Power and power practices in public universities: the Autonomous University of Baja California

Abstract

This research was conducted in the Human Sciences School of the Autonomous University of Baja California; the main subjects or units of analysis considered were the academicians involved in the process of curricular design, who were identified using theoretical sampling criteria. The focus of interest was on understanding the social fabric of power and its exercise in defining a curriculum by skills in the human-sciences area.

The act of educating is shaped and carried out by individuals who above all are social beings, and as such are subjective entities that manipulate environmental stimuli and draw up their interpretation of the world by giving specific meanings to reality. Social power relations were configured through mastery of disciplinary concerns and the epistemological dispute over defining the scientific paradigm that provides the legitimate definition of reality on the basis of three approaches: the struggle for mastery and control of space (skill), of knowledge (discipline) and of formal authority (management).