MASS INTELLECTUALITY
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO A BOOK ON ‘MASS
INTELLECTUALITY: THE DEMOCRATISATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION’
Through our work on the Social Science Centre, Richard Hall and
I have been approached to produce a book which documents and critically
analyses ‘alternative higher education’ projects in terms of their being
critical responses to ‘intellectual leadership’ in mainstream higher education.
The book is intended to be part of a series already agreed with Bloomsbury
Academic Publishing that focuses on ‘intellectual leadership’. The series
editors have encouraged us to develop a proposal for an edited volume. A brief
statement about the series is:
‘Perspectives on Leadership in Higher Education’ is a
research-level series comprising monographs and edited collections with an
emphasis on authored books. The prime purpose of the series is to provide a
forum for different and sometimes divergent perspectives on what intellectual
leadership means within the context of higher education as it develops in the
21st century.
This is an invitation to attend a workshop where we aim to collectively
design a book proposal that is submitted to Bloomsbury. As you can see below,
we have drafted a proposal, which the series editors and their peer-reviewers
have responded very positively to, but it has always been our intention to
ultimately produce the book in a collaborative way with all its authors.
[UPDATE:
Just to be clear: we welcome contributions from authors who are not based in
the UK and can offer a
perspective from outside the UK. It is our intention that the book have an
international focus. Attendance at the workshop is preferred but not
obligatory.]
We hope that from the workshop, a revised proposal is produced with
confirmed authors and chapter summaries, which we will then submit to
Bloomsbury for final approval.
We are very optimistic that it will be accepted, but of course we are at
liberty to submit the proposal elsewhere if Bloomsbury decide not to go ahead
with it. Either way, we are confident of getting the book published.
Hopefully, the draft proposal below is largely self-explanatory. The
chapters headings are only indicative in order to get us this far. We expect a
fully revised proposal to come out of the workshop with input from all authors.
If you are interested in writing
a chapter for the book, you are strongly encouraged to attend the
workshop. We will be seeking international contributions to the book, but would
like as many authors as possible to help design the book through attendance at
this workshop.
We welcome anyone who is involved with and/or working on alternative
higher education projects such as free universities,
transnational collectives, occupied spaces, and co-operatives for higher
education. We hope that this book will provide a lasting critical analysis of
recent and existing efforts to develop alternatives to mainstream higher
education in the UK and elsewhere. We expect it to encompass chapters which
focus on all aspects of these initiatives including, for example, governance, pedagogy,
institutional form, theory, disciplinary boundaries, subjectivities:
‘academic’, ‘teacher’, ‘student’, ‘researcher’, and the role and nature of
research outside of mainstream universities.
The workshop will be held on Thursday 5th June in Leicester,
UK. Exact details of time and place will be sent to participants
nearer the date. If you would like to attend, please email Joss Winn prior to 10th May, with a brief
abstract of your anticipated contribution. This will help us get a sense of
direction prior to the workshop and organise it more effectively. If you are
unable to attend the workshop but would like to contribute to the book, please tell
us.
OUTLINE:
1.
Book Title and Subtitle.
‘Mass Intellectuality: The democratisation of higher education’
2.
Summary
Drawing on the activism of academics and students working in, against
and beyond the neo-liberal university, this book brings together for the first
time, both an analysis of the crisis of higher education and the alternative
forms that are emerging from its ruins.
3.
Description (marketing)
Higher education in the UK and elsewhere is in crisis. The idea of the
public university is under assault, and both the future of the sector and its
relationship to society are being gambled. Higher education is increasingly
unaffordable, its historic institutions are becoming untenable, and their
purpose is resolutely instrumental. What and who have led us to this crisis?
What are the alternatives? To whom do we look for leadership in revealing those
alternatives?
This book brings together critical analyses of the failures of
‘intellectual leadership’ in the University, and documents on-going efforts
from around the world to create alternative models for organising higher
education and the production of knowledge. Its authors offer their experience
and views from inside and beyond the structures of mainstream higher education,
in order to reflect critically on efforts to create really existing
alternatives.
The authors argue that mass higher education is at the point where it no
longer reflects the needs, capacities and long-term interests of society. An
alternative role and purpose is required, based upon ‘mass intellectuality’ or
the real possibility of democracy in learning and the production of knowledge.
4.
Key features
1. The book critiques the role of higher education and the University in
developing solutions to global crises that are economic and
socio-environmental. In this way it grounds an analysis of the idea that there
is no alternative for higher education but to contribute to neoliberal agendas
for economic growth and the marketisation of everyday life. The restrictions on
the socio-cultural leadership inside the University are revealed.
2. The book describes and analyses several real, alternative forms of higher
education that have emerged around the world since the ‘Great Recession’ in
2008. These alternatives emerged from worker-student occupations, from
engagements in civil society, and from the co-operatives movement. These
projects highlight a set of co-operative possibilities for demonstrating and
negotiating new forms of political leadership related to higher learning that
are against the neo-liberal university.
3. The book argues that the emergence of alternative forms of higher
education, based on co-operative organising principles, points both to the
failure of intellectual leadership inside the University and to the real
possibility of democracy in learning and the production of knowledge. The place
of ‘Mass Intellectuality’ as a form of distributed leadership that is beyond
the limitations of intellectual leadership in the University will be critiqued,
in order to frame social responses to the crisis.
5.
Table of Contents
Chapters
to be negotiated in a dedicated workshop for the book. However, examples
indicative of actual content are as follows.
1. Introduction: Leadership and academic labour: the failure of
intellectual leadership in Higher Education [Joss Winn and Richard Hall]
This chapter will introduce the book by offering a perspective on the
different types of ‘intellectual leadership’ that exist within higher education
i.e. the state, university management, and academic. It will establish a
critical framework for understanding the role of each, focused upon their
interrelationships, and the tensions and barriers that arise. The chapter aims
to introduce and provide a review of the term ‘intellectual leadership’, and
then offer a different way of conceiving it as a form of social relationship.
In doing so, the authors will briefly question the role, purpose and idea of
the university and ask what is it for, or rather, why is it being led? For what
purpose? If there has been a failure of leadership, whom has it failed? The authors
will then draw on other chapters in the book to offer further responses to
these questions, which are themselves developed through the structure of the
book: in; against; and beyond the university. We will review the aim of each
section, how they are connected and why they point to the need for
alternatives. We will address whether it is possible to define alternatives for
higher education as a coherent project, and if so how can they be developed and
what is the role of leadership in that process?
First section: inside the University
This section sets up the problems of intellectual leadership,
historically, philosophically and politically. The co-editors suggest the
following indicative areas, which will be defined at the workshop.
·
The
failures of intellectual leadership: historical critique (including
militarisation and financialisation)
·
The
failures of intellectual leadership: philosophical critique
·
Intellectual
leadership and limits of institutional structures: managerialism and
corporatisation against academic freedom
·
Technology:
enabling democracy or cybernetic control?
·
The
recursive ‘logic’ of openness in higher education: Levelling the ivory tower?
Second section: against the University
This section documents responses to the first section, in the form of
recent critical case studies from those working and studying within and outside
the academy. The co-editors suggest the following indicative areas, which will
be defined at the workshop.
·
Leaderless
networks, education and power
·
Student
intellectual leadership: models of student-academic and student-worker
collaboration
·
Forms of
co-operation: case studies of organisational democracy in education
·
Historical
examples of leaderless organisation
·
Historical
examples of resistance to intellectual leadership
·
Regional
examples of alternatives: Latin America, etc.
·
A review
of recent initiatives: Student as Producer, SSC, FUN, Free University Brighton,
Liverpool, Ragged, P2PU, Brisbane, Edufactory, etc.
Third section: beyond the University
This section provides a critical analysis of the responses described in
section two and draws out generalisable themes related to the purpose,
organisation and production of higher education, in terms of the idea of Mass
Intellectuality, relating it to leadership. The co-editors suggest the
following indicative areas, which will be defined at the workshop.
·
Co-operative
higher education. Conversion or new institution building?
·
Other
models: Open Source ‘benevolent dictator’; heroic leader; radical collegiality,
co-operatives
·
Critiques
of horizontalism, P2P production, forms of co-operation, radical democracy,
etc.
·
Beyond/problems
with/critique of ‘Student as Producer’ (Lincoln)
·
General
intellect, mass intellectuality: New forms of intellectuality
·
Higher and
higher education: Utopian forms of higher education
·
Intellectual
leadership and local communities
·
Public
intellectuals and public education
Conclusion. The role of free universities: in, against and beyond [Joss
Winn and Richard Hall].
The concluding chapter will aim to synthesis key points from the book
into an over-arching critical, theoretical argument based upon evidence from
the preceding chapters. We will question whether the examples of alternatives
to intellectual leadership inside and beyond the university are effective and
whether they are prefigurative of a fundamental change in the meaning, purpose
and form of higher education. We will reflect on the concept of ‘mass
intellectuality’, and attempt to develop this idea in light of our critique and
preceding evidence. We will attempt to identify a coherent vision for
alternatives to mainstream higher education and assess the role and form of
‘intellectual leadership’.
6.
Chapter by chapter synopsis
This
needs to be determined at our workshop, but the text below is indicative.
Section one collects chapters which discuss the historical,
political-economic and technological trajectory of the modern university, with
a particular critical focus on the ‘imaginary futures’ of post-war higher
education in the UK and elsewhere. In the context of the current social and
economic crises, the chapters lay out the failures of universities and their
leaders to provide an on-going and effective challenge to neo-liberalism and
question why.
Section two collects chapters which focus on recent and historical
attempts by students and academics to resist, reinvent and revolutionise the
university from within. Looking at UK and international examples, they examine
the characteristics of these efforts and assess the effectiveness of critical
forms of praxis aimed against what the university has become.
Section three collects chapters which reflect critically on recent
student and academic activism that goes beyond the institutional form of the
university to understand higher education as a form of social relations
independent of mainstream disciplines and structures. They examine several
inter-related and complementary forms of practice as well as reflecting
critically on their own practice.
7.
Indicative Submission date
·
Workshop
to define content and structure in 5th June 2014
·
First
draft of all chapters by October/November 2014.
·
Peer-review
of chapters completed by February/March 2015.
·
Final
draft chapters to co-editors by May/June 2015.
·
Manuscript
delivered by September 2015.
**END**
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