Boone Shear | University of Massachusetts Amherst (original) (raw)
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Papers by Boone Shear
Collaborative Anthropologies, 2019
In this essay, I envision the university, not simply as a discreet institution with formal bounda... more In this essay, I envision the university, not simply as a discreet institution with formal boundaries to attend to and defend from neoliberal and conservative assaults, but as a location of possibility from which to locate and advance projects that connect students and ourselves to the possibility of other economic worlds.
Practicing Anthropology, 2008
Journal of Political Ecology
The green economy is put forward as an apposite remedy to both economic crisis and ecological dev... more The green economy is put forward as an apposite remedy to both economic crisis and ecological devastation. Policy makers, academics, corporate interests and activists are advancing their goals as part of and through the green economy, a discursive terrain full of circulating and competing ideas about, dispositions towards, and desires for the economy. In Massachusetts, broad-based coalitions involving labor, environmentalists and community groups have emerged to capture funding, influence policy and launch their own economic initiatives. This paper explores and compares the activities of two green economy coalitions. I investigate how social actors, including myself, have been negotiating, responding to, and producing the meaning of the green economy, and the meaning of "the economy" writ-large, through our political efforts. I aim to move beyond a project that only critiques capitalism or maps out capitalist hegemony. Instead, taking inspiration and drawing from J.K. Gibs...
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 08935690701739964, 2008
Community Development, 2015
Practicing Anthropology, 2008
On a September evening in 2005, the Kalamazoo, Michigan City Commission's poverty subcommitte... more On a September evening in 2005, the Kalamazoo, Michigan City Commission's poverty subcommittee held a public hearing in a church in one of the city's poorer areas. The purported goal was uncovering what city government could do to help economically vulnerable citizens. One commissioner asked what the city commission could do to "help you achieve the American dream." As another commissioner put it, "We're here to listen. You are the experts in your own lives."
Community Development, 2015
Learning and Teaching, 2010
Ongoing transformations of the university - from changing working conditions to issues of afforda... more Ongoing transformations of the university - from changing working conditions to issues of affordability and access, increasing 'accountability' measures and commodification of academic production - are increasingly referred to as university corporatisation and are unfolding within and concomitant to neoliberal globalisation. In this paper we outline some of these processes as they are occurring at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and explore the limitations and possibilities of a critical response mounted by a number of students and faculty in the Department of Anthropology. Drawing on ethnographic data and interviews with group participants, as well as our own experiences with the group, we describe and assess this project as a means to investigate and respond to neoliberal governance. Through this analysis we problematise conventional discourses and imaginings of university corporatisation and neoliberalism and explore the sometimes contradictory subject positions that complicate our efforts to respond critically to university corporatisation.
Collaborative Anthropologies, 2019
In this essay, I envision the university, not simply as a discreet institution with formal bounda... more In this essay, I envision the university, not simply as a discreet institution with formal boundaries to attend to and defend from neoliberal and conservative assaults, but as a location of possibility from which to locate and advance projects that connect students and ourselves to the possibility of other economic worlds.
Practicing Anthropology, 2008
Journal of Political Ecology
The green economy is put forward as an apposite remedy to both economic crisis and ecological dev... more The green economy is put forward as an apposite remedy to both economic crisis and ecological devastation. Policy makers, academics, corporate interests and activists are advancing their goals as part of and through the green economy, a discursive terrain full of circulating and competing ideas about, dispositions towards, and desires for the economy. In Massachusetts, broad-based coalitions involving labor, environmentalists and community groups have emerged to capture funding, influence policy and launch their own economic initiatives. This paper explores and compares the activities of two green economy coalitions. I investigate how social actors, including myself, have been negotiating, responding to, and producing the meaning of the green economy, and the meaning of "the economy" writ-large, through our political efforts. I aim to move beyond a project that only critiques capitalism or maps out capitalist hegemony. Instead, taking inspiration and drawing from J.K. Gibs...
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 08935690701739964, 2008
Community Development, 2015
Practicing Anthropology, 2008
On a September evening in 2005, the Kalamazoo, Michigan City Commission's poverty subcommitte... more On a September evening in 2005, the Kalamazoo, Michigan City Commission's poverty subcommittee held a public hearing in a church in one of the city's poorer areas. The purported goal was uncovering what city government could do to help economically vulnerable citizens. One commissioner asked what the city commission could do to "help you achieve the American dream." As another commissioner put it, "We're here to listen. You are the experts in your own lives."
Community Development, 2015
Learning and Teaching, 2010
Ongoing transformations of the university - from changing working conditions to issues of afforda... more Ongoing transformations of the university - from changing working conditions to issues of affordability and access, increasing 'accountability' measures and commodification of academic production - are increasingly referred to as university corporatisation and are unfolding within and concomitant to neoliberal globalisation. In this paper we outline some of these processes as they are occurring at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and explore the limitations and possibilities of a critical response mounted by a number of students and faculty in the Department of Anthropology. Drawing on ethnographic data and interviews with group participants, as well as our own experiences with the group, we describe and assess this project as a means to investigate and respond to neoliberal governance. Through this analysis we problematise conventional discourses and imaginings of university corporatisation and neoliberalism and explore the sometimes contradictory subject positions that complicate our efforts to respond critically to university corporatisation.