This seminar draws on Rille Raaper's forthcoming book ‘Student Identity and Political Agency: Activism, Representation and Consumer Rights’ (due 2023, by Routledge). This paper starts by exploring what does it mean to be a student in today’s marketised higher education and argues that the homogenising notion of the student-as-consumer has become prevalent in today’s higher education. Rapper argues that the student-as-consumer positioning needs to be seen as an economic construct that aims to insert self-interest and competition into the higher education market and divert attention from student diversity to a student who is primarily seen as an economic actor with homogenous (economic) aspirations and needs. Consumerism as it applies to higher education therefore should be seen as an extension of consumer capitalism in our societies that socialise young people in the mindset of consumption. By using poststructuralist theoretical tools, Raaper offers three provocative scenarios that help to explain the dominant constructions of contemporary students: ‘the lost and lonely subject’, ‘the futureless consumer subject’ and ‘the commodified subject’. While these scenarios may sound bleak, the paper intends to conclude with optimistic notes by exploring the new forms of students’ political agency that are emerging from this altered setting. Rille Raaper argues that the market forces and consumerist discourses that brutally shape the students are also what trigger, enable and disable certain forms of political agency.

Speaker: 

Rille Raaper is an Associate Professor in Sociology of Higher Education at Durham University’s School of Education. Rille’s research centres around university students, and ranges from exploring issues of identity, experience and political agency in a variety of higher education settings. She has conducted numerous research projects and published widely in the areas of higher education policy and practice and its impact on students as learners, citizens and political agents. Her recent projects have explored the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on disadvantaged students, media representation of students, as well as student politics in the experience of disabled students. Her recent book project titled ‘Student Identity and Political Agency: Activism, Representation and Consumer Rights’ is to be published by Routledge in 2023. She is also currently leading a project ‘Risks to Youth and Studenthood in Digital Spaces’ aimed at understanding how some students develop an influencer status in social media, and opportunities and risks associated with their practices.

Moderated by Dr Manja Klemenčič, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University