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Book How the Neoliberalization of Academia Leads to Thoughtlessness

Download or read book How the Neoliberalization of Academia Leads to Thoughtlessness written by Justin Pack and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Universities across the US have committed to a process of neoliberalization that is radically altering higher education: academia is increasingly being run like a business. As a result, the university is becoming less and less a place of wonder, self-cultivation and thinking and instead is becoming more and more a place to specialize, strategize, produce and profit. Students race through coursework to bolster job prospects while facing massive debt. Faculty scramble for the biggest grants and angle for the most prestigious journals. Sink or swim, publish or perish, triumph and win: there is no longer time to think and to wonder. This undermines the opportunity for students to develop into good citizens that can truly think critically and judge carefully. Thinking and judgment are, according to the philosopher Hannah Arendt, the only things that can save us if the powerful machines of science or capitalism begin to work in ways they should not. Arendt saw Nazi Germany use the newest science and the best economic management to systematically kill six million Jews. She saw the disturbing inability of the populace and the intellectuals to capably resist the Nazi machine once it got rolling. Applying Arendt’s insights to modern academia, Pack argues that unless checked, neoliberalization threatens to turn the university into a place that discourages thinking and the development of judgment in favor of hyper-specialization and strategic action.

Book Money and Thoughtlessness

Download or read book Money and Thoughtlessness written by Justin Pack and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Justin Pack proposes a genealogy of the traditional suspicion of money and merchants. This genealogy is framed both by how money itself has changed and how different traditions responded to money. Money and merchants became heavily debated concerns in the Axial Age, which coincided with the spread of coinage. A deep suspicion of money and merchants was particularly notable in the Greek, Confucian and Christian traditions, and continued into the Middle Ages. These traditions wrestled with a new dialectic of purity that also appears with the widespread use of money. How were these concerns dealt with politically, socially and philosophically? How did they change over time? How did medieval Europe deal with money and how did this inform modern governmentality? To answer these questions, Pack turns to Hanna Arendt’s work. Arendt argues that one of the outstanding characteristics of our time is thoughtlessness. This thoughtlessness is related to how modern life, especially under neoliberalism, is increasingly structured by abstract systems, abstract calculative rationality, abstract relations, and the profit motive. Money both drives and embodies this machinery. The hyper-complex abstract systems of modernity discourage, to use Arendtian terms, “thinking” (wonder, questioning everything) in favor of “cognition” (problem solving). Too often the result is thoughtless cognition—the ability to make things more productive and efficient paired with the incapacity to question and challenge the implications and morality of these systems.

Book The Rise of Neoliberal Philosophy

Download or read book The Rise of Neoliberal Philosophy written by Brandon Absher and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-08-20 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Rise of Neoliberal Philosophy: Human Capital, Profitable Knowledge, and the Love of Wisdom, Brandon Absher argues that the neoliberal transformation of higher education has resulted in a paradigm shift in philosophy in the United States, leading to the rise of neoliberal philosophy. Neoliberal philosophy seeks to attract investment by demonstrating that it can produce optimal return. Further, philosophers in the neoliberal paradigm internalize and reproduce the values of the prevailing social order in their work, reorienting philosophical desire toward the production of attractive commodities. The aim of philosophy in the neoliberal university, Absher shows, has become the production of human capital and profitable knowledge.

Book Amor Mundi and Overcoming Modern World Alienation

Download or read book Amor Mundi and Overcoming Modern World Alienation written by Justin Pack and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love in many premodern cultures extended to and permeated the world or even the cosmos, but love in contemporary consumerist society tends to be sexualized, romanticized, and individualized. As a result, ancient visions of ethical love are difficult for moderns to comprehend, especially those rooted in premodern Western thought, or Native American thinkers that describe a love of the natural world that would help us live more responsibly on the Earth. This volume retrieves the significant narratives of love of the world and the concomitant ethical ramifications of those visions and argues that our age of science and technology has destroyed the ancient, living cosmos of previous visions and replaced it with a mechanical universe. This shift has resulted in various forms of destruction, diminishment, and forgetfulness. Overcoming modern world alienation requires recovering a sense of what it means to love the world and changing our practices to reflect our interconnection with it and our interdependency on it.

Book Making the Familiar Strange

Download or read book Making the Familiar Strange written by Ryan Gunderson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-29 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the meaning and implications of the sociological maxim, ‘make the familiar strange’. Addressing the methodological questions of why and how sociologists should make the familiar strange, what it means to ‘make the familiar strange’, and how this approach benefits sociological research and theory, it draws on four central concepts: reification, familiarity, strangeness, and defamiliarization. Through a typology of the notoriously ambiguous concept of reification, the author argues that the primary barrier to sociological knowledge is our experience of the social world as fixed and unchangeable. Thus emerges the importance of constituting the familiar as the strange through a process of social defamiliarization as well as making this process more methodical by reflecting on heuristics and patterns of thinking that render society strange. The first concerted effort to examine an important feature of the sociological imagination, this volume will appeal to sociologists of any specialty and theoretical persuasion.

Book How the Neoliberalization of Academia Leads to Thoughtlessness

Download or read book How the Neoliberalization of Academia Leads to Thoughtlessness written by Justin Pack and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the modern university is increasingly run like a business, students and faculty are losing the time and space to wonder and think under the hypercompetitive demands to produce. The goals of critical self-knowledge and good citizenship are being undermined by the demands of profit.

Book Academic Labour  Unemployment and Global Higher Education

Download or read book Academic Labour Unemployment and Global Higher Education written by Suman Gupta and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-05-27 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how the kinds of world-wide restructurings of higher education and research work that are underway today have not only increased employment insecurity in academia but may actually be producing unemployment both for those within academia and for graduate job-seekers in other sectors. Recent and current re-organisations of higher education and research work, and re-orientations of academic life (as students, researchers, teachers) generally, which are taking place around the world, achieve exactly the opposite of what they claim: though ostensibly undertaken to facilitate employment, these moves actually produce unemployment both for those within academia and for graduate job-seekers in other sectors.

Book Rock   Water   Life

    Book Details:
  • Author : Lesley Green
  • Publisher : Duke University Press
  • Release : 2020-03-20
  • ISBN : 1478004614
  • Pages : 222 pages

Download or read book Rock Water Life written by Lesley Green and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-20 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Rock | Water | Life Lesley Green examines the interwoven realities of inequality, racism, colonialism, and environmental destruction in South Africa, calling for environmental research and governance to transition to an ecopolitical approach that could address South Africa's history of racial oppression and environmental exploitation. Green analyzes conflicting accounts of nature in environmental sciences that claim neutrality amid ongoing struggles for land restitution and environmental justice. Offering in-depth studies of environmental conflict in contemporary South Africa, Green addresses the history of contested water access in Cape Town; struggles over natural gas fracking in the Karoo; debates about decolonizing science; the potential for a politics of soil in the call for land restitution; urban baboon management; and the consequences of sending sewage to urban oceans.

Book Encyclopedia of Critical Political Science

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Critical Political Science written by Clyde W. Barrow and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2024-03-14 with total page 813 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An indispensable and exemplary reference work, this Encyclopedia adeptly navigates the multidisciplinary field of critical political science, providing a comprehensive overview of the methods, approaches, concepts, scholars and journals that have come to influence the disciplineÕs development over the last six decades.

Book The Price of Nice

    Book Details:
  • Author : Angelina E. Castagno
  • Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
  • Release : 2019-10-22
  • ISBN : 1452961506
  • Pages : 421 pages

Download or read book The Price of Nice written by Angelina E. Castagno and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How being “nice” in school and university settings works to reinforce racialized, gendered, and (dis)ability-related inequities in education and society Being nice is difficult to critique. Niceness is almost always portrayed and felt as a positive quality. In schools, nice teachers are popular among students, parents, and administrators. And yet Niceness, as a distinct set of practices and discourses, is not actually good for individuals, institutions, or communities because of the way it maintains and reinforces educational inequity. In The Price of Nice, an interdisciplinary group of scholars explores Niceness in educational spaces from elementary schools through higher education to highlight how this seemingly benign quality reinforces structural inequalities. Grounded in data, personal narrative, and theory, the chapters show that Niceness, as a raced, gendered, and classed set of behaviors, functions both as a shield to save educators from having to do the hard work of dismantling inequity and as a disciplining agent for those who attempt or even consider disrupting structures and ideologies of dominance. Contributors: Sarah Abuwandi, Arizona State U; Colin Ben, U of Utah; Nicholas Bustamante, Arizona State U; Aidan/Amanda J. Charles, Northern Arizona U; Jeremiah Chin, Arizona State U; Sally Campbell Galman, U of Massachusetts; Frederick Gooding Jr., Texas Christian U; Deirdre Judge, Tufts U; Katie A. Lazdowski; Román Liera, U of Southern California; Sylvia Mac, U of La Verne; Lindsey Malcolm-Piqueux, California Institute of Technology; Giselle Martinez Negrette, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Amber Poleviyuma, Arizona State U; Alexus Richmond, Arizona State U; Frances J. Riemer, Northern Arizona U; Jessica Sierk, St. Lawrence U; Bailey B. Smolarek, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Jessica Solyom, Arizona State U; Megan Tom, Arizona State U; Sabina Vaught, U of Oklahoma; Cynthia Diana Villarreal, U of Southern California; Kristine T. Weatherston, Temple U; Joseph C. Wegwert, Northern Arizona U; Marguerite Anne Fillion Wilson, Binghamton U; Jia-Hui Stefanie Wong, Trinity College; Denise Gray Yull, Binghamton U.

Book Artificial Intelligence and Learning Futures

Download or read book Artificial Intelligence and Learning Futures written by Stefan Popenici and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-11-30 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artificial Intelligence and Learning Futures: Critical Narratives of Technology and Imagination in Higher Education explores the implications of artificial intelligence’s adoption in higher education and the challenges to building sustainable instead of dystopic schooling. As AI becomes integral to both pedagogy and profitability in today’s colleges and universities, a critical discourse on these systems and algorithms is urgently needed to push back against their potential to enable surveillance, control, and oppression. This book examines the development, risks, and opportunities inherent to AI in education and curriculum design, the problematic ideological assumptions of intelligence and technology, and the evidence base and ethical imagination required to responsibly implement these learning technologies in a way that ensures quality and sustainability. Leaders, administrators, and faculty as well as technologists and designers will find these provocative and accessible ideas profoundly applicable to their research, decision-making, and concerns.

Book Neoliberalism

Download or read book Neoliberalism written by Alfredo Saad-Filho and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2005-02-03 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading writer Boris Kagarlitsky offers an ambitious account of 1000 years of Russian history.

Book America s Addiction to Terrorism

Download or read book America s Addiction to Terrorism written by Henry A. Giroux and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States today, the term "terrorism" conjures up images of dangerous, outside threats: religious extremists and suicide bombers in particular. Harder to see but all the more pervasive is the terrorism perpetuated by the United States itself, whether through military force overseas or woven into the very fabric of society at home. Henry Giroux, in this passionate and incisive book, turns the conventional wisdom on terrorism upside down, demonstrating how fear and lawlessness have become organizing principles of life in the United States, and violence an acceptable form of social mediation. He addresses the most pressing issues of the moment, from officially sanctioned torture to militarized police forces to austerity politics. Giroux also examines the ongoing degradation of the education system and how young people in particular suffer its more nefarious outcomes. Against this grim picture, Giroux posits a politics of hope and a commitment to accurate-and radical-historical memory. He draws on a long, distinguished career developing the tenets of critical pedagogy to propose a cure for our addiction to terrorism: a kind of "public pedagogy" that challenges the poisoned narratives of "America's dis-imagination machine."

Book Knowledge for Sale

    Book Details:
  • Author : Lawrence Busch
  • Publisher : MIT Press
  • Release : 2017-02-10
  • ISBN : 026203607X
  • Pages : 177 pages

Download or read book Knowledge for Sale written by Lawrence Busch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-02-10 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How free-market fundamentalists have shifted the focus of higher education to competition, metrics, consumer demand, and return on investment, and why we should change this. A new philosophy of higher education has taken hold in institutions around the world. Its supporters disavow the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and argue that the only knowledge worth pursuing is that with more or less immediate market value. Every other kind of learning is downgraded, its budget cut. In Knowledge for Sale, Lawrence Busch challenges this market-driven approach. The rationale for the current thinking, Busch explains, comes from neoliberal economics, which calls for reorganizing society around the needs of the market. The market-influenced changes to higher education include shifting the cost of education from the state to the individual, turning education from a public good to a private good subject to consumer demand; redefining higher education as a search for the highest-paying job; and turning scholarly research into a competition based on metrics including number of citations and value of grants. Students, administrators, and scholars have begun to think of themselves as economic actors rather than seekers of knowledge. Arguing for active resistance to this takeover, Busch urges us to burst the neoliberal bubble, to imagine a future not dictated by the market, a future in which there is a more educated citizenry and in which the old dichotomies—market and state, nature and culture, and equality and liberty—break down. In this future, universities value learning and not training, scholarship grapples with society's most pressing problems rather than quick fixes for corporate interests, and democracy is enriched by its educated and engaged citizens.

Book Dark Academia

    Book Details:
  • Author : Peter Fleming
  • Publisher : Pluto Press (UK)
  • Release : 2021-05-20
  • ISBN : 9780745341064
  • Pages : 224 pages

Download or read book Dark Academia written by Peter Fleming and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2021-05-20 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The unspoken, private and emotional underbelly of the neoliberal university

Book The Idea of the University

    Book Details:
  • Author : Karl 1883-1969 Jaspers
  • Publisher : Hassell Street Press
  • Release : 2021-09-10
  • ISBN : 9781015260931
  • Pages : 160 pages

Download or read book The Idea of the University written by Karl 1883-1969 Jaspers and published by Hassell Street Press. This book was released on 2021-09-10 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Book Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm

Download or read book Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm written by Pascal Gielen and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In most countries art education is not immune from a large-scale reorganization. Educational institutions are increasingly required to operate as enterprises that compete for the best or the largest number of students and to express their objective and results in financial and management terms. In short, the field of education has become a 'market'. 'Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm' investigates the effects of this setup on the content and practice of artistic education and the position of art and the artist.00.