Open Education and the emancipation of academic labour

I have previously argued that open education is a liberal project with a focus on the freedom of things rather than the freedom of people (Winn, Joss. 2012. “Open Education: From the Freedom of Things to the Freedom of People.” In Towards Teaching in Public: Reshaping the Modern University, edited by Michael Neary, Howard Stevenson, and Les Bell, 133– 147. London: Continuum). Furthermore, I have argued that despite an implicit critique of private property with its emphasis on ‘the commons’, the literature on open education offers no corresponding critique of academic labour (Neary, Mike, and Joss Winn. 2012. “Open Education: Common(s), Commonism and the New Common Wealth.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 12 (4): 406–422). In this paper, I develop my critical position that an emancipatory form of education must work towards the emancipation of teachers and students from labour, the dynamic, social, creative source of value in capitalism. In making this argument, I first establish the fundamental characteristics of academic labour. I then offer a ‘form-analytic’ critique of open access, followed by a corresponding critique of its legal form. Finally, I critically discuss the potential of ‘open cooperatives’ as a transitional organisational form for the production of knowledge through which social relations become ‘transparent in their simplicity’ (Marx, Karl. 1976. Capital, Vol. 1. London: Penguin Classics, 172)

Dreams and nightmares of liberal international law: capitalist accumulation, natural rights and state hegemony

This article develops a line of theorising the relationship between peace, war and commerce and does so via conceptualising global juridical relations as a site of contestation over questions of economic and social justice. By sketching aspects of a historical interaction between capitalist accumulation, natural rights and state hegemony, the article offers a critical account of the limits of liberal international law, and attempts to recover some ground for thinking about the emancipatory potential of international law more generally

A Proposal for the Political Economy of Green Criminology: Capitalism and the Case of the Alberta Tar Sands

Green criminology was proposed in 1990 to broaden the discipline and illustrate how environmental crime, deviance, and inequality can be interpreted through a critical lens influenced by political economic theory. Green criminology has yet to fulfill that theoretical promise. Instead, the political economic perspective on green criminology remains underdeveloped. The purpose of this work is to contribute to further development of a political economic green criminology by laying out the connection between ecological Marxism and green criminology. To carry out this task we describe five propositions that criminologists must consider when developing a green criminology from a political economic perspective. Importantly, these propositions suggest that the environmentally destructive forces of capitalism are opposed to nature. That is, we argue that green criminologists must come to recognize that capitalism and nature cannot both survive over the long run, and in criminological terms, capitalism is therefore a crime against nature

Law, domination, and degemony: the jurisprudence of the supreme tribunal of justice of Venezuela

Este artículo ofrece una reconstrucción de la teoría antihegemónica del derecho que ha influido la jurisprudencia de la Sala Constitucional del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia de Venezuela. Esta teoría entiende el derecho como un instrumento al servicio de la lucha por la hegemonía en la que se encuentra envuelto el régimen. De forma contraria a la tradición del constitucionalismo democrático y liberal, el TSJ venezolano se ve a sí mismo como facilitador de un proyecto político socialista cuyo éxito no puede estar subordinado a las limitaciones que el derecho constitucional impone al ejercicio del poder. El derecho constitucional, desde este punto de vista, debe contribuir a fortalecer la posición dominante del régimen revolucionario y facilitar el proceso de construcción de una nueva hegemonía. Este artículo desarrolla las implicaciones prácticas de esta teoría a partir del análisis de tres momentos críticos de la historia política venezolana desde la adopción de la Constitución de 1999.This article reconstructs the anti-hegemonic theory of law that has influenced the decisions of the Constitutional Chamber of Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice. This theory conceives law as an instrument at the service of the struggle for hegemony in which this country’s regime is involved. Contrary to the liberal-democratic constitutionalist tradition, this tribunal sees itself as the facilitator of a socialist project whose success should not be obstructed by the limitations that constitutional law usually imposes on the exercise of political power. From this perspective, constitutional law’s main goal is to strengthen the position of dominance of the revolutionary regime and contribute to the establishment of a new hegemony. This article makes explicit the practical implications of this legal theory through the analysis of three critical moments in the history of Venezuelan politics since the adoption of the Constitution of 1999

Accidents, Agency and Asylum: Constructing the Refugee Subject

Refugee law demands that the asylum seeker demonstrate an extremely limited and distorted form of agency that is encapsulated within the legal definition of the refugee. Such a framework also denies the role of the accidental in the refugee experience. I argue that the problem lies at the heart of the legal form, as constructed under capitalism. The sans-papiers show us the potential for refugees themselves to reconstruct a subjectivity that transcends the distorted form of agency and the false dichotomy between the accidental and agency found in law, through their rejection of legal definitions and the re-emergence of themselves as political subjects