15 research outputs found
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When performativity fails: Implications for Critical Management Studies
This article argues that recent calls in this journal and elsewhere for Critical Management Studies scholars to embrace rather than reject performativity presents an overly optimistic view of (a) the power of language to achieve emancipatory organizational change and (b) the capability of lone Critical Management Studies researchers to resignify management discourses. We introduce the notion of failed performatives to extend this argument and discuss its implications for critical inquiry. If Critical Management Studies seeks to make a practical difference in business and society, and realize its ideals of emancipation, we suggest alternative methods of impact must be explored
The Neoliberalisation of Higher Education in England: An Alternatives is Possible
In this article, we provide a critical explanation and critique of neoliberal policy. We attempt an innovative focus ranging from the wider contemporary political and ideological shifts, to specific higher education influences and consequences, of neoliberalism. We do this in three parts that follows a narrative logic where we explore the bigger picture, which we then locate concentrating on specific and particular examples with a long view of class struggle. In the first part, we lay out neoliberalism and explicate its basic principles in abstraction. This is necessary for part two, where we contextualise neoliberalism specifically within the English higher education system with specific reference to the policy agenda of the Government. In the third and final part of the article we suggest an alternative higher education model that simultaneously exists and flourishes with and against the neoliberal hegemony.
We conclude by suggesting the possibility of class formation and struggle in this moment of history when neoliberalism is expanding and deepening
âMessy Democracyâ: Democratic pedagogy and its discontents
This paper reflects on a recent participatory installation by the artistsâ collective @.ac, entitled Messy Democracy, as a case study to raise questions concerning the âdistribution of the sensibleâ within the neoliberal art school. The project set up a quasi-autonomous artistsâ space within Hanover Project gallery 9 Aprilâ3 May, 2018 at University of Central Lancashire, Preston. This exhibition functioned as a space of collective pedagogy, co-labour and âdissensusâ situated in relation to the wider operation of the department of Fine Art. It also sought to operate as a critical alternative to contemporary models of the art school, rooted in notions of usefulness and romantic self-realisation, but re-structured in the service of âcommodificationâ and âfinancialisationâ in wake of the Browne Report (2010). Most importantly, Messy Democracy represented a âtheatocracticâ âundercommonsâ for alternate and counter-hegemonic subjectivities to emerge. However, hierarchical logics, resulting from the hegemonic âdistribution of the sensibleâ stubbornly persisted even within this nascent pedagogic democracy
Toward critical pedagogies of the international? Student resistance, other-regardedness and self-formation in the neoliberal university
Anxieties regarding colonial and neoliberal education have generated multiple calls for critical international pedagogies. Scholars of critical pedagogy have analyzed the pedagogies of the neoliberal project, whose ethos and economic imperatives aim to produce apolitical consumers and future citizens. Such calls, this article argues, articulate a concern about other-regardedness, critiquing the impact of neoliberalism on the cultivation of student values and relations toward politics, society, and others. How can we articulate a critical international pedagogy informed by, and enhancing, studentsâ and future citizensâ other-regardedness toward those âsuperfluousâ and âdisposableâ others outside the classroom and the formal curriculum? To this end, we mobilize Michel Foucaultâs thinking of âcounter-conductâ to illuminate how students resist being conducted as self-interested and apolitical consumers. Such practices remain largely unexplored in examinations of recent student protests and occupations. Examining the 2005 student occupation of a French university against the local governmentâs abandonment of asylum-seekers, we discuss studentsâ own processes of social participation and self-formation, thus exploring the possibilities and tensions for advancing a critical and other-regarding pedagogy. Greater attention to students resisting the historically blind and market-driven rationalities and techniques of governingâinside and outside classrooms and curriculaâmarks an important point of departure for critical pedagogies of the international
Leadership and learning landscapes: the struggle for the idea of the university
This paper focuses on the academic involvement in the design and delivery of new teaching and learning spaces in higher education. The findings are based on research conducted at 12 universities within the United Kingdom. The paper examines the nature of academic involvement in the design and decision-making process of pedagogic space design, revealing some of the complexities and the tensions within this area of academic leadership. The research found that innovation and creativity on particular projects is often restricted by the project management decision-making processes and that broader institutional aims are often underplayed once the design process goes into project mode. The paper concludes by calling for greater academic involvement in the design process in ways that allow for critical reflexivity based on discussions around the concept of âthe idea of the universityâ
Academic Freedom, Intellectual Diversity, and the Place of Politics in Geography
This paper examines the conservative critique of higher education in the USA. I argue, first, that the right\u27s call for greater âintellectual diversityâ in American higher education should be understood as an attack on the professional self-regulation and disciplinary autonomy that are central to academic freedom in this country. Second, I suggest that the right\u27s politicization of politics in the academy brings to light the importance of our developing a vision of the university that accounts for rather than disavows the political nature of the work we do