Staging a Battle, Losing the Wars? International Studies, ‘Science’ and the Neoliberalisation of the University (original) (raw)
Related papers
Specters of Weber: Science as a Vocation in the Age of Neoliberalism
Featuring essays by Ivan Ascher and Will Roberts, this critical exchange shows how the work of both professors and students is deeply structured by the demands of the neoliberal marketplace. Directing our attention to the precise economic conditions under which scholarship is produced and students are molded, these essays illuminate that academic work is complicit with the fantasies of free choice and passionate attachment.
He who rides on the back of a tiger may wind up inside ' -Chinese proverb In the late 18 th century, the great German Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant, had been embroiled in what he called 'the contest of the faculties' (1979 [1798]) in which he argued for the priority of philosophy over theology, law and medicine as the protector of the critical power of reason in the university. Thereby, he effectively opened the way for the subsequent resurgence of academic inquiry as a political force in the wider context of society, and thus gave the modern university its mission. Today, indeed for some time already, we witness a recurrence of the conflict of the faculties. In the meantime, however, the tables have been turned. The natural sciences have long since established themselves as academic disciplines, representing our most prestigious form of knowledge and, serving as conduit for the entry of capitalism and industry into the university, together with technology took over the role of leading productive force. As a consequence, philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences are left languishing in little more than a marginal position. The late 20 th and early 21 st century 'contest of the faculties' thus takes on a completely different complexion than in the time of the Enlightenment.
Interdisciplinarity, neoliberalism and academic identities
Journal of Education, 2017
This paper explicates the growing interest in interdisciplinarity as a form of knowledge organisation at the University of Botswana (UB). It accomplishes this by locating this development in a global context of a growing instrumentalisation of knowledge, partially occasioned by the advent of the knowledge society. Generally, the paper argues that interdisciplinarity is not some neutral, apolitical technical re-arrangement of knowledge, as often presented. Rather, it is a political technology implicated in attempts to break academics’ monopoly on the processes and products of higher education (HE). It attributes interdisciplinarity’s rise to the emergence in the 1970s of neoliberalism as a social settlement that privileges market rationality. There is, therefore, affinity between interdisciplinarity and neoliberalism, and it is a relationship in which the former is being deployed by the latter in HE to produce ‘neoliberal academic subjects’. The case of UB is presented as a specific ...
Interrogating the University as an Engine of Capitalism: neoliberalism and academic 'raison d'état'
In the era of knowledge capitalism, universities are consistently regarded as potential 'engines' of capital accumulation and state prosperity. This article will argue that as regards their teaching and research functions – but with specific attention to the research function – universities can be seen to be enacting a type of neoliberal discourse/discursive practice that corresponds to the particular notion of 'raison d'état' raised by Foucault in his 1978-79 Collège de France lectures on neoliberalism. The positioning of monetary accumulation and expansion in the rawest sense as the ultimate desirable goal of universities serves to enact the type of 'limitation of self-regulation' which Foucault describes as a function of the (new) liberal state, conditioned as it is to build itself, and condition all of its behaviour, on the principal goal of economic growth and accumulation, enacting a form of neoliberal governmentality, in Foucault's (and others') terms. Subsequently, a neoliberal conception of science as necessarily wedded to a narrow instrumental-economic idea of technology continues to animate public discourse both at the government and university levels, resulting in a complex – and at times contested – political terrain which revolves around a particular economic regime of truth predicated in growth and accumulation before any other consideration. In this context, universities must grow and expand, but particularly in the ways that are demanded by the particular regime of truth which is hegemonic at the time, which revolve around what is understood here as the neoliberal discourse of knowledge capitalism. This argument is offered with the example of Canada in mind in particular, but with cognizance of related trends active in other countries impacted by the 'knowledge economy' discourse in the OECD group of countries, for instance, and beyond.
The Century of Science: The Global Triumph of the Research University
The Century of Science: The Global Triumph of the Research University, 2017
In The Century of Science — edited by Justin J.W. Powell, David P. Baker, and Frank Fernandez — a multicultural, international team of authors examines the global rise of scholarly research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health (STEM+) fields. At the beginning of the 20th century, the global center-point of scientific productivity was about half way between Western Europe and the U.S., in the North Atlantic. Then, the center moved steadily westward and slightly southward—reflecting the burgeoning science capacity of the U.S. supported by America’s thriving public and private universities, technological innovation, and overall economic growth. After WWII, this began to change as the course of the world’s scientific center of gravity turned and for the next 70 years traveled eastward, the direction it still travels, especially due to the rise of China and other prolific East Asian countries, such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Europe continues to be the center of global science. Focusing on these developments, this volume provides historical and sociological understandings of the ways that higher education has become an institution that, more than ever before, shapes science and society. Case studies, supported by the most historically and spatially extensive database on STEM+ publications available, of selected countries in Europe, North America, East Asia, and the Middle East, emphasize recurring themes: the institutionalization and differentiation of higher education systems to the proliferation of university-based scientific research fostered by research policies that support continued university expansion leading to the knowledge society. Growing worldwide, research universities appear to be the most legitimate sites for knowledge production. Countries like France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan began the 20th century with prerequisites in place to realize the emerging model of university-based research. Over the past several decades, China, South Korea, and Taiwan, with different historical legacies and conflicts in education and research policy, have witnessed explosive growth, sustained by public and private funds. Qatar recently embarked on an ambitious government-driven effort to develop a world-class university sector and cultivate academic STEM+ research from scratch. These more recent entrants to the global scientific enterprise pose the question whether it is possible to leapfrog across decades, or even centuries, of cultivating university systems, to compete globally. Simultaneously with international and regional competition, world-leading science increasingly implies collaboration across cultural and political borders as global scientific production and networking continue to rise exponentially. This volume’s case studies offer new insights into how countries develop the university-based knowledge thought fundamental to meeting social needs and economic demands. Despite repeated warnings that universities would lose in relevance to other organizational forms in the production of knowledge, our findings demonstrate incontrovertibly that universities have become more—not less—important actors in the world of knowledge. The past hundred years have seen the global triumph of the research university.