Monday, December 1, 2014

Marx, Engels and the Critique of Academic Labor - Call for Papers

MARX, ENGELS AND THE CRITIQUE OF ACADEMIC LABOR – CALL FOR PAPERS

Call for Papers
Marx, Engels and the Critique of Academic Labor
Special Issue of Workplace: A journal for academic labor
Guest Editors: Karen Gregory & Joss Winn

Articles in Workplace have repeatedly called for increased collective organisation in opposition to a disturbing trajectory: individual autonomy is decreasing, contractual conditions are worsening, individual mental health issues are rising, and academic work is being intensified. Despite our theoretical advances and concerted practical efforts to resist these conditions, the gains of the 20th century labor movement are diminishing and the history of the university appears to be on a determinate course.
To date, this course is often spoken of in the language of “crisis.” While crisis may indeed point us toward the contemporary social experience of work and study within the university, we suggest that there is one response to the transformation of the university that has yet to be adequately explored: A thoroughgoing and reflexive critique of academic labor and its ensuing forms of value. By this, we mean a negative critique of academic labor and its role in the political economy of capitalism; one which focuses on understanding the basic character of ‘labor’ in capitalism as a historically specific social form. Beyond the framework of crisis, what productive, definite social relations are actively resituating the university and its labor within the demands, proliferations, and contradictions of capital?
We aim to produce a negative critique of academic labor that not only makes transparent these social relations, but repositions academic labor within a new conversation of possibility.
We are calling for papers that acknowledge the foundational work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for labor theory and engage closely and critically with the critique of political economy. Marx regarded his discovery of the dual character of labor in capitalism (i.e. concrete and abstract) as one of his most important achievements and “the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy turns.” With this in mind, we seek contributions that employ Marx’s and Engels’ critical categories of labor, value, the commodity, capital, etc. in reflexive ways which illuminate the role and character of academic labor today and how its existing form might be, according to Marx, abolished, transcended and overcome (aufheben).

Contributions:
1. A variety of forms and approaches, demonstrating a close engagement with Marx’s theory and
method: Theoretical critiques, case studies, historical analyses, (auto-)ethnographies, essays, and
narratives are all welcome. Contributors from all academic disciplines are encouraged.
2. Any reasonable length will be considered. Where appropriate they should adopt a consistent style
(e.g. Chicago, Harvard, MLA, APA).
3. Will be Refereed.
4. Contributions and questions should be sent to:
Joss Winn (jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk) and Karen Gregory (kgregory@ccny.cuny.edu)

Publication timetable
● Fully referenced ABSTRACTS by 1st February 2015
● Authors notified by 1st March 2015
● Deadline for full contributions: 1st September 2015
● Authors notified of initial reviews by 1st November 2015
● Revised papers due: 10th January 2016
● Publication date: March 2016.

Possible themes that contributions may address include, but are not limited to:
The Promise of Autonomy and The Nature of Academic “Time”
The Laboring “Academic” Body
Technology and Circuits of Value Production
Managerial Labor and Productions of Surplus
Markets of Value: Debt, Data, and Student Production
The Emotional Labor of Restructuring: Alt-Ac Careers and Contingent Labor
The Labor of Solidarity and the Future of Organization
Learning to Labor: Structures of Academic Authority and Reproduction
Teaching, Learning, and the Commodity-Form
The Business of Higher Education and Fictitious Capital
The Pedagogical Labor of Anti-Racism
Production and Consumption: The Academic Labor of Students
The Division of Labor In Higher Education
Hidden Abodes of Academic Production
The Formal and Real Subsumption of the University
Alienation, Abstraction and Labor Inside the University
Gender, Race, and Academic Wages
New Geographies of Academic Labor and Academic Markets
The University, the State and Money: Forms of the Capital Relation
New Critical Historical Approaches to the Study of Academic Labor

About the Editors:

Karen Gregory
kgregory@ccny.cuny.edu @claudikincaid
Karen Gregory is lecturer in Sociology at the Center for Worker Education/Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the City College of New York, where she heads the CCNY City Lab. She is an ethnographer and theory-building scholar whose research focuses on the entanglement of contemporary spirituality, labor precarity, and entrepreneurialism, with an emphasis on the role of the laboring body. Karen cofounded the CUNY Digital Labor Working Group and her work has been published in Women’s Studies Quarterly, Women and Performance, The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, and Contexts.
Joss Winn
Joss Winn is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Lincoln, UK. His research extends broadly to a critique of the political economy of higher education. Currently, his writing and teaching is focused on the history and political economy of science and technology in higher education, its affordances for and impact on academic labor, and the way by which academics can control the means of knowledge production through co-operative and ultimately post-capitalist forms of work and democracy. His article, “Writing About Academic Labor,” is published in Workplace 25, 1-15.


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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski 

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

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Para-Academia

PARA-ACADEMIA

BOOK LAUNCH
‘Para-academia’
With Deborah Withers, Alex Wardrop, and Charlotte Cooper
Saturday 6th December, 6.30pm
Housmans, radical booksellers since 1945
Caledonian Road, King’s Cross, London, N1 9DX
Entry £3, redeemable against any purchase

‘Academia is dying, and in the process compulsively crushes the desires for learning, creating, teaching, cooperating it claimed to foster', Isabelle Stengers writes as endorsement for The Para-Academic Handbook: A Toolkit for making-learning-creating-acting, a unique collection exploring the margins of contemporary academia.

The book collects global perspectives of people who feel connected, in different ways, to the practice of para-academia. Those people who work alongside, beside, next to, and rub up against the proper location of the Academy, making the work of higher education a little more irregular and perverse.

This event will discuss the perils, possibilities and necessities of para-academic practice. It will explore how alternatives to the marketised university can not only be sustained, but also flourish. Speakers include editors of the collection Deborah Withers and Alex Wardrop, and contributor Charlotte Cooper.

Events at Housmans: http://www.housmans.com/events.php  
Published by Hammer On Press: http://www.hammeronpress.net

**END**

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski 
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

Glenn Rikowski’s latest paper, Crises in Education, Crises of Education – can now be found at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education

Glenn Rikowski’s article, Education, Capital and the Transhuman – can also now be found at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9033532/Education_Capital_and_the_Transhuman

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Some Recent Additions to Academia - Glenn Rikowski

SOME RECENT ADDITIONS TO ACADEMIA – GLENN RIKOWSKI

The following papers by Glenn Rikowski were recently added to Academia:

Crises in Education, Crises of Education (2014) A paper prepared for the Philosophy of Education Seminars at the University of London Institute of Education 2014-15 Programme, 22nd October 2014, online at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education

Critical Mass (2006) (with Phil Badger) Information for Social Change, Issue 23, online at: http://www.academia.edu/9186407/Critical_Mass

On Education for Its Own Sake (2005) 17th Ocober 2005, London, online at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9099777/On_Education_for_Its_Own_Sake

Silence on the Wolves: What is Absent in New Labour’s Five Year Strategy for Education (2005) University of Brighton, Education Research Centre, Occasional Paper, May 2005, online at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9150947/Silence_on_the_Wolves_What_is_Absent_in_New_Labours_Five_Year_Strategy_for_Education

Education, Capital and the Transhuman (2002) Chapter 6, in: Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory, edited by Dave Hill, Peter McLaren, Mike Cole & Glenn Rikowski, Lanham MD: Lexington Books, online at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9033532/Education_Capital_and_the_Transhuman

The ‘Which Blair’ Project: Giddens, the Third Way and Education (2000) Forum for promoting 3-19 comprehensive education, Vol.42 No.1, pp.4-7, online at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9169470/The_Which_Blair_Project_Giddens_the_Third_Way_and_Education

Nietzsche’s School? The Roots of Educational Postmodernism (1998) A paper prepared for the Social Justice Seminar, Semester 2, University of Birmingham, School of Education, 24th March 1998, online at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9099116/Nietzsches_School_The_Roots_of_Educational_Postmodernism

Between Postmodernism and Nowhere: The Predicament of the Postmodernist (1997) (with Mike Cole and Dave Hill) British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol.45 No.2, pp.187-200, online at: https://www.academia.edu/9291420/Between_Postmodernism_and_Nowhere_The_Predicament_of_the_Postmodernist

Post-Compulsory Education and Training for the 21st Century (1995) (with Andy Green) Forum for promoting 3-19 comprehensive education, Vol.37 No.3, pp.68-70, online at: https://www.academia.edu/9171342/Post-Compulsory_Education_and_Training_for_the_21st_Century  


Glenn Rikowski at Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

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

International Congress on Education for the Future: Issues and Challenges

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON EDUCATION FOR THE FUTURE: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
ICEFIC 2015
International Congress on Education for the Future: Issues and Challenges
13-15 May 2015
Ankara, Turkey
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Ankara University Faculty of Educational Sciences at Ankara University, Turkey

Important Dates
Abstract submission: Until 31 January 2014
Notification of Results: 15-28 February 2015
Early Bird Registration: 1-31 March 2015
Late Registration: 1 April 2015

We are proud to announce that the International Congress on Education for the Future: Issues and Challenges (ICEFIC 2015) will take place on 13-15 May 2015 in Ankara to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Ankara University Faculty of Educational Sciences.

The Faculty was established to be the first faculty of educational sciences in Turkey so as to fulfill the need for experts in the field of educational sciences. Since its establishment, the Faculty having made great contributions to the field of educational sciences has brought national and international researchers together via the scientific events organized.

ICEFIC 2015 is aimed at providing academics, educators and policymakers from around the world with an international platform to present new perspectives, to discuss trends and innovations, and to share best practices with one common goal of providing better education for future generations. To this end, the congress theme “Education for the Future: Issues and Challenges” will be examined with a wide array of sub-themes on education through oral presentations, posters and workshops.

We look forward to meeting you in Ankara, the heart of the Republic of Turkey and the cradle of Anatolian civilizations, which provides an inspiration for international events with its historical and cultural richness.

Sincerely,
Ayşe Çakır İlhan, Ph.D.
Dean of the Faculty of Educational Sciences


**END**

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski 
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

Glenn Rikowski’s latest paper, Crises in Education, Crises of Education – can now be found at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education

Glenn Rikowski’s article, Education, Capital and the Transhuman – can also now be found at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9033532/Education_Capital_and_the_Transhuman

Friday, November 14, 2014

Romantic Remains

ROMANTIC REMAINS

MICHAEL NICHOLSON (CHAIR)
SPECIAL SESSION – NASSR 2015
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism

Remain(s):
To be left behind after the removal, use, or destruction of some part, number, or quantity.
To continue in the same place or with the same person; to abide, to stay.
The survivors of a war, battle, or other destructive event.
A relic of some obsolete custom or practice; a surviving trait or characteristic.
A part or the parts of a person’s body after death; a corpse.
The literary works or fragments (esp. the unpublished ones) left by an author after death
[OED]

Romantic culture’s most familiar rhetorics of revolution are progressive, teleological, messianic, and apocalyptic. Building upon the etymology of the term “remain(s)” as a term that denotes survival and persistence as much as death and decay, “Romantic Remains” will consider the whole range of “remain(s)” in relation to “rights” (political, cultural, literary, scientific, environmental, corporeal, and otherwise). This panel will therefore theorize the era’s less critically prominent forms of protest such as stasis, resistance, delay, disappearance, survival, and/or endurance. In a moment whose most prominent poetic works, embodied individual lives, and grand political narratives focus on vigor, life, growth, evolution, and development — Wordsworth’s “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,” Barbauld’s “Little Invisible Being Who is Expected Soon to Become Visible,” and Shelley’s “Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory”—who or what gets left behind? What radical possibilities lie on the other side of Romanticism’s forward thinkingforms of enthusiasm, passion, utopianism, and optimism?

As the necessary consequence of works such as Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey and Volney’s Ruins, Romantic critics have always taken an interest in Europe’s physical remains. Yet in our present moment of environmental catastrophe and ruin, a diverse array of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars have drawn new attention to the possibilities and anxieties of contingent, biodegradable, unhurried, and uncertain forms of existence and aesthetics: Kevis Goodman and Jonathan Sachs (slow time), Jonathan Bate and James C. McKusick (Romantic ecology and green writing), Paul Fry (ontological radicalism), Anahid Nersessian (nescience), Anne-Lise François (recessive agency), Timothy Morton (dark ecology), and Jacques Khalip (anonymity and dispossession). In its focus on natural rhythms, formal omissions, and vanishing acts rather than developmental narratives or confident subjects, this panel will turn toward a critique of the idea that Romanticism always proceeds though rapid movement and productive presence. With this end in mind, we will study the period’s conservationist energies in the realms of ontology, politics, and aesthetics—how the positions of remaining behind, moving slowly, and entirely disappearing often allowed Romantic writers to contest the excesses of an increasingly accelerating age focused on imperial expansion, economic development, and sociocultural improvement.

Papers may consider “Romantic Remains” in relation to a wide range of formal, historical, theoretical, and critical concerns, that might include:
--necromanticism / material remains: corpses, ruins, relics, residues, wastes, wrecks, dust, rubble, and debris
--formal remains: elegies, epitaphs, scraps, elisions, gaps, fragments, caesurae, ellipses, and repetitions
--biological / natural processes: decomposition, defilement, deterioration, erosion, putrefaction, and decay
--the poetics of nostalgia / memory and ephemerality / forgetting
--outmoded, suspended, superseded, and left over genres, modes, and personae
--spatial remains: localism, dispossession, immovability, and immobility
--temporal remains: anachronism, haunting, and gradualism
--textual / authorial negotiations of invisibility, abjection, anonymity, disappearance, obscurity, and reanimation
--memorialization and categories of identity such as gender, race, class, sexuality, and disability
--biodegradable / sustainable aesthetics
--scientific and antiquarian analyses of extinction, rebirth, evolution, and survival
--the ruins of Romantic criticism and theory / the remains of Romantic literary history / the afterlives of Romantic writing

General Call for Papers: http://nassr2015.wordpress.com/cfp/
Special Sessions Call for Papers: http://nassr2015.wordpress.com/sessions/

GENERAL CALL FOR PAPERS:
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NSSR)
The 23rd Annual NASSR Conference Winnipeg, Manitoba, August 13-16, 2015
Sponsored by University of Manitoba and The University of Winnipeg, NASSR 2015 will meet at the historic Fort Garry Hotel near The Forks in downtown Winnipeg, Manitoba, from August 13 to 16, 2015.
The theme of the conference is “Romanticism & Rights,” broadly construed to include:
·         Human Rights (racial, indigenous, economic; right to freedom and autonomy [slavery])
·         Animal Rights; Natural Rights, Nature’s rights (the environment)
·         Sexual Rights (alternative genders, women’s rights, procreative rights)
·         Author or Authorial Rights (intellectual property, copyright)
·         State/Sovereign Rights
·         Children’s Rights
·         Right to be heard; Freedom of Speech
·         The Right to Philosophy / Thinking
·         Right to Religion
·         Rights and Wrongs
·         The Right to Die
·         What is left of Rights?
For information on the 2015 NASSR call for papers, including special sessions, click on the “Call for Papers” menu item above.

Conference Co-Chairs:
Michelle Faubert, University of Manitoba
Peter Melville, The University of Winnipeg
Conference Committee:
Linda Dietrick, The University of Winnipeg
Murray Evans, The University of Winnipeg
Joshua D. Lambier, Western University
Dana Medoro, University of Manitoba
Pam Perkins, University of Manitoba
Kathryn Ready, The University of Winnipeg
Armelle St. Martin, University of Manitoba

Contact NASSR 2015: nassr15@umanitoba.ca
NASSR Main Website: http://publish.uwo.ca/~nassr/

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

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

Glenn Rikowski’s latest paper, Crises in Education, Crises of Education – can now be found at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education


Glenn Rikowski’s article, Education, Capital and the Transhuman – can also now be found at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9033532/Education_Capital_and_the_Transhuman

The SoJo Journal: Educational Foundations for Social Justice Education

THE SoJo JOURNAL: EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATIONS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION

The SoJo Journal: Educational Foundations and Social Justice Education
CALL FOR PAPERS
The editorial team of The SoJo Journal: Educational Foundations and Social Justice Education is soliciting manuscripts for its inaugural issue. The journal is an international peer-reviewed journal of educational foundations. The Department of Educational Leadership at California State University, East Bay, whose mission is to prepare and influence bold, socially responsible leaders who will transform the world of schooling, is hosting the journal.
The journal welcomes manuscripts that examine contemporary educational and social contexts and practices from critical perspectives. The SoJo Journal: Educational Foundations and Social Justice Education is interested in research studies as well as conceptual, theoretical, philosophical, and policy-analysis essays that advance educational practices that challenge the existing state of affairs in society, schools, and (in)formal education.
Manuscripts for publication consideration for the inaugural issue should be submitted electronically via email by attachment by February 1, 2015 to Bradley J. Porfilio at bradley.porfilio@csueastbay.edu The issue will be published in the fall of 2015.

Style Guidelines
All manuscripts must adhere to APA sixth edition format, include an abstract of 100-150 words, and range between 20 - 30 pages in length (including camera ready tables, charts, figures, and references). Two copies of the manuscript should be attached: a master copy including a title page and a blind copy with the title page and all other author-identifying information removed (including citations and references pertaining to any of the contributing authors’ works). Attachments should be in Microsoft Word

Journal Contact
Bradley J. Porfilio
Editor-In-Chief
The SoJo Journal: Educational Foundations and Social Justice Education
California State University, East Bay
25800 Carlos Bee Blvd, Hayward, CA 94542
Phone: 609-339-5011
Email: bradley.porfilio@csueastbay.edu
Associate Editors
Nicholas D. Hartlep
Illinois State University
Lisa William-White
Sacramento State University
http://www.infoagepub.com/the-sojo-journal.html

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

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

Glenn Rikowski’s latest paper, Crises in Education, Crises of Education – can now be found at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education


Glenn Rikowski’s article, Education, Capital and the Transhuman – can also now be found at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9033532/Education_Capital_and_the_Transhuman

Marx, Justice and Education

MARX, JUSTICE AND ALIENATION

A SPECIAL CALL FOR PAPERS

New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry

In spite of its clear and distinguished pedigree in European political philosophy and theology, the concept of alienation is now associated, almost exclusively, with Marxian critical theory and analysis. Yet, even within the orbit of Marxian thought the meaning and function of the concept of alienation has not always had a comfortable or stable position. Pointing to polysemic and intermittent use in the Paris Manuscripts, and the absence of explicit formation in Capital, Louis Althusser advised discarding alienation like other “old philosophical themes” (Althusser 1967.) Granted, there is a degree to which Marx’s own deployment of alienation has several different conceptions and connotations, but the Grundrisse and other textual sources provide evidence that alienation, its semantic elasticity notwithstanding, remained central to Marx’s political economic analysis and his theory of history, even while it appeared to ‘go underground’, so to speak, in his late thought.

Part of the confusion around this concept arises from the fact that Marx appears to use alienation as a kind of normative foundation, one which informs his various critiques. A central historical rendering tends to describe workers’ inability to fully realize their inner life in capitalist society outside of market forces, hence they are separated from their “species being.” Adopted from Feuerbach, and initially developed in the Paris Manuscripts, Marx tends to understand species-being as comprising the distinctive features of human being which when expressed facilitate the conditions for human life to flourish. The ability to freely make and create is central to this conception. But under capitalism the majority of people are unable to exercise their capabilities. In this respect, alienation is a normative assessment of the conditions of life and the potential possibility to fulfill necessary elements of them themselves. One can see residue elements of this sentiment in the language in and around the ideas associated with dignity, humanity, and human flourishing.

In terms of the analysis of capitalist social relations, Marx’s conception of alienation is narrower and is applied to studies of exploitation in the labour process. Alienation in this respect refers to how workers are separated or estranged, from their products. As a social system, capitalism is structurally dependent upon separating workers from their products and therefore requires dominating means to force workers to comply in the reproduction of capitalist social relations. Thus separation implies subordination. Additionally, there is a reconstructed rendering of alienation wherein Marx’s concept of alienation can be reduced to “the notion that people create the structures that dominate them” (Postone and Brennan 2009, 316). Herein, alienation is a process by which persons are co-opted to reproduce their subordinate conditions.

While the idea of alienation has never quite disappeared from popular and scholarly consciousness, in recent years the impetus to understand these structures seems more urgent than it did only a decade ago. Indeed, when Leo Panitch, Greg Albo and Vivek Chibber argue that, for many, “crisis is the new normal” (Panitch, Albo, and Chibber 2012, ix), they articulate the conditions under which people both struggle to eke out the means of existence and make sense of the world today as well as the structural constraints which rigorously intercede and perpetuate social misery. 

Increasingly, capitalism is at the center of critical attention. This is evidenced by the fact that Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which details he inequalities generated under capitalism (hardly a revelation), seems to struck a chord in the popular press, so to speak. So to have Milanovic’s The Haves and the Have-Nots and Joseph Stiglitz’s The Price of Inequality. Unfortunately, these analyses, while detailing economic developments more broadly, are silent on issues of labor, working conditions, and the prospects for people to cultivate their inner life under contemporary capitalism. For this reason, alienation still nevertheless provides a useful focus to explore contemporary social thought. There is a need for old philosophical themes.

This special issue of New Proposals seeks to collect and showcase scholarship primarily concerned with using, refining, or deploying the concept of alienation. Given the diverse expressions of alienation we invite contributions that explore the historical, analytical, and practical underpinnings of the concept, its contemporary fate, and speculations on the trajectory of this idea.

Recommended Length:
Peer-Reviewed academic articles: 4’000-6’000 words.
Shorter comments and arguments: 1’500- 2’500 words

Please send queries and expressions of interest (including title, a 200 word abstract, a brief outline of the argument, affiliation, and contact details) via email to the co-editors.

Scott Timcke – snt2@sfu.ca
Graham MacKenzie – gsmacken@sfu.ca



**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

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

Glenn Rikowski’s latest paper, Crises in Education, Crises of Education – can now be found at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education


Glenn Rikowski’s article, Education, Capital and the Transhuman – can also now be found at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9033532/Education_Capital_and_the_Transhuman

Friday, November 7, 2014

Silence on the Wolves

SILENCE ON THE WOLVES: WHAT IS ABSENT IN NEW LABOUR’S FIVE YEAR STRATEGY FOR EDUCATION

My paper Silence on the Wolves: What is Absent in New Labour’s Five Year Strategy for Education – is now on Academia.

Although some of the content might seem dated, the business takeover of schools in England goes on apace. This is what the paper is really about; it is not just a narrow ‘education policy’ critique. Furthermore, there is some analysis of human capital theory, labour power and employers’ labour power needs in section 3 of the paper. Those interested in Marxist analyses of education will find the paper of interest over-and-above any education policy concerns.


Reference:
Rikowski, G. (2005) Silence on the Wolves: What is Absent in New Labour’s Five Year Strategy for Education, University of Brighton, Education Research Centre, Occasional Paper, May 2005, online at: https://www.academia.edu/9150947/Silence_on_the_Wolves_What_is_Absent_in_New_Labours_Five_Year_Strategy_for_Education

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

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

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Recent Additions to Academia - Glenn Rikowski

RECENT ADDITIONS TO ACADEMIA – GLENN RIKOWSKI


The following papers by Glenn Rikowski were recently added to Academia:


Crises in Education, Crises of Education (2014) A paper prepared for the Philosophy of Education Seminars at the University of London Institute of Education 2014-15 Programme, 22nd October 2014, online at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education

On Education for Its Own Sake (2005) 17th Ocober 2005, London, online at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9099777/On_Education_for_Its_Own_Sake

Education, Capital and the Transhuman (2002) Chapter 6, in: Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory, edited by Dave Hill, Peter McLaren, Mike Cole & Glenn Rikowski, Lanham MD: Lexington Books, online at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9033532/Education_Capital_and_the_Transhuman

Nietzsche’s School? The Roots of Educational Postmodernism (1998) A paper prepared for the Social Justice Seminar, Semester 2, University of Birmingham, School of Education, 24th March 1998, online at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9099116/Nietzsches_School_The_Roots_of_Educational_Postmodernism


Glenn Rikowski at Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

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

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics

CONFERO: ESSAYS ON EDUCATION, PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS

Open Call for Papers
Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy & Politics

Confero is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal focusing on issues related to education and social criticism. The journal provides a space for essayistic writing and especially encourages discussions of philosophical and political nature.
We are now inviting submissions of essays that deal with issues related to the broad scope of the journal, i.e. education and criticism.
The journal welcomes a broad range of empirical sources to explore the issue or phenomenon at hand: unconventional sources such as art works, literature, movies as well as conventional empirical material like interviews, statistics and ethnographies.
Confero publishes essays related to education written from various academic traditions, for example anthropology, literature, history, social psychology and sociology.
Confero is an open access journal, available for free to people engaged in social science research as well as a wider intellectual public. All the submission that potentially will possess the high quality required for publication, will go through a rigorous double blind peer-review process. 
This open call for papers warmly welcomes contributions at any time.
The inaugural issue of Confero contains essays by such scholars as Sven-Eric LiedmanYlva HasselbergMary Lou Lou RasmussenWalter Mignolo and Ronny Ambjörnsson. To access these essays or getting further information on our submission guidelines, please visit: http://www.confero.ep.liu.se
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Glenn Rikowski’s latest paper, Crises in Education, Crises of Education – can now be found at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education


Glenn Rikowski’s article, Education, Capital and the Transhuman – can also now be found at Academia: https://www.academia.edu/9033532/Education_Capital_and_the_Transhuman

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Crises in Education, Crises of Education

Crises in Education, Crises of Education

Glenn Rikowski, Visiting Scholar, Department of Education, Anglia Ruskin University, UK

A paper prepared for the Philosophy of Education Seminars at the University of London Institute of Education 2014-15 Programme, 22nd October 2014.

INTRODUCTION
The capitalist crisis of 2007-09 cast a grim shadow over social existence in developed Western nations. The fallout from the banking crash of September 2008 post-Lehman cascaded over welfare, health, social services and education provision in the form of austerity measures, the drive to cut sovereign debt levels, the erosion of workers’ living standards and vicious service cuts and taxes aimed at the poor and disadvantaged (e.g. the bedroom tax in the UK).
On the back of this maelstrom, the Journal of Education Policy (JEP) celebrated its 25th anniversary by running a special issue on ‘Education, Capitalism and the Global Crisis’ in 2010[1]. The JEP is to be congratulated on unveiling articles addressing relationships between the crisis of 2007-09 and education: it was unusual for a mainstream education journal to dedicate a whole issue to this topic. However, with the possible exception of Clarke and Newman’s (2010) contribution[2] it could be concluded that little progress has been made in understanding relations between capitalist crises and education since Madan Sarup’s classic Education, State and Crisis: A Marxist Perspective of 1982. Furthermore, there seemed to be a coy elision regarding the constitution of crisis within or of education itself. The crisis of 2007-09 was basically ‘economic’ in nature, it appears, with various spill-over effects for education: e.g. cuts in expenditure, deepening educational inequalities and rationing of access to higher education (Jones, 2010). Thus: education crisis was derivative of, and consequential upon, economic crisis. Furthermore, the economy, or the ‘economic’ system (for structuralists) is the starting point for analysis of education crisis.
        The notion that an ‘education crisis’ can only ever be derivative of a capitalist economic one begs the question as to whether all crises can only ever be basically economic in nature; only ‘economic’ crises fundamentally put either the whole capitalist economy and society at risk, or, are the foundation for crises in other parts of the social system but still basically ‘economic’ in nature; thereby generating spectres of reductionism, economic determinism and crude renditions of historical materialism. On the other hand, references to ‘crisis’ litter media reports and academic outputs in relation to all kinds of topics – and there is nearly always some kind of ‘education crisis’ foregrounded by the print media. In terms of everyday usage the concept appears to have extensive legitimacy, though Gamble notes that ‘the term crisis [is] being thrown around fairly indiscriminately in everyday discourse’ (2009, p.7).[3]    
It should be borne in mind that the concept of crisis can be traced back to the writings of Hippocrates (c. 460 – c. 370 B.C.) in ancient Greece, where it was used in relation to medicine, specifically indicating the turning point in the course of a disease or medical condition. In such writings as Epidemics, Book 1, Hippocrates used the concept of crisis to denote the point (the turning point) at which a patient either began to make a recovery from illness, or the disease won out and death resulted (Hippocrates, 1983). Furthermore, reading the ground-breaking work on crisis by Janet Roitman (2011 and 2014), which built on the classic text on the topic by Reinhart Koselleck (1988), indicated that an exploration of the concept of crisis beyond the economic sphere could be a worthwhile project. Maybe there could be essentially ‘education crises’ after all, and with this in view, this paper is structured into three parts, as follows.
Part 1 begins with a rudimentary outline of the concept of crisis. Madan Sarup’s (1982) classical theory of education crisis is then explored, coupled with some evidence showing that Sarup’s approach still has relevance for today (with contemporary examples drawn from the United States, Australia and England). It is demonstrated how contemporary accounts of the 2007-09 economic crisis could supplement and deepen Sarup’s account, whilst also avoiding the issue of the possibility of definitive education crises. This is followed by a brief outline and review of some work by Vincent Carpentier (2003, 2006a-b and 2009), which, although manifesting more sophistication (and much better data) as compared with Sarup’s classic work, nevertheless falls prey to subsuming education crises under economic developments. In the same context, David Blacker’s work on The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame (2013) is examined. This is an attempt to apply Marx’s notion of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (TRPF) (via the work of Kliman, 2012) to developments in education in the United States (primarily). Blacker stamps the TRPF on contemporary education and thereby develops an original account of education crisis. Yet nevertheless, his rendering of education crisis is still derivative of economic crisis. Blacker also fails to pin down what a falling rate of learning actually is. He prefers to focus on a fall in the mass of learning and the elimination of learning, instead. These developments rest on economic, but also environmental, crisis. This first part of the paper ends with a brief critique of Crisis Fundamentalism: the notion that real, bona fide crises can only be economic ones. This is what the concept of crisis in education is concerned with.
        Part 2 takes another tack: a different starting point, an alternative methodological approach. Rather than viewing education crises as flowing from economic ones, it explores the concept of education and what it is to be an ‘educated person’, and then seeks out possibilities for education crises within educational phenomena, institutions, processes and ethics. Such crises are crises of education, it is argued. The work of R.S. Peters (via Robin Barrow, 2011) is the focus here. There is an attempt to work through what an ‘education crisis’ might be on the basis of Barrow’s rendition of what he (Barrow) takes to be the four key components of Peters’ conception of the educated person. The discussion of some of the consequences of this approach is deepened through bringing the work of Janet Roitman (2011, 2014) to the keyboard. Rather than providing a history of the concept of crisis, as in Koselleck (1988), or providing a new (and improved) concept of crisis, Roitman shows the various ways in which the concept has been, and can be, put to work. Hence, Roitman’s approach to crisis is ‘put to work’ on R.S. Peters’ work on the educated person, pace Barrow. The last base in Part 2 examines the notion of ‘education for its own sake’ and what I call ‘island pedagogy’, flowing from the work of Furedi (2004a and 2009) and his followers. The argument here is that this approach to education crisis falls either into an ethics of blame or conjures up an education Colossus; a kind of Nietzschean figure with a monumental drive to learn and teach, unsullied by material interests and motivations. This approach is also basically idealist, transhistorical and sociologically naïve. It is also the flipside of Crisis Fundamentalism (education crises derive from economic ones – crises in education): quintessentially education crises can only arise within the educational sphere itself – leading to a kind of Educational Crisis Idealism (crises of education).
The Conclusion argues that we need to think about crisis in relation to education and economy in a new way: such crises are not essentially ‘education’ or ‘economic’ in nature. An anti- (rather than post-) structuralist perspective rooted in class struggle is advanced as a way forward, and neither Crisis Fundamentalism (crises in education) nor Educational Crisis Idealism (crises of education) will do. It also discusses the question of whether, and why, exploring the issue of crisis and education is a worthwhile pursuit for critical educators and theorists and for those who wish to move beyond capitalist education and society.


The whole paper can be downloaded at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski




[1] Journal of Education Policy, Vol.25 No.6, November, edited by Stephen Ball, Meg Maguire and Ivor Goodson. A book based on this special 25th Anniversary was produced by the same three editors, also called Education, Capitalism and the Global Crisis, in 2012 (Ball et al, 2012) – but with some additional articles.
[2] Clarke and Newman (2010) explore the notion that crises are ‘socially constructed’ and the roles discourse and social power play in these constructions.
[3] See also: ‘Crisis is much overused in everyday discourse. 24-hour news lives by manufacturing crisis. Most of them are entirely ephemeral. Any event that is in any way out of the ordinary or where there appears to be conflict and the outcome is uncertain becomes labelled a crisis’ (Gamble, 2010, p.704).