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Realizing the University in An Age of Super-- complexity
R. BARNETT (2000)
Buckingham, Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press
200 pp.
L19.99 (paperback), L60.00 (hardback)
Ronald Barnett is one of our most prolific and perceptive analysts of the contemporary university. For those familiar with his work, this book will not disappoint. It is written in the author's characteristically eloquent and logical style. It will serve as a wide-ranging and thoughtful consideration of an institution--the university-- which now must deal with a complexity which it has done much to generate. Let it be said straight away that Barnett is no essentialist when it comes to the university, and he gives sound arguments for this. The book's organising concept, supercomplexity, is typified by what Barnett calls 'the multiplication of frameworks' by which we make sense of natural, social and mental states. These very frameworks not only proliferate, but they may conflict. Moreover, the influences which impinge upon the university pull it in different directions, inwardly and outwardly. On the one hand, the quality agencies take us towards the conformity and performativity of nationally set benchmarks and templates. On the other hand, economic globalisation and the culture of postmodernism set the university on a broader stage. These often conflicting influences themselves come up against what Barnett calls the...