Understanding Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism

UNDERSTANDING NEOLIBERALISM

With Neil Davidson and Anwar Shaikh

Friday, March 21 * 7pm * RSVP on fb.

Puck Building 4th floor * 295 Lafayette St (at Houston)

Neoliberalism is a term often used, yet rarely in the same way twice. 

We are very excited to welcome Neil Davidson and Anwar Shaikh to a discussion that can help establish just what we mean when we say “neoliberalism”. 

Our speakers will help untangle the complicated — and often contradictory — understandings of neoliberalism.

Aspects covered will include:

  *neoliberalism as a period in the history of capitalism;

  *the long-term effects of capitalist globalization;

  *the short-term impact of capitalist crisis;

  *and social neoliberalism as a regime of consolidation.

 

Readings to prepare:

The neoliberal era in Britain: Historical developments and current perspectives – Neil Davidson

The Economic Mythology of Neoliberalism – Anwar Shaikh

 

Presented by Haymarket Books and the NYC International Socialist Organization, as part of their Socialism Series.

* * *

About the Speakers

Neil Davidson lectures in Sociology in the School of Political and Social Science at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. He is the author of several books, including:

“Holding Fast to an Image of the Past: Essays on Marxism and History” (http://bit.ly/1gdq5zQ) — forthcoming; “How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions?” (http://bit.ly/1iEw6sJ); and “Discovering the Scottish Revolution,” (http://bit.ly/1fyNdxn) for which he was awarded the Deutscher Prize.

Anwar Shaikh is a Professor of Economics at the Graduate Faculty of The New School in New York City. He has written on international trade, finance theory, political economy, U.S. macroeconomic policy, the welfare state, growth theory, inflation theory, crisis theory, inequality on the world scale, and past and current global economic crises.

Shaikh’s many books and publications include “Globali zation and the Myths of Free Trade: History, Theory and Empirical Evidence”; “The Economic Mythology of Neoliberalism” and “Explaining Inflation and Unemployment: An Alternative to Neoliberal Economic Theory”

 

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskpoint.blogspot.com

Greening the Academy: Ecopedagogy Through the Liberal Arts

Samuel Day Fassbinder

GREENING THE ACADEMY: ECOPEDAGOGY THROUGH THE LIBERAL ARTS

Greening the Academy: Ecopedagogy through the liberal arts

Samuel Day Fassbinder (DeVry University, Chicago, USA), Anthony J. Nocella II (Hamline University, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA) and Richard Kahn (Antioch University Los Angeles, USA) (Eds.)

Sense Publishers

2012 – 254 pages

Winner! 2013 Critics Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association (AESA)

ISBN Paperback: 9789462090996 ($ 54.00)
ISBN Hardcover: 9789462091009 ($ 99.00)

Free Preview Greening the Academy

This is the academic Age of the Neoliberal Arts. Campuses—as places characterized by democratic debate and controversy, wide ranges of opinion typical of vibrant public spheres, and service to the larger society—are everywhere being creatively destroyed in order to accord with market and military models befitting the academic-industrial complex.

While it has become increasingly clear that facilitating the sustainability movement is the great 21st century educational challenge at hand, this book asserts that it is both a dangerous and criminal development today that sustainability in higher education has come to be defined by the complex-friendly “green campus” initiatives of science, technology, engineering and management programs.

By contrast, Greening the Academy: Ecopedagogy Through the Liberal Arts takes the standpoints of those working for environmental and ecological justice in order to critique the unsustainable disciplinary limitations within the humanities and social sciences, as well as provide tactical reconstructive openings toward an empowered liberal arts for sustainability.

Greening the Academy thus hopes to speak back with a collective demand that sustainability education be defined as a critical and moral vocation comprised of the diverse types of humanistic study that will benefit the well-being of our emerging planetary community and its numerous common locales.

Praise for this book:

“Critical, crucial, and challenging, this book initiates a dialogue essential to the survival of our planet and all the species on it, including our own. Ignored for far too long by leaders of the major social institutions around the world, this book poses the question of whether the academy will belatedly tackle the urgent policies and actions necessary to ameliorate the ecological destruction wrought by predatory capitalism. University Centers for Teaching and Learning should use this book to generate meaningful discussions of curriculum transformation wherever possible.” — Dr. Julie Andrzejewski, Co-Director, Social Responsibility Masters Program, St. CloudStateUniversity

“Breaks through barriers that continue to enervate higher education’s contribution to environmental education and ecological justice. By connecting radical “cognitive praxis” and authentic Indigenous perspectives to a variety of relevant topics, it offers educators motivation and maps for helping us all regain our lost balance before it is too late.” — Four Arrows, Editor of Unlearning the Language of Conquest: Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism in America

“This is an important and urgent book that represents a landmark for higher education. It is a book that must be heeded, and, more importantly acted upon.” — Dr. Peter McLaren, Author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution

Greening the Academy

Buy this book from Sense Publishers: https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/other-books/greening-the-academy/

Buy this book at Amazon:

Paperback | Hardcover

Buy this book at Barnes & Noble:
Paperback | Hardcover

 

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Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Social Policy, Risk and Education

Education Crisis

SOCIAL POLICY, RISK AND EDUCATION

CALL FOR PAPERS

Social Policy, Risk, and Education

This special issue of the journal Policy Futures in Education – www.wwwords.co.uk/PFIE – takes the broad lens of risk as its point of departure and invite empirical and theoretical papers which focus on the ways in which risk is enacted through and within education. Risk has become a central discourse – a cultural mindset – in modern societies which frames identities and organizes the governance of individuals and populations. The neoliberal, deregulated state, which emphasizes market-based solutions to the distribution of social goods, has collapsed economic and social policy: the paramount reality is competition and risk. Risk in multifarious settings now dominates social, political and economic discourse.

In a world where uncertainty and harm are governed through risk assessment and risk management, it is no surprise that educational policy similarly aligns loss, injury, and disadvantage with educational management strategies. American education, largely associated with formal schooling, has long embraced the concept of risk (e.g. ‘at-risk children’ and ‘a nation at risk’) as the basis for securing the nation’s economic future competitiveness. Public program initiatives such as Head Start are fashioned upon the perception of a perilous future, and attempt to assess and manage negative risks to children and society, as do the policies of many private intervention programs. Similarly, school-age children, from kindergarten through high school, are systematically identified as ‘at risk’ and targeted for academic and social intervention. While the US Department of Education’s ‘A Nation At Risk’ predated Beck’s risk society, the ‘at risk’ child can only be imagined within a risk society. Conversely, both official and unofficial educational sites are also governed by risk, but individual identities are frequently portrayed as ‘risk takers’. Here, risk is aligned with well-being and the enterprising self. Learning to skydive or rock climb, taking a challenging class, ‘having a go’ at spelling a new word, or returning to college to transition a career indicates a life worth living.

The purpose of this themed issue is to bring together international and critical perspectives on risk theory and education in both formal and informal settings.

All papers submitted will be evaluated using the journal’s normal peer review process. Please also see the journal’s guidance for authors: www.wwwords.co.uk/pfie/howtocontribute.asp

Publication for the special issue is planned for 2014. Deadline for submissions is September 1, 2013. Papers should be sent as an email attachment to the Guest Editor, Policy Futures in Education, Professor Steve Bialostok, College of Education, University of Wyoming: stevebialostok@yahoo.com

 

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
 

Policy Futures in Education: Volume 11 Number 1 (2013)

Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory

POLICY FUTURES IN EDUCATION: VOLUME 11 NUMBER 1 (2013)

Now available at: www.wwwords.co.uk/pfie/content/pdfs/11/issue11_1.asp

POLICY FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Volume 11 Number 1 2013, ISSN 1478-2103

CONTENTS:

Enma Campozano Aviles & Maarten Simons. To be Accountable in Neoliberal Times: an exploration of educational policy in Ecuador

Iris Haapanen. Three Methods of Enhancing Global Educational Awareness for Future Teachers

Kirti Joshi, Kavita Mehra, Suman Govil & Nitu Singh. Biotechnology Education in India: an overview

Reijo Kupiainen. Dissolving the School Space: young people’s media production in and outside of school

Alexander Means. Creativity and the Biopolitical Commons in Secondary and Higher Education

Maria Nikolakaki. Pedagogical Systems and the Construction of the Primary School Teacher in the Teachers’ Training Institution (Didaskalio) in Greece (1830 1933): issues of power and governmentality

Johan Nordensvard. Using Political Metaphors to Understand Educational Policy in Developing Countries: the case of Ghana and informal communities

Erdal Toprakçı, Serkan Buldur, Ebru Bozpolat, Gülçin Oflaz, İclal Dağdeviren & Ersin Türe. The Philosophy of Turkish National and Higher Education

Lynley Tulloch. On Science, Ecology and Environmentalism
Access to the full texts of current articles is restricted to those who have a Personal subscription, or those whose institution has a Library subscription. Articles older than three years are open access.

PLEASE NOTE: to accommodate the increasing flow of quality papers this journal will expand to 8 numbers per volume/year as from Volume 12, 2014.

PERSONAL SUBSCRIPTION (single user access) Subscription to the January-December 2013 issues (including full access to ALL back numbers), is available to individuals at a cost of US$54.00. If you wish to subscribe you may do so immediately at www.wwwords.co.uk/subscribePFIE.asp

LIBRARY SUBSCRIPTION (institution-wide access) If you are working within an institution that maintains a Library, please urge them to purchase a Library subscription so access is provided throughout your institution; full details for libraries can be found: www.symposium-journals.co.uk/prices.html

For all editorial matters, including articles offered for publication, please contact the Editor, Professor Michael A. Peters: mpeters@waikato.ac.nz

In the event of problems concerning a subscription, or difficulty in gaining access to the articles, please contact the publishers: support@symposium-journals.co.uk

 

*****

Glenn Rikowski and Ruth Rikowski have a number of articles in Policy Futures in Education. These include:

Rikowski, Ruth (2003) Value – the Life Blood of Capitalism: knowledge is the current key, Policy Futures in Education, Vol.1 No.1, pp.160-178 http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=pfie&vol=1&issue=1&year=2003&article=9_Rikowski_PFIE_1_1&id=195.93.21.68

Rikowski, Glenn (2004) Marx and the Education of the Future, Policy Futures in Education, Vol.2 Nos. 3 & 4, pp.565-577, online at: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=pfie&vol=2&issue=3&year=2004&article=10_Rikowski_PFEO_2_3-4_web&id=195.93.21.71

Rikowski, Ruth (2006) A Marxist Analysis of the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, Policy Futures in Education, Vol.4 No.4: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=pfie&vol=4&issue=4&year=2006&article=7_Rikowski_PFIE_4_4_web&id=205.188.117.66

Rikowski, Ruth (2008) Review Essay: ‘On Marx: An introduction to the revolutionary intellect of Karl Marx’, by Paula Allman, Policy Futures in Education,Vol.6 No.5, pp.653-661: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/validate.asp?j=pfie&vol=6&issue=5&year=2008&article=11_Rikowski_PFIE_6_5_web

 

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

 

An International Examination of Teacher Education: Exposing and Resisting the Neoliberal Agenda – JCEPS Special Issue + Call for Papers

End the Damage

AN INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATION OF TEACHER EDUCATION: EXPOSING AND RESISTING THE NEOLIBERAL AGENDA – JCEPS SPECIAL ISSUE + CALL FOR PAPERS

The Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies
Special Issue: Spring 2012
An International Examination of Teacher Education: Exposing and Resisting the Neoliberal Agenda
Chief Editor: Professor Dave Hill, Chief/Managing Editor and Founding Editor, Professor Dave Hill, Professor Peter L. McLaren Editor, North America, Professor Pablo Gentili Editor, Latin America

Guest Editors: Dr. Brad Porfilio, Lewis University & Dr. Julie Gorlewski, SUNY at New Paltz

In recent decades, the transnational capitalist class has wielded power and influence to gain control over elements of social life that were once considered vital domains to fostering the social welfare of global citizens. Affected public domains include natural resources, health care, prisons, transportation, post-catastrophe restoration, and education. The chief linchpin in the elite’s corporatization over social affairs is its effective propaganda campaign to inculcate the global community to believe that neoliberal capitalism ameliorates rather than devastates humanity. According to political pundits, free-market academics, and corporate leaders, economic prosperity and improvements in the social world emanate from “unregulated or free markets, the withering away of the state as government’s role in regulating businesses and funding social services are either eliminated or privatized, and encouraging individuals to become self-interested entrepreneurs” (Hursh, 2011).

Since neoliberalism is a term rarely uttered is most dominant (mainstream) media outlets, most citizens are not cognizant of how it is linked to many deleterious economic and social developments at today’s historical juncture, such as massive unemployment, the swelling of home foreclosures, homelessness, militarism, school closings, maldistribution of wealth, and environmental degradation (Hill, 2008; Hursh, 2011; McLaren, 2007; Ross & Gibson, 2007; Scipes, 2009). Equally important, many global citizens fail to recognize how the transnational elite have spawned a McCarthy-like witch hunt to eliminate academics, policies, and programs that have the potential to engage citizens in a critical examination of what is responsible for today’s increasingly stark social world – as well as what steps are necessary to radically transform it.

In this special issue of The Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies, we call on progressive scholars from across the globe to provide empirical research, conceptual analysis, and theoretical insights in relation to how corporate policies, practices, and imperatives are structuring life in schools of education.

Since the impact of neoliberal capitalism on programs, policies, relationships, and pedagogies in schools of education is not uniform, as local histories and politics structure how macro-forces come to impact people in local contexts (Gruenwell 2003), the issue will be integral in understanding and confronting the social actors and constitute forces gutting the humanizing nature of education. Additionally, we call on critical scholars and pedagogues who have found emancipatory fissures amid corporatized schools of education to share policies, pedagogies, and cultural work that have the potency promote critical forms of education, democratic relationships, and peace, equity and social justice across the globe.

Manuscripts are due by December 1, 2011 and should be submitted as email attachments to porfilio16@aol.com and gorlewsj@newpaltz.edu.

Papers submitted for publication should be between 5,000 and 8000 words long. While we would hope that papers would be submitted in accordance with the Harvard Referencing Style, we do accept those written in any commonly accepted academic style, as long as the style is consistent throughout the paper.

Please direct all inquires about this special issue to the guest editors at Porfilio16@aol.com and gorlewsj@newpaltz.edu

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Marxian Analysis of Society, Schools and Education SIG of the American Educational Research Association (MASSES)

Education Crisis

MARXIAN ANALYSIS OF SOCIETY, SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION SIG OF THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATION (MASSES)
CALL FOR PAPERS

2012 Annual Meeting – Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Friday, April 13 – Tuesday, April 17, 2012
http://www.facebook.com/l/7ba756tNF7qOe9ItKjSdc1iil3A/www.aera.net/

*Why Marxism? Whose Marxism? Let’s Begin from the Beginning.*

*Rethink Class, Race and Gender Inequalities and Education*

The current global momentum is a profound paradox. On one hand, our era has been witnessing huge and dramatic transformations propelled by the biotech movement including genetic and biotechnological discoveries, as well as, the electronic revolution of communications and information both of which have had a huge impact on the way knowledge has been produced and reproduced.

Despite such progress, on the other hand, global societies have been experiencing, among other things, the shocking exacerbation (and in some cases the return) of horrendous social evils, namely, the return of slavery, legitimization of human genocide, new pandemics, the return of high vulnerability to old sicknesses that seemed to have been eradicated and now appear to be linked to new pandemics like HIV/AIDS, and naturalization of war, the domestication of revolting social inequalities (cf. Sousa Santos, 2005), the need of a more predatory capitalism to sustain neoliberal capitalism, the emergence of a new economy propelled by the need to fight terror(ism) (cf. Giroux, 2011).

Despite the fact that we never had a society that produced as much knowledge as today’s society, the fact is such production not only has been incapable of building a fairer and just society, but also as it has just served to increase and multiply social inequality. Such shocking paradoxes bring to the fore the vitality of (neo)Marxist analyses, as the ‘most rigorous, comprehensive critique of capitalism ever to be launched’ (Eagleton, 2011).

The 2012 Marxian Analysis of Society, School and Education SIG program asks scholars and educators around the globe, profoundly committed with the struggle for social and cognitive justice, to rethinking not only class, race, and gender inequalities and education, but also if the reinvigoration of the (neo)Marxist analyses and contributions to society and education implies the need to ‘begin from the beginning’ (Zizek, 2009). We asked scholars to critically address questions such as why (neo)Marxism and whose (neo)Marxism is a key to rethink and understand the current global disruption of capitalism and its implications of the daily live of teachers and students.

AERA: http://www.area.net

MASSES Yahoo Group (Marx and Education SIG): http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MarxSIG/  

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

London Premiere of ‘Debtocracy’

Debt 3

LONDON PREMIERE OF ‘DEBTOCRACY’

… The documentary which captured the start of a revolution!
Tuesday, 5 July, 6pm
Brunei Gallery, SOAS, University of London
Hosted by Research on Money and Finance Group : www.researchonmoneyandfinance.org 

“… the samizdat of Greek debt” – The Guardian

Downloaded by millions of citizens in Greece and across Europe, ‘Debtocracy’ is spreading like wildfire.  The film seeks the causes of the debt crisis and proposes solutions – solutions hidden by the governments of Europe and the dominant media.  This is a unique opportunity to see the film, and to participate in a discussion with the filmmakers and other experts on the crisis.

– Aris Chatzistefanou, Director of Debtocracy
– Costas Lapavitsas, Professor of Economics, SOAS
– Andrew Burgin, Coalition of Resistance
Chaired by: Nick Dearden, Jubilee Debt Campaign

Entry will be on a first-come first-serve basis as space allows.  Entry is free, but the organisers will be asking for contributions to assist in covering the travel costs of the filmmakers.

Read a Red Pepper interview with director Aris Chatzistefanou:
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/greece-no-tahrir-here/ 

Read a Guardian comment by Costas Lapavitsas on the Greek crisis: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/21/greek-exit-strategy-bailout-default

For directions: http://www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/
For more on the film:  http://www.debtocracy.gr/indexen.html

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com