JADE 5th edition | Page 6

EDITORIAL COMMENT | 7 6 | JADE PAUL TROWLER EDITORIAL COMMENT The key question for me is: is it realistic to expect that systemic change at the institutional or even national level can be brought about by interventions aimed at individuals? Without an understanding of the nature of social practices I think it is unrealistic to have such an expectation, and my talk offered some examples from another context, South Africa, to illustrate this. At the same time I wanted to challenge accounts at the other end of the scale, ones based on structuralist ideas in which individuals simply act out social conventions. I used the example of the early academic tribes and territories research to illustrate such an approach. In contrast, an understanding of social reality, social change and enhancement sees both agency and structure in operation. Researching contexts of change from this perspective raises new challenges and new opportunities, and I briefly explored these. The talk was based on research which set out most fully in the following five publications: • Trowler, P. (2008) Cultures and Change in Higher Education: Theories and Practices. London: Palgrave Macmillan. • Trowler, P., Saunders, M. and Bamber, R. (Eds) (2012) Tribes and Territories in Higher Education: Practices in the 21st Century. London: Routledge. • Trowler, P. (2013) Depicting and Researching Disciplines: Strong and moderate essentialist approaches.   Studies in Higher Education, 39, 10, 1720-1732.