Abstract

MURCIA PENA, Napoleón. University life and imaginaries: a possibility in defining policies on higher education. Rev.latinoam.cienc.soc.niñez juv [online]. 2009, vol.7, n.1, pp. 235-266. ISSN 1692-715X.

Based upon the substantive realities of university life, this article shows the university as a social institution. Although it is structured on norms that are defined as institutionalized imaginaries, the university responds to an always effervescent and constructive dynamics that develops internally as intelligibility sketches and social plausibility scenarios from which institutional life is constructed and organized. The institution shows, from its own dynamics, how the definition of policies on higher education must start from the recognition of those imaginaries constructed by educational communities, as it is from them that university life actions and interactions are defined.

Keywords : Politics in higher education; daily life; imaginary about the university.