Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2007): Journal of Higher Education in Africa

7 - ‘It’s Literacy, Stupid!’: Declining the Humanities in National Research Foundation (NRF) Research Policy

https://doi.org/10.57054/jhea.v5i1.1645
John Higgins

Journal of Higher Education in Africa, Vol. 5 No. 1 (2007): Journal of Higher Education in Africa

Abstract

This article examines the role and place of the skills of advanced cultural literacy in NRF policy and argues that there is no role or place for them in current policy formulations. Through a brief analysis of the work of Goody and Gellner, the paper argues that this gap in policy ignores the necessary and crucial force that the skills of advanced literacy are widely acknowledged to have in the function and constitu- tion of modern states and their economies. Ignoring this, the NRF jeopardises its mission to support social development and economic growth in South Africa. The paper further argues that the current structure of selective support for research in the humanities is likely to have the perhaps unintended consequence of their de- struction in global competitive terms due to the penalisation of core disciplinary research activity and the consequent erosion of disciplinary reproduction. All in all, current NRF policy towards the humanities appears as a declining of the humani- ties, in all senses of the term. To which this paper responds, troping Bill Clinton’s favoured slogan, ‘It’s literacy, stupid!’

Keywords

NRF policy Goody and Gellner
Higgins, J. (2007). 7 - ‘It’s Literacy, Stupid!’: Declining the Humanities in National Research Foundation (NRF) Research Policy. Journal of Higher Education in Africa, 5(1), 95–112. https://doi.org/10.57054/jhea.v5i1.1645
Download Citation
Endnote/Zotero/Mendeley (RIS)
BibTeX
References
  1. Alexander, N., 2007, ‘The Role of African Universities in the Intellectualisation of African Languages’, Journal of Higher Education in Africa, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 29–44.
  2. Anderson, B., 1983, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, New York: Verso.
  3. Barton, D., 1994, Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of the Written Word, Oxford: Blackwell.
  4. Clinton, B., 2005, My Life, London: Arrow Books.
  5. Collini, S., 2000, ‘Introduction’, in C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures, Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press.
  6. Department of Education, 1997, Education White Paper 3: A Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education, General Notice 1196 of 1997, Pretoria.
  7. Derrida, J., 1984, Otobiographies: L’Enseignement de Nietzsche et la Politique du Nom Propre, Paris: Galilée.
  8. Forbes, D., 1975, Hume’s Philosophical Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press.
  9. Foucault, M., 2002, Power: Essential Works of Foucault, Volume 3, trans. Robert Hurley et al., Harmondsworth: Penguin.
  10. Freire, P., 1970, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum.
  11. Gellner, E., 1997, ‘Nationalism as a Product of Industrial Society’, in M. Guibernau and J. Rex, eds., The Ethnicity Reader, Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 67–93.
  12. Gibbon, T and Kabaki, J., 2002, ‘Staff’, in N. Cloete et al., eds., Transformation in Higher Education: Global Pressures and Local Realities in South Africa, Landsdowne: Juta. pp. 186–229.
  13. Goody, J., 1986, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  14. Goody, J. and Watt, I., 1968, ‘The Consequences of Literacy’, in J. Goody, ed., Literacy in Traditional Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 15-35.
  15. Gross, A. and Levitt, B. 1994, The Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrel with Science, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
  16. Gumport, P., 2000, ‘Academic Restructuring: Organizational Change and Institu- tional Imperatives’, Higher Education, No. 39, pp. 67–91.
  17. Ha away, D., 1992, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science, London and New York: Verso.
  18. Harding, S., ed., 1993, The ‘Racial’ Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  19. Hardt, M. and Negri, A., 2005, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Em- pire, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
  20. Havelock, E.A., 1982, The Literate Revolution in Ancient Greece and Its Cultural Consequences, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  21. Higgins, J., 1992, ‘Critical Literacies: English Studies Beyond the Canon’, Journal of Literary Studies, Vol. 8, No. 3–4, pp. 86–100.
  22. Higgins, J., 1998, ‘The Legacy of Raymond Williams’, English Academy Review, No. 14, pp. 30–48.
  23. Higgins, J., 1999, Raymond Williams: Literature, Marxism and Cultural Material- ism, London and New York: Routledge.
  24. Higgins, J., 2000, ‘Academic Freedom in the New South Africa’, boundary 2, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 151–73.
  25. Kuhn, T., 1970, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  26. Latour, B., 2000, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press.
  27. Leavis, F.R., 1972, Nor Shall My Sword: Discourses on Pluralism, Compassion and Social Hope, London: Chatto and Windus.
  28. Maasen, P. and Cloete, N., 2002, ‘Global Reform Trends in Higher Education’ in N. Cloete et al., eds., Transformation in Higher Education: Global Pressures and Local Realities in South Africa, Landsdowne: Juta. pp. 13–57.
  29. MacLuhan, M., 1962, The Gutenburg Galaxy, Toronto: Toronto University Press. Miyoshi, M., 1999, ‘“Globalization”, Culture and the University’ in F. Jameson and M. Miyoshi, eds., The Cultures of Globalization, Durham and London: Duke University Press. pp. 247–270.
  30. Miyoshi, M., 2000, ‘Ivory Tower in Escrow’, boundary 2, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 7–50.
  31. Olsen, D., 1988, ‘Mind and Media: The Epistemic Functions of Literacy’, Journal of Communications, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 254–79.
  32. Ong, W.J., 1982, Orality and Literacy, London: Methuen.Pattison, R., 1982, On Literacy: The Politics of the Word from Homer to the Age of Rock, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  33. Plumb, J.H., ed., 1965, Crisis in the Humanities, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Prinsloo, M. and Breier, M., eds., 1996, The Social Uses of Literacy: Theory and Practice in Contemporary South Africa, Cape Town: SACHED. Readings, B., 1995, Oxford Literary Review, Vol. 17, Nos. 1–2.
  34. Readings, B., 1996, The University in Ruins, Harvard: Harvard University Press. Reddy, V., 2006, ‘The State of Mathematics and Science Education: Schools are Not Equal’ in S. Buhlungu et al., eds., State of the Nation: South Africa 2005-2006, Cape Town: HSRC Press. pp. 392–416.
  35. Said, E.W., 1983, The World, the Text and the Critic, London: Faber.
  36. Skinner, Q., 2002, Regarding Method, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Snow, C.P., 2000[1964], The Two Cultures, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sokal, A. and Bricmont, E., 1998, Intellectual Impostures, London: Profile.
  37. Street, P., ed., 1993, Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy, Cambridge: Cambridge University
  38. Press.
  39. Trilling, L., 1967, Beyond Culture, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Weinberg, S., 1994, Dreams of a Final Theory, New York: Vintage.
  40. White, H., 1973, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press.
  41. Williams, R., 1975, The Country and the City, St Alban’s: Paladin.
  42. Williams, R., 2001[1984], ‘Writing, Speech and the “Classical”’ in J. Higgins, ed.,The Raymond Williams Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 266–277.
  43. Williams, R., 1989, What I Came to Say, London: Hutchinson.
Read More

Author Biography

John Higgins

 Professor and Fellow, Department of English, University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Download
PDF
Statistic
Read Counter : 131 Download : 59

Similar Articles

1 2 3 4 5 6 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.