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Students as ‘Animal Laborans’? Tracing Student Politics in a Marketised Higher Education Setting

Raaper, R.

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Authors



Abstract

This article examines the widespread policy discourses that have constructed the notion of student as consumer in English higher education, and it questions the implications of such fabrications on students’ political engagement. In particular, it explores the extent to which students have been forced into a position of an ‘animal laboran’ whose primary function is to focus on immediate necessities in highly pressurised university environments. By drawing on Arendt, the article will first consider the shift towards representative practices in student politics, characterised by professionalisation of students’ unions. Second, the article will draw on Foucault to investigate the ways in which more personalised forms of students’ political participation related to private interest and single-issue campaigns can emerge in neoliberalised universities and society more broadly.

Citation

Raaper, R. (2021). Students as ‘Animal Laborans’? Tracing Student Politics in a Marketised Higher Education Setting. Sociological Research Online, 26(1), 130-146. https://doi.org/10.1177/1360780420952810

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 3, 2020
Online Publication Date Sep 15, 2020
Publication Date Mar 1, 2021
Deposit Date Sep 15, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Sociological Research Online
Electronic ISSN 1360-7804
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 26
Issue 1
Pages 130-146
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/1360780420952810

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).





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