29 research outputs found
Book review: the toxic university: zombie leadership, academic rock stars and neoliberal ideology by John Smyth
In The Toxic University: Zombie Leadership, Academic Rock Stars and Neoliberal Ideology, John Smyth offers a critical reading of the pathological state of higher education today, diagnosing this as the effect of commodification, marketisation and managerialism. While those looking for a minute analysis of the crisis of the university may at times wish for more nuanced and detailed insight, this is an outstanding synthesis of the current challenges facing the HE landscape, finds Jana Bacevic
Science in inaction - the shifting priorities of the UK government's response to COVID-19 highlights the need for publicly accountable expert advice.
The phrase following the science is repeated frequently in relation to government policies to address COVID-19. However, what this science might be and how it is better than other âsciencesâ is less frequently explained. In this post, Jana Bacevic reviews the UK governmentâs initial response to the COVID-19 outbreak and argues that a key factor determining the UK governmentâs approach was a closed advisory system that enabled particular scientific or epistemic communities to have disproportionate influence on policymaking. To address this deficiency, scientific advisory systems need both a greater variety of experts and greater transparency
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War on universities? Neoliberalism, intellectual positioning, and knowledge production in the UK
This thesis contributes to sociological accounts of critique and, more broadly, to accounts of the relationship between knowledge and the social conditions of its production.
It begins with a theoretical exploration of the tension between Bourdieuâs concept of sociological reflexivity and Boltanskiâs sociology of critique, including the epistemic and political position from which knowledge claims in social sciences can be made and justified. This question becomes particularly important when the authority of such claims rests on the possibility of a conceptual distinction between the subject of knowledge (the âknowerâ) and their object (the âsocialâ).
The empirical part of the thesis provides an analysis of this process through the case of the critique of neoliberalism in UK higher education and research between 1997 and 2017. Intellectual interventions (books, articles, and other public statements) offering critical accounts of the transformation of universities are interpreted as forms of intellectual positioning, speech-acts that assign properties to objects and actors in the social realm. Through a qualitative analysis of interventions and interviews, the thesis reconstructs ontological assumptions entailed in forms of positioning, particularly those pertaining to the justification of epistemic authority of academics in the political and historical context of post-WWII Britain.
The thesis uses these findings to situate the questions of knowledge, critique, and the role of social sciences within the longer discussion about the relationship between âthinkingâ and âdoingâ. Focusing on the relationship between positionality and positioning, the thesis shows how subject-object relationships form a fundamental part of the production of both critique and knowledge about its object.Cambridge Commonwealth, European, and International Trust, PhD scholarship, 2015-201
Review essay: what we talk about when we talk about universities by Jana Bacevic
The history of universities, including in the UK, is always also the history of the political community; their future, equally, dependent on the future of the community as a whole. In this review essay, Jana Bacevic examines two recent books that offer a good illustration of this point, Who Are Universities For? by Tom Sperlinger, Josie McLellan and Richard Pettigrew and British Universities in the Brexit Moment by Mike Finn
Epistemic injustice and epistemic positioning: towards an intersectional political economy
This article introduces the concept of epistemic positioning to theorize the relationship between identity-based epistemic judgements and the reproduction of social inequalities, including those of gender and ethnicity/race, in the academia. Acts of epistemic positioning entail the evaluation of knowledge claims based on the speakerâs stated or inferred identity. These judgements serve to limit the scope of the knowledge claim, making it more likely speakers will be denied recognition or credit. The four types of epistemic positioning â bounding (reducing a knowledge claim to elements of personal identity), domaining (reducing a knowledge claim to discipline or field associated with identity), non-attribution (using the claim without recognizing the author) and appropriation (presenting the claim as oneâs own) â are mutually reinforcing. Given the growing importance of visibility and recognition in the context of increasing competition and insecurity in academic employment, these practices play a role in the ability of underrepresented groups to remain in the academic profession
The politics of gender and identity
Can we find a way through and even around the messy âgender warsâ currently raging on-and offline? A 2021 profile of Finn Mackay in The Guardian described them as âthe writer hoping to help end the gender warsâ. However, in the days leading up to this conversation in early April 2022, the UK government reneged on their promise to ban conversion therapy for trans people and Finn acknowledges that the gender wars have significantly worsened in the time following the publication of their book, Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars, in 2021. In this conversation, Finn explores the histories of feminist exclusions; the deepening political antagonism towards the trans community; the performance of gender; and much more
With or without U? Assemblage theory and (de)territorialising the university
Contemporary changes in the domain of knowledge production are usually seen as posing significant challenges to âthe Universityâ. This paper argues against the framing of the university as an ideal-type, and considers epistemic gains from treating universities as assemblages of different functions, actors and relations. It contrasts this with the concept of âunbundlingâ, using two recent cases of controversies around academicsâ engagement on social media to show how, rather than having clearly delineated limits, social entities become âterritorialisedâ through boundary disputes. The conclusion extends this discussion to the production of knowledge about social objects in general
Liberal fatalism, Covid-19 and the politics of impossibility
How liberal governments manage knowledge, ignorance, prediction, and uncertainty has attracted increased attention across the social sciences. In this article, we analyse the strategy and rhetoric of the UK Government during the Covid-19 pandemic, with particular attention to the first half of 2020. We see the initial UK policy response â as well as its later legitimation â as a form of âpolitics of impossibilityâ, effecting political change through claims of incapacity or impotence. We argue this approach departs from the uses of knowledge and ignorance in both classical liberalism and neoliberalism, and suggests the emergence of a new, hybrid form of governance which can be dubbed liberal fatalism. We discuss the relevance of this new form of governance for political futures of an increasingly volatile world
Encountering Berlant part 1: Concepts otherwise
In Part 1 of âEncountering Berlantâ, we encounter the promise and provocation of Lauren Berlant's work. In 1000-word contributions, geographers and others stay with what Berlant's thought offers contemporary human geography. They amplify an encounter with their work, demonstrating how a concept, idea, or style disrupts something, opens up a new possibility, or simply invites thinking otherwise. The encounters range across the incredible body of work Berlant left us with, from the ânational sentimentalityâ trilogy through to recent work on negativity. Varying in form and tone, the encounters exemplify and enact the inexhaustible plenitude of Berlant's thought: fantasy, the case, love, impasse, feel tanks, slow death, ellipses, gesture, attrition, intimate public, ambivalence, style. Part 2 of âEncountering Berlantâ focuses on Berlant's most influential concept: âcruel optimismâ. Across these heterogeneous encounters, Berlant's enduring concern with the tensions and possibilities of relationality and how to enact better forms of common life shine through. These enduring concerns and Berlant's commitment to the incoherence and overdetermination of phenomena are summarised in the Introduction, which also explores how Berlant's work has been engaged with in geography. The result is a repository of what an encounter with Berlant's thought makes possible