Castells in Africa: Universities and Development

Castells in Africa: Universities and Development collects the papers produced by Manuel Castells on his visits to South Africa, and publishes them in a single volume for the first time. The book also publishes a series of empirically-based papers which together display the multi-faceted and far-sighted scope of his theoretical framework, and its fecundity for fine-grained, detailed empirical investigations on universities and development in Africa. Castells, in his afterword to this book, always looking forward, assesses the role of the university in the wake of the upheavals to the global economic order. He decides the university’s function not only remains, but is more important than ever. This book will serve as an introduction to the relevance of his work for higher education in Africa for postgraduate students, reflective practitioners and researchers.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1067342

Jonathan Jansen, President of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa
16/11/2017
“Castells in Africa is by far the best book-length publication yet on what went wrong with higher education after apartheid and why South Africa struggled to create from among its more promising universities leading producers of new knowledge in this part of the world system. In the work of this incomparable intellectual we find not only powerful diagnoses of what holds back our universities but also compelling solutions about what can (still) be done to harness the intellectual resources of Africa’s best institutions.”

Peter Scott, University College London Institute of Education
16/11/2017
“This book is doubly important. First, it showcases the work of Manuel Castells re-emphasising its continuing endurance as a framework for thinking creatively about the evolution of higher education globally. Second, it focuses on development, a preoccupation that has rather got lost in the self-referential squabbles about tuition fees and marketisation that have obsessed higher education in the developed ‘West’ in these dog days of neoliberalism. This collection brings us back to fundamental issues of reform, social justice and global equity.”

Acknowledgements

Preface

About the editors

Section 1: Framing Castells in Africa

1 Castells in South Africa

2 Universities and the ‘new society’

Section 2: Castells in South Africa

3 Universities as dynamic systems of contradictory functions

4 The role of universities in development, the economy and society

5 Rethinking development in the global information age

Section 3: Putting Castells to Work in Africa

6 Roles of universities and the African context

7 Universities and economic development in Africa

8 Research universities in Africa?

9 African universities and connectedness in the information age

10 Contradictory functions, unexpected outcomes, new challenges

Afterword 2017 by Manuel Castells

Appendices

References

Index