Keywords

I have a background in science rather than the humanities, and so learning how to work with theory has been daunting at times. As each chapter of this book came in to Remy, Suzanne, and I as co-editors, I felt a growing sense of excitement. Seeing the ways in which each author worked with theory made me wish I’d had a book like this when I was starting out in higher education research. The insights offered into the ways colleagues grapple with theory shows that it’s a skill that can be developed and honed.

Common Threads

At first glance it may seem that this book covers very disparate topics, ranging from educating the next generation of teachers (Chaps. 4, 8, 10, 18, 19) to research on the violence faced by people living with HIV in relation to socio-political conflict (Chap. 16). The book covers a number of countries, contexts, experiences, and views and is written by PhD students, early and mid-career academics, and a Professor Emerita. Each contributor writes in their own distinct style, and you’ll notice a variety of ways in which the response authors approached their task of conversing with their assigned chapter.

Despite these differences, there are also several common threads. Although the contributors to this book are working with theory in different ways, we are all using it to make sense of aspects of our work in higher education. Here are four common threads I noticed: (1) Theory is personal and contextual; (2) What theory does; (3) Grappling; and (4) The collective individual. I elaborate on each of these in turn below, followed by a brief discussion of topics you may wish to explore beyond the book and some final reflections.

Before this though, I wanted to note that the pandemic looms large throughout the book. COVID makes an appearance in most chapters, which is not surprising given its world-altering impacts. Certainly the in-person reading group of 2017–2018 that sparked this book seems a distant memory of the before times. Post-apocalyptic books and TV shows like Station 11 and The Last of Us now have a personal resonance, where we are simultaneously repelled and fascinated by the depictions of societal collapse and also heartened by the emphasis on the importance of humour, art, and love.

These are indeed the ‘interesting times’ referred to by Norman (on Žižek; Chap. 14), who goes on to also discuss the crisis of climate change. And there are certainly links between the twin tragedies of COVID and climate change, as discussed in the book Inflamed (Marya & Patel, 2021). So in our book you may sense a regrouping, a refiguring of who we are now, and what state the world is in, after so much loss and change, so much personal and collective grief.

Theory Is Personal and Contextual

All contributors were invited to bring a personal lens into their writing and we hope that these examples bring working with theory to life. The idea that theory is personal is particularly vivid in Moran’s writing about the ways in which she is connected to and belongs to Country:

When I was birthed into these countries, my little body was passed through smoke and my feet were placed into the soil and water of my countries, my body collected the microbial DNA from country that I will carry around inside of me for the rest of my life. (Moran; Chap. 5)

That the personal is political was a central tenet of second wave feminism; theory can also help us both understand and see beyond the personal. For example, Xu reflects on his personal experiences of moving into and through higher education as the first in his family to do so, and how Foucault’s concept of biopolitics helped him understand the global massification of higher education (Chap. 12). Theory can help us take a wider perspective and question prevailing norms, taking us from individual experiences to understanding of systemic issues.

Some authors have taken some time to situate their chosen theorist. Once we understand a theorist’s context, we are then better able to understand how that theorist’s work might apply to our own contexts. As emphasised by Egan in the introductory chapter, we need to ask ourselves ‘Why is this theory or idea influential for this very place and time?’ (Chap. 1). We need to understand the theorist’s context, what came before, the antecedents of and influences on their ideas.

Sometimes we don’t really grasp a theorist’s key ideas until we learn about their lives and the events that shaped them. For example, Egan commented to me that

I only really started to grasp some of Foucault’s key ideas when I read about his life and how particular events, such as the French student protests in 1968, revealed to him the limitations of Marxism. However Foucault does not explicitly refer to these influences in any of the key texts I was grappling with at the time (i.e. History of Sexuality Volume 1, Discipline and Punish, the Archaeology of Knowledge). So even when it’s not made explicit by the theorist, they, as an individual with a particular set of experiences, are always in their theory. (S. Egan, personal communication, February 21, 2023)

In Connell’s case (noting how honoured we are to have one of the theorists discussed by our reading group generously take the time to contribute a response), we gain a first-hand glimpse into how theory is created:

Where did The Good University come from? I have written a number of books, but none like this before. I wrote it in the years after retiring from my job, looking back with joy and anger after a long academic career, and drawing from several streams of research and action that flowed through those years. (Connell; Chap. 21)

Connell goes on to explain that the book also had a ‘specific impetus…a long industrial dispute at the University of Sydney’. We gain further insights into Connell’s context in Wood’s response to Serrano Amaya (Chap. 17). Wood as a contemporary and friend of Connell traces the development of Southern theory and shows how it expands on earlier work, is part of a larger collective project, and builds up an argument over time. For me these glimpses into theory creation indicate that place and life events continually shape and re-shape our theorisation and scholarship.

The importance of the personal and of context is also emphasised by Serrano Amaya:

I am writing from Colombia, a country in the Latin American Global South where there are no neat separations between academia and activism as presented in the Global North. I have been navigating between academic and non-academic environments as result of personal political commitments with struggles for rights, mostly the rights of those collectives discriminated by gender and sexuality matters. That navigation comes by effects of the job precarities, de-regularisation of labour and the fragility of work industries that some of us experience nowadays in neoliberal economies and that require adapting permanently to changes in employment opportunities. (Serrano Amaya; Chap. 16)

Connell responding to Xu affirms that ‘the local situation of the researcher and institution do matter’ (Chap. 21). Another example of the importance of one’s own context is seen in Krishnaraj’s use of Connell’s theorising in The Good University to explore the Guru (teacher)–Sishya (student) parampara (tradition) in India (Chap. 20).

What Theory Does

At a time when some types of theory are under attack it’s important to understand what theory does. I’m thinking particularly of critical race theory in the USA, where its opponents have deliberately misled others as to what it is and academics in some states are now not able to teach it (e.g., Golden, 2023; Kendi, 2021). Critical race theory, first conceptualised by Kimberlé Crenshaw, is a way of understanding how racism is structural and is reproduced via laws and culture, with the ultimate aim of addressing racial inequalities (Fortin, 2021). Conservative politicians, commentators, and religious leaders have instead told the public that critical race theory vilifies white people and in particular that its teaching harms white children (Kendi, 2021). Several states in the USA have since introduced restrictions on the teaching of critical race theory, leading to some professors cancelling planned courses (Golden, 2023). While this is perhaps an extreme example of theory being misconstrued and co-opted for political means, it highlights the importance of understanding that theory can be used (and mis-used) for many purposes.

In this book, we can see several ways that theory is being put to work and several metaphors to describe what it does:

  • ‘A call to arms’ (Wood; Chap. 17)

  • A ‘map to explore new terrains’ (Wood; Chap. 17)

  • ‘To make sense of social dynamics’ (Low; Chap. 8)

  • Searching for the possible (Norman; Chap. 20)

  • To ‘name, clarify, obscure, reframe, orient, excite, soothe, agitate, inspire, and affect our senses of ourselves in the world’ (Low and Egan; Chap. 1)

Theory can help us understand social phenomena:

In teaching sociology of education for example, I need a theory of why neoliberalism, and its marketisation of parental school choice, has affected the educational landscape and the distribution of life chances in Australia. (Wood; Chap. 7)

Theory can be used to achieve something very meaningful, see, for example, Serrano Amaya’s evocative example of working with Southern theory to:

deal with silences, with the lack of voice in state institutions and in official memory accounts, and with the process of healing wounds from long-term violence. (Serrano Amaya; Chap. 16)

I particularly enjoyed Serrano Amaya’s description of theory as:

an invitation to enter into permanent and open conversations. As in any invitation, there are basic rules of respect for those who open their houses, their stories, and their histories before any questions are asked or interventions made. (Serrano Amaya; Chap. 16)

My musing after reading the book is that theory can be used as a lens to bring something into focus, to frame, to zoom in or out, to crystallise, even to distort or diffract. Overall though, my main lingering impression is that the authors are working with theory in hopeful ways, ways in which they are hoping the status quo will change or longing something will come to be. Just one example is provided by Connell:

there is hope for further change. That hope surely comes through in the commentary offered by Krishnaraj, Norman, and Xu. There are resources for change in the rich capacities of the university workforce, in the multiple possibilities of coalition-building, in the many traditions and approaches to higher education that exist in the wider world, and within Australia too. The task now is to put those resources to better use than the current system does. (Connell, Chap. 21)

Here Connell is commenting on the hope evident in the ways Krishnaraj, Norman, and Xu have applied the concepts of The Good University to their academic work (Chap. 20). In particular Norman uses Connell’s theorising to understand and work through the many, sometimes heart-breaking, challenges of working in the academy in neoliberal times. Any theory that offers hope in the ‘cruel optimism’ of our times (Berlant, 2011) is worth clinging to.

Grappling

Sometimes theory just clicks into place, as Egan describes in Chap. 1. And sometimes working with theory feels like trying to grasp something that is just out of reach or holding onto a slippery fish. This can be due to the way theory is presented. Egan initially struggled with ‘the often-convoluted language used to express such ideas’ and how the ways people speak and write about theory can be alienating and unwelcoming, particularly for first-generation scholars. bell hooks wrote that such ways of writing about theory are deliberate:

It is evident that one of the many uses of theory in academic locations is in the production of an intellectual class hierarchy where the only work deemed truly theoretical is work that is highly abstract, jargonistic, difficult to read. (hooks, 1991, p. 4)

Many of the chapters describe the emotions that the authors encounter when working with theory—‘Unnerves me’ (Low; Chap. 8), ‘serious anxieties’, ‘haunt me’ (Low; Chap. 18). Working with theory can challenge our work, our beliefs, and our identities as scholars and, as discussed by Bell and Moran in Chap. 2, it demands humility.

The Collective Individual

The final common thread I noticed is that journeys with theory don’t need to be solitary. This book grew from a reading group. Something that our reading group provided was the time to read, to focus, to discuss. As described in the introductory chapter we were (and are) all time pressured but also craving the time to slow down and engage deeply. Boulous Walker calls for slow reading—a political act against the pressures of today’s higher education environment. Slow reading, depending on the context, may involve re-reading; or ‘sinking slowly and carefully into the atmosphere, mood…that the work creates (Boulous Walker, 2016, p. 178); or ‘a fine-tuned attention to detail and nuance’. Some of the metaphors Boulous Walker uses to depict these practices include ‘meandering’, ‘patience’, ‘intimacy’, ‘wondrous appreciation’, even meditation and love (ibid). I see resonances here with Moran’s depiction of Indigenous ways of learning as ‘non-linear…a constant circling back’ (Bell & Moran; Chap. 2). In our reading group we were able to engage in slow reading and discussion together. It’s important to create and protect these spaces and practices however we can.

In some of the chapter and response pairings too, we can see glimpses of the discussions that occurred, particularly in Wood’s response to Egan (Chap. 7). Other forms of collaboration can be seen in chapters that depict researching ‘with’ rather than ‘on’, for example, Norman’s exploration of White’s co-research with students (Norman; Chap. 14), Bell and Moran’s collaboration (Chap. 2), and Serrano Amaya’s activist work (Chap. 16).

The theorists themselves worked in collective ways:

focussing on great individual thinkers can mislead us into an idealist model of how really useful knowledge grows and how we can employ it to make things better. Knowledge is not ‘produced’ just inside theorists’ heads but through actual intellectual labour and long term collaborations. (Wood; Chap. 17)

The collective individual is in the present and also in the past and future. Moran, in her discussion of Indigenous ways of knowing and being, introduces us to the concept of ‘Maa-bularrbabu, the next seven, that we should always act with the next seven generations in mind’ (Moran; Chap. 5). For all of us working in universities shaped by neoliberalism there can be a constant push to come up with quick fixes and simplistic solutions, and to work beyond reasonable hours, often at the expense of our wellbeing and that of the planet. If we consider that one generation is around 25 years, then Maa-bularrbabu prompts us to consider the impact of our actions 175 years into the future. Against that expansive timeframe, the typical university strategic plan timeframe of four years seems almost comically short-sighted, and Moran’s reminder to think far into the future is welcome.

Beyond This Book

As discussed in Chap. 1, while we have covered a range of theorists, the book is not intended as a primer on all the potential theorists that can be put to work to aid higher education teaching, research, and work life. Another thing this book does not do, and nor was it intended to, is to examine how theory is used by those positioned outside higher education. Social theories are often produced within universities and therefore don’t always fit well with the realities of social and community work. It would be interesting to explore how teachers in schools, people working in non-government and other organisations, and researchers located outside of higher education put theory to work.

In addition, while the reading group selected a range of scholars from different parts of the world, and women as well as men, as several of the authors point out, we need to continue to seek out the work of scholars from the global south and from diverse gender and other backgrounds. Connell (among others) has long emphasised the importance of attending to theorists from ‘the periphery’. Related to this point, we acknowledge that publishing this book only in English limits its audience. Serrano Amaya acknowledges that:

Knowledge from activism is at the South of Southern knowledge, and even more when such knowledge is written and published in languages and in publication circuits less available, legitimated or attractive for academic markets. At present, I am writing this piece in English even if most of its thinking and supportive experience comes from Spanish and Latin America. (Serrano Amaya; Chap. 16)

Moran too discusses the importance of language and, in particular, Indigenous language revitalisation (Bell and Moran; Chap. 2). Just yesterday I was at a university ceremony where our health and medicine precincts were being named with Indigenous names. Several of the Indigenous speakers expressed that language is an important aspect of healing and wellbeing for Indigenous peoples. I encourage you to consider how language impacts on your selection and use of theory.

Closing Reflections

I recently retired a blog I used to write, as I wasn’t finding time to add to it. I had one post about theory, titled ‘Working with theory – go hard or go home’ that I wrote in 2015. While I cringe a bit to read it now, it shows a novice perspective that perhaps may be relatable and reassuring to some readers:

This moment has been coming for a while. My background is in science, and I’m now working in academic development. So in the past when people have talked about theorists such as Bourdieu, Foucault, Derrida and the gang, I’ve struggled to understand. When I saw that Dr Remy Low was giving a talk called ‘How to do things with theory’, I was so there!

Remy took us on an exciting romp through phenomenology, critical theory and post-structuralism, enlivened by poetry, memes and music videos. Obviously there was only so much he could cover in two hours, but it was a great introduction. His talk has made me more aware of the theory-lite nature of my own research to date. And I’m not the only one. The lack of theory in higher education research has been pointed out several times e.g. Ashwin (2012), Hutchings (2007). A whole issue of one of the top higher education research journals was devoted to the topic ‘Questioning theory-method relations in higher education research’. (Ashwin & Case, 2012)

My own research is crying out for it. So I now need to leap in and start reading. My plan is to start with theorists who write about education or higher education. My ideas so far include Raewyn Connell, Sue Clegg and Catherine Manathunga. Other suggestions for reading are very welcome. I know that some of the writing might be difficult to understand, but as a colleague pointed out, statistics is difficult and off-putting for those who don’t have a statistics background. So here goes. See you on the other side!

I don’t think I’m alone in that initial trepidation; many guides on higher education research discuss ‘theory anxiety’ (Mewburn, 2012) and ‘theory fright’ (Thomson, 2018). Reporting now from ‘the other side’ several years later I am by no means an expert but, just as one small example, I did find myself nodding along while reading Jan McArthur’s (2019), book about assessment for social justice: ‘ah yes, the third-generation critical theorist Axel Honneth’. Learning to work with theory is a slow but sure process; to quote an Australian shampoo TV ad from the 1990s which seems to be stuck in the memories of many who saw it: ‘it won’t happen overnight but it will happen’. My grappling with theory—reading it, discussing it, thinking about it, using it, writing it about—is ongoing, and I’m not sure it will ever be easy. But it is worthwhile.

I encourage you to reflect back on your past interactions with theory and keep a note of how that changes over time, and no doubt will continue to evolve and change. We hope that this book provides a way in to working with theory in higher education and inspires you to read and grapple with these or other theorists and to make theory. We wish you all the very best as you work with theory in your own teaching and research.