Rikowski Point

'Human Herbs' - by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: A New Remix and Video

2012-02-01T04:50:00.000-08:00

‘HUMAN HERBS’ – BY COLD HANDS & QUARTER MOON – A NEW REMIX & VIDEO

I believe in the afterlife
It starts tomorrow
When I go to work

The new remix was produced on 29th January 2011, in east London.

The new remix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Live, original version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk

MySpace recording of ‘Human Herbs’: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

'Cheerful Sin' – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

'Exile' - by Van Pace

2012-01-28T14:34:00.000-08:00

‘EXILE’ – By VAN PACE

Exile is the second exiting short novel in the Theomachy series, which began with Heretic and the series continues with Enforcer.

Fourteen years ago, Brother Stefan made a terrible mistake. A single vengeful act, fuelled by grief and hatred and fear, in a lifetime of hard work and good intentions ... He has spent every waking moment since then serving the Beneficent Numina, and trying to make up for his error of judgement in the worst possible way – by eradicating himself and leaving an empty husk in place of his heart.
Stefan took shelter with the gods because they could forgive worse sinners than him. Seven centuries earlier, the Numina had forgiven the worst of the lot: Rory Kempe, first-and-only prophet to grace Xerxes – a planet forgotten by all others, and ruled over by a theocracy which had gladly turned its back on the Universe.
Then, through the machinations of Hathor – the Numina’s Primary Servant, and Xerxes’ ruling artificial intelligence – Stefan was sent off-world to retrieve Kempe’s own account of his conversion, known simply as the Book. Life beyond Xerxes proved to be more confusing and dangerous than he could have imagined.

Now Brother Stefan returns to Rock Point Abbey with two responsibilities: Kempe’s journal, stolen from his homeworld centuries before, and a four-year-old orphan called Yuki. He delivers the Book to his superiors at Rock Point Abbey with relief, hoping to be allowed to take up his old life of walking and preaching.
But life has other plans for him.
Stefan used to be a clever and compassionate man. A strong man who would fight for his friends; would shelter the unfortunate and protect the innocent. He was a deep and passionate lover – he was loyal and caring and brave. And if it were not for that one terrible mistake, made so long ago, he could be all those things again ...
Stefan has spent fourteen years denying his past. When he gets the chance to change his future, it will take courage to make the right choice.
How does a man regain his honour, once he loses it?

How does he reclaim the woman for whom his love has never wavered?

How does he make amends for the death of a true friend?

This time, Stefan is going to have to fight.

Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Exile-Theomachy-Series-ebook/dp/B0070PNJN8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327624416&sr=1-1
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Exile-Theomachy-Series-ebook/dp/B0070PNJN8/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327624897&sr=1-4

**END**

'Cheerful Sin' – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8
‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

'Heretic' - by Van Pace

2012-01-26T17:12:00.000-08:00

‘HERETIC’ – By VAN PACE

Seven centuries after conquest of the human colony on Xerxes by the alien Numina, Brother Stefan’s religious order act as watchdogs against revolt. As he attends the deathbed of a heretic, the Numina give Stefan a warning to deliver to his superiors at Rock Point Abbey. The message is greeted with anger and distrust, and Stefan is forced to rely on an unlikely ally for protection: Hathor, the sole surviving artificial intelligence on Xerxes.

The price of Stefan’s safety is the retrieval of a stolen book, and the task will take him on a lengthy and dangerous journey to La Infanta – an off-world way-station on the verge of a bloody coup. Even away from Xerxes, other forces are in motion. The Numina may be stirring, but their ancient enemy the Berefhi are already advancing towards Xerxes. Between the two opposing alien sides, their agents and servants are poised, like pieces on a chessboard.

At the centre of all their actions, the stolen book exerts its hold over monks and rebels alike. This most holy of texts is flawed, and to read it is to invite the taint of heresy. By the end of their journey, neither Stefan nor any of his fellow passengers will remain unchanged. Some will survive and some will not, but all will be altered irrevocably.

Heretic is the first gripping short novel in the Theomachy Series. The second is Exile.
Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heretic-Theomachy-Series-ebook/dp/B006ZENW3C/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327235126&sr=1-1
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Heretic-Theomachy-Series-ebook/dp/B006ZENW3C/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327623678&sr=1-3

**END**

'Cheerful Sin' – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

'The Lamb' by William Blake - set to music by Victor Rikowski

2012-01-20T02:58:00.000-08:00

‘THE LAMB’ BY WILLIAM BLAKE – SET TO MUSIC BY VICTOR RIKOWSKI

Back when I was in Havering Sixth-Form College, at the age of 17/18, I remember setting this poem by Blake to my own song. Although I haven't played it since then, the tune always remains within my mind. This is a revisit to that song that I wrote 7/8 years ago now. This might not be exactly as it was then, but the opening tune is the one that stuck with me for all these years.

Victor Rikowski

Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?

Gave thee life, and bid thee feed

By the stream and o'er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing, woolly, bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice? Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:

He is called by thy name,

For he calls himself a Lamb.

He is meek, and he is mild;

He became a little child.

I a child, and thou a lamb.

We are called by his name. Little Lamb, God bless thee! Little Lamb,

God bless thee!

Arrangement and performance by Victor Rikowski

It can be viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

Symposium on the Work of Paula Allman

2012-01-13T05:33:00.000-08:00

SYMPOSIUM ON THE WORK OF PAULA ALLMAN

Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues XVI
A Day Seminar, 10.30 – 5.00
Saturday February 4th, 2012
Institute of Education, University of London
20 Bedford Way, WC1
The Drama Studio

Speakers:

Sara Carpenter (University of Toronto)
Helen Colley (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Margaret Ledwith (University of Cumbria)
Peter Mayo (University of Malta)
Michael Neary (University of Lincoln)
Glenn Rikowski (University of Northampton)

This is an open seminar and tickets are free.
To reserve a place email: amaisuria@ioe.ac.uk

Convenors: Tony Green, Alpesh Maisuria & Glenn Rikowski

Times Higher Education (Obituary): Paula Allman (1944-2011) – http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=418263&c=2

Major Works of Paula Allman:

Critical Education Against Global Capitalism: Karl Marx and Revolutionary Critical Education (2010) Second Edition, with a new Foreword by Peter McLaren and a new Afterward by Paula Allman, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

On Marx: An Introduction to the Revolutionary Intellect of Karl Marx (2007) Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Critical Education Against Global Capitalism: Karl Marx and Revolutionary Critical Education (2001) Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey.

Revolutionary Social Transformation: Democratic Hopes, Political Possibilities and Critical Education (1999) Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic
'Cheerful Sin' – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8
Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rage Against the Rule of Money

2011-11-25T11:44:00.000-08:00

RAGE AGAINST THE RULE OF MONEY
Three Public Lectures by John Holloway

Rage Against the Rule of Money: http://johnhollowayinleeds.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/holloway-leeds-15-11-2010-45.jpg
Three public lectures by John Holloway, Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the MA in Activism and Social Change, School of Geography, University of Leeds: http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/study/masters/courses/maasc

28th November: Rage

6pm, Business School Western Lecture Theatre. Business School. University of Leeds

29th November: The Rule of Money

6pm, Business School Western Lecture Theatre. Business School. University of Leeds

30th November: Break the Power of Money! Communise!

6pm, The Space Project, 37-38 Mabgate Green Leeds.

Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, Professor John Holloway is spending some time as a visiting professor at the School of Geography, University of Leeds in 2011 and is teaching at the MA in Activism and Social Change:

http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/study/masters/courses/maasc
The lectures are free and open to the public and there is no need to book.About the venues:Business School Western Lecture Theatre, G01, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT: http://www.teachingspace.leeds.ac.uk/room_details.asp?ID=1-01-087-2570-GR+-G01
Information about how to get to the Business School (LUBS) in a map here: http://business.leeds.ac.uk/fileadmin/webfiles/General/lubs_map.pdf
Space project: http://www.spaceproject.org.uk/, 37-38 Mabgate Green, LS9 7DS. It’s a non commercial space in Leeds facilitated by the Really Open University http://reallyopenuniversity.wordpress.com/.

See a map here: http://pedallers.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/p1030288.jpg.For more information about these lectures contact: s.gonzalez@leeds.ac.uk or 0113 343 6639Source: http://johnhollowayinleeds.wordpress.com/

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom
Disguised as maximum fun’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)

'Cheerful Sin' – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com
Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Cheerful Sin - A Song by Victor Rikowski

2011-11-23T14:50:00.000-08:00

CHEERFUL SIN – A SONG BY VICTOR RIKOWSKI

This is a song written by Victor Rikowski during his third year at Bangor University, north Wales. Says Victor:
“I’ve always wanted to do a recording of this song or a live performance or something, so now I’ve done this. Having only just bought myself a USB sound card thingy, this is my first bit of recording that I’ve done on my own for many years. This is the fruit of a sleepless night’s labour”

29th October 2011
Cheerful Sin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8
Victor Rikowski Channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/VictorRikowski

‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom
Disguised as maximum fun’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Marxism and Education: Works by Glenn Rikowski - Version November 2011

2011-11-12T22:43:00.000-08:00

MARXISM AND EDUCATION: WORKS BY GLENN RIKOWSKI – VERSION NOVEMBER 2011

This is a list of the main works on Marxism and Education by Glenn Rikowski, revised and update on 6th November 2011:

Online Articles and Papers

Rikowski, G. (1990) The Recruitment Process and Labour Power, unpublished manuscript, Division of Humanities & Modern Languages, Epping Forest College, Loughton, Essex, July. Online at:

http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Recruitment%20and%20Labour%20Power

Rikowski, G. (1996) Apprenticeship and the Use-value Aspect of Labour Power, First Paper prepared for the ESRC Seminar Series on 'Apprenticeship in Work and Education', Nene Research Centre, Nene College of Higher Education, Northampton, 31st May, at The Flow of Ideas web site: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Apprenticeship%20and%20the%20Use-value%20Aspect%20of%20Labour%20Power

Rikowski, G. (1996) Revealed Recruitment Criteria Through the Use-value Aspect of Labour-power, Second Paper prepared for the ESRC Seminar Series on 'Apprenticeship in Work and Education', Nene Research Centre, Nene College of Higher Education, Northampton, 31st May, at The Flow of Ideas web site: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Revealed%20Recruitment%20Criteria%20through%20the%20Use-value%20Aspect%20of%20Labour-power

Rikowski, G. (1996) Education Markets and Missing Products, Revised and extended paper first presented at the Conference of Socialist Economists, University of Northumbria, Newcastle, 7-9th July 1995. This revised version dated 18th December 1996: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Education%20Markets%20and%20Missing%20Products

Rikowski, G. (1998) Three Types of Apprenticeship, Three Forms of Mastery: Nietzsche, Marx, Self and Capital, a Departmental Paper, School of Education, University of Birmingham, 5th June: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Three%20Types%20of%20Apprenticeship%20-%20Three%20Forms%20of%20Mastery

Rikowski, G. (2000) Why Employers Can't Ever Get What They Want. In fact, they can't even get what they need, a paper presented at the School of PCET Staff/Student Seminar, University of Greenwich, Queen Anne's Palace, 30 Park Row, Greenwich, London, 27 March. Online at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Why%20Employers%20Can[a]t%20Ever%20Get%20What%20They%20Want

Rikowski, G. (2000) That Other Great Class of Commodities: Repositioning Marxist Educational Theory, BERA Conference Paper, Cardiff University, 7-10 September. At Education-line: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00001624.htm

Rikowski, G. (2000) Messing with the Explosive Commodity: School Improvement, Educational Research and Labour-Power in the Era of Global Capitalism, paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Cardiff University, 7-10 September. Available from Education-line: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00001610.htm

Rikowski, G. (2001) The Importance of Being a Radical Educator in Capitalism Today, Guest Lecture in Sociology of Education, The Gillian Rose Room, University of Warwick, Coventry, 31st May, available at The Institute for Education Policy Studies: http://www.ieps.org.uk.cwc.net/rikowski2005a.pdf

McLaren, P. & Rikowski, G. (2001) Pedagogy for Revolution against Education for Capital: An E-Dialogue on Education in Capitalism Today, Cultural Logic: An Electronic Journal of Marxist Theory and Practice, Vol.4 No.1: http://clogic.eserver.org/4-1/mclaren%26rikowski.html

Rikowski, G. (2001) After the Manuscript Broke Off: Thoughts on Marx, Social Class and Education, a paper prepared for the British Sociological Association Education Study Group Meeting, King’s College London, 23 June. Available at Education-line: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00001931.htm

Rikowski, G. (2002) Methods for Researching the Social Production of Labour Power in Capitalism, School of Education Research Seminar, University College Northampton, 7th March, at: http://www.ieps.org.uk.cwc.net/rikowski2002b.pdf

Rikowski, G. (2004) Marx and the Education of the Future, Policy Futures in Education, Vol.2 Nos. 3 & 4, pp.565-577, online at: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=pfie&vol=2&issue=3&year=2004&article=10_Rikowski_PFEO_2_3-4_web&id=195.93.21.71

Gibson, R. & Rikowski, G. (2004) Socialism and Education: An E-Dialogue, available from The Rouge Forum web site: http://www.pipeline.com/~rougeforum/RikowskiGibsonDialogueFinal.htm

Rikowski, G. (2005) Distillation: Education in Karl Marx's Social Universe, Lunchtime Seminar, School of Education, University of East London, Barking Campus, 14th February: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Distillation

Rikowski, G. (2006) Education and the Politics of Human Resistance, Information for Social Change, Issue No.23 (Summer): http://libr.org/isc/issues/ISC23/B3%20Glenn%20Rikowski.pdf

Gibson, R. & Rikowski, G. (2006) Education for a Socialist Future: An E-Dialogue, Information for Social Change, Issue No.23 (Summer): http://libr.org/isc/issues/ISC23/C1%20Rich%20Gibson%20and%20Glenn%20Rikowski.pdf

Rikowski, G. (2006) On the Capitalisation of Schools in England, a paper prepared for The Flow of Ideas, 1st November: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=On%20the%20Capitalisation%20of%20Schools%20in%20England

Rikowski, G. (2006) Ten Points on Marx, Class and Education, a paper presented at Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues IX Seminar, University of London, Institute of Education, 25th October: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Ten%20Points%20on%20Marx,%20Class%20and%20Education

Rikowski, G. (2007) Marxist Educational Theory Unplugged, a paper prepared for the Fourth Historical Materialism Annual Conference, 9-11th November, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Marxist%20Educational%20Theory%20Unplugged

Rikowski, G. (2008) Marx and Education Revisited, 21st April, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Marx%20and%20Education%20Revisited

Rikowski, G. (2008) Marxism and Education Revisited, 25th April, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Marxism%20and%20Education%20Revisited

Rikowski, G. (2011) Capitorg: Education and the Constitution of the Human in Contemporary Society, A paper prepared for the Praxis & Pedagogy Research Seminar, The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM), Dublin, Ireland, 25th May 2011, available online at ‘The Flow of Ideas’: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Capitorg

Key Chapters in Edited Collections

Rikowski, G. (1998) Only Charybdis: The Learning Society Through Idealism, in: S. Ranson (Ed) Inside the Learning Society, London: Cassell Education.

Rikowski, G. (1999) Nietzsche, Marx and Mastery: The Learning Unto Death, in: H. Rainbird & P. Ainley (Eds.) Apprenticeship: Towards a New Paradigm of Learning, London: Kogan Page.

Rikowski, G. (2000) The Rise of the Student-Worker, in: K. Moti Gokulsing & C. DaCosta (Eds.) A Compact for Higher Education, Aldershot: Ashgate.

Rikowski, G. (2002) Education, Capital and the Transhuman, in: D. Hill, P. McLaren, M. Cole & G. Rikowski (Eds.) Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Rikowski, (2002) Prelude: Marxist Educational Theory After Postmodernism, in: D. Hill, P. McLaren, M. Cole & G. Rikowski (Eds.) Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Rikowski, G. (2002) Fuel for the Living Fire: Labour-Power! In: A. Dinerstein & M. Neary (Eds.) The Labour Debate: An Investigation into the Theory and Reality of Capitalist Work, Aldershot: Ashgate.

Rikowski, G. (2004) Labour's Fuel: Lifelong Learning Policy as Labour Power Production, in: D. Hayes (ed.) The RoutledgeFalmer Guide to Key Debates in Education, London: RoutledgeFalmer.

McLaren, P. & Rikowski, G. (2005) Pedagogy for Revolution Against Education for Capital: An E-Dialogue on Education in Capitalism Today, in: P. McLaren, Red Seminars: Radical Excursions into Educational Theory, Cultural Politics, and Pedagogy, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Allman, P., McLaren, P. & Rikowski, G. (2005) After the Box People: The Labor-Capital Relation as Class Constitution and Its Consequences for Marxist Educational Theory and Human Resistance, in: P. McLaren, Capitalists and Conquerors: A Critical Pedagogy Against Empire, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Articles in Journals (not online)

Rikowski, G. (1992) Work Experience and Part-time Jobs in a Recruitment Context, British Journal of Education and Work, Vol.5 No.1, pp.19-46.

Rikowski, G. (1996) Left Alone: End Time for Marxist Educational Theory? British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol.17 No.4, pp.415-451.

Rikowski, G. (1997) Scorched Earth: Prelude to Rebuilding Marxist Educational Theory, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol.18 No.4, pp.551-574.

Rikowski, G. (2001) Education for Industry: A Complex Technicism, Journal of Education and Work, Vol.14 No.1, pp.29-49.

Books & Booklets

Hill, D., McLaren, P., Cole, M. & Rikowski, G. (Eds.) (1999) Postmodernism in Educational Theory: Education and the Politics of Human Resistance, London: Tufnell Press.

Rikowski, G. (2001) The Battle in Seattle: Its Significance for Education, London: Tufnell Press.

Cole, M., Hill, D., Rikowski, G. & McLaren P. (2001) Red Chalk: On Schooling, Capitalism & Politics, Brighton: The Institute for Education Policy Studies. Available online from The IEPS, at:

http://www.ieps.org.uk.cwc.net/redchalk.pdf

D. Hill, P. McLaren, M. Cole & G. Rikowski (Eds.) (2002) Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Rikowski, G. (2005) Silence on the Wolves: What is Absent in New Labour’s Strategy for Education, Education Research Centre, Mayfield House, University of Brighton, Occasional Paper, May.

Green, A., Rikowski, G. & Raduntz, H. (Eds.) (2007) Renewing Dialogues in Marxism and Education – Openings, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.blogspot.com

'Cheerful Sin' - A Song by Victor Rikowski

2011-11-12T22:39:00.000-08:00

'CHEERFUL SIN' – A SONG BY VICTOR RIKOWSKI

This is a song written by Victor Rikowski during his third year at Bangor University, north Wales. Says Victor:

“I’ve always wanted to do a recording of this song or a live performance or something, so now I’ve done this. Having only just bought myself a USB sound card thingy, this is my first bit of recording that I’ve done on my own for many years. This is the fruit of a sleepless night’s labour”

29th October 2011

Cheerful Sin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Victor Rikowski Channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/VictorRikowski

‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom
Disguised as maximum fun’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues XV

2011-11-02T12:33:00.000-07:00

MARXISM AND EDUCATION: RENEWING DIALOGUES XV

Education, Crisis and Society

Speakers to include: Alex Callinicos and Dave Hill

A Day Seminar 10.30 – 4.30, Saturday November 26th 2011

Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, WC1, Committee Room 1
The seminar is free but places are limited.
To reserve a place contact Alpesh Maisuria at: amaisuria@ioe.ac.uk

Please forward this invite to those who may be interested

Convenors: Tony Green, Alpesh Maisuria

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Discourse Power Resistance 12

2011-10-28T07:41:00.000-07:00

DISCOURSE POWER RESISTANCE 12

DPR Conference 2012

+++IMPACT+++

2 – 4 April 2012, Plymouth College of Art, UK

The conference considers what 'Impact' means for us, our work, our understandings and future developments. Governments, international agencies, funding bodies and policy-makers increasingly use this term. What does it mean?

The social sciences, creative arts, education and humanities are currently under attack on a global scale as funding is concentrated on STEM related subjects; but the threatened fields of scholarship are themselves evolving new ways of thinking and practice and new sites and methods of enquiry.

Practitioners and academics in the threatened areas are responding to the situation with vitality and determination: experimental, adventurous, playful, but serious in redefining boundaries and finding new ways forward. DPR 12 maps these emerging knowledge regimes, their impacts, the imagined futures they enable and the implications for practice, research, learning and teaching.
DPR and PCA have joined forces for this conference. DPR is deeply engaged in the critical interrogation of contemporary culture as it plays out in the academy in research, learning and teaching. Similarly, PCA is working with energy and passion to implement a vision of high quality education for life in contemporary arts practice. Bringing the two together is an adventure in creative synergy.
The conference explores the potential impact on each other of the creative arts and social sciences in terms of theory and practice.
All conference streams are designed to encourage contributions from across the creative arts, social sciences and humanities. Click here http://www.dprconference.com/conference/streams for details.

Conference streams:
Language, materiality, theory, silence, speaking
International, intercultural, transcultural impact
Research, learning, teaching: impact
Social Science, social work, community, wellbeing
Art Poetics: Practice as Learning, Learning in Practice
Sustainable impact
Open

The conference website is http://www.dprconference.com/
For further information contact: http://uk.mc247.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=enquiries@dprconference.com

Call for Papers: http://www.dprconference.com/conference/call-for-papers
Registration: http://www.dprconference.com/conference/registration

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Marx from a Multiculturalist Perspective

2011-10-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

MARX FROM A MULTICULTURALIST PERSPECTIVE

You are invited to attend these open discussions on…
Marx from a Multiculturalist Perspective

First & Third Wednesdays, October 2011- January 2012
6:30-9.00 pm @ Chicago Public Library
Harold Washington Library Center, 400 South State St. Chicago IL

In an increasingly globalized world, the cross-cultural exchange of ideas and struggles between those in developed and developing countries takes on added importance. It is often overlooked that one thinker who had a lot to say about the role of multiculturalism in an increasingly globalized world was capitalism’s most important critic—Karl Marx. This series of six discussions will explore Marx’s lesser-known writings on nationalism, ethnicity, and non-Western societies that take on new importance in light of today’s realities. Readings will include excerpts from Marx’s works as well as Kevin Anderson’s new book Marx at the Margins. Readings are available from USMH.

Sponsored by the U.S. Marxist-Humanists
Email: arise@usmarxisthumanists.org Website: www.usmarxisthumanists.org Phone: 773-561-3454

Books: Page numbers in the schedule refer to the following books. An earlier translation of Capital & other Marx readings are online at Marxists.org, & are linked in the schedule. Starred readings* are available by emailing USMH. The Anderson can be bought from USMH & as an e-book. The Dunayevskaya is also available from USMH.
Anderson, Kevin. Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Print.
Dunayevskaya, Raya. Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Print.
Marx, Karl, Ben Fowkes, and Ernest Mandel. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol 1. Tran. Ben Fowkes. New York:NY: Penguin Classics, 1992. Print.

Schedule and Readings

October 19th
Room 7N-5 (7th Floor)

Marx’s Initial Response to the European Encounter with India & China.
Did Marx support the European colonization of Asia and Africa, or was he a sharp critic of it? How do his views speak to the today’s increasingly globalized world? This meeting will explore Marx’s writings of the 1850s on Asia, especially his response to the Sepoy revolt in India and the Tai’ping rebellion in China.

Suggested readings: Marx: British Rule in India (6/25/1853), Future Results of British Rule in India (8/8/1853); Revolution in China and Europe (6/14/1853) Marx at the Margins, pp. 9-41.

Leading the discussion: Peter Hudis, General Editor, The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg

November 2nd
Room 3N-6 (3rd Floor)

In Defense of National Self-Determination: Marx on Poland & Ireland.
Although Marx famously proclaimed, “Workers of the word, unite!” he also strongly supported struggles against national oppression and racism. This meeting will explore his defense of national liberation movements in Poland and Ireland and how he viewed their relation to the overall aims of the labor movement.

Suggested Readings: Marx: Proclamation on Poland (October 1863)*
Letter to Engels (12/10/1869)
Marx at the Margins, pp. 56-78, pp. 115-95.

Leading the discussion: J Turk, U.S. Marxist Humanists

November 16th
Room 7N-5 (7th Floor)

Racism as the Achilles Heel of U.S. Society: Marx’s Writings on the Civil War
Marx was a strong supporter of the North in the U.S. Civil War, as seen in his journalism, his correspondence with Abraham Lincoln, and the text of his greatest theoretical work, Capital. This meeting will explore why Marx held that “labor in the white skin cannot be free where labor in the black skin is branded.”

Suggested Readings: Marx: Letter to Engels (8/7/1862)
Marx at the Margins, pp. 79-114.

Leading the discussion: Miguel A. Rodriguez, student at Loyola University

November 30th Room 3N-6 (3rd Floor)

The “Rosy Dawn” of Capitalist Accumulation: The Impact of Capitalism on the Developing World-
Why is each period of capitalist expansion accompanied by the penetration and destruction of non-capitalist economic formations in technologically less-developed countries? This class will explore the “so-called primitive accumulation of capital”—which Marx held accompanies all periods of renewed capitalist expansion.

Suggested Readings: Marx: Capital Vol. I, chapters 26 and 33 (pp. 873-76, pp. 931-42)
Marx at the Margins, pp. 154-95

Leading the discussion: Eileen Grace, Hobgoblin Collective

December 14th
Room 3N-6 (3rd Floor)

Marx on the Peasantry and Communal Agrarian Relations: Pillar of Reaction or Force of Revolution?
Are peasant movements inherent conservative and patriarchal, or are they a progressive factor in fostering social transformation—especially in the developing world? This meeting will explore Marx’s writings on the Russian peasantry and the liberatory potential of its communal social relations, composed at the end of his life.

Suggested Readings: Marx: Draft Letters to Vera Zasulich (1881)*
Marx at the Margins, pp. 224-236.

Leading the discussion: Ali Reza, Iranian activist: Solidarity with the People of Iran and their struggles for bread, freedom and democracy.

January 11th Room 3N-6 (3rd Floor)

Marx’s Late Writings on India, China, Native Americans, and Islam-
Marx engaged in a series of important studies of indigenous cultures and non-Western societies in the last decade of his life as he searched for new pathways to liberation. This meeting will discuss this long-neglected dimension of his work speaks to debates over the meaning of multiculturalism today.

Suggested Readings: Marx at the Margins, pp. 196-224.
Dunayevskaya, Raya, “The Last Writings of Marx” in Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, pp 175-98 *

Leading the discussion: Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, author, Neither Victim nor Survivor: Thinking Toward a New Humanity

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Creative Writing Worshop at the Idea Store - East London

2011-10-08T14:24:00.000-07:00

CREATIVE WRITING AT THE IDEA STORE – EAST LONDON

Discover the Writer within You – by taking part in our new CREATIVE WRITING Workshops!

Tuesdays, 4.00-6.00pm [11+]

Do you have a passion for writing, telling and sharing stories?

Have you ever wanted to be an author?

If so, then take part in this FREE Workshop to start your creative journey.

The Workshop will also help you to improve your IT and literacy skills, to help you along the way.

We will be covering all forms of fiction so that you can focus on what interests you: whether it is writing novels or poetry, TV and film scripts, plays, short stories, or even comic books.

Set the stories of your imagination free!

IDEA: Library Learning Information

Idea Store
Chrisp Street
1 Vesey Path
East India Dock Road
LONDON
E14 6BT
Tel: 0207 364 1506
Website: http://www.ideastore.co.uk/en/articles/libraries_your_local_idea_store_library_idea_store_chrisp_street

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DevXS

2011-10-08T10:03:00.001-07:00

DevXS

DevXS is a FREE developer marathon spread across three days, where students from across the UK and beyond are encouraged to team up and build cool things that contribute to university life. All you need to do is get here!. If you are not a student, it would be great if you could pass this email onto relevant people in your organisation.

Please note we actively encourage you to speak to computer science tutors, who are also welcome to attend as long as they bring along some students!. Tutors might be able to organise a team of you to attend (e.g. travelling by minibus etc). If you think you might have difficulty getting here, please contact us on hello@devxs.org, and we might be able to help.

Tell others about it by printing off a poster and putting it somewhere visible where others can see it!

See: http://devxs.org/assets

DevXS is about students sharing their ideas, mashing up data and building prototypes that improve, challenge and positively disrupt the research, teaching and learning landscapes of further and higher education.

We're going to award prizes to the best ideas, prototypes and collaborations and there are going to be developers from universities around the country hanging around to help you out.

So if you are a student (undergraduate or postgraduate) or a tutor, please register for this event as soon as possible, places are limited and it is a fantastic opportunity to improve your CV and work with some of the best young developers in the country! You may even get the chance to speak to recruiters from industry.

The event will take place at the University of Lincoln on the weekend of 11-13 November, 2011. We will provide free accommodation on the night of the 11th (twin rooms) and then a relaxation zone on the 12th (bring your sleeping bag!). There will also be free food and refreshments!

Register now before it is too late: http://devxs.org/register

For more information about the event, please see: http://devxs.org/

ΔΔΔΔΔΔΔ

Mr Mahendra Mahey

Project Manager DevCSI
Research Officer
UKOLN,
University of Bath,
Bath,
BA2 7AY

Tel: ++44 (0) 1225 384594
Fax: ++44 (0) 1225 386256
Mobile: ++44 (0) 07581069575
Email: m.mahey@ukoln.ac.uk
skypeID: mr_mahendra_mahey
http://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/
http://cerify.ukoln.ac.uk/
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
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The Reactionary Mind

2011-10-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

THE REACTIONARY MIND

Dear friends:

I wanted to let you know that my book The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin is one day away from its official publication date, which happens to coincide with Rosh Hashanah (hence my writing you today), but you can buy it now at Amazon or elsewhere, in hard cover or on Kindle.

If you live in the New York area or will be traveling here next week, I'd like to invite you to a public conversation between me and Chris Hayes, host of the excellent new MSNBC show "Up With Chris Hayes," about my book. It will be on Thursday, October 6, at 7 pm, in the Martin Segal Theater of the CUNY Graduate Center. That's 365 5th Avenue, between 34th and 35th. Seating may be tight, so try to get there early. Here's a link to the event. It's being sponsored by the Center for Humanities, The Nation, and the Roosevelt Institute.If you do come, please make sure to say hi. And whether you can or can't come, I'd be grateful if you could share this note to your friends and colleagues and lists.

Happy New Year!

Corey Robin

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The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Education Against Austerity

2011-10-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

EDUCATION AGAINST AUSTERITY

Education Against Austerity – Thursday 6th October, 6.30pm @ The Quad, LSE, London WC2A 2AE

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=267737039913763

Report, photos and videos on #Anti-Tory-March: http://educationactivistnetwork.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/ean-report-from-tory-conference-demo-in-manchester/

The new academic term is opening in anger: On Sunday 1500 joined the EAN feeder march in Manchester and more than 30000 trade unionists marched in total. As tens of thousands are being denied university places and forced into debt, we will discuss how we can build a movement that can.

The deep inequalities faced by millions of young people were exposed by the summer riots. Yet the Tories are coming for more; this year will see the attempt to implement their “White Paper” – the definitive entry of business into education and wholesale privatisation of entire institutions. The creation of the £18000 a year New College of the Humanities while 70% of courses are cut at London Met University shows the Con-Dem project for our education. Yet the government is weak and when we build pressure from below we can win. The student revolt pushed the coalition into turmoil and ESOL was partially saved after widespread resistance.

Education Against Austerity seeks to both to set the political tone of the new term and begin to lay down the organisational framework for a shut down of education in November when millions of public sector workers look set to join lecturers and teachers for mass strikes. We hope to see you there joining EAN to discuss how we build effective resistance in our colleges and universities as part of a growing movement against austerity.

Education Against Austerity – Thursday 6th October, 6.30pm @ he Quad, LSE, London WC2A 2AE

Speakers include:
* Owen Jones, author of Chavs looks at the rising demonization of young people.
* Mark Campbell, Save London Met campaigner explains what’s behind the public sector strikes and why they matter in the fight for education.
* Susan Matthews, Defend the Right to Protest activist on the rise of political policing and why we should defend arrested protesters.
* Mandy Brown, Action for ESOL on how we defected ESOL cuts and where next in the fight for Further Education.
* Mark Bergfeld, NUS NEC discusses where next for the student movement

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
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Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Ruth Rikowski's News Updates Progression - 47th News Update

2011-10-02T13:33:00.000-07:00

RUTH RIKOWSKI’S NEWS UPDATES PROGRESSION – 47th NEWS UPDATE

This can be found at ‘Ruth Rikowski News Updates Progression’, which came out on 2nd October 2011.

In this 47th News Update, Ruth explores the following topics, amongst others:

* Capitorg: Education and the Constitution of the Human in Contemporary Society – by Glenn Rikowski.

* School Culture and ‘Fear of a Blank Planet’ – by Dishi Phillips.

* Education and Bonus Culture – by Brianna Haberman-Lawson

* Competition and Markets in Education – by Brad Dymond

* Rage! Writers Change the World – by Victor Rikowski

* Review of ‘Libraries and Society’ – by Ruth Rikowski

See the 47th News Update at: http://ruthrikowskiupdates.blogspot.com/2011/09/hope-everyone-had-good-summer.html

Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

Marxism in Culture

2011-10-01T14:50:00.000-07:00

MARXISM IN CULTURE: PROGRAMME FOR THE AUTUMN TERM 2011

Friday 14 October
Financialisation, Monetisation, Privatisation: Creating the New Market in Higher Education
Andrew McGettigan (Central Saint Martins)

Friday 28 October
Self-emancipation, activity theory, and political deskilling / reskilling: Some thoughts on organising into a big fish
Alex Levant (Wilfred Laurier University)

Friday 25 November
A Socialist Realist Sander: Comparative Portraiture as a Marxist Model in the German Democratic Republic
Sarah James (University College London)

Friday 09 December
Cultures of Marxism 1: Publishing and the Left
Contributors to be confirmed

All seminars start at 5.30pm, and are held in the Court Room (unless otherwise indicated) at the Institute of Historical Research in Senate House, Malet St, London. The seminar closes at 7.30pm and retires to the bar.

Organisers: Matthew Beaumont, Dave Beech, Alan Bradshaw, Warren Carter, Gail Day, Steve Edwards, Larne Abse Gogarty, Owen Hatherley, Esther Leslie, David Mabb, Antigoni Memou,Chrysi Papaioannou, Nina Power, Dominic Rahtz, Pete Smith, Peter Thomas & Alberto Toscano.

For further information, contact Warren Carter, at: w.carter@ucl.ac.uk
or Esther Leslie at: e.leslie@bbk.ac.uk

Cheers,
Warren

Warren Carter
Teaching Fellow
History of Art
University College London
Tel:- 020 3108 4023

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom
Disguised as maximum fun’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
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Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
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Europe Against Austerity Conference

2011-09-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

EUROPE AGAINST AUSTERITY CONFERENCE

The European left gathers in London to debate responses to the economic crisis in Europe
Europe Against Austerity Conference
1st October, 10am-5pm, Camden Centre, Bidborough Street, London WC1H 9AU

In the last two years Europe has seen waves of strikes, mass demonstrations, student radicalizations, civil disobedience and even riots in response to government austerity policies.

Struggles have broken out against cuts to pensions and raises in the retirement age, increased post-school education charges, reduced welfare payments, privatisations and falling living standards.

Is there an alternative to cuts and privatisation? What does the left say to the crisis of the Eurozone? What were the fundamental economic causes of the ‘great recession’ and does the left have a different way out? Is the European left as nationally fractured as its governments increasingly are?

This conference brings together the main left political, trade union and campaigning forces across Europe in the widest such forum since the meetings of the European Social Forum.

It will be an unparalleled opportunity to hear what the alternative voice from across Europe from West to East, South to North.

Speakers will include representatives of Die Linke (the German Left Party), the European Left Party (http://www.european-left.org/), Partie de Gauche (the French Left Party), Sinn Fein, the European
Attac network, (http://www.attac.org/en/what-attac) and anti-austerity campaigns and left parties from Denmark, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Eastern Europe joining British trade unionists (including Len McCLusky general secretary of Unite), and Jeremy Corbyn MP.

The conference is now a free-standing European-wide initiative with support across the EU and beyond. For a full list of current supporters see here: http://www.europeagainstausterity.org/conference-supporters/

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
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MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com/
Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
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Tackling Michael Gove's Education Revolution

2011-09-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

TACKLING MICHAEL GOVE’S EDUCATION REVOLUTION: CAUGHT IN THE [EDUCATION] ACT

Tackling Michael Gove’s Education Revolution
CAUGHT IN THE [EDUCATION] ACT

Michael Gove’s new Education Act gives the Secretary of State some 50 new powers. What is the agenda behind this shift of power to the centre? What is the role of profit in these plans? How can education be defended? Join the workshops that will be led by our guest speakers to discuss the way forward.

10am - 3.30pm Saturday 19th November 2011
University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY

Clyde Chitty/Melissa Benn – A Divided Education System
David Wolfe (Matrix Chambers) - Implications of the new Education Act
Stephen Ball (Institute of Education) – Privatisation
Martin Johnson (ATL) – Edubusiness
Sam Ellis (ASCL) – Paying the Price
Christine Blower (NUT) – The International Scene
Patrick Roach (NASUWT) – What Next?

For more information, please go to: http://tinyurl.com/EducationAct2011

Conference fee: £20 (including buffet lunch)
Organised and supported by: Anti Academies Alliance, CASE, Comprehensive Future, FORUM (www.wwwords.co.uk/FORUM), ISCH, Socialist Educational Association

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

LINKS Update - 19th September 2011

2011-09-19T07:03:00.000-07:00

LINKS UPDATE – 19th SEPTEMBER 2011

What's new at Links: Thailand, Pakistan, ecosocialism, 9/11, Sudan, Egypt, GCC, Venezuela, Palestine, Swaziland, Blacks & Comintern, Australian left

* * *
Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10865397643

Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au/ and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@dsp.org.au

*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links.

* * *
Thailand: Why aren’t the generals in jail?
By Giles Ji Ungpakorn
September 19, 2011 -- On the fifth anniversary of the September 19, 2006, military coup in Thailand, General Sonti Boonyaratgalin should be facing charges for staging an illegal coup and tearing up a democratic constitution. General Prayut Junocha should also be facing charges for ordering the killings of nearly 90 unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators last year.

Pakistan: Arrested, tortured for assisting climate change victims
[Urgent: Please send messages calling for the release of Baba Jan and his comrades c/- farooqtariq@hotmail.com. Farooq Tariq will be a guest speaker at the Climate Change Social Change activist conference in Melbourne, over September 30 to October 3.]
By Farooq Tariq

September 15, 2011 -- Baba Jan, a federal committee member of the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP), has been taken from jail ... and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) is torturing him on the name of investigation”, fears the LPP.

Derek Wall: 'Ecosocialism places Marx at the centre of its analysis'
September 10, 2011 -- Economist, activist and writer Derek Wall is a member of the Green Party of England and Wales (and the Green Left grouping within it) and is the author of several books on ecology and politics. Wall will speak via video link at the Climate Change Social Change activist conference in Melbourne,r September 30 to October 3. He maintains the ecosocialist blog Another Green World. He spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Simon Butler about the politics of ecosocialism.

US rulers turned 9/11 outrage into blank cheque for endless war
By Rupen Savoulian
September 17, 2011 -- Near where I live in Sydney, there is a war memorial commemorating all those people from the area who have died serving the Australian armed forces in wars overseas. There are columns for each war Australians have participated in, followed by the names of those who never returned. For instance, there are columns for World War I (1914-1918), World War II (1939-1945), the Korean War (1950-53), and also the "International Campaign against Terrorism (2001– )". Notice that last one? Unlike the others, the war on terror has no end date.

Sudan: Secret police target Communist Party press
September 15, 2011 -- The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed alarm at the growing censorship of opposition newspapers in Sudan. The regime's secret police, the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), halted the distribution of four different opposition newspapers without cause.

Dateline Egypt: Everything up for grabs in ongoing revolt
By Raul Bassi, Cairo
September 11, 2011 -- After the overthrow of Egypt's dictator Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, a new chapter in Egyptian history is being written and its authors are the people themselves. Anything could happen and everything is up for grabs given the profound political, social and economic crisis in which Egypt's neoliberal system finds itself in.

Thailand: Free Somyot Prueksakasemsuk!
September 17, 2011 -- Australia Asia Worker Links reports that jailed trade union activist Somyot Prueksakasemsuk was denied bail on September 12. Somyot is in jail for allegedly insulting the Thai king, under the country's notorious lèse majesté law.

New book: Adam Hanieh's 'Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States'; Modern slaves in the GCC
Long-time friend of Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Adam Hanieh, has just released a book that is essential reading for all those following developments in the Middle East. With Hanieh's permission, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal publishes an interview with the author, conducted by Jadaliyya, and a short excerpt from the book.

Venezuela: Communes in Caracas
September 7, 2011 -- Translated by Owen Richards -- Among the aims of community organisation is that of building the communal state, where power is exercised directly by the people, through self-government, with an economic model of social property and local self-development. Based on this premise, 236 communes and more than 9000 communal councils have been established, according to information from the Ministry of Popular Power for the Communes.

Palestine: Ilan Pappe -- At the UN, the funeral of the two-state solution
By Ilan Pappe
September 12, 2011 -- We are all going to be invited to the funeral of the two-state solution if and when the UN General Assembly announces the acceptance of Palestine as a member state.

Black liberation and the Communist International
By John Riddell
September 11, 2011 -- The influence of the Communist International was decisive in the early 1920s in winning a generation of black revolutionaries to Marxism. On this the historians agree. But what did this influence consist of, and how was it exerted?

Eyewitness Swaziland: The birth of ‘Liberation Friday!’; 'The struggle for a democratic Swaziland continues'
By the Swaziland Democracy Campaign
September 10, 2011 -- Friday, September 9, marked the last day in the second Global Week of Action on Swaziland, culminating in a large protest march in Mbabane that resulted in pitched battles between a heavily armed and aggressive security detachment, and mostly poor workers, students and the unemployed, who gathered legally and peacefully as they have done all week.

On the Australian left: 'Let’s unite behind Green Left Weekly'
September 8, 2011 -- For many years we were regular contributors to Green Left Weekly and proud supporters of the paper. We’ve now decided to resume writing for GLW and we urge other former contributors to consider doing the same.

* * *
Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information, experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

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Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
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'Rage! How Writers Change the World' - by Victor Rikowski

2011-09-18T15:08:00.000-07:00

RAGE! WRITERS CHANGE THE WORLD

This is an essay written by Victor Rikowski when he was a final year student in Music, Creative Writing and English Literature at Bangor University, Wales.

It was written as an assignment for the QXE3089 module, ‘Rage! How Writers Can Change the World’.

Victor’s essay can now be found at The Flow of Ideas website:

Rikowski, V. (2011) Rage! Writers Change the World, An essay written for the QXE3089 module, ‘Rage! How Writers Can Change the World’, Bangor University, Wales, April, online at:
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=articles&sub=Rage%20-%20Victor%20Rikowski

Whilst at Bangor, Victor was in Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, a post-punk folk band. For more on this, see: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Journal of Transformative Education - Call for Papers

2011-09-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

JOURNAL OF TRANSFORMATIVE EDUCATION – CALL FOR PAPERS

The central aim or scope of the journal reflects a keen interest in furthering, through scholarly analysis, inquiry, and dialogue, the fields of transformative learning and transformative education. This work can and does occur within a wide variety of educational contexts, including adult education, education for the professions, continuing education and professional development, higher education, community education, and the workplace, as well as more informal and non-formal settings for adult learning.

We would like to encourage submissions from either practitioners or researchers who are working from a transformative perspective in educational that relate to the aims and scope of the journal. We receive a fair number of submissions now from folks in in-service teacher education, and it would be
wonderful to have adult education more represented in the journal as well.

For more information on the journal I encourage you to peruse the journal's website at http://jtd.sagepub.com/.

For a specific call for papers, go to: http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/31118_JTED_CFP_Oct09(2).pdf.

For Guidelines for Manuscript Submission, go to:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsProdDesc.nav?ct_p=manuscriptSubmission&prodId=Journal201653#tabview=manuscriptSubmission

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom
Disguised as maximum fun’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)

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Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com
Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for Resistance

2011-09-10T11:04:00.000-07:00

THE ASSAULT ON UNIVERSITIES: A MANIFESTO FOR RESISTANCE

The UK White Paper on universities that was published in June contains yet more proposals that will embed the market ever deeper into our educational system through the entrance of private providers and the extension of a logic of financialisation. The deadline for submissions is 20 September and we encourage you to make a response (http://bit.ly/jpLET3).

We would also like to let you know that the manifesto has now been published in a book, 'The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for Resistance' (Pluto Press) which contains a series of short essays identifying the consequences of the reforms as well as possible alternatives. We are sure you will find it both stimulating and useful in your response to the attacks on higher education.

Details of the book are at: http://bit.ly/lKgYdE.

You can also use the book and manifesto as the focus for a meeting, debate or other form of campaign activity where you work.

We would be delighted to help arrange a meeting on your campus and to build up a head of steam against the government's disastrous reforms.

No university is immune and there will certainly be a good audience for a lively and topical meeting.

Please don't hesitate to contact us: hemanifesto@gmail.com (or d.freedman@gold.ac.uk if you have trouble accessing gmail).

With best wishes
Des Freedman
Michael Bailey

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The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
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Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Radical Philosophy New York Conference 2011

2011-09-10T09:11:00.000-07:00

RADICAL PHILOSOPHY NEW YORK CONFERENCE 2011

Radical Philosophy
New York Conference 2011

Columbia University, New York
Friday 21st October 2011, 9am – 7.30p

The event is free but advance registration is essential, to:
radicalphilosophyrsvp@gmail.com

Sessions:
Postcolonial Worlds
Representing Capitalism
Biocapital and Security
Temporalities of Crisis
Politics of Information

Speakers:
Claudia Aradau – RP/International Relations, King's College London
Souleymane Bachir Daigne – Philosophy, Columbia University
Tim Bewes – English, Brown University
Antonia Birnbaum – Philosophy, University of Paris 8
Finn Brunton – Information, University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Marilena Chaui – Philosophy, University of São Paulo
David Cunningham – RP/English, University of Westminster
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui – Workshop on Andean Oral History, Bolivia
David Golumbia – Media, University of Virginia
Harry Harootunian – Literature, Duke University
Esther Leslie – RP/English, Birkbeck, University of London
Rosalind C. Morris – Anthropology, Columbia University
Mark Neocleous – RP/Politics, Brunel University, London
Peter Osborne – RP/Philosophy, Kingston University London
Kristin Ross – Comparative Literature, New York University
Kaushik Sunder Rajan – Anthropology, University of Chicago
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak – University Professor, Columbia University

Programme details and abstracts @: http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/uncategorized/radical-philosophy-conference-2011

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Marxism and Education: International Perspectives on Education for Revolution

2011-09-10T04:22:00.000-07:00

MARXISM AND EDUCATION: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON EDUCATION FOR REVOLUTION

CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS

Special Issue of Cultural Logic
http://clogic.eserver.org/

“Marxism and Education: International Perspectives on Education for Revolution”

Issue Editors: Rich Gibson & E. Wayne Ross

FOCUS OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE
The core issue of our time is the reality of the promise of perpetual war and escalating color-coded inequality met by the potential of a mass, activist, class-conscious movement to transform both daily life and the system of capitalism itself. In this context, schools in the empires of the world are the centripetal organizing points of much of life. While the claim of capitalist schooling is, in the classics, education, “leading out,” the reality is that schools are segregated illusion factories, in some cases human munition factories. Rather than leading out, they encapsulate.

Mainstream educational and social research typically ignores, disconnects, the ineluctable relationships of what is in fact capitalist schooling, class war, imperialist war, and the development of varying forms of corporate states around the world.

At issue, of course, is: What to do?

The long view, either in philosophy or social practice is revolution as things must change, and they will.

Connecting the long view to what must also be a long slog necessarily involves a careful look at existing local, national, and international conditions; working out tactics and strategies that all can understand, none taken apart from a grand strategy of equality and justice.

GUIDELINES
The editors are seeking manuscripts that explore education for revolution and are informed by Marxist perspectives. We are particularly interested in manuscripts that explore and examine:

* local/regional contexts and educational activism linked to global anti-capitalist movements;
* broad foundational and historical themes related to education and revolution (e.g., philosophy, social movements, community organizing, literacy, popular education, etc.); and
* organizational and practitioner perspectives.

The editors are also interested in reviews of books, film, and other media related to education for revolution.

Article manuscripts should be approximately 5,000-10,000 words in length (20-40 pages), although we will consider manuscripts of varying lengths. The editors prefer that manuscripts be prepared using either APA or Chicago styles. Manuscripts should be submitted as email attachments (Microsoft Word or RTF) to the both editors: rgibson@pipeline.com and wayne.ross@ubc.ca.

Authors interested in submitting manuscripts should email manuscript title and a brief description to the editors by December 1, 2011. Final manuscripts are due April 1, 2012.

ABOUT CULTURAL LOGIC
Cultural Logic, which has been online since 1997, is a non-profit, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal that publishes essays, interviews, poetry, and reviews (books, films, and other media) by writers working in the Marxist tradition.

E. Wayne Ross
http://www.ewayneross.net/
wayne.ross@mac.com

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Capitorg: Education and the Constitution of the Human in Contemporary Society

2011-09-08T15:43:00.001-07:00

CAPITORG: EDUCATION AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

This paper is my first writing, relating to my first public appearance (apart from seminars / lectures with my own students), for three years – apart from the eulogy for my father’s funeral (written on 21st February 2009). Furthermore, Dublin was only my second trip outside the UK in 32 years; so in many respects it was something special for me. Thus: it felt a bit like the first leg of a ‘comeback’ tour!

I would like to thank the people in the Praxis & Pedagogy group at The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCam) in Dublin for inviting me (especially Glenn Loughran). They were wonderful hosts.

The paper was completed in London at breakneck speed (during the ‘marking madness’ season) on 23rd May 2011, and was delivered to an audience at The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, in Dublin, on 25th May. It was revised on 27th May, went through further editing and proof reading on 6-7th September, and was finally posted to The Flow of Ideas on 8th September 2011.

The full reference and link to the paper is:

Rikowski, G. (2011) Capitorg: Education and the Constitution of the Human in Contemporary Society, A paper prepared for the Praxis & Pedagogy Research Seminar, The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM), Dublin, Ireland, 25th May 2011, available online at ‘The Flow of Ideas’: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Capitorg

Note: the paper reads better if you click onto the ‘Print Friendly’ option at the end of the page.

The tremendous flyer for the event can be viewed at: http://www.gradcam.ie/glenn_rikowski.pdf

Praxis and Pedagogy

The group is convened by Glenn Loughran, artist, activist, and PhD Scholar at the NCAD and GradCAM. Other members include John Buckley (NCAD/GradCAM), Edia Connole (NCAD/GradCAM), Susan Gill (DIT/GradCAM) and Thomas McGraw-Lewis (DIT/GradCAM).

The group convenes Wednesdays bi-weekly.

For more information on joining the Praxis & Pedagogy seminar series, and/or related activities see http://www.gradcam.ie/, or email the group at praxis@gradcam.ie

Praxis & Pedagogy is at: http://praxispamphlet.wordpress.com/

Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

School Culture and Fear of a Blank Planet - by Dishi Phillips

2011-09-04T14:21:00.000-07:00

SCHOOL CULTURE AND ‘FEAR OF A BLANK PLANET’ – BY DISHI PHILLIPS

This is an essay written by Dishi Phillips when she was a final year student in Education Studies at the University of Northampton.

It was written as an assignment for the Education, Culture & Society module (EDU3004) that Dishi studied during the 2010-2011 academic year.

Dishi’s essay can now be found at The Flow of Ideas website:

Phillips, D. (2011) School Culture and Fear of a Blank Planet, an essay written for EDU3004 ‘Education, Culture and Society’, Education Studies, School of Education, University of Northampton, 10th January, online at ‘The Flow of Ideas’: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=contributions&sub=School%20Culture%20and%20Fear%20of%20a%20Blank%20Planet%20-%20Dishi%20Phillips

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
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The Frankfurt School and Marxist-Humanism

2011-08-30T08:25:00.000-07:00

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND MARXIST-HUMANISM

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND MARXIST-HUMANISM: RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA’S DIALOGUE WITH HERBERT MARCUSE AND ERICH FROMM AS A WINDOW ON MARXISM IN AMERICA

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2011
2:00-4:00 PM
Community Room A, Westside Pavilion, Los Angeles
(Westside Pavilion is at Pico & Westwood Boulevards; Community Room A is on east side of the mall, third floor, behind food court; 3 hrs. free parking in mall lot)

Speakers:
Kevin Anderson, author of Marx at the Margins
Kelly Green, student activist

Changes in technology and in the overall structure of modern capitalism – as well as debates over dialectics -- were at the center of an important dialogue among Marxists in the U.S. The discussion took place between the Marxist-Humanist and feminist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya and the philosopher Herbert Marcuse and the social psychologist Erich Fromm, both formerly of the Frankfurt School. Their dialogue is manifested in books such as Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, Fromm’s Marx’s Concept of Man, and Dunayevskaya’s Philosophy and Revolution, and in their correspondence, which is to be published in book form next year.

Suggested readings:
1. Kevin Anderson, “A Preliminary Exploration of the Dunayevskaya-Marcuse Dialogue (with excerpts from their correspondence and comments by Douglas Kellner): http://www.kevin-anderson.com/preliminary-exploration-dunayevskayamarcuse-dialogue-1954-79-excerpts-correspondence-comments-douglas-kellner/
2. Kelly Green, “Technology, Labor, and the Transcendence of Capital: Revisiting the Marcuse-Dunayevskaya Debate”, in: http://www.usmarxisthumanists.org/articles/technology-labor-transcendence-capital-revisiting-marcusedunayevskaya-debate-kelly-green/
3. Raya Dunayevskaya, “The ‘Automaton’ and the Worker,” in Philosophy and Revolution, pp. 68-76
4. Herbert Marcuse, “The New Forms of Control,” Ch. 1 of One-Dimensional Man, at: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/one-dimensional-man/ch01.htm

Future meeting (same time and location):
October 8 (date tentative): On the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War: Marx’s writings on race, class, and slavery before and during the Civil War.

Sponsored by West Coast Marxist-Humanists http://www.usmarxisthumanists.org/
Mail to: arise@usmarxisthumanists.org

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All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

New Articles and Features from U.S. Marxist-Humanists - Update 28th August 2011

2011-08-29T01:28:00.000-07:00

NEW ARTICLES AND FEATURES FROM U.S. MARXIST-HUMANISTS – UPDATE 28th AUGUST 2011

http://www.usmarxisthumanists.org/

AUGUST 2011

1. DAVID BLACK, “‘NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE’ AND BLOOD AND FLAMES ON ENGLAND’S STREETS: 1981, 1985 AND 2011” -- The explosion of rage and revolt on the streets of British cities, recalls the dramatic “uprisings” of the 1980s. The author, a resident of the riot-hit London Borough of Haringey, looks at what has changed and why it matters.

2. BA KARANG, “OSLO MASSACRE AND THE ‘REASONING’ OF THE FAR RIGHT” -- In the aftermath of the Massacre in Norway, Norwegian-African Ba Karang examines the ideological strands of the Far Right in the thinking of Anders Breivik.

3. PETER HUDIS, “COMMENTS ON ‘WHAT MORE COULD WE WANT OF OURSELVES!’, JACQUELINE ROSE’S REVIEW OF THE LETTERS OF ROSA LUXEMBURG” -- In responding to Rose’s review in London Review of Books: http://www.usmarxisthumanists.org/books/the-letters-of-rosa-luxemburg/ Hudis discusses Luxemburg’s differences with Lenin, her writings on imperialism and indigenous communal social forms, and her worldview as both “open” and “single-minded.” Originally appeared on the Verso Books authors’ blog, June 21, 2011.

4. DALE PARSONS, “LABOR AT THE CROSSROADS” -- The capitulation on the part of Obama and the Democrats to the far-Right agenda of the Republicans in the latest battle over raising the deficit ceiling raises the issue of whether capitalism is undermining its own conditions of existence.

5. KELLY GREEN, “TECHNOLOGY, LABOR, AND THE TRANSCENDENCE OF CAPITAL: REVISITING THE MARCUSE-DUNAYEVSKAYA DEBATE” -- In the 1960s and 1970s, Herbert Marcuse and Raya Dunayevskaya developed differing responses to the new stage of capitalist production represented by automation.

6. ELI MESSINGER, “REVIEW OF RICHARD GREEMAN’S BEWARE OF VEGETARIAN SHARKS” –Veteran socialist Greeman’s book collects his essays on the radical movement, as well as biographical and theoretical reflections.

7. ELI MESSINGER, “REVIEW OF SLAVOJ ZIZEK ET AL., LENIN RELOADED” -- This review of one of the few recent books devoted to Lenin’s thought – with much discussion of dialectics -- is particularly timely now that Lenin Reloaded is appearing in Spanish, Turkish, and other languages.

8. KHALFANI MALIK KHALDUN, “BURIED ALIVE INSIDE INDIANA SCU UNIT: A LOOK AT SUGGESTIONS TO MODIFY CURRENT CONDITIONS AND CREATE A MORE CONDUCIVE ENVIRONMENT” -- This piece by political prisoner Khalfani Malik Khaldun, speaks to the issues that have helped foment the hunger strike of prisoners in Pelican Bay, California, as well as elsewhere in California. Now is the time to demonstrate support for those wrongly incarcerated and suffering the terrible abuses of the U.S. criminal injustice system.

9. RINITA MAZUMDAR AND HEATHER TOMANOVSKY, “DIALOGUE ON MARX, GENDER, KINSHIP, AND HUMAN EMANCIPATION” -- Dialogue on Tomanovsky’s essay, “Marx, Gender, and Human Emancipation,” which originally appeared on this website: http://www.usmarxisthumanists.org/articles/marx-gender-and-human-emancipation-%E2%80%93-by-heather-tomanovsky/

10. STEVEN COLATRELLA AND PETER HUDIS, DIALOGUE ON MARX’S CRITIQUE OF THE GOTHA PROGRAM – Dialogue over Hudis’s essay on “Directly and Indirectly Social Labor: What Kind of Human Relations Can Transcend Capitalism?” which appears on this website: http://www.usmarxisthumanists.org/articles/directly-and-indirectly-social-labor-what-kind-of-human-relations-can-transcend-capitalism-by-peter-hudis/

11. DAVID BLACK, “ADORNO FOR REVOLUTIONARIES?” -- In Adorno for Revolutionaries Ben Watson attempts to show how Theodore Adorno, starting with the commodity form, outlined a revolutionary musicology, a passageway between subjective feeling and objective conditions. In extending the analysis beyond the confines of ‘highbrow’ classical music Watson aims to ‘detonate the explosive core of Adorno's method’.

12. PETER HUDIS, “READING ROSA” – Interview with Hudis on The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg with Red Pepper (London)

13. THE LETTERS OF ROSA LUXEMBURG, EDITED BY ANNELIES LASCHITZA, GEORG ADLER AND PETER HUDIS, TRANSLATED BY GEORGE SHRIVER (VERSO 2011) -- Links to reviews in New Politics and elsewhere

14. MARX AT THE MARGINS: ON NATIONALISM, ETHNICITY, AND NON-WESTERN SOCIETIES, BY KEVIN ANDERSON

Links to reviews in Le Monde Diplomatique, Counterfire, Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch, and elsewhere.

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

1. KEVIN ANDERSON, “ARAB REVOLUTIONS AT THE CROSSROADS” – The revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and the uprising in Libya have exhibited a post-Islamist and post-nationalist character. After challenging both the political and the economic order, they face dangers from old forces like the military and the Islamists (Egypt) or of violent repression (Libya).

2. PETER HUDIS, “THE LIFE, LETTERS, & LEGACY OF ROSA LUXEMBURG – Video of a presentation at a symposium marking the publication on the Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, New York University Law School, March 14, 2011

THE SITE ALSO INCLUDES OTHER ARTICLES FROM THE PAST DECADE BY U. S. MARXIST-HUMANISTS AND THEIR INTERNATIONAL COLLEAGUES.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Beach Beneath the Street

2011-08-23T02:07:00.000-07:00

THE BEACH BENEATH THE STREET: THE EVERYDAY LIFE AND GLORIOUS TIMES OF THE SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL

BY MCKENZIE WARK

PUBLISHED: 22 AUGUST 2011

"The lack of politicisation in the recent riots around Britain can be frustrating to those steeped in French theory, those who see the riot as what Martin Luther King described as the “language of the unheard”. But London 2011 is quite evidently not Paris 1968. A new book about the ideas that led to that moment in Paris sheds light on quite how different the two countries’ traditions are…

Wark has done us a great favour by explaining how situationist ideas (which included a proto-internet, an information super-network free of government control) still represent the sharpest and most surprisingly prescient critiques of the contemporary city." Edwin Heathcote, FINANCIAL TIMES
-----------------------------------

EVENTS:

August 23, 2011, 8.00pm
Cafe OTO
18—22 Ashwin street, Dalston
London E8 3DL UK

McKenzie Wark appears at cafe OTO to talk about his book on the life and times of the Situationist International, The Beach Beneath the Street.
For more information: http://www.versobooks.com/events/191-the-beach-beneath-the-street-at-cafe-oto

August 24, 2011, 7.00pm
Housmans
5 Caledonian Road , King's Cross
London N1 9DX

McKenzie Wark’s new book on the subject The Beach Beneath the Street: The Glorious Times of the Situationist International, explores anew the history of the movement and connects the Situationist’s work to new practices in communication, built form, and everyday life.
For more information: http://www.versobooks.com/events/196-the-glorious-times-of-the-situationist-international

August 25, 2011, 7.00pm
Whitechapel Gallery
77-82 Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX UK

Writer McKenzie Wark explores the diversity of the Situationist International in his new book The Beach Beneath the Street, re-reading their history in the light of our contemporary experience of communications, architecture, and everyday life.
For more information: http://www.versobooks.com/events/188-the-beach-beneath-the-street-new-new-babylon
-----------------------------------
McKenzie Wark’s history of the Situationist International writes against twenty-first century boredom with art and politics, in which both have ‘ceased to be modern, and finding it too passé to be postmodern… is now merely contemporary.’ Creating a new kind of historiography from the group’s legendary oeuvre, Wark re-presents the SI’s history in light of contemporary experiences to shake us out of our boredom and re-kindle the explosive potential of everyday life.

Over 50 years after the Situationist International appeared, its legacy of Marxism mixed with 20th century European artistic avant-garde continues to influence activists, artists and theorists. From the Invisible Committee’s bestselling The Coming Insurrection to Iain Sinclair’s psychogeographic explorations, the work of the Situationists echoes through twenty-first century thought. Yet, despite the rich possibilities, its breadth, diversity, and potential impact are still largely unexplored. Wark’s volume is a radical re-imagining of the Situationist legacy, which reconnects their work to new practices in communication, architecture, and everyday life.

Arguing that ‘Situations are temporary, singular unities of space and time… They call for a different kind of remembering,’ Wark takes readers on a tour of the movement from bohemian after-hours drinks in the cellars of 1950s St. Germain-des-Prés to the mythical beach ‘sous les pavès’ of the explosive days of May ’68.

Blending history and narrative, biography and literature, Wark traces the group’s development as an ensemble creation, rather than the brainchild of its most famous member, Guy Debord. Roaming through Europe and the lives of those who made up the movement – including Constant, Asger Jorn, Michèle Bernstein, Alex Trocchi and Jacqueline De Jong – Wark uncovers an international movement riven with conflicting passions, expanding the gaze beyond the Paris coterie.

Taking up Guy Debord’s famous injunction, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” Wark delves into the SI’s diverse body of work to re-present the legendary Situationists in a way that ignites the possibility of resistance for our time. Wark puts the Situationist experiments into context for twenty-first century struggles, and in doing so, suggests that while the Situationists failed to escape the world of twentieth-century spectacle, there might still be hope for us to escape the twenty-first century, while we still can.

The book jacket is also a fold out poster, Totality for Beginners. A collaborative graphic essay, the beautifully rendered poster employs text selected by McKenzie Wark with composition and drawings by Kevin C. Pyle
-----------------------------------
PRAISE FOR THE HACKER MANIFESTO

“This is a perceptive, provocative study, packed to the seams with acute analysis.” Terry Eagleton, NATION

“Wark’s book challenges the new regime of property relations with all the epigrammatic vitality, conceptual innovation, and revolutionary enthusiasm of the great manifestos.” Michael Hardt, co-author of EMPIRE

“Infuriating and inspiring in turn, A Hacker Manifesto will spawn a thousand theses, and just maybe spawn change.” Mike Holderness, NEW SCIENTIST

“A Hacker Manifesto will yield some provocative ideas and real challenges to a world in which everything is commodified.” Eric J. Iannelli, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
-----------------------------------
MCKENZIE WARK is the author of A HACKER MANIFESTO, GAMER THEORY, 50 YEARS OF RECUPERATION OF THE SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL and various other books. He teaches at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York City.
-----------------------------------
ISBN: 978 1 84467 720 7 / $26.95 / £14.99 / $33.50CAN / Hardback / 224 pages
-----------------------------------
For a look into MCKENZIE WARK work visit:
http://vectorsjournal.org/issues/7/totality/

For more information about THE BEACH BENEATH THE STREET or to buy the book visit:
http://www.versobooks.com/books/980-the-beach-beneath-the-street
-----------------------------------
Visit Verso’s website for information on our upcoming events, new reviews and publications and special offers:http://www.versobooks.com

Become a fan of Verso on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Verso-Books/205847279448577

And get updates on Twitter - @VersoBooks
http://twitter.com/VersoBooks

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom
Disguised as maximum fun’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Two More Reviews of 'Marx and Education' by Jean Anyon - Patrick Ainley, and Adam Sanchez

2011-08-17T01:47:00.000-07:00

TWO MORE REVIEWS OF ‘MARX AND EDUCATION’ BY JEAN ANYON – PATRICK AINLEY, AND ADAM SANCHEZ

Patrick Ainley reviews Jean Anyon’s ‘Marx and Education’ (Routledge, 2011) in the latest update to the Marx & Philosophy Society Review of Books. See: http://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviewofbooks/reviews/2011/366

Adam Sanchez also reviews ‘Marx and Education’ by Jean Anyon in the latest issue (No.78) of International Socialist Review. See Sanchez’s review, Radical education theory 101, at: http://www.isreview.org/issues/78/rev-marxeducation.shtml

In my view, both of these reviews rather skate over, or ignore, many of the glaring faults in Anyon’s book. However, I think as many people as possible should read it; in that way, it might become more apparent regarding what the real tasks are for Marxist educational theory.

The obsession with Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis’ Schooling in Capitalist America (1976) continues. Of course, it is a classic work of Marxist educational theory, and continues to be useful. However, I would like to think that Marxists have made some progress in their thinking on education since the seminal work of Bowles and Gintis. See Sarah Knopp’s review, What do schools produce? of the newly-republished classic at: http://www.isreview.org/issues/78/featrev-schooling.shtml

Glenn Rikowski

All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com/
Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Debt and the Commons Three-Day Seminar

2011-08-16T15:32:00.000-07:00

DEBT AND THE COMMONS THREE-DAY SEMINAR

August 18, 19, and 20 – Three-Day Seminar on Debt & the Commons – with Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis, David Graeber

CONTENTS:
0. About the Seminar
1. Longer Introduction
2. Seminar Schedule
3. A Bibliography
_____________________________

0. About the Seminar

When: Thursday, Friday, Saturday / August 18,19,20
Who: Free (please rsvp, details below)
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor, New York City
What: 3 Day Seminar with Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis, David Graeber

Beyond Good and Evil Commons is a three day seminar focusing on debt, economic crisis and the production of commons

The seminar organizes itself with and around the work of three individuals: Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis, and David Graeber

It will take the shape of 2 sessions per day, each session building around a talk by Silvia, George, and/or David and followed by collective discussions.

It is being organized in the spirit of collective inquiry inspired particularly by recent anti-debt organizing in NYC but draws also from a number of international contexts in which new political cultures have developed to challenge the command of money, austerity and debt in the crisis. Moreover, it builds off previous seminars organized in the space with friends over the last years.

The idea is, at least partially, to develop and test political concepts that help us better orient our understanding of these new political cultures but also aid us in further developing our own. Our starting point is an attempt to bring together a politics through both an analysis of debt anthropologically and an anti-capitalist perspective on the commons.

The hope is to achieve some focus, to sharpen our terminologies and analytical tools, to direct our collective intelligence toward a new orientation of existing organizing efforts and guide new interventions as well, to better know what, how and with whom. It is a difficult and elusive hope. It also relies on enough of us approaching the seminar with the idea of collectively enacting an enlarged framework for political action (which implicates many different practices).

We know that many on our list also live in different parts of the world. For this reason, we have put together a website with many readings as a resource. We also hope to be able to put some recordings from the presentations for those who are interested in following or connecting with this seminar. We also make the effort to articulate the motivations for the inquiry in the hopes that we can also build upon one another's efforts.

For those planning to attend, we ask you to please RSVP, as it will allow us to better prepare.

You can do so by writing to seminars [the at sign] 16beavergroup.org with rsvp in subject line.

The event is free, but we will be making a daily collection to cover basic expenses.

_____________________________

1. Longer Introduction

Molecular Investigations / Seminars

This Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, we will continue a collective journey and experiment.

Over the last years, we have tried to organize with friends collective seminars (e.g., Continental Drift, Connective Mutations, Something Becomes Visible) which give participants an opportunity to have a rich intellectual experience attempting to raise critical questions about how we live, think, struggle - in an open, autonomous, non-institutional, non-commodified, non-authored situation. Those seminars have attempted to cross-weave intellectual efforts with activist and artistic practices. Moreover, rather than merely become attempts to represent ideas, knowledge, or knowingness, the seminars have been a part of an effort to situate and suggest, through the work of specific individuals, where we may devote further work collectively in the coming years. And to build potential solidarities across disciplines, practices, and approaches.

At their best, they have been like small, concise, intellectual bombs detonated carefully, collectively, not far from Wall Street, with all intents to illuminate the cracks in the edifices of those buildings, and on the ground, on the very terrain we cohabit. They have been suggestions for paths of individual, collective projects, militant investigations: artistic, intellectual, political, economic, activistic, and beyond.

In a period which has seen the neoliberal machine produce a seemingly invincible force of financialization, mega-gentrification, and militarization: together with a multitude of friends and contributors, we built up a counter-image and research of those aforementioned cracks. We have done this collectively, autonomously, and as a direct counter-force to the commodification and competitiveness that has all too often marked intellectuality in these same times. In doing so, we have placed ourselves, along with many other initiatives emerging globally, into a new situation, for the generation and maintenance of critical discourses, analyses, and practices.

An important struggle today is to realize how these practices, whether artistic, intellectual, or otherwise can most effectively combat the emergent paradigms of racism, militarization, and a more formulated, articulated war by the wealthiest elite and corporate interests on the very fabric of human and planetary reproduction.

For some people, six years ago, an introduction like this may have appeared as potentially catastrophic (or utopian), alarmist, or delirious.

In the midst of the recent insurrections in London, massive revolts against forced austerity measures in Spain, Greece, and throughout Europe, revolutionary resistance in North Africa and the Middle East, we find ourselves having to acknowledge that these efforts of collective research have not only been substantiated, but today ask how can they conjoin to actions, global political processes unfolding in our midst.

Today, the cracks appear as gaping holes, through which one of the most radical transformations of the world irrupts before our eyes.

Living amidst the civil war in Lebanon, a friend of the space once remarked that there is no official day, where everyone is notified that a civil war has commenced. It begins as a small series of loosely related events, which only later, can be reconstructed as a civil war with precise dates of commencement and end.

'Returning to Normal life'?

How can one speak of returning to 'normal life' in the midst of a post-nuclear Japan? Where do we draw the limits of solidarity with that reality? Is the solidarity expressed as far as the radioactivity travels? Or will it end with the struggle to end nuclear plants or nuclear arms in every country? How can one speak of returning to 'normal life' in the midst of this historic transfer of common wealth to private banks and the continued intransigence on the part of those who govern (and in most cases, even their opposition parties) in confronting (rather than engendering) growing inequalities, processes of enclosure, social and ecological destruction? Will the outrage end when each particular group, being effected by cuts, saves a small piece of the pie to continue doing what they were before with even less resources? Will it end with a broad 'new deal' or 'social contract' as even many of the staunchest critics of neoliberalism hope?

Or can we imagine and build toward another horizon of struggle beyond the specificity of resisting nuclear technology or local/national austerity measures tied to financial speculation and crimes? How to connect to already occurring processes of revolt or production of commons? And can the efforts to build upon such processes of resistance be done without addressing the basic terms upon which we reproduce our lives?

The Proposal

The proposal is to collectively approach two notions which have valence in contemporary movements but call for further interrogation:

The Commons

There has been a great resurgence over the last decade or more in thinking about and elaborating the notion of the commons. As George Caffentzis writes: "The ‘commons’ has undergone a remarkable transformation in the last fifteen years, from a word referring rather archaically to a grassy square in the centre of New England towns to one variously used by real estate developers, ‘free software’ programmers, ecological activists and peasant revolutionaries to describe very different, indeed conflicting, purposes and realities., ... "What accounts for this resurgence? What are the merits of this concept and its potential dangers as 'two streams, coming from opposing perspectives' begin to utilize and mobilize it?”

In exploring the prospects for a commons that is resistant to capitalism, one key position of this seminar, and it is a position, time and again, emphasized by Silvia Federici's work, is the incorporation of basic insights of feminist critique concerning the centrality of reproduction within any social, economic, or political regime. Moreover, her consistent attention to women's struggles to maintain spaces which are common – engender communal forms of life and social reproduction (historically and today), especially in impoverished parts of the world – points us to the necessity of learning from and using these experiences to better understand what resistance to capitalism can mean.

Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis have been two very important figures in conceptualizing and interrogating this notion of the commons as well as historic and contemporary processes of enclosures. In addition to their own writings, their work within the Midnight Notes collective has been an inspiration for sustained, collective, engaged research outside of the disciplining / enclosing that can happen in the university or academy. With their collaborators, they have offered some of the most decisive, direct, historically and geographically expanded account of capitalist accumulation and struggles of resistance. Their political commitments have sometimes overshadowed their theoretical contributions, and this seminar will be an opportunity to give space to those contributions and begin what we hope will be a longer inquiry together with them.

Debt

Whether it is through the imposition of or the resistance to debt, processes from above or below, one can see that debt obligations have been a central figure of political considerations.

From student debt strikes

To millions losing their homes or being foreclosed upon; from financial instruments imposed upon countries underwriting new enclosures; to the dismantling of social provisions and justifying politically motivated austerity measures, which rely upon seemingly objective 'hard' economic 'realities': debt is the terrain upon which various actors and discourses take shape.

But can an anthropological inquiry into debt help us view these processes and struggles in a new light? Can such an inquiry help us build upon contemporary struggles against debt?

David Graeber is among other things, an anarchist, a thinker, an anthropologist, and an activist. His intellectual contributions have been timely, pertinent, useful, and yet antagonistic to the established norms pertaining to each of those three terms. Thus one could speculate, under the regime of capitalist realism, his contributions would be characterized as 'historical', 'inapplicable', 'unrealistic'; but somehow this has not been the case. David's accessible approach to writing, as well as his insistence to situate his work in places where struggle takes place, has made his work resilient to dismissal. His current book entitled 'Debt: The First 5000 Years' is more than a theorization of debt: it is also a trenchant treatise exposing tangible limitations of imagination and language for describing the range of human relations existing historically and today. As David writes:

"This book is a history of debt, then, but it also uses that history as a way to ask fundamental questions about what human beings and human society are or could be like—what we actually do owe each other, what it even means to ask that question. As a result, the book begins by attempting to puncture a series of myths—not only the Myth of Barter, which is taken up in the first chapter, but also rival myths about primordial debts to the gods, or to the state—that in one way or another form the basis of our common-sense assumptions about the nature of economy and society. In that common-sense view, the State and the Market tower above all else as diametrically opposed principles. Historical reality reveals, however, that they were born together and have always been
intertwined. The one thing that all these misconceptions have in common, we will find, is that they tend to reduce all human relations to exchange, as if our ties to society, even to the cosmos itself, can be imagined in the same terms as a business deal. This leads to another question: If not exchange, then what?"

One Goal

A hope is, that for these three days, we could give our energies to these three individuals and one another. And construct together a kind of machine which could collectively take us to the center of two critical nodes in perceiving, understanding, and struggling with/against our contemporary reality.

A short parting note on London and beyond:

In 2005, with the revolts in Paris, pundits could characterize and particularize those revolts as disaffected and disenfranchised youth or even worse dismiss them by mobilizing xenophobic fears. There never was room for entertaining the racist readings of those events. And the events in Norway this summer further clarify where such a critique is coming from and headed. But the events in Paris still left many wondering what was the political horizon or meaning of those revolts.

In the summer of 2011, any analysis of events, like those in London unfolding these last days, cannot but be read as part of a disarticulated yet emerging globalized picture of revolt against 'capital', capitalists, and the various state forms that have advocated on their behalf.

Thus, this seminar takes place in the midst of these events and struggles. Thus, there is an additional hope that collectively we can consider what global solidarity can look like, unfolding across different modes of doing, producing, and thinking in light of such events.

The seminar has been organized with and by Silvia, George, David, 16 Beaver Group, This Is Forever, and various individuals affiliated and not affiliated with other spaces and initiatives in New York.

_____________________________

2. Schedule

THURSDAY - August 18
Doors open at 4:00

Session 1
4:30 - 6:45 Silvia / George
light food
Session 2
7:15 - 9:30 David

FRIDAY, August 19th
Doors open at 4:00

Session 3
4:30 - 6:45 Silvia / George
light food
Session 4
7:15 - 9:30 David

SATURDAY, August 20th
Doors open at 1:00

Session 5
2:00 - 4:30 David
light food
Session 6
5:00 - 7:30 Silvia / George
food

Please note:
This schedule is a script of what we have planned. The actual seminar times and order may be altered according to how things unfold. Best place to follow changes or updates will be on our website for the seminar: http://www.16beavergroup.org/silvia_george_david/

_____________________________

3. The Bibliography

A full and updated bibliography can be found on the seminar website with additional texts: http://www.16beavergroup.org/silvia_george_david/

Below, we have listed a shorter selection of readings:

-\ \ \ Midnight Notes
The New Enclosures n.10: http://www.midnightnotes.org/newenclos.ht

-\ \ \ Silvia Federici
Feminism And the Politics of the Commons: http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/federici_feminism_politics_commons.pdf

-\ \ \ George Caffentzis
The Future of 'the Commons': Neoliberalism's 'Plan B' or the Original Disaccumulation of Capital?
http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/caffentzis_future_commons.pdf

-\ \ \ David Graeber
Debt: The First Five Thousand Years (overview from Mute 2009): http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/graeber_overview_mute.pdf

All from DEBT, THE FIRST 5, 000 YEARS

On the Experience of Moral Confusion: http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/graeber_debt_chapter_1.pdf

A Brief Treatise on the Moral Grounds of Economic Relations: http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/graeber_debt_chapter_5.pdf

1971–The Beginning of Something Yet to Be Determined: http://sduk.us/silvia_george_david/graeber_debt_chapter_12.pdf

______________________________________

16 Beaver Group
16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10004

For directions/subscriptions/info visit: http://www.16beavergroup.org/

TRAINS:
4,5 Bowling Green
2,3 Wall Street
J,Z Broad Street
1,9 South Ferry
R Whitehall

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Maximum levels of boredom
Disguised as maximum fun’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowsk i
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com/

An International Examination of Teacher Education: Exposing and Resisting the Neoliberal Agenda - JCEPS Special Issue + Call for Papers

2011-08-10T17:02:00.001-07:00

AN INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATION OF TEACHER EDUCATION: EXPOSING AND RESISTING THE NEOLIBERAL AGENDA – JCEPS SPECIAL ISSUE + CALL FOR PAPERS

The Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies
Special Issue: Spring 2012
An International Examination of Teacher Education: Exposing and Resisting the Neoliberal Agenda
Chief Editor: Professor Dave Hill, Chief/Managing Editor and Founding Editor, Professor Dave Hill, Professor Peter L. McLaren Editor, North America, Professor Pablo Gentili Editor, Latin America

Guest Editors: Dr. Brad Porfilio, Lewis University & Dr. Julie Gorlewski, SUNY at New Paltz

In recent decades, the transnational capitalist class has wielded power and influence to gain control over elements of social life that were once considered vital domains to fostering the social welfare of global citizens. Affected public domains include natural resources, health care, prisons, transportation, post-catastrophe restoration, and education. The chief linchpin in the elite’s corporatization over social affairs is its effective propaganda campaign to inculcate the global community to believe that neoliberal capitalism ameliorates rather than devastates humanity. According to political pundits, free-market academics, and corporate leaders, economic prosperity and improvements in the social world emanate from “unregulated or free markets, the withering away of the state as government’s role in regulating businesses and funding social services are either eliminated or privatized, and encouraging individuals to become self-interested entrepreneurs” (Hursh, 2011).

Since neoliberalism is a term rarely uttered is most dominant (mainstream) media outlets, most citizens are not cognizant of how it is linked to many deleterious economic and social developments at today’s historical juncture, such as massive unemployment, the swelling of home foreclosures, homelessness, militarism, school closings, maldistribution of wealth, and environmental degradation (Hill, 2008; Hursh, 2011; McLaren, 2007; Ross & Gibson, 2007; Scipes, 2009). Equally important, many global citizens fail to recognize how the transitional elite have spawned a McCarthy-like witch hunt to eliminate academics, policies, and programs that have the potential to engage citizens in a critical examination of what is responsible for today’s increasingly stark social world – as well as what steps are necessary to radically transform it.

In this special issue of The Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies, we call on progressive scholars from across the globe to provide empirical research, conceptual analysis, and theoretical insights in relation to how corporate policies, practices, and imperatives are structuring life in schools of education. Since the impact of neoliberal capitalism on programs, policies, relationships, and pedagogies in schools of education is not uniform, as local histories and politics structure how macro-forces come to impact people in local contexts (Gruenwell (2003), the issue will be integral in understanding and confronting the social actors and constitute forces gutting the humanizing nature of education. Additionally, we call on critical scholars and pedagogues who have found emancipatory fissures amid corporatized schools of education to share policies, pedagogies, and cultural work that have the potency promote critical forms of education, democratic relationships, and peace, equity and social justice across the globe.

Manuscripts are due by December 1, 2011 and should be submitted as email attachments to porfilio16@aol.com and gorlewsj@newpaltz.edu

Papers submitted for publication should be between 5,000 and 8000 words long. While we would hope that papers would be submitted in accordance with the Harvard Referencing Style, we do accept those written in any commonly accepted academic style, as long as the style is consistent throughout the paper.

Please direct all inquires about this special issue to the guest editors at Porfilio16@aol.com and gorlewsj@newpaltz.edu

The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies: http://www.jceps.com

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com/

International Professional Development Association Conference 2011

2011-08-09T07:14:00.000-07:00

INTERNATIONAL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE 2011

IPDA 2011 International Conference
Aston Conference Centre, Aston University,
Birmingham, UK

Learning: a Public Good or a Private Commodity?

November 25th – 26th 2011

Welcome to the professional development conference of the year. We are in Birmingham UK again for two days of stimulating debate, high quality research reports, critical discussion and to share ideas, issues and concerns with colleagues from many countries.

Our conference title reflects widespread international interest in discussing the values and purposes of individuals and organisations involved in professional formation and learning at a time of shifting ideologies and value change.

The conference aims to develop a culture of openness, trust and critical friendship amongst IPDA members. Our international keynote speakers will address the conference themes and participants will have the opportunity to follow up issues and challenges in workshops and roundtable discussions.

By the end of the conference we intend to have reportable outcomes that can be developed and acted upon through regional seminars, website interaction and personal networking.

Conference sub themes are:

• The nature and role of learning communities
• Teaching schools: Implications for CPD
• Top Down or Bottom Up? The policy/practice interface
• Values, CPD and the concepts of effectiveness and sustained improvement
• The role of Higher Education in CPD

IPDA 2011 Conference Programme

Friday 26th November

0930- 1000: Registration

1000- 1005: Welcome by IPDA Chair, Cliff Jones

1005- 1100: Formal Opening of Conference and First Keynote Address

Glenn Rikowski, Senior Lecturer, University of Northampton *

Session Chair: Helen Mitchell

1100- 1130: Coffee/Tea Break

1130- 1300: Research Papers: Session 1

1300- 1400: Lunch

1400- 1445: Second Keynote Address

Tony Finn, Chief Executive of the General Teaching Council for Scotland

Session Chair: Jim O’Brien

1445-1530: Round Table Responses

1530-1600: Coffee/Tea Break

1600-1700: Research Papers: Session 2

1700-1800: The IPDA Trial

This year the charge is: ‘Educators stand accused of forgetting that they are shaping the values of society’

1930: Conference Dinner followed by presentation of IPDA Prizes & Fellowships

Saturday 26th November 2011

0915- 1000: Third Keynote Address

Jackie Main, Director of Learning and Development, Kaplan International Colleges

Session Chair: Cliff Jones

1000 – 1030: Keynote related Workshop

1030- 1100: Coffee/Tea Break

1100–1200: Research Papers: Session 3

1200–1330: Research Papers and Workshops: Session 4

1330-1415: Lunch

1415-1515: Parallel Seminars

Share your research with your peers and a panel of experts and receive constructive responses

How to Get Published Seminar offered by Members of the PDiE Editorial Board

‘Bring us your research issues/problems’ Seminar with Kit Field & Roger Levy

1515: Close of Conference: Professor Ken Jones, IPDA President

IPDA: http://www.ipda.org.uk/

IPDA 2011 International Conference: http://www.ipda.org.uk/conferences.html

END

* I shall speak to the title of ‘Higher Education in Crises of Capital and Labour’. This will be part of my ‘comeback tour’. For three years (since my Rhodes paper in June 2008), I did not write anything substantial or speak in public (apart from my father’s eulogy, and, of course, lectures / seminars with my own students): no conferences, no papers, articles etc. of note – I just wrote blogs in the form of adverts for events I did not attend, but supported and thought interesting and worthwhile. I performed a service.

The first part of my ‘comeback tour’ was my talk on ‘Capitorg: Education and the Constitution of the Human in Contemporary Society’, at the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM) in Dublin, on 25th May 2011.

See: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/capitorg-education-and-the-constitution-of-the-human-in-contemporary-society-glenn-rikowski/ and http://www.gradcam.ie/glenn_rikowski.pdf

Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com/

Report on Montessori - by Jonathan France

2011-08-09T03:43:00.000-07:00

REPORT ON MONTESSORI – BY JONATHAN FRANCE

This is a Report on the Montessori Method written by Jonathan France, a final year student in Education Studies at the University of Northampton.

It was written as a short assignment for the Adventures in Educational Theory & Practice module (EDU3028) that Jon studied during the 2010-2011 academic year.

Jon’s Report can now be found at The Flow of Ideas website:

France, J. (2010) Report on Montessori, 30th November, Education Studies, School of Education, University of Northampton, online at ‘The Flow of Ideas’ : http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=contributions&sub=Report%20on%20Montessori%20-%20Jonathan%20France

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

Critical Pedagogoes in the Twenty-First Century: A Conference on Transformative Pedagogies

2011-07-06T15:08:00.001-07:00

CRITICAL PEDAGOGIES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: A CONFERENCE ON TRANSFORMATIVE PEDAGOGIES

Call for Papers

Critical Theories in the Twenty First Century: A Conference of Transformative Pedagogies

West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Conference Founders: Curry Malott, John Elmore, and Brad Porfilio
November 18th and 19th 2011

Proposals for papers, panels, performances, workshops, and other multimedia presentations should include title(s) and names and contact information for presenter(s). The deadline for sending prooposals is August 31, 2011. The Steering Committee will email acceptance or rejection notices by September 8, 2011. The proposal formats available to the presenters are as follows:

The general purpose of the West Chester Critical Theory Conference is to promote and support critical scholarship within students, and to advance critical theory and pedagogy more generally. By “advance” we mean to expose more people to critical practices and understandings as part of the process of the development of theory.

Through this focus we hope to work toward unifying and strengthening the sub-genres of critical pedagogy from Marxism, critical race theory, to critical neo-colonial studies. This goal is approached through the conferences internal pedagogy and therefore through a horizontal rather than a vertical organizing structure; by including students and classroom teachers in the critical pedagogical work dominated by professors; and by attempting to create a space where criticalists who do not usually work together can create meaningful unity, respect, and common goals. Since the dominant form of power in the twenty first century—neoliberal capitalist power—is both multicultural and global, critical pedagogy must too become more multicultural and global if it is to pose a significant challenge to it for a more democratic life after capitalism.

Because critical theory is concerned with not only understanding the world, but with transforming it, the conference is focused on not only understanding the consequences of an unjust social and economic system (i.e. corporate take-over of schools, high stakes testing and behaviorist pedagogy, micro classroom aggressions and bullying, poverty, racism, sexism, white supremacy, homophobia, perpetual war, ableism, etc.), but with transforming or dissolving their root causes (i.e. neoliberal capitalism and settler-state, Euro-centric oppression and their patriarchal, homophobic, racist, etc. hegemonies). As part of this goal the conference will hopefully provide introductory discussions and presentations on critical pedagogy and critical theory.

SUBMISSIONS
Proposal Formats

Individual Proposal: (45 minutes)
The conference committee welcomes individual paper proposals, with the understanding that those accepted will be grouped together around common or overlapping themes, Presenters will have approximately 45 minutes to present or summarize their individual papers. Individual paper submissions will be considered for panels with the same topic/theme. If you would prefer to present your paper/research individually you should consider the alternative format proposal. A 300-500 word abstract of the paper will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Symposium Proposal: (90 minutes)
Presenters are also welcomed to submit proposals for a symposium. A symposium is typically composed of a chair and discussant and three to five participants who present or summarize their papers. Each symposium is organized around a common theme. Each participant will have between 15 and 45 minutes to present their papers, depending upon the number of participants involved in the symposium. A 300-500 word abstract of the symposium will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Panel Proposal: (90 minutes)
A panel discussion is another venue available presenters. A panel discussion is typically composed of three to six participants who discuss their scholarly work within the context of a dialogue or conversation on a topic or theme related to the conference theme. Typically, each panelist is given 10-15 minutes to discuss the topic, present theoretical ideas, and/or point to relevant research. A chair should be identified who introduces the panel and frames the issues and questions being addressed. In addition to the chair, we encourage (but do not require) organizers of panels to include a discussant who responds to the comments of the panelists. Individual proposal submissions will be combined into panels with the same theme/topic. A 300-500 word abstract of the panel discussion will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Alternative Format and Special Interest Groups (90 minutes)
Alternative proposals that do not fit into the above categories, such as workshops, performances, video and multimedia presentations, and round-table dialogues, are encouraged. We also welcome proposals for the organization of special interest groups. A 150-250 word abstract of the panel discussion will be peer reviewed for acceptance to the conference.

Email proposals to conference coordinators Brad Porfilio (porfilio16@aol.com) and Curry Malott (currymalott@hotmail.com) by August 31, 2011.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
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Blair's Educational Legacy: Thirteen Years of New Labour

2011-05-06T02:39:00.000-07:00

BLAIR’S EDUCATIONAL LEGACY: THIRTEEN YEARS OF NEW LABOUR

Edited by Anthony Green
Palgrave Macmillan (December 2010)
ISBN: 978-0-230-62176-3, ISBN10: 0-230-62176-7,
5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches, 244 pages

Providing an overview and Marxist assessment of Tony Blair and New Labour's U.K. education policies, structures, and processes, the contributors in this exciting new collection discuss specific aspects of education policy and practices. This examination is set against the changing political and economic contexts of the British state’s responses to global and neo-liberal pressures.

Central themes include: New Labour and the education market state; New Labour, education, and ideology; and totality and open Marxism.

Green's work marks a timely contribution to Marxist analysis and Left critical assessment and is the first such collection addressing New Labour education policy.

Anthony Green is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Educational Foundations and Policy Studies at the Institute of Education, University of London. He co-convenes Marxism and Education Renewing Dialogues (MERD), and is Series Editor for the Palgrave Macmillan Marxism and Education Series.

CONTENTS:
Introduction: Anthony Green * All the Wrong Answers: Labour’s Corporate-Centred Education Initiatives--Kevin Farnsworth * The Knowledge-based Economy and the Transformation of Higher Education: Issues concerning enclosing and protecting the intellectual commons--Molly Bellamy * The Professional Imagination: Further Education Professionalism in and beyond a Neo-liberal Context--Denis Gleeson * The Privatisation of Education Phase II: Perspectives on state schools the private sector and ten years of a Labour government--Thakir Hafid * Management and Governance of the School System--Richard Hatcher * City: Academies, Alienation, Economism and Contending Forces for Change--Philip Woods * Curriculum Change in the Blair Years--Terry Wrigley * Education still make you sick under Gordon Brown, Innit?--Martin Allen & Patrick Ainley * Ten Years of Education Policy and ‘Race’ Inequality: Whiteness or Neo-liberal Practice?--Alpesh Maisuria * Gendered Practices in Education--Rosalyn George & John Wadsworth

Blair’s Educational Legacy (at Palgrave Macmillan): http://us.macmillan.com/blairseducationallegacy

Palgrave Macmillan Marxism and Education Series: http://www.palgrave.com/products/series.aspx?s=ME

Blair’s Educational Legacy (at Amazon.co.uk): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blairs-Educational-Legacy-Thirteen-Education/dp/0230621767/ref=sr_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304672910&sr=1-13

Blair’s Educational Legacy (at Amazon.com): http://www.amazon.com/Blairs-Educational-Legacy-Thirteen-Education/dp/0230621767/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304673063&sr=1-10

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
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Marx and Education: Misleading Title and Confusing Narrative

2011-04-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

MARX AND EDUCATION: MISLEADING TITLE AND CONFUSING NARRATIVE

April 13th 2011
By m310 - See all my reviews (on Amazon.com)
Review at Amazon.com: Marx and Education (Routledge Key Ideas in Education) (Paperback)

This had the potential to be a book that shed important light on the Marxist educational tradition; however, I was confused by the narrative. The title misled me into believing that I was in for a discussion of Marxist educators. Originally, I was interested in the book because I hoped it would augment the writings of U.S. Marxists, such as Ramin Farahmandpur, Rich Gibson, E. Wayne Ross, and a few others. Yet the book is dedicated to neo-Marxists, and while she gives attention to McLaren as a progressive educator (mid-1980s), she provides scant attention to his Marxist writings. Those who have read any of McLaren’s writings since 1995 know that he is a Marxist-Humanist; he is clearly not a neo-Marxist. Anyone following Marxism in education in the US would be hard pressed to find a more prominent and influential exponent than McLaren.

Furthermore, the significant contributions made upon U.S. Marxists by British Marxists such as Glenn Rikowski, Paula Allman, Dave Hill, and Mike Cole, are not highlighted. Why were there no significant discussions of Valerie Scatamburlo D'Annibale and Deb Kelsh? The narrative in this book is not so much about Marxist educators but rather progressive and neo-Marxist educators. Where were discussions of contributions of John Holst and Himani Bannerji? The book, Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory – a milestone in the debates over Marxism and education – was not even mentioned. This truly was a narrow reading of a very small field and as a result has shortchanged its readers. Mike Cole's work in England is far superior.

Anyon has done good work on urban education, but needs to be more aware of what is happening in the Marxist arena as far as education is concerned. I like her basic summary of Marxist analysis but wanted to find out more about U.S.-based Marxist educators, especially since there are so few of them.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
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Marx and Education - Jean Anyon

2011-04-01T03:20:00.000-07:00

MARX AND EDUCATION – JEAN ANYON

There was only one Karl Marx, but there have been a multitude of Marxisms. This concise, introductory book by internationally renowned scholar Jean Anyon centers on the ideas of Marx that have been used in education studies as a guide to theory, analysis, research, and practice.

Marx and Education begins with a brief overview of basic Marxist ideas and terms and then traces some of the main points scholars in education have been articulating since the late 1970s. Following this trajectory, Anyon details how social class analysis has developed in research and theory, how understanding the roles of education in society is influenced by a Marxian lens, how the failures of urban school reform can be understood through the lens of political economy, and how cultural analysis has laid the foundation for critical pedagogy in US classrooms. She assesses ways neo-Marxist thought can contribute to our understanding of issues that have arisen more recently and how a Marxist analysis can be important to an adequate understanding and transformation of the future of education and the economy.

By exemplifying what is relevant in Marx, and replacing that which has been outdone by historical events, Marx and Education aims to restore the utility of Marxism as a theoretical and practical tool for educators.

Selected Table of Contents

Series Editor Introduction

Introduction

1. Neo-Marxism in Education, 1970s - 1980s

2. Neo-Marxism in Education, 1990 - 2005

3. Current Issues: Economic Problems, Education Policies

4. Extending Marxist Theory and Practice

March 2011 120 pages Paperback: 978-0-415-80330-4 Routledge Series:

Routledge Key Ideas in Education http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415803304/

At amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Marx-Education-Routledge-Ideas-Educati/dp/0415803306

At amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Marx-Education-Routledge-Ideas-Educati/dp/0415803306/ref=sr_1_5_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301434167&sr=1-5

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com/

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Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Trade Unions, Free Trade and the Problem of Transnational Solidarity

2011-03-25T11:32:00.000-07:00

TRADE UNIONS, FREE TRADE AND THE PROBLEM OF TRANSNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

Two-day workshop at the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) at Nottingham University on 2 and 3 December 2011 with Samir Amin as keynote speaker

Since the completion of the GATT Uruguay Round and the establishment of the WTO in the mid-1990s, the international free trade agenda has been drastically expanded including now also issues related to intellectual property rights, trade in services and trade-related investment measures. The WTO Doha negotiations round launched in 2001 had been intended to complete ‘unfinished business’ especially in the area of free trade in services, public procurement and agriculture. At the same time, resistance to these developments has increased with the demonstrations at the WTO ministerial conference in Seattle in 1999 as a first landmark event. The latest attempt to revive the Doha round in July 2008 ended in failure. In view of the problems at the multilateral level, both the EU and the USA have increasingly engaged in bilateral strategies of free trade agreements. These strategies include the expanded trade agenda and are a tool to achieve what has been impossible within a multilateral setting.

Free trade strategies have increasingly become a problem for the international labour movement. On the one hand, trade unions in the North especially in manufacturing have supported free trade agreements. They hope that new export markets for products in their sectors will preserve jobs. On the other, trade unions in the Global South as well as social movements more generally oppose these free trade agreements, since they often imply deindustrialisation and the related loss of jobs for them. Unsurprisingly, transnational solidarity is difficult if not impossible to achieve as a result. At the same time, however, it has to be asked what free trade actually is and whether we can call the existing system really a free trade system? How trade unions understand both these questions is fundamental for their chances to understand each other. Understandings of free trade, which draw on alternative economic theories – see, for example, Samir Amin’s theory of unequal exchange and imperialism – may open up new avenues.
Additionally, a focus is required on countries’ different position in the global economy, core, semiperiphery, periphery, the related dynamics of uneven and combined development structuring it, as well as the related implications for labour movements in view of free trade. Equally, a sector specific view is required, as particular sectoral dynamics are likely to have an influence on trade unions’ outlook on free trade.

In this workshop, we intend to focus on the problematic around free trade, the current free trade system and the related neo-liberal ideology, as well as analyse the problems for trade unions and social movements in more detail. The objective is to understand better the dynamics underlying free trade as well as explore possibilities for transnational solidarity against the background of uneven and combined development. This will also involve a discussion of alternative conceptualisations of free trade based on different economic theories and the related implications for labour movements. The workshop intends to reach beyond academia and facilitate discussions between academics and trade union researchers as well as social movement activists.

In more detail, we invite papers by academics, trade union researchers and social movement activists in the following areas:

• Basic analyses of what a ‘proper’ free trade system is;
• Analyses of current free trade policies, the implications of neo-liberalism as well as the concrete results of free trade policies for the populations affected. Can we call the current system a free trade system?
• Analyses of free trade policies and the relationships with other policies of neo-liberal restructuring;
• Implications of countries’ structural location in the global economy as well as sectoral specificities for trade unions’ positions on free trade;
• Analyses of resistance movements to concrete free trade agreements with a specific emphasis on co-operation and/or non – co-operation between trade unions and social movements;
• Analyses of the position of specific trade unions and/or social movements on free trade;

Paper proposals of ca. 250 words should be sent to Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk by 9 May 2011. There is no registration fee for the workshop and all participants will be provided with coffee/tea breaks, two lunches and one evening dinner free of charge.

The workshop is supported with a small research grant of £6960 by the British Academy (SG102043) as well as a grant of £1750 by the University of Nottingham priority group Integrating Global Society.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
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MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
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14th Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues (MERD) Seminar

2011-03-12T08:49:00.000-08:00

14th MARXISM AND EDUCATION: RENEWING DIALOGUES (MERD) SEMINAR

Understanding the Current Crisis in Higher Education
MARXISM AND EDUCATION: RENEWING DIALOGUES XIV
A Day Seminar

10.30 – 4.30
Saturday April 9th 2011
Institute of Education, University of London
20 Bedford Way, WC1
Room 828

Speakers to include:
Patrick Ainley, Martin Allen, Sarah Amsler, Joyce Canaan, Clyde Chitty, Chris Knight

The seminar is free but places are limited.

To reserve a place and receive a numbered ticket, please contact Alpesh Maisuria at: amaisuria@ioe.ac.uk
A waiting list will come into operation when all the places have been allocated.

Please forward this invite to those who may be interested.

Convenors: Tony Green and Alpesh Maisuria

The MERD Seminars were co-founded by Tony Green and Glenn Rikowski in 2001. The First MERD Seminar took place at the University of London, Institute of Education on 22nd October 2002. For details of the first ten MERD Seminars, see: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=events&sub=MERD

---END---

‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
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Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com/

Education and Social Change in Latin America

2011-02-04T05:45:00.000-08:00

EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN LATIN AMERICA

A two day workshop organised in collaboration between

MERD (Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues)
CSSGJ (Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, University of Nottingham)
Centre for Education for Social Justice (Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln)

To be held at the
University of Nottingham
1st - 2nd July 2011

The role of education is increasingly important in the construction of new forms of anti-capitalist politics in Latin America. This is evidenced by the centrality of popular education and other forms of struggle influenced by radical education philosophy and pedagogy, and by social movements in their construction of new forms of participatory politics and mass intellectuality. It is also evidenced in the creation of formal and informal educational programmes, practices and projects that develop varieties of critical pedagogy and popular education with both organised and non-organised marginalised and excluded communities.

Particularly, noticeable in this regard is the centrality of education in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the move towards 21st Century socialism. At the heart of the politicisation of education are the questions of whose knowledge counts in the process of social transformation and political change and if the ways in which such transformative knowledge is created impact upon the struggle to develop worlds beyond capitalism in the 21st century.

This workshop invites papers which develop theoretically grounded empirical analysis about the politicisation of education in the continent.

Key questions to be addressed are:

How is education politicised in contemporary anti-capitalist struggles?

How has neoliberalism closed down as well as opened up terrains of educational struggle?

What differences are there between the role of education in 20th century socialism and 21st century socialism?

How does Marxism shape such practices of radical pedagogy and how do such practices transform Marxism?

How does the focus on popular education in new forms of popular politics influence and reflect the type of politics developed?

What is the role of autonomous education in social movements in the construction of anti-capitalism?

What is the relationship between formal ‘progressive’ educational programmes and the politics of knowledge and education in informal community/social movement settings?

What can we (outside of the region) learn from Chavez’s concept of Venezuela as a ‘giant school’ and other radical pedagogies and educational practices in Latin America?

What is the role of popular educators within formal schooling in these processes?

Selected papers will be published in an edited collection with Palgrave Macmillan in their Marxism and Education Series.

Contact Sara Motta at sara.motta@nottingham.ac.uk and Mike Cole at mike.cole@bishopg.ac.uk if you are interested in helping organise the workshop or would like any further information.

Please submit your paper proposal by March 1st 2011

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
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The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/
Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Educational Spaces of Alterity

2011-01-22T05:52:00.000-08:00

EDUCATIONAL SPACES OF ALTERITY

CALL FOR PAPERS

Educational Spaces of Alterity
University of Nottingham, Tuesday 26th April 2010

Nottingham Critical Pedagogy invites contributions for a day of workshops considering spaces (both inside and outside the academy) that may help challenge the dominance of neoliberal logics, alienated practices and Eurocentric hegemony in contemporary educational practice, and in so doing contribute to radical social change. We are pleased to announce that John Holloway will be hosting a keynote workshop at the event.

We hope to welcome contributions from a variety of disciplines and from inside and outside the academy. These can be in any format, but we especially encourage those that break from traditional conference paper models: workshops, artistic engagements, poster presentations and performances would all be welcomed. We welcome suggestions for entire workshop sessions (90 minutes), or single contributions, which we will group into workshops.

Our event partners Spaces of Alterity: a conference hosted by the University of Nottingham’s Department of Culture, Film and Media on Wed 27th-Thurs 28th April, with keynote addresses by China Miéville and Alberto Toscano. Both events are designed to work on their own, but participants are more than welcome to attend both should they wish, and we will be co-curating an Annexinema film night with Spaces of Alterity (details tbc) to show short films which touch upon the themes of the two events.

A non-exhaustive list of themes you may wish to consider is offered over the page. Please do not feel these are mutually exclusive:

Critical Education and ‘The Crisis’
• How can critical education respond to the crisis in higher education and wider societal crises?
• Do these crises close down or create spaces of hope for critical education?
• Defending the university? Transforming the university? Abandoning the university?

Education and the Affective
• Emotional epistemologies and pedagogies.
• The role of hope in critical education.
• ‘Radical love’.

Community Education
• Skillshare workshops.
• Social movements/community politics.
• Challenging the borders between HE and community.
• The role of non-traditional educational spaces (art galleries, social centres, etc).

Border Thinking and Hybridity
• The importance of identity and difference for critical education.
• Challenging hegemonic and Eurocentric perspectives.
• How can we introduce the subaltern into the classroom?

Reflections on Practice
• Experiences of critical education.
• What can we learn from past experiences, experiments and struggle?

Art, Music and Critical Education
• The role of art and music in critical education.
• Resonances between critical education and contemporary theory and practice in art and music.
• Problems of assessment in critical and artistic education: or is assessment the problem?

Please send abstracts and information on the format you wish your presentation to take to nottinghamcriticalpedagogy@gmail.com no later than Tuesday 8th February. These should be no more than 300 words, but may contain links to further reading regarding your chosen method of presentation.

Registration is free for Educational Spaces of Alterity but there are fees for Spaces of Alterity: attendance for one day is £25/£35; for both days it’s £45/55 (cheaper price for students and unwaged).

We have a limited amount of money to help cover the travel and accommodation costs of participants who would not otherwise be able to attend, or to help with fees for those who wish to stay for Spaces of Alterity. Details will be announced once abstracts have been received. Food and drink will be provided for all.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

Invitation to a Book Launch for 'Digitisation Perspectives'

2011-01-21T14:05:00.000-08:00

INVITATION TO A BOOK LAUNCH FOR ‘DIGITISATION PERSPECTIVES’

Digitisation Perspectives
Edited by Ruth Rikowski
Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2011

ISBN 978-94-6091-297-9 (pbk); 978-94-6091-6 (hdbk);
978-94-6091-299-3 (e-book)
£35.00 (pbk); £75.00 (hdbk)
https://www.sensepublishers.com/product_info.php?products_id=1158&osCsid=f255a6ffa2e20417688cf96c4ae8976e

Part of Book Series:
‘Educational Futures: Rethinking Theory and Practice’
Series Editor: Michael A. Peters

Digitisation Perspectives will be launched on Wednesday 16th February 2011, 17.30 - 20.00
At: Wilkins Terrace Restaurant
University College London
Gower Street
London, WC1E 6BT, England

Digitisation Perspectives includes contributions from 22 experts worldwide.

Foreword by Simon Tanner, Director Digital Consultancy, King’s College London, who says that the book: “…seeks to address and answer some of the big questions of digitisation…It succeeds on many levels…”

Topics covered include: electronic theses, search engine technology, digitisation of ancient manuscripts, citation indexing, reference services, digitisation in Africa, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, new media and scholarly publishing. The final chapter explores virtual libraries, posing some interesting questions for possible futures.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

FOREWORD: SIMON TANNER, DIRECTOR, KING’S DIGITAL CONSULTANCY SERVICES, KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON

INTRODUCTION: RUTH RIKOWSKI

PART 1: BACKGROUND AND OVERVIEW TO DIGITISATION AND DIGITAL LIBRARIES

Chapter 1: The Rise of Digitization: An Overview - Melissa M. Terras
Chapter 2: Digital Libraries and Digitisation: an overview and critique –
Ruth Rikowski
Chapter 3: Digital Knowledge Resources – M. Paul Pandian
Chapter 4: Digitisation: research, sophisticated search engines, evaluation: all that and more – Ruth Rikowski

PART 2: DIGITISATION AND HIGHER EDUCATION

Chapter 5: Improving student mental models in a new university information setting – Alan Rosling and Kathryn Chapman
Chapter 6: Electronic Theses and Dissertations: promoting ‘hidden’ research – Susan Copeland
Chapter 7: Learning Systems in Post-Statutory Education – Paul Catherall
Chapter 8: Going Digital: the transformation of scholarly communication and academic libraries – Isaac Hunter Dunlap

PART 3: DIGITISATION AND INEQUALITIES

Chapter 9: Hegemony and the Web: the Struggle for Hegemony in a Digital Age – Tony Ward
Chapter 10: Digital libraries: an opportunity for African education – Dieu Hack-Polay
Chapter 11: Critical Perspectives on Digitising Africa – by Leburn Rose

PART 4: DIGITAL LIBRARIES, REFERENCE SERVICES AND CITATION INDEXING

Chapter 12: Digital Library and Digital Reference Service: integration and mutual complementarity – Jia Liu
Chapter 13: The New Generation of Citation Indexing in the Age of Digital Libraries – Mengxiong Liu and Peggy Cabrera

PART 5: DIGITISATION OF RARE, VALUED AND SCHOLARLY WORKS

Chapter 14: Building the Virtual Scriptorium – Tatiana Nikolova-Houston and Ron Houston
Chapter 15: SPARC: creating innovative models and environments for scholarly research and communication – Heather Joseph
Chapter 16: Impacts of New Media on Scholarly Publishing – Yehuda E. Kalay

PART 6: FUTURISTIC DEVELOPMENTS OF DIGITISATION

Chapter 17: Meeting and Serving Users in Their New Work (and Play) Spaces – Tom Peters
Chapter 18: Virtual Libraries and Education in Virtual Worlds: twenty-first century library services – Lori Bell, Mary-Carol Lindbloom, Tom Peters and Kitty Pope

CONCLUSION: RUTH RIKOWSKI

Cover designed by Victor Rikowski

Refreshments provided.

Confirmed speakers at the launch include:

An Introduction by Andy Dawson, Senior Teaching Fellow and MSc Information Science Programme Director, Department of Information Studies, UCL.

Ruth Rikowski is a Freelance Editor, commissioning books for Chandos Publishing, Oxford. She is an Associate of the Higher Education Academy and a Chartered Librarian. Ruth Rikowski is the author of Globalisation, Information and Libraries (Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2005) and the editor of Knowledge Management: social, cultural and theoretical perspectives (Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2007). She has also written numerous articles and given many talks; focusing in particular on the topics of globalisation, knowledge management and information technology. Ruth Rikowski is on the Editorial Board of Policy Futures in Education and Information for Social Change. The Rikowski website, ‘The Flow of Ideas’ can be found at www.flowideas.co.uk and her blog, ‘Ruth Rikowski Updates’ is at http://ruthrikowskiupdates.blogspot.com/

Paul Catherall is a librarian currently working at University of Liverpool, UK. Paul has worked in E-Learning and technical support roles over a number of years and his current role involves providing library services to students studying online. Paul also worked for several years as a college lecturer in Information Communications Technology. Paul is also undertaking a PhD within the area of E-Learning and is a graduate of Glyndŵr University, formerly the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education (B.A.) and John Moores University (M.A. Dist). Paul is also an associate of the Higher Education Academy and chartered member of Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). Paul has also been active in various CILIP affiliated groups, including the Career Development Group and is a member of the Editorial Board for the collective forum and journal Information for Social Change. Paul has authored various published journal articles and texts including a stand-alone book Delivering E-Learning for Information Services in Higher Education (Chandos 2005).

Julianne Nyhan – on behalf of Melissa Terras, who is a Senior Lecturer in Electronic Communication in the Department of Information Studies, University College London, and the Deputy Director of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities. With a background in Classical Art History and English Literature, and Computing Science, her doctorate (University of Oxford) examined how to use advanced information engineering technologies to interpret and read the Vindolanda texts. She is a general editor of DHQ (Digital Humanities Quarterly) and Secretary of the Association of Literary and Linguistic Computing. Her research focuses on the use of computational techniques to enable research in the arts and humanities that would otherwise be impossible.

Places limited for the book launch: R.S.V.P: Rikowskigr@aol.com

Purchasing Digitisation Perspectives:

From Sense Publishers:

Paperback: https://www.sensepublishers.com/product_info.php?products_id=1158&osCsid=6db6323c10ad4cd5490353b1a892f650

Hardback: https://www.sensepublishers.com/product_info.php?products_id=1159&osCsid=6db6323c10ad4cd5490353b1a892f650

From Amazon.co.uk:

Paperback: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digitisation-Perspectives-Ruth-Rikowski/dp/9460912974/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295640711&sr=1-5

Hardback: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digitisation-Perspectives-Ruth-Rikowski/dp/9460912982/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295640711&sr=1-6

From Amazon.com:

Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Digitisation-Perspectives-Ruth-Rikowski/dp/9460912974/ref=sr_1_2_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295640919&sr=1-2

Hardback: http://www.amazon.com/Digitisation-Perspectives-Ruth-Rikowski/dp/9460912982/ref=sr_1_2_title_1_h?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1295640919&sr=1-2

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Labour, Capitalism and Radical Critique

2011-01-16T07:17:00.000-08:00

LABOUR, CAPITALISM AND RADICAL CRITIQUE

I am having trouble posting to this blog.

If you want to see what I would have posted in full, go to: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/ for 16th January 2011.

Glenn Rikowski

The Speed of Life

2010-12-12T04:49:00.000-08:00

THE SPEED OF LIFE

Ten years ago, Michael Neary and I wrote a paper for the British Sociological Association Annual Conference 2000 called The Speed of Life: The significance of Karl Marx’s concept of socially necessary labour time. The paper was selected by the BSA’s Publications Committee for inclusion in the annual ‘book of the conference’ for 2000.

We revised and edited our paper, and it came out as Time and Speed in the Social Universe of Capital, in Social Conceptions of Time: Structure and Process in Work and Everyday Life, edited by Graham Crow and Sue Heath (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

See Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Social-Conceptions-Time-Explorations-Sociological/dp/0333984994/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292087985&sr=1-1

And

Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Social-Conceptions-Time-Structure-Everyday/dp/0333984994/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292088141&sr=1-1

In addition, our original paper was also put out on The Flow of Ideas website on 13th May 2006. It is in two parts.

Recently, the journal Principia Dialectica has alerted folks to our original paper at The Flow of Ideas on their blog. The relevant post is called ‘Marx, Einstein, Postone...’ and was posted to the Principia Dialectica blog on 1st December 2010. This has led to a lot of traffic going to the original paper posted to The Flow of Ideas in 2006. However, the link provided there does not work, so people have been coming to the paper by other means (including a general link given for The Flow of Ideas in the Principia Dialectica blog’s ‘Links’ section).

Thus, to make it easier for people to get to our original paper I have included the working link (and full reference) here, as:

Neary, M. & Rikowski, G. (2000) The Speed of Life: The significance of Karl Marx's concept of socially necessary labour-time, a paper presented at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference 2000, 'Making Time - Marking Time', University of York, 17 -20 April, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Speed%20of%20Life%20-%20Part%20One

The Principia Dialectica blog home page is at: http://www.principiadialectica.co.uk/blog/

The page with their blog about our paper, ‘Marx, Einstein and Postone...’ is at: http://www.principiadialectica.co.uk/blog/?author=1&paged=2

Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

Marx, Capitalism and Social Justice - an essay by Alexander Rikowski

2010-12-04T06:35:00.000-08:00

MARX, CAPITALISM AND JUSTICE

‘Marx did not think that capitalism is unjust, and, in fact, said that it is just.’ Discuss.

Alexander Rikowski

An essay written as an undergraduate in the Department of Philosophy, King’s College London

This essay on ’Marx. Capitalism and Justice’ by Alexander Rikowski can be viewed at:

Rikowski, A. (2010) Marx, Capitalism and Justice, an essay written as an undergraduate in the Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, June, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=articles&sub=Marx%20and%20Justice

About Alexander Rikowski: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=about&sub=Alexander%20Rikowski

Posted here by Glenn RikowskiThe Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

Alienated Labour - an essay by Alexander Rikowski

2010-12-03T14:06:00.000-08:00

ALIENATED LABOUR: AN ESSAY BY ALEXANDER RIKOWSKI

What is alienated labour, and what would unalienated labour be like?

An essay written as an undergraduate in the Department of Philosophy, King’s College London

Alexander Rikowski
This essay on Alienated Labour by Alexander Rikowski can be viewed at:

Rikowski, A. (2010) Alienated Labour, An essay written as an undergraduate in the Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, June, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=articles&sub=Alienated%20Labour

About Alexander Rikowski: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=about&sub=Alexander%20Rikowski

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

A Tribute To My Father

2010-11-14T03:22:00.000-08:00

A TRIBUTE TO MY FATHER

Kurt Richards, Kurt Rikowski (14th June 1927 – 15th February 2009)

It has taken me some time to get the psychological strength for putting the Eulogy I wrote for my father’s funeral in the public domain. It can now be read on The Flow of Ideas web site.

A Tribute to My Father can be found at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=A%20Tribute%20to%20My%20Father

Glenn Rikowski
London, 14th November 2010
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

On the Commons

2010-11-05T06:37:00.000-07:00

ON THE COMMONS

BANFF RESEARCH in CULTURE (BRiC) / Research Residency ProgramBanff Centre for the Arts / University of Alberta

THEME: On the Commons; or, Believing-Feeling-Acting TogetherApplication deadline: December 1, 2010

APPLICATION AND PROGRAM INFORMATION NOW AVAILABLE AT: http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=1068

Guest Faculty: Lauren Berlant, Michael Hardt, Pedro ReyesOrganizers: Imre Szeman, Heather Zwicker, Kitty Scott

Program dates: May 9, 2011 - May 27, 2011

Email contact: bric@ualberta.ca

(Note: There are only 25 spots available in the residency program this year)

The commons has emerged as one of the key concepts around which social, political, and cultural demands are being articulated and theorized today. Harkening back to the displacement of people from shared communal spaces and their transformation from public into private property — a central act in the development of European capitalism in the 18th and 19th centuries — the commons insists on the fundamentally shared character of social life: that everything from language to education, from nature to our genetic inheritance, belongs irreducibly to all of us. As an increasingly rapacious capitalism draws ever more elements of social life into its profit logic and renders seemingly every activity and value into a commodity, thinking with and through the commons has become an important means of generating conceptual and political resistance to the multiple new forms of enclosure that continue to take place today, and which need to be confronted and challenged forcefully and directly.

The commons is a concept used in analyses and interventions in popular culture, art, new media, political philosophy, social theory, law, literary studies, and more. The ease with which neoliberal ideology — which celebrates the supposed rationality of privatization and has managed to transform taxation into an act feared above all else — has become embedded in the beliefs and lived structures of everyday life demands an intensive examination of how and why we have come to prefer enclosure to the commons in almost every area of social life. Just as importantly, it also requires us to investigate and invent new ways of being-in-common--ways of believing, feeling and acting together, of creating the commons that seem everywhere to be receding from view.

The aim of this year’s Banff Research in Culture workshop is to give scholars, cultural producers, and artists an opportunity to explore how we believe, feel, and act together, and the ways in which we are prevented from doing so. How might we shape new collectivities and communities? What are the capacities and dispositions essential to producing new ways of being? What lessons can we learn from history as well as contemporary struggles over the commons (from challenges to intellectual property to indigenous struggles)? What concepts and vocabularies might we develop to aid our critical and conceptual work with respect to the commons (e.g. Alain Badiou’s revival of communism or Jacque Rancière’s reconfiguration of equality and democracy)? How does artistic and cultural production participate in the production of new collectivities and defense of the commons? Where do we go from here-a moment in which neoliberalism seems to have stumbled and lost its forward momentum? We welcome projects dealing with the full range of issues and topics related to being-believing-feeling-acting together today.

On the Commons will run concurrently with the thematic residency La Commune. The Asylum. Die Bühne led by artist Althea Thauberger, providing opportunities for interaction and collaboration with artists in residence. (http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=1094)

PROGRAM DETAILS

Developed by Imre Szeman, Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies and Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Heather Zwicker, Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta, and Kitty Scott, Director of Visual Arts at the Banff Centre, On the Commons is part of Banff Research in Culture (BRiC), a new residency program designed for scholars engaged in advanced theoretical research on themes and topics in culture. Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, junior faculty, and practicing artists from across Canada and beyond will convene at The Banff Centre to pursue their work — and, ideally, to incubate new collaborations and creations — for three weeks. During the residency, participants will attend lectures, seminars, and workshops offered by distinguished visiting faculty from around the world, each of whom will stay at Banff for a week or more and will be available to discuss projects and ideas. Participants will also be encouraged to present their work to colleagues through readings, talks, and presentations held over the course of the program.

As a residency program, BRiC is designed to allow participants to devote an extended period of time on their own research in the company of others with similar interests. In addition to giving researchers and creators from different disciplinary and professional backgrounds an opportunity to exchange opinions and ideas, it is hoped that participants will develop new artistic, editorial, authorial, and collective projects during their time at Banff, both individually and in connection with others. We are especially pleased by the opportunity that BRiC affords visual artists and researchers to work together on issues of common interest.

APPLICATION AND PROGRAM INFORMATION NOW AVAILABLE AT: http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=1068

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

Critical Education Against Global Capitalism - by Paula Allman

2010-10-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

CRITICAL EDUCATION AGAINST GLOBAL CAPITALISM – BY PAULA ALLMAN

Dear colleagues

I'd like to draw your attention to the new paperback edition of Paula Allman's 'Critical Education Against Global Capitalism' which is to be published by Sense Publishers any day now, price around £30.

This is a powerful text relating not only to adult education, about which it has much of importance to say, but also to the general context in which we live and work.

In particular, the new edition has an Afterword by the author in which she offers a detailed and up-to-date Marxist analysis of the current economic crisis and its causes, which is invaluable for helping us to link what is going on in our day-to-work with major global economic developments. It is also an invaluable text for responding to the growing interest in Marxism among students and activists alike as it becomes ever clearer that capitalism, far from triumphing, is in catastrophic crisis.

Best wishes
Helen Colley

Critical Education Against Global Capitalism: https://www.sensepublishers.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=51&products_id=1122&osCsid=3202bf1d0434f6e0a9d0fb2fcd2ee3d0

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Critical-Education-Against-Global-Capitalism/dp/946091263X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289034653&sr=1-1

Helen Colley
Professor of Lifelong Learning
Education and Social Research Institute
Manchester Metropolitan University
799 Wilmslow Road
Didsbury
Manchester M20 2RR, UK
Tel: +44 (0)161-247 2306
Research Centre Reception: +44 (0)161-247 2320

In support of Paula Allman's book, Stephen Brookfield and John Holst have just published Radicalizing Learning: Adult Education for a Just World.
The books links adult education to the creation of democratic socialism:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Radicalizing-Learning-Adult-Education-World/dp/0787998257

Testimonial

Paula Allman's book is beyond doubt one of the most important and possibly THE most important of all contemporary texts in education. It will be a classic. I can't think of an educational text that can match it in importance. Amazing!
Peter McLaren, Professor, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, UCLA, author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and The Pedagogy of Revolution

END

‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Student As Producer

2010-10-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

STUDENT AS PRODUCER

What is Student as Producer?

The drive to connect research and undergraduate teaching to create a productive and progressive pedagogical framework has become one of the most significant areas for academic development in higher education.

The Student as Producer project develops this connection by re-engineering the relationship between research and teaching. This involves a reappraisal of the relationship between academics and students, with students becoming part of the academic project of universities rather than consumers of knowledge.

Key to this process of re-engineering is to establish research-engaged teaching and learning as an institutional priority at the University of Lincoln, making it the dominant paradigm for all aspects of curriculum design and delivery, and the central pedagogical principle that informs other aspects of the University’s strategic planning.

Research-engaged teaching and learning is defined as: ‘A fundamental principle of curriculum design whereby students learn primarily by engagement in real research projects, or projects which replicate the process of research in their discipline. Engagement is created through active collaboration amongst and between students and academics’.

Although focussed on one institution the project will engage fully with other higher educational institutions, at the local, national and international level, so as to ensure maximum impact across the sector.

For more information on Student as Producer, see:

http://studentasproducer.lincoln.ac.uk/

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Wavering on Ether: http://blog.myspace.com/glennrikowski
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Higher Education and the Market

2010-10-15T11:56:00.000-07:00

HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE MARKET

Higher Education Policy Network

Book launch and seminar: ‘Higher Education and the Market’

Monday 8th November 2010, 4.00-6.30 pm
Room GCG-08, London Metropolitan University, 166-220 Holloway Road, London, N7 8DB

Market forces are increasingly central to the higher education sector and this event marks the launch of a very timely new book: ‘‘Higher Education and the Market’ edited by Professor Roger Brown. The book examines the role and impact of the market in HE in a number of countries across Europe as well as in the USA and Japan, and this event offers an opportunity to discuss the issues raised in the context of major challenges to the future of the higher education sector.

The event will take the form of a presentation by the editor and key author:

Professor Roger Brown, Co-Director for the Centre of Higher Education Research Development (CHERD) at Liverpool Hope University.

Followed by responses from:

David Palfreyman, Fellow and Bursar New College Oxford and Director of the Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies

Dr Kelly Coate, Lecturer in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, National University of Ireland, Galway and a member of the SRHE Governing Council

There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion and a wine reception.

For further details about the Higher Education Policy Network, please contact the network convenor, Professor Carole Leathwood, Institute for Policy Studies in Education, London Metropolitan University, c.leathwood@londonmet.ac.uk.

Higher Education Policy Network – 8th November

Network Events are free to SRHE members as part of their membership package.

Delegate fees for non members: £25 (students £20).

To register for this event please contact nmanches@srhe.ac.uk

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com Wavering on Ether: http://blog.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Alain Badiou Talks About the Communist Hypothesis

2010-10-08T05:50:00.000-07:00

ALAIN BADIOU TALKS ABOUT THE COMMUNIST HYPOTHESIS

In conversation

Alain Badiou talks about

The Communist Hypothesis

18.30, Thursday 28 October 2010

Arthur & Paula Lucas Lecture Theatre (S-2.18), Strand Building

King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS

This event is free - but please let us know by emailing european-studies@kcl.ac.uk if you'd like to attend.

This event is hosted by the European Studies Programme http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/depts/european/ at King's College London as part of the Arts & Humanities Week and in association with Verso Books.

Alain Badiou, Professor of Philosophy at the International Graduate School, is one of the most celebrated philosophers in the world. Among a vast output, his philosophical reputation rests especially on the two-volume work Being and the Event (1988) and Logics of Worlds (2006). The New Statesman has described him as ‘an heir to Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser’, seeking to continue both Althusser’s anti-humanism and Sartre’s preoccupation with subjectivity.

A veteran of May 1968 and a Maoist militant during the 1960s and 1970s, Badiou has emerged as one of France’s leading public intellectuals in recent years. His opposition to banning the burqa was followed by The Meaning of Sarkozy (2007). This polemic first advanced what he called the ‘Communist Hypothesis’, which reasserts the idea of an alternative to capitalism based on the universal principle of equality. These ideas are further developed in The Communist Hypothesis, recently published by Verso.

---END---

‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism

2010-09-18T13:29:00.000-07:00

THE ENIGMA OF CAPITAL AND THE CRISES OF CAPITALISM
By David Harvey

Book launch and panel discussion with author David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography, CUNY Graduate Center and Director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics.

Discussants:

Leo Panitch is Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University (Canada) and editor of the Socialist Register.

Frances Fox Piven is Professor in the faculties of political science and sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Professor Piven is the author of, among other books, Poor People's Movements and The New Class War. She is currently at work on a book on American labor union strategies in response to globalization and the new economy.

William Tabb is Professor Emeritus of Economics, Political Science and Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of numerous books including The Amoral Elephant: Globalization and Capitalist Development in the Early 21st Century (Monthly Review Press, 2001).

Melissa Wright is an Associate Professor in Geography and in the Program on Women's Studies, Pennsylvania State University. Author of Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism. New York and London: Routledge, 2006.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27TH, 2010
PROSHANSKY AUDITORIUM
7 PM – 9 PM
CUNY GRADUATE CENTER, 365 FIFTH AVE @ 34TH STREET

Free and open to the public. Books will be available for sale.

'I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work'

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Wavering on Ether: http://blog.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Meeting on 'Marx at the Margins' with Kevin B. Anderson

2010-09-12T23:38:00.000-07:00

MEETING ON ‘MARX AT THE MARGINS’ – WITH KEVIN B. ANDERSON

Location: Niebyl Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. Oakland, CA 94609

Saturday September 25th, 20102:00 PM

Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies
Author event Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies by Kevin B. Anderson

Marx’s critique of capital was far broader than is usually supposed. To be sure, he concentrated on the labor-capital relation within Western Europe and North America. But at the same time, he expended considerable time and energy on the analysis of non-Western societies, as well as race, ethnicity, and nationalism. While some of these writings show a problematically unilinear perspective and, on occasion, traces of ethnocentrism, the overall trajectory of Marx’s writings was toward a critique of national, ethnic, and colonial oppression and toward an appreciation of resistance movements in these spheres. In 1848, in the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels espoused an implicitly and problematically unilinear concept of social progress. Precapitalist societies, especially China, which they characterized in ethnocentric terms as a “most barbarian” society, were destined to be forcibly penetrated and modernized by this new and dynamic social system. In his 1853 articles for the New York Tribune, Marx extended these perspectives to India, while viewing the communal social relations and communal property of the Indian village as a solid foundation for “Oriental despotism.” Postcolonial and postmodern thinkers, most notably Edward Said, have criticized the Communist Manifesto and the 1853 India writings as a form of Orientalist knowledge fundamentally similar to the colonialist mindset.

END

I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon Profile: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/cold-hands-quarter-moon/
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Discourse, Power and Resistance in Education Conference 2011

2010-09-10T07:04:00.000-07:00

DISCOURSE, POWER AND RESISTANCE IN EDUCATION CONFERENCE 2011

DPR10: Discourse, Power, Resistance Conference 2011

Theme: CHANGING EDUCATION
University of Plymouth, United Kingdom, 13-15 April 2011Sponsored by the School of Secondary and Further Education Studies

Official DPR Conference Website: http://www.dprconference.com

The DPR conference returns to Plymouth in its tenth year, bringing together learners, teachers, researchers and policy-makers from the international education community to look at the crises in contemporary education, not just at post-compulsory level but across the board from pre-school to post-graduate. The need for change in education has never been more urgent. The conference will bring colleagues from around the world to think radically about education changing, and needing to change.

The conference will be divided into 7 streams:
- What is the point of education?- Anticipative education: policy and practice- Education in a funding crisis- Widening participation: for real- Education across the boundaries of faith: challenging fear and hatred- The future of post-compulsory education: the internet and the role of the university- DPR: open

The DPR conference is a site for the radical critique of discourse, power and resistance within and beyond the discipline of education, looking at concerns which are currently troubling learners, teachers and researchers engaged at all stages from pre-school to postgraduate. The conference looks more widely at the impact on education of powerful interests in and behind the policy-making apparatus as they exert their influence to reshape the goals and ethos of learning, teaching and research. DPR transgresses inter-disciplinary boundaries, attracting scholars from across the humanities and social sciences. A continuing concern of the conference is the contested issue of research methodology and the related issues of the problem of knowledge.

The conference has an international reputation, drawing delegates from a wide range of the developed and developing nations and attracting world-class keynote speakers.

The DPR journal, Power and Education (www.wwwords.co.uk/POWER), was launched in 2009.

For full information, including a Call for Papers and registration details, please visit the conference website: http://www.dprconference.com

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com
Wavering on Ether: http://blog.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Save Wanstead Flats! Mass Community Picnic!

2010-08-31T12:22:00.000-07:00

SAVE WANTSEAD FLATS! MASS COMMUNITY PICNIC!

Sunday 5th September

All welcome at 1.00pm on the spot to the west of Centre Road where the police want to site their Olympic operations base in 2012

Ever since over 250 attended a packed public meeting in July, residents living near Wanstead Flats have been demanding answers about plans by the City of London Corporation to allow the Metropolitan Police to base its Olympic operational centre on the Flats in 2012. In order to push this proposal through, the Corporation would need to amend an Act of Parliament that has protected Wanstead Flats for community use for well over a century.

Local people want to know why the proposed site for this police base, west of Centre Road, has been chosen, how that decision was made and why the Olympic stadium site itself cannot be used. There has been no consultation, even though the plans involve locating a fenced, high-security compound – with building, parking areas, stables and apparently even police holding cells – for at least 120 days and so close to residential neighbourhoods.

The Save Wanstead Flats Campaign is organised by local people and on Sunday 5th September, we would like to invite you to show your opposition to the City of London Corporation’s plans by joining us for a picnic – occupying the very spot where the police operations base would be constructed.

Bring Food! Picnic blankets, your children, and your friends! Meet all your neighbours who also want to save Wanstead Flats!

Please copy this and pass on to friends and neighbours and those concerned with the environment and wildlife in London

Don’t give the property developers, banks and corporate lawyers a chance and a legal loophole to ruin Wanstead Flats!

C/o Community Involvement Unit, Durning Hall, Earlham Grove, London E7 9AB

Email: savewanstedflats@gmail.com

Save Wanstead Flats Campaign: http://www.savewansteadflats.org.uk/

SWFC on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Protect-Wanstead-Flats-and-Epping-Forest/142307172448681

Article in The Socialist, ‘Save Wanstead Flats’, 4th August 2010: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/10074/04-08-2010/save-wanstead-flats

‘Does Wanstead Flats Really Need Saving?’ by Flash Bristow, in the Epping Forest, Waltham Forest and Wanstead and Woodford Guardian, 24th August 2010, online at: http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/blogs/8350467.Does_Wanstead_Flats_really_need_saving_/?ref=rss

‘Plan to sell off nature reserves risks ‘austerity countryside’, by Juliette Jowitt, Severin Carrell and John Vidal, The Guardian, Friday 13th August 2010, at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/13/plan-sell-nature-reserves-austerity-countryside

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

Marxsite is Back!

2010-08-31T05:26:00.000-07:00

MARXSITE IS BACK!

After months of technical problems and staffing difficulties, Marxsite returns. Expect a cascade of postings as we struggle to catch up with the momentous events which the current phase of the capitalist crisis has unleashed.

Please let other people know. During our absence the site continued getting more than 1000 hits a day, despite not updating. This can only be because of the range of accumulated materials and links that the site now deploys.

Marxsite is at: http://www.marxsite.com/

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies - Vol.8 No.1 (August 2010)

2010-08-18T14:55:00.000-07:00

JOURNAL FOR CRITICAL EDUCATION POLICY STUDIES – VOLUME 8 NUMBER 1 (August 2010)

JCEPS 8(1), AUGUST 2010

Table of Contents

1. Re-thinking normative democracy and the political economy of education. Paul R. Carr, Lakehead University (Orillia), Ontario, Canada

2. Neoliberal Ideology and Public Higher Education in the United States. Daniel B. Saunders, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA

3. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? a reply to Dave Hill’s ‘Race and Class in Britain: a critique of the statistical basis for critical race theory in Britain’. David Gillborn, Institute of Education, University of London, England

4. The New Assimilationism: The Push for Patriotic Education in the United States Since September 11. Liz Jackson, Educational Policies Consultant, Republic of South Africa

5. Neo-Liberalism and the evolvement of China’s education policies on migrant children’s schooling. Jie Dong, Tilburg University, the Netherlands

6. Freire: Informal Education as Protest. Susanne Butte, Walden University, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

7. Some Social Consequences of Faith-based Schooling: A Comparative Study of Denominational Secondary Education in Thanet and Lille. Paul J. Welsh, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, Kent, UK

8. Access for Whom, Access to What? The Role of the “Disadvantaged Student” Market in the Rise of For-profit Higher Education in the United States. Bonnie K. Fox Garrity, Mark J. Garrison, and Roger C. Fiedler, D’Youville College, Buffalo, New York, USA

9. “Why Does Wearing A Yellow Bib Make Us Different”?: A Case Study of Explaining Discrimination in a West of Scotland Secondary (High) School. Henry Maitles, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland and Erin McKelvie, Classroom teacher, Glasgow City Council, Glasgow, Scotland

10. Manufacturing (il)literacy in Alberta’s classrooms: The case of an oil-dependent state. Albert Hodgkins, University of Alberta, Canada

11. ‘Media Mediators’: Advocating an Alternate Paradigm for Critical Adult Education ICT Policy. Karim A. Remtulla, Ontario Institute of Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

12. Schooling Ugandan Girls: a policy historiography. Mary Kabesiime, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

13. Transformation of the Turkish Vocational Training System: Capitalization, Modularization and Learning Unto Death. Ergin Bulut, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Illinois, USA

14. Alternative State Formation in Colonial Hong Kong: Patriotic Schools, 1946-1976. Lau Chui Shan, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China

15. American Education Discourse: Language, Values, and U.S. Federal Policy. Chad Becker, Indiana State University, Indiana, USA

16. Book Review Symposium: Peters, Michael, Lankshear, Colin, and Olssen, Mark. (2003). Critical Theory and the Human Condition: Founders and Praxis. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Gabriela Walker, Alexander Rakochy, Margaret Fitzpatrick, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA; Colegio Roosevelt - The American School of Lima, Peru

17. Book Review Symposium: Kahn, Richard (2010). Critical Literacy, Ecopedagogy, and Planetary Crisis. New York: Peter Lang. Samuel Day Fassbinder, Greg William Misiaszek, Jorunn Thordarson, DeVry University, Illinois, USA; University of California, Los Angeles, USA; University of North

JCEPS: http://www.jceps.com

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon Profile: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/cold-hands-quarter-moon/

International Conferene on Critical Education

2010-08-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION

FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT (13 August 2010)

The Department of Education, University of Athens, Greece is hosting the

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION
12-16 July 2011, Athens, Greece

Organized by the journals:

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL POLICY EDUCATIONAL STUDIES (UK)
CULTURAL LOGIC (USA/CANADA)
KRITIKI (GREECE)
RADICAL NOTES (INDIA)

The venue of the Conference will be the city of Athens and possibly the surrounding areas.

Conference and Local Organizing Committee Coordinators:
Dave Hill, (Middlesex University, UK)
Peter McLaren, (UCLA, USA)
Kostas Skordoulis, (University of Athens, Greece)

Keynote Speakers:
To be announced, to include Dave Hill, (Middlesex University, UK), Peter McLaren, (UCLA, USA), Ravi Kumar (Jamia Milia Islamia University, Delhi, India). There will also be keynote speakers from Greece. Key women Marxist writers are being invited as Plenary speakers.

Important Dates

Participants should submit an abstract of 300 words by: 15 December 2010.
Notification of acceptance of paper presentation by: 15 January 2011.
Full papers should be submitted by: 30 May 2011.

The papers will be peer reviewed and published in the Conference Proceedings.

Selected papers will be published in Special Issues of JCEPS, Cultural Logic and KRITIKI.

Presentations
There will be 6 plenary presentations (two per day), each plenary session lasting one hour. Other papers will have 30 minutes (inclusive of the paper presentation plus discussion)

Conference Fee

The Conference fee is 300 Euros. (approx $380, or £245). The fee covers participation in the conference, the book of abstracts, coffee/tea/refreshments during conference breaks and participation in the conference dinner in a traditional taverna.

Participation of unemployed, and of colleagues from the third world is free/ no fees.

Further Information about the Invited speakers will be announced in the second circular. As will the contact address and registration details for the conference. Though in the meantime it would be interesting to see who might intend to offer papers… send me a provisional (non-binding) indication of interest if you like? (dave.hill35@btopenworld.com and dave6@mdx.ac.uk ) (It’s not mandatory to let me know in advance… … paper abstracts can be submitted until 15 Dec 2010.

Many thanks

Dave Hill, Kostas Skordoulis and Peter McLaren

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon Profile: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/cold-hands-quarter-moon/
Wavering on Ether: http://blog.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Victor Rikowski Playing at Forest Roots

2010-07-21T04:36:00.000-07:00

VICTOR RIKOWSKI PLAYING AT FOREST ROOTS

Victor Rikowski will be playing at the Forest Roots on Friday 23rd July. He will be performing some country music and one of his own compositions.

Victor plays in Cold Hands & Quarter Moon at Bangor University, north Wales. You can find out more about this band and listen to their music by going to: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/cold-hands-quarter-moon/ and the Cold Hands & Quarter Moon profile on MySpace: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/cold-hands-quarter-moon/

Victor’s PowerPoint story (in 6 parts), The Ockress, can be found at: http://www.theockress.com

Acoustica are the headline band at Forest Roots. They play a varied selection of Irish folk and modern acoustic music. There will also be The Flats Family band, and guest and surprise musicians.

So come along to Forest Roots on Friday, 23rd July!

It starts 8.30pm at the usual venue: The Forest Gate Hotel function room, Godwin Road, Forest Gate.

Free entry (with a whip-round)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Historical Materialism Conference 2010: Extended Abstract Deadline

2010-06-02T04:15:00.000-07:00

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM CONFERENCE 2010

Extended Abstract Deadline

Due to high demand, the deadline for submitting abstracts for the 2010 Historical Materialism Conference in London has now been extended to 1 JULY 2010. This will be the last extension.

'Crisis and Critique': Historical Materialism Annual London Conference 2010,

Central London, Thursday 11th to Sunday 14th November*

Call for Papers

Notwithstanding repeated invocations of the ‘green shoots of recovery’, the effects of the economic crisis that began in 2008 continue to be felt around the world. While some central tenets of the neoliberal project have been called into question, bank bailouts, cuts to public services and attacks on working people's lives demonstrate that the ruling order remains capable of imposing its agenda. Many significant Marxist analyses have already been produced of the origins, forms and prospects of the crisis, and we look forward to furthering these debates at HM London 2010. We also aim to encourage dialogue between the critique of political economy and other modes of criticism – ideological, political, aesthetic, philosophical – central to the Marxist tradition.

In the 1930s, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht projected a journal to be called ‘Crisis and Critique’. In very different times, but in a similar spirit, HM London 2010 aims to serve as a forum for dialogue, interaction and debate between different strands of critical-Marxist theory. Whether their focus is the study of the capitalist mode of production's theoretical and practical foundations, the unmasking of its ideological forms of legitimation or its political negation, we are convinced that a renewed and politically effective Marxism will need to rely on all the resources of critique in the years ahead. Crises produce periods of ideological and political uncertainty. They are moments that put into question established cognitive and disciplinary compartmentalisations, and require a recomposition at the level of both theory and practice. HM London 2010 hopes to contribute to a broader dialogue on the Left aimed at such a recomposition, one of whose prerequisites remains the young Marx’s call for the ‘ruthless criticism of all that exists’.

We are seeking papers that respond to the current crisis from a range of Marxist perspectives, but also submissions that try to think about crisis and critique in their widest ramifications. HM will also consider proposals on themes and topics of interest to critical-Marxist theory not directly linked to the call for papers (we particularly welcome contributions on non-Western Marxism and on empirical enquiries employing Marxist methods).

While Historical Materialism is happy to receive proposals for panels, the editorial board reserves the right to change the composition of panels or to reject individual papers from panel proposals. We also expect all participants to attend the whole conference and not simply make ‘cameo’ appearances. We cannot accommodate special requests for specific slots or days, except in highly exceptional circumstances.

*Please note that, in order to allow for expected demand, this year the conference will be three and a half days’ long, starting on the Thursday afternoon.

Please submit a title and abstract of between 200 and 300 words by registering at: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual7/submit by 1 JULY 2010

Possible themes include:

• Crisis and left recomposition

• Critique and crisis in the global south

• Anti-racist critique

• Marxist and non-Marxist theories of crisis

• Capitalist and anti-capitalist uses of the crisis

• Global dimensions of the crisis

• Comparative and historical accounts of capitalist crisis

• Ecological and economic crisis

• Critical theory today

• Finance and the crisis

• Neoliberalism and legitimation crisis

• Negation and negativity

• Feminism and critique

• Political imaginaries of crisis and catastrophe

• The critique of everyday life (Lefebvre, the Situationists etc.)

• The idea of critique in Marx, his predecessors and contemporaries

• Art criticism, political critique and the critique of political economy

• Geography and crisis, geography and the critique of political economy

• Right-wing movements and crisis

• Critiques of the concept of crisis

• New forms of critique in the social and human sciences

• Aesthetic critique

• Marxist literary and cultural criticism

• Reports on recent evolution of former USSR countries and China

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
“Daystar” by Will Roberts, at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6f_pA5XUPk
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon at MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon Profile: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/cold-hands-quarter-moon/
The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Middlesex University Philosophy Campaign - Update 26 May 2010

2010-05-27T04:17:00.000-07:00

MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY PHILOSOPHY CAMPAIGN – UPDATE 26th MAY 2010

Campaign update Wednesday 26 May 2010 (http://savemdxphil.com/)

1. John Protevi and Todd May have posted a petition calling for an international academic boycott of Middlesex University, http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/academic-boycott-of-middlesex-university.html. Several hundred well-placed people have already signed it, in the space of a few hours. Please spread the word about this, far & wide.

2. The poet Michael Rosen renounced his visiting professor at Middlesex today. He explained that "On account of the action of Middlesex University over the Philosophy Department, I would like to inform Professor Ahmad that I would like to renounce my visiting professorship. I do not wish to be a visiting professor at Middlesex University. Best wishes, Michael Rosen."

3. This morning, professors Osborne and Hallward were denied managerial permission to attend an emergency meeting of their union, the UCU, scheduled for Friday 28 May. They were also denied permission to attend the UCU annual general meeting scheduled for next Wednesday, and a meeting of the University's self-constituted Professors Group.

4. Collective pressure to greylist i.e. boycott Middlesex University is growing rapidly. The external examiners for the Middlesex Philosophy department have already announced their refusal to collaborate with next month's assessment boards, and colleagues in other departments may soon follow suit. A boycott by external examiners will have a significant and immediate impact on the University.

5. Last Friday Middlesex management told the four suspended students that their hearings would take place this Friday 28 May at the Hendon campus. Fiona Fall, who will preside over the hearings, suddenly decided this morning that it would be 'better for the students' to hold the meeting at Trent Park instead, since it is their 'home campus.' The four students explained that they would nonetheless prefer for the hearing to go ahead at Hendon as originally planned. But Fiona Fall has made up her mind. 'As my understanding is that a rally of support is being organised at Hendon,' she told one of the students, 'I have decided that Trent Park continues to be the best most calm place to hold the hearings for both students and the panel.'

6. Confirmed speakers for the rally at Hendon on Thursday 27 May from 4pm include Alex Callinicos (KCL), Richard George (Campaign for Better Transport; Plane Stupid), Paul Gilroy (LSE), Nina Power (Roehampton), Jim Wolfreys (UCU), among others. Please circulate the rally announcement and flyer (http://savemdxphil.com/) to everyone who might be sympathetic.

The Campaign
26 May 2010.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon at MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic
Wavering on Ether: http://blog.myspace.com/glennrikowski