ABSTRACT
Chapter 1, “Introduction”, presents the concept of the dispositif of the reform as a model of analysis of the governmentality mechanisms of the university. The suggested way of reasoning comes from two basic sources: Michel Foucault’s concepts of dispositif and governmentality and Bob Jessop’s concept of crisis. In this theoretical context, the reform of the university is discussed as a mechanism integrating the discursive and non-discursive elements in response to specific events (cases) and crisis situations. The concept of the reform as a dispositif assumes that crisis triggers various semiotic practices, and the effectiveness of the course of the reform depends on the extent to which they are able to embrace and integrate some broad, complex institutional discourses, i.e. media, political, and scientific. The Introduction presents the main research problems and the post-Foucauldian research perspective. In the last part, it describes the scope of the research presented in Chapters 2–5 of this book.
