A Human Development and Capability Approach to Justice in HE and Student Activism

While quite a number of studies have been conducted to explain, understand and acknowledge the role of student activism and its potential in fostering justice in the global South higher education institutions, some researchers such as Hlatshwayo and Fomunyam (2019) identify an absence of theory in offering an analytical and evaluative foundation for understanding the emerging complexities of student activism in South African higher education. This observation was made particularly in reference to the emerging trend of the use of social media, and its complexity and diversity, in student activism. As such, this chapter presents an argument and outline of why the capability approach framework is helpful when researching HE student activism from a justice and democracy standpoint. In this chapter, I examine and argue that the capability approach (Sen 1999b, 2009; Nussbaum 2011) and human development (Ul Haq 1995, 2003) offer a fresh analytical and normative framework for investigating both offline and online student activism, including the struggle for epistemic justice (Fricker 2007), towards a more robust democracy within higher education spaces in South Africa. The human development and capability approach framework’s strength lies in its emphasis on the freedoms of what students are able to do and be. Furthermore, the framework allows for a more nuanced analysis of the dynamic processes that characterise student engagement in activism of all kinds.