The alternative university: lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela

Description

Is an alternative university possible in the global field of higher education, dominated by the logic of the market? What are the contradictions and challenges that such a project might face when put to practice? To what extent can an inclusive and mass project for social change be implemented through a traditionally elitist institution such as the university? What can present day struggles and future reforms learn from such past processes?

Based on extensive fieldwork in Caracas, the talk presents my work on the Venezuelan higher education reform under late President Hugo Chavez. In the book, forthcoming as manuscript in 2023 with the Anthropology of Policy Series of Stanford University Press, I explore the advancements and limitations of the Bolivarian government’s university reform, set against the grain of dominant trends in the global field of higher education. Combining ethnography with interviews and historical and policy ethnography in the book I show how policy travels and is adapted in processes of social change; and how complex gender, race and class inequalities are both challenged and reproduced within an alternative university model in a post-colonial semi-peripheral petrol state. In the talk I draw on this material to outline some lessons for contemporary higher education struggles.

Period	15 Mar 2023
Held at	University College London, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	International