ABSTRACT

Markets do not simply appear as a result of policymaker diktat or policy at. And nor do markets – once made – exist in a space which sits outside, or beyond, a society and its complex of institutions and practices. Rather, markets are both made and remade, as new products and services, frontiers and spaces, are imagined, invented, implemented, inventoried, vetted and vetoed. Yet as Berndt and Boeckler argue, despite the ubiquity of markets, “the market is rarely treated as a process, to be taken seriously in its own right” and that “for all their force and spatial relevance” many researchers working on markets have “steered clear of attempts to achieve a better understanding of how markets are assembled and put to work” (Berndt and Boeckler 2012: 203). We agree with them. is, in the case of higher education, means examining the processes involved in unbundling existing institutionalised higher education practices which constitute the non-market university sector, and bringing into view “societal transformations and the investment necessary to make markets work” (Berndt and Boeckler 2012: 205).