2011;Neary and Winn 2012;Kamola and Meyerhoff 2009;Boehenke and Meyerhoff 2012;Pusey 2017). However, despite the growing recognition of the concept, there is still confusion regarding its constituent terms, as it is continuously referred to as: the common good (UNESCO 2015; Boyadjieva and Ilieva-Trichkova 2018), the common (Roggero 2011), the common public good (Marginson 2004b), common goods (Locatelli 2018), or the commons (Neary and Winn 2012).…”

A cartography of the possible: Reflections on militant ethnography in and against the edu‐factory

“…A three-day conference of varied talks, workshops and other activities, around the theme of 'reimagining the university', was timed to coincide with a large demonstration which saw the occupation of a lecture theatre on the University of Leeds campus. And lastly, the establishment of a six-month initiative called the 'Space Project', which formed an example of a temporary autonomous radical education space close to the centre of Leeds (Pusey, 2017).…”