Enabling transformation through critical engagement and reflexivity: a case study of South African academics

ABSTRACTScholars writing on agency argue that normally, individuals who experience social structures as comfortable will tend to want to reproduce them while those who experience these structures as oppressive will want to change them. This is a bleak outlook because it suggests that those in positions of power and influence are less likely to seek to overhaul the very system of rewards and punishments that benefits them. However, there are exceptions to this pattern: instances where those who experience the structures as comfortable, nevertheless, work at transforming them. This article introduces an alternative perspective to current transformation discourses by seeking to understand why such exceptions exist. It argues that critical engagement is an important dimension of such transformation, and examines how it interacts with reflexivity to shape individual choices and reformulate interest. Drawing on a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of in-depth interviews with 10 academics who have been identi...