Understanding successful academic identity within subjectivity and agency under the constraint conditions in selected South African universities

Abstract

Using qualitative interviews with 10 participants, purposeful sampling, constructionism paradigm and content data analysis, the study explores how academics negotiate their careers and construct enabling academic identities under the constraining conditions in selected South African universities. The study applied identity-subjectivity-agency conceptual framework to explore how academics negotiate their careers under the constraint conditions in selected South African Universities Considering the inequalities around race, gender and social difference, the study foregrounds the role of agency in its dialectic with the surrounding environment in building strong academic identities. In this regard, individual background emerges as asset or liability in that it enables and constraints what academics intend, how they interpret their actions and the world around them; and how they are interpreted or socially constructed in their interactions with other people. It is primarily through their agency that they can succeed as academics within the highly exclusionary South African academic environment. However, the theoretical insights from this study also show that the construction of academic identities with reference to subjectivity and agency is an area that still requires considerable research.