Skip navigation

Tag Archives: Privatization

Privatisation in Education and Commodity Forms

Glenn Rikowski

Privatisation in Education and Commodity Forms

 

 

 

 

Glenn Rikowski, Visiting Fellow, College of Social Science, University of Lincoln, UK

 

My article, Privatisation in Education and Commodity Forms has now been published in Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Volume 15 Number 3, December 2017, pp.29-56.

The Abstract for the article is below.

The article can be accessed at: http://www.jceps.com/archives/3620

and http://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/15-3-2.pdf

 

ABSTRACT

To date research and scholarship on privatisation in education lacks critical depth and intensity. Stock concerns occupy contributions to the field: the effects of privatisation in education on teachers’ labour, pay and conditions of service; educational expenditure; resultant problems of planning at local and national levels; corruption (systemic, and by teachers); and on the curriculum and pedagogy. Additionally, many accounts have been largely descriptive, focusing on how privatisation takes place, or on threats to privatisation, or its insertion within education systems. Many case studies have been undertaken in this light, with sectoral, country-wide and local cases. There has been less emphasis on why privatisation in education occurs. Resistance to educational privatisation has been another common theme. Finally, work on educational commodification has been substantially dissociated from studies on privatisation in education. This paper builds on this last point. Writing and research on privatisation in education has largely avoided what it represents and calls forth: the development of capital, the deeper capitalisation of education. Furthermore, discussion on educational privatisation typically ignores its implication in the social production of labour-power. Therefore, with reference to Karl Marx, this contribution drives the critique of privatisation in education forward by focusing on commodity form(s) in education and their relations to the capitalisation of educational services. Consequently, the points of resistance to privatisation in education are sharpened as anti-capitalist weapons.

 

The URL for the whole issue is: http://www.jceps.com/archives/3644

The journal website is: http://www.jceps.com

 

***END***

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski

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

Glenn Rikowski

Why Library is Not a Dirty Word – Presentation Slides

Ruth Rikowski Framlingham Castle

Ruth Rikowski
Framlingham Castle

WHY LIBRARY IS NOT A DIRTY WORD – PRESENTATION SLIDES

The presentation slides for Ruth Rikowski’s talk at The Froud Centre, Manor Park, London, on 10th June 2016 –are now available at Academia.

Why Library Is Not  A Dirty Word: Reclaiming Its Power And Possibility

Presentation slides @ http://www.academia.edu/30467128/Why_Library_is_Not_a_Dirty_Word_Reclaiming_its_Power_and_Possibility_Presentation_

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

 

Glenn Rikowski

In addition, Glenn Rikowski also has a new post at Academia: The Woodhead Federation? The Business Takeover of Schools in England

This can be viewed at: http://www.academia.edu/31544770/The_Woodhead_Federation_The_Business_Takeover_of_Schools_in_England_Presentation_

 

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski

Dr. Glenn Rikowski

Dr. Glenn Rikowski

UNICONFLICTS

Education Crisis

Education Crisis

UNICONFLICTS

UNICONFLICTS In Spaces of Crisis: Critical Approaches In, Against and Beyond the University

International Open Gathering

11–14 June 2015

At the Department of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Encounters and Conflicts in the City

Details: http://urbanconflicts.wordpress.com/

 

Calling

The group “Encounters and Conflicts in the City” calls radical research groups, critical workshops and researchers, students and collectives that are placed in, against and beyond the neoliberal university in an open gathering on the 11-14th June 2015 at the Department of Architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Through this gathering, we aim to create a public space of dialogue transcending divisions among academic and scientific disciplines and to critically approach the urban issues of the era of crisis, through a dialectic, intersectional and postcolonial approach.

The central questions that we wish to raise are two:

  1. What is the role of knowledge, of the university and of researchers in the era of crisis?
  2. What are the critical epistemological and methodological tools for studying the spatial expressions of the ongoing crisis at multiple scales?

Within this context, we seek to examine the ongoing crisis not just as an over-accumulation crisis but also as a crisis of social disobedience and of the inability of the circulation of capital, patriarchy and nationalism. Moving against the mystification of the crisis, we are interested in critical approaches that focus on the spatialization of social relations and examine the spaces of dissent. Particularly, we wish to examine the articulations, the limits, the contradictions and the dialectic relation of commons, enclosures, inclusion, exclusion, insurgency and counter-insurgency as well as their hybrid intermediate forms, which emerge in and through physical space, modes of communication and the constitution of communities. Overall, we aim to break the North/South or East/West dichotomies and to focus on the fields of gender, race, class and culture.

Building on the critical evaluation of social relations, the circulation of social struggles and subjects and communities in motion, we search for their contentious spaces and their spatial transformations, limits, possibilities and contradictions in the era of crisis. Moreover, understanding education as a unity of theory and practice, we seek these epistemological and methodological tools that emerge from and aim to the deepening and the circulation of social struggles and social movements. In the context of today’s global and local crisis, we note that while a plethora of social struggles and insurgencies emerge, the academic research often appropriates and commercializes their ideas. It is exactly here that we identify the dead-end.

Hence, we seek to surpass the so called academic activism and to set as a main target of this open gathering the critical examination of the following:

A. The role of knowledge and of researchers in the university and in social movements

The neoliberal University and the educational system constitute strategic mechanisms for the production and reproduction of social relations. In particular, within a dynamic process of neoliberalization, the university studies are intensified and are linked more and more to the labour market. Within this context, we wish to examine issues such as the production of knowledge, knowledge as a common, the neoliberalization of the University, the new educational enclosures and the concept of Anti-university.

The transformation of knowledge into private property and consequently into a commodity creates new enclosures in the field of knowledge. These new enclosures in neoliberal education are expressed both through the commodification of the physical space of the universities and through the objectification of human abilities. Some indicative examples are the increase of studying costs, the studying loans, the control of access to information, the commercialization of academic papers and books, the securitization of the University space, the criminalization and the rhetoric against student mobilizations, the suppression of the struggles of university employees and the restriction of the freedom of speech.

However, since 1960s and 1970s, the universities are spaces of collective emancipatory movements, of social struggles and of radical experiments of self-organization for the production of knowledge. As a response to these movements, since 1980s, a number of educational reforms have been introduced. These reforms seek to promote the marketization of the university, aiming to produce the appropriate competitive workforce and to supress student movements.

Yet, during the last decade, many dynamic student movements have emerged in France (2006), Greece (2006-2007), the USA (2009-2010), the UK (2010), Italy (2010-2011) and so on, which targeted the enclosure of knowledge and were connected and inspired many other urban social movements.

 

Axes of Discussion

A.1 Social education and emancipatory movements in the universities

-Student movements: limits and contradictions, connection with other urban movements, confrontation of their suppression and criminalization

-Perspectives of a radical pedagogy towards the knowledge as common

-Ideas and practices of free–‐autonomous universities beyond the education of the neoliberal university

A.2 Control and commodification of knowledge

-Public, state and private education in the neoliberal era

-Politics of knowledge enclosures and copyrights

-The suppression of academic freedom and of the freedom of speech

-Knowledge as private property and commodity for the production of value and surplus value

-Student loans and study costs as mechanisms of disciplining

-The cultural politics of the neoliberal university

-Paid and unpaid work at the University

A.3 The role of the researcher

-Lifelong education, competitiveness and the precarious status of the researcher

-The researcher as producer of dominant discourses and her/his role in the reproduction of power

-Competitiveness, academic carrie and academic divisions and hierarchies

-The biopolitical character of the neoliberal education and the construction of new identities

-Education as praxis, understood as a unity of theory and practice

-Researchers, networks and groups against and beyond the neoliberal university

 

B. Critical epistemological and methodological tools for the study of the crisis’s spatial expressions at multiple scales

Against the privatization and commodification of the academic knowledge and the intended hegemony of the neoliberal perspectives, we seek those critical epistemological tools of knowledge production that encourage social emancipation.

During the last years, urban movements and a plethora of visible and invisible practices of resistance and emancipation offer a variety of tools for the destabilization of the dominant ideologies, ways of disaggregation of power, negotiation of contradictions and visibility of differences. In parallel, today there is the urgent need for the promotion, circulation and deepening of these critical perspectives and their linking to social struggles. Thus, we aim to discuss epistemological and methodological tools, such as the following:

B1. Dialectic critical urban theory

Which are those critical approaches that assist us to perceive and examine the multiple dimensions of urban space? How do dialectic approaches and critical urban theory contribute to the understanding of the spaces of social movements and the spaces of capital, racism and patriarchy?

B2. Intersectionality and urban space in the era of crisis

How does intersectionality contribute to the study of the urban space? Which are the intersectional crossings of the multiple systems of domination, oppression and discrimination such as race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, dis/ability, age, cast, language, culture, body size, education level or citizenship?

B3. Cultural and postcolonial approaches

How do cultural and postcolonial studies contribute to the understanding of urban space and the conceptualization of body, identity and modes of communication. How does the criminalization and the suppression of alternative modes of culture, information and lifestyle operate as mechanisms of control, disciplining and normalization? What is the role of social media in the communication of social struggles? We seek the expression of the ongoing crisis through the spaces of architecture, art, media, and internet.

 

Within the above context, we call critical research groups, workshops, collectives and individuals to participate in a gathering during 11-14 June 2015. If you would like to participate, please provide us with your abstract (300 words) by 1 March 2015 at the latest, to the following e-mail: urbanconflicts@gmail.com

Participation is free and we will try to provide accommodation for as many participants as possible.

 

“Encounters and conflicts in the city” group

Costas Athanasiou, Eleni Vasdeki, Elina Kapetanaki, Maria Karagianni, Matina Kapsali, Vaso

Makrygianni, Foteini Mamali, Orestis Pangalos, Haris Tsavdaroglou

Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki

**END**

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

 Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Crisis

Crisis

Neoliberalism and the Degradation of Education

Education Not for Sale

Education Not for Sale

NEOLIBERALISM AND THE DEGRADATION OF EDUCATION

Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research

VOL 26 (2015)

Edited by Carlo Fanelli and Bryan Evans

Contributors to this anthology trace how neoliberalism has impacted education. These effects range from the commercialization and quasi-privatization of pre-school to post-secondary education, to restrictions on democratic practice and research and teaching, to the casualization of labour and labour replacing technologies, and the descent of the university into the market which threatens academic freedom. The end result is a comprehensive and wide-ranging review of how neoliberalism has served to displace, if not destroy, the role of the university as a space for a broad range of perspectives.

Neoliberalism stifes the university’s ability to incubate critical ideas and engage with the larger society. Entrepreneurship, however, is pursued as an ideological carrier serving to prepare students for a life of precarity just as the university itself is being penetrated and occupied by corporations. The result is an astonishing tale of transformation, de-democratization and a narrowing of vision and purpose.

Contents: http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/issue/view/1590/showToc

Current Issue: http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/issue/view/1590

Alternative Routes: http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar

**END**

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

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: https://rikowski.wordpress.com

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism

Critical Education – Call for Manuscripts

Education is Not for Sale

Education is Not for Sale

CRITICAL EDUCATION – CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS

SPECIAL SERIES

CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS

The Media and the Neoliberal Privatization of Education

 Series editors: Derek R. Ford (Syracuse University), Brad Porfilio (Lewis University), Rebecca A. Goldstein (Montclaire State University)

Abstracts due: December 31,2013

Manuscripts due: May 1,2014

As the neoliberal agenda for public education in North America intensifies, educational literature has increasingly turned its attention toward understanding the logics and processes of neoliberal privatization. Additionally, attention has been paid as to how educators resist these processes and practices, both in the classroom and beyond. This special issue seeks to deepen our understanding of the neoliberal privatization of education by extending critical examinations to an under-represented field of cultural production: that of mainstream media reporting on education and the neoliberal privatization of education, which many believe represents a new round of primitive accumulation. By examining and analyzing the mainstream media’s relationship to the processes in which neoliberal education ideologies are constructed, reflected, and reified, articles in this issue will explicate the various ways in which the mainstream media has helped facilitate and legitimate neoliberalism as universal logic in reforming education, both locally and globally. Articles will also speak to how critical educations have guided students in K-20 schools to understand the mainstream media’s relationship to supporting the neoliberal takeover of schools.

We welcome conceptual, empirical, theoretical, pedagogical and narrative articles that approach this topic from a variety of perspectives and frameworks. Articles included in the special issue may ask and examine questions such as, but not limited to:

* How has media coverage of teachers’ unions and teachers’ strikes reinforced and/or advanced privatization?

* What shift has taken place in terms of who is positioned in the media as educational “experts”?

* What are the differences between the way that various major news networks, newspapers, and news magazines talk about educational privatization?

* How are Teach For America and Teach For All being propelled by media coverage?

* What are the variations in media coverage of the neoliberal agenda for education?

* What are the alternatives and prospects for challenges to the mainstream media?

* How has ALEC impacted school reform policies and practices on the state level and to what extent has the media covered it?

* How have critical educators positioned their students to understand the mainstream media’s role in supporting the corporate agenda for schooling?

Critical Education is an international peer-reviewed journal, which seeks manuscripts that critically examine contemporary education contexts and practices. Critical Education is interested in theoretical and empirical research as well as articles that advance educational practices that challenge the existing state of affairs in society, schools, and informal education.

An early expression of interest and a 250-500 word abstract is preferred by December 31, 2013. Please address correspondence to drford@syr.edu and include “Critical Education” in the subject line.

For details on manuscript submission, please visit:  http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/information/authors

 **END**

 

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

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

Nearly Ten Years After: Examining Education Reform Post-Katrina

The Future of Education

The Future of Education

NEARLY TEN YEARS AFTER: EXAMINING EDUCATION REFORM POST-KATRINA

CALL FOR PAPERS

Policy Futures in Education

NEARLY TEN YEARS AFTER: examining education reform post-Katrina
Guest Editor: LUIS MIRÓN, Loyola University New Orleans, USA

It has been almost 10 years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast region of the USA, wreaking in its path billions of dollars of damage and flooding 80% of buildings and homes in New Orleans. At the same time education activists, civic elites, and policymakers seized upon this crisis largely inflicted by the failures of the levee system, to enact unprecedented school reform measures. Today nearly all of the public schools in New Orleans are charter schools, semi privately led entities, which enjoy considerable autonomy to redesign curricula, contract with outside vendors to fiscally manage and operate the schools, hire and fire teachers and school leaders, and set pay scales largely as they see fit. As the New Orleans model gains traction nationally, this near-tenth anniversary of the storm presents an ideal opportunity to assess on balance, whether or not these reform have largely benefited or hurt students, their families, and the communities that their schools serve.

This Special Issue of Policy Futures in Education (www.wwwords.co.uk/PFIE) proposes to examine nearly a decade following Hurricane Katrina, both the educational and social consequences of the devastating man-made disaster, as well as its symbolic meaning. In particular the selection of invited articles will seek to analytically assess the claims of proponents and opponents of school reform and ‘ universal school choice.’ The latter includes the proliferation of charter schools, which, collectively, comprise nearly 90% of all public schools in New Orleans. Nearly Ten Years After will also seek to determine theoretically what these reforms and their long-term societal consequences might mean for specific populations.

The substantive issues that this special issue will address include but are not limited to the following:
– Quantitative and qualitative impacts on student achievement.
– The effects of ‘universal choice’ on students and families.
– The use of MGOs (management governance organizations).
– Privatization
– Unionization/collective bargaining
– National/international implications of the New Orleans model
– Spatial dynamics (geographical)
– Comparative case studies (e.g. Detroit and New Orleans)
– Neo-liberal trends
– African-American diaspora
– The meaning of ‘public education’
– The future of school reform

Deadline for the final draft of your paper is January 6, 2014. However, if you would find it helpful, please send a draft of your article by November 15, and the Guest Editor will provide feedback for any suggested revisions.

Please send contributions to: lfmiron@gmail.com

 

**END**

 

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ 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

 

Education for Sale?

Education for Sale?

Education for Sale?

EDUCATION FOR SALE?

A debate on the privatisation of education

 

University of East London

Cass School of Education & Communities

Stratford Campus

Wednesday February 13th

The Panellists:

Dr. Glenn Rikowski (University of Northampton)

Professor John Schostak (Manchester Metropolitan University)

Professor James Tooley (University of Newcastle)

Dr. Patricia Walker (University of East London, and Labour councillor for Acton)

Chair: Claire Fox – Director, Institute of Ideas: http://www.instituteofideas.com/

Tea & Coffee: 3.30-4.00

The Debate: 4.00-5.00

Wine reception: 5.00-6.00

All welcome

Please circulate

 

UPDATE: 23rd FEBRUARY 2013:

Report on the Debate in the Times Higher Education: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=422702&c=1

 

Education for Sale?

Education for Sale?

**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

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

Economic Crisis, Conservatism and the Social

Sociology

ECONOMIC CRISIS, CONSERVATISM AND THE SOCIAL

Sociology Special issue 2014

Call for Tenders

Sociological perspectives on major global events

The Editorial Board of Sociology invites proposals for a special issue on one or more of the following themes:

(1) Austerity and protest;

(2) The global economic crisis;

(3) The resurgence of rightwing populism and the reconfiguration of conservative movements. 

Sociology is acknowledged as one of the leading journals in its field.  For more than three decades it has made a major contribution to the debates that have shaped the discipline and it has an undisputed international reputation for quality and originality. The journal now seeks a special issue that will examine the social in context of recent events. 

The successful proposal will have broad, mainstream appeal.  It will engage conceptually and explicitly with sociology and present a strong rationale for exploring the theme(s), drawing on key areas of sociological work (the social imaginary, generation, youth, emotions, gender, work, etc.). The special issue of Sociology (vol. 48) will be published in October 2014.

The team should consist of two or more editors. Applicants should have a clear vision of the purpose and content of their special issue. Issue content may be recruited by inviting submissions and open call.  Applicants are encouraged to include details/abstracts of any invited contributions at the time of application.  All submissions will be peer reviewed.

Deadline for tenders: Monday 8 October 2012

A proforma application is available from Alison Danforth, BSA Publications Officer.  Please email for a full list of criteria and information on how to apply.

Alison Danforth, BSA Publications Officer

+44 191 383 0839, publications@britsoc.org.uk

 

**END**

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

 

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: 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

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

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

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

Questions of Value – From Commons to Communomics: Resisting Privatization

Privatization

QUESTIONS OF VALUE – FROM COMMONS TO COMMMUNOMICS: RESISTING PRIVATIZATION

27 June: 2pm – 7pm

Seminar 1 – East Park Design Centre, 200.1.39 (first floor), Loughborough University 
FREE
Speakers: Christophe Bruno, Neil Cummings, Open Music Archive, Toni Prug, Stevphen Shukaitis

Moderated by: Kuba Szreder

The Politicized Practice Research Group (PPRG) and Radar are initiating a new events series devoted to the critical examination and evaluation of social forms through which ‘values’ are produced, perpetuated and extracted in contemporary society and economies, in arts and culture. The sessions will invite a number of speakers and thinkers from a range of disciplines to share their thoughts and ideas on the subject of value. We will develop a particular focus on contemporary art, also inviting artists who address questions of value through, in and with their practice.

The Questions of Value events aim to explore the variety of modes of valorisation, through which certain objects, ways of living, emotions, and even human beings are rendered as ‘valuable’ while others are neglected as unwanted and disposable.  The series will review and assess some of the contemporary debates and theories in which the concept of ‘value’ is central, from economics and ethics to mathematics and semiotics. The seminars will encompass a wide range of subjects, including the semiotics of speculation and the economics of financial capitalism, as well as contemporary forms of appropriating and extracting value.

In the first session of the series – we are delighted to welcome Christophe Bruno, Neil Cummings, Open Music Archive, Toni Prug and Stevphen Shukaitis to Loughborough to discuss questions of value with a focus on – From Commons to Communomics: Resisting Privatization. Christophe Bruno will unveil the mechanisms that create and capture the value of symbols in semio-capitalism.  Neil Cummings will investigate the notion of abundance of the commons from a future perspective, imagining what kind of evaluative structures will evolve if the dogma of scarcity and economic restriction is abolished. Open Music Archive will present their project ‘Song division’, which resists the enclosures of public domain by copyright regimes and proprietary intellectual ownership.  Toni Prug will conceptualize communomics as based on an egalitarian theory of value, encompassing modes of measuring the utilitarian value of things and services without attaching a price tag to them. Stevphen Shukaitis will talk about the class composition of the metropolitan factory, locating the question of the commons in a contemporary urban context.

A New Series of Events at Loughborough University School of the Arts in conjunction with the Politicized Practice Group and Radar

To book please email: E.L.Nadin@lboro.ac.uk

Convened by: Corina Oprea and Kuba Szreder
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/research/groups/politicised/index.html
http://www.arts.lboro.ac.uk/radar/conversation/

**END**

 

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

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

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

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

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

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

 

Grassroots Politics in the Postcolony

CLR James

GRASSROOTS POLITICS IN THE POSTCOLONY

Call for Papers
Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts (Indiana University Press)
Volume 6, Number 3 (Spring 2013)
Grassroots Politics in the Postcolony

Franco Barchiesi (Ohio State University), Guest Editor

Submissions are invited to explore the politics of contention and social movements in the postcolonial world (Africa, Asia, and Latin America), with particular regard to the ways in which race and ethnicity relate to identities and claims revolving around class, gender, nationality, and religion. Comparative discussions of social contestation in different societies are welcome.

Guest Editor Franco Barchiesi, Associate Professor in the Department of African American and African Studies at the Ohio State University, and the editorial staff of Race/Ethnicity invite submissions for Volume 6, Number 3, entitled “Grassroots Politics in the Postcolony”. We welcome submissions from activists, advocates and practitioners working on relevant issues, as well as from scholars in the social sciences and the humanities. In this issue, we look to engage the  following questions:

* How are racial and ethnic identities implicated in collective mobilization (including rural, labor, women, youth, indigenous, and religious movements) in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the “global South”?
* Is the concept of “social movement” useful to understand contemporary forms of social contention and grassroots politics?
* How do racial inequalities shape local contentious politics and everyday forms of social contestation?
* How do claims for racial and ethnic justice relate to grassroots politics in realities of economic liberalization and privatization?
* In which ways do intersections of race and ethnicity with current social conflicts interrogate the legacies of nationalism and decolonization?
* Do processes of migration and diaspora internationalize postcolonial political identities?
* How do grassroots identities, and their elaborations of race and ethnicity, interrogate political institutions and ideas of citizenship and civil society?
* How have postcolonial social movements responded to the global economic crisis and its impact on racial and ethnic dynamics?

Contributions can include, but are not limited to, case studies, theoretical discussions, and experience-based reflections.

Papers must be received by September 15, 2012 to be considered for publication in this issue.
Submission of artwork for the cover that relates to the theme of the issue is welcome. See website at http://www.raceethnicity.org/coverart.html for submission guidelines.

Please send manuscript publications to the managing editor: Leslie Shortlidge shortlidge.2@osu.edu

See Style Guidelines at http://www.raceethnicity.org  

Submission of artwork for the cover that relates to the theme of the issue is welcome. See website for submission guidelines.

Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts encourages and welcomes contributions by scholars, researchers, grassroots activists, policy advocates, and organizations.

 

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

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

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

Centre for the Study of Education and Work – Update 8th May 2011

CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AND WORK – UPDATE 8th MAY 2011

EVENTS

DYING FOR A HOME: FIGHTING FOR OUR SOCIAL PROGRAMS

Thursday, May 19
7 pm
Toronto Reference Library, Atrium
Yonge Street, north of Bloor

Join Toronto street nurse Cathy Crowe for a street-level perspective on the need for social housing and why we need social programs now more than ever. Crowe has been a street nurse in downtown Toronto for more than seventeen years and co-founded the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee. Music provided by the Common Thread Community Choir. Hosted by Councillor Adam Vaughan.

+++++

STOP SIGNS: CARS AND CAPITALISM ON THE ROAD TO ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL DECAY

Thursday, May 12
7pm
Bahen Centre, Room 1200
40 St. George St., Toronto

In North America, human beings have become enthralled by the automobile: A quarter of our working lives are spent paying for them; communities fight each other for the right to build more of them; our cities have been torn down, remade and planned with their needs as the overriding concern; wars are fought to keep their fuel tanks filled; songs are written to praise them; cathedrals are built to worship them.

Drawing on their new book Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay, authors Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler will describe how the automobile’s ascendance is inextricably linked to capitalism and involved corporate malfeasance, political intrigue, backroom payoffs, media manipulation, racism, academic corruption, third world coups, secret armies, environmental destruction and war.

To locate this discussion in the Toronto context, local activist Jordy Cummings will describe the work of the campaign for Free and Accessible public transit, which is being spearheaded by the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly.

+++++

COUNCILLOR JOSH MATLOW’S TOWN HALL DEBATE ON GARBAGE PRIVATIZATION

Tuesday, May 10th 2011
7:00 – 9:00 pm
North Toronto Collegiate Institute, 17 Broadway Ave – SCHOOL AUDITORIUM

Councillor Josh Matlow will be holding a Town Hall debate on the garbage privatization issue which will be coming to City Council in mid-May, to ensure residents have an opportunity to become informed on both sides of this important issue. It will be moderated by TVO’s Steve Paikin and will feature Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, Chair of Toronto Public Works Committee and Hugh Mackenzie of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

For additional information, please contact Josh Matlow’s office at (416) 392-7906 or email councillor_matlow@toronto.ca

+++++

STOP WAGE THEFT! CAMPAIGN LAUNCH

Friday May 13, 2011
7:00pm * FREE!
Beit Zatoun – 612 Markham Street
(Bathurst St. and Bloor St.)

Celebrate our shared resistance with performances by:

* Ruben ‘Beny’ Esguerra and New Tradition Drum and Dance live Afro-Colombian percussion
* Spoken word by Lishai

Hear from Workers’ Action Centre leaders on our fight to stop employers from stealing our wages.    

Watch undercover footage of employers breaking the law, and see how workers are resisting through Bad Boss actions around the city.

Find Out how you can get involved!

Workers’ Action Centre is releasing a series of videos on wage theft. Watch the latest video at http://www.workersactioncentre.org

For more information: call Sonia at (416) 531-0778, ext. 221.

+++++

(UN)LAWFUL ACCESS: CYBER-SURVEILLANCE, SECURITY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

May 12, 2011
5:00pm- :00pm
Campbell Conference Facility
Munk School of Global Affairs, U of T
1 Devonshire Place
Toronto, ON

Join moderator Dr. Ron Deibert for an insightful and lively discussion into some of the most pressing social issues surrounding our rights and freedoms as cyber-surveillance becomes an ubiquitous part of our lives, on-line and off.

Digitally mediated surveillance is an increasingly prevalent, but still largely invisible, aspect of everyday life. As we work, play and negotiate public spaces, on-line and off, we produce a growing stream of personal digital data of interest to unseen others. CCTV cameras hosted by private and public actors survey and record our movements in public space, as well as in the workplace. Corporate interests track our behaviour as we navigate both social and transactional cyberspaces, data mining our digital doubles and packaging users as commodities for sale to the highest bidder. Governments continue to collect personal information on-line with unclear guidelines for retention and use, while law enforcement increasingly use internet technology to monitor not only criminals but activists and political dissidents as well, with worrisome implications for democracy.

Read more: http://www.digitallymediatedsurveillance.ca

+++++

NEXT GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE GTWA: IN THE SPRING OF 2011 WILL STRUGGLE BLOOM?

Saturday May 14, 2011
Steelworkers Hall
25 Cecil Street, Toronto.
East side of Spadina south of College

As we exit the elections and the capitalist class continues to consolidate itself the attacks against working people will come quicker and stronger. The need for an organized resistance is greater than ever.

The Greater Toronto Workers’s Assembly (GTWA) was formed to contribute to this resistance at a time when we saw the tip of the iceberg of the “austerity” program. Looking back less than two years later our success at doing this has been both limited and mixed despite some of our successes. We need to examine the current context, our project and the challenges we face. Do we have the capacity, will and discipline to take on these challenges? Can we overcome the divisions, pressures and practices that divide us? Will we be able to help the struggle bloom?

All members and supporters are welcome. Members and supporters are encouraged to bring guests as observers.

Read more: http://www.workersassembly.ca/node/150

+++++
+++++

NEWS & VIEWS

ANTI-AUSTERITY STRUGGLES AND THE CANADIAN ELECTION

From The Bullet

The precise political outcome of the May 2nd election may well have the NDP make an unprecedented electoral breakthrough in Canada and Quebec. This would be a major step in its long desire to displace the Liberals as the other dominant national party, partly to become something more like the Democratic Party in the U.S. and partly to become the alternate centrist political option like the British Labour Party and the German SPD. This is already what the NDP is in Western Canada and Nova Scotia. This needs to be placed in the context of an international political conjuncture where ruling class forces have, paradoxically, gained strength and momentum over the crisis to date; and set against the enduring institutional characteristics of the Canadian political and electoral systems that, if anything, the political parties and campaigns have reinforced.

Read more: http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/496.php

+++++

ONTARIO FARM WORKERS ‘SHOCKED’ AS UNION BAN UPHELD

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a provincial ban on farm unions is constitutional, denying more than 80,000 Ontario farm workers the ability to unionize. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a provincial ban on farm unions is constitutional, denying more than 80,000 Ontario farm workers the ability to unionize.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2011/04/29/supreme-court.html

+++++

MURRAY DOBBIN’S BLOG – A CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY. NOW WHAT?

There is no point dwelling on the obvious other than to simply reiterate it. The election of a Conservative majority government will usher in wrenching change in Canada and we will have to witness the worse that Stephen Harper has to offer. It remains to be seen whether or not Harper actually wants to stay around for another election to win it (and therefore not go too far in a first term), and solidify the dominance of his party as the new “natural governing party.” Or whether, as his personality disorder would suggest, he will in a spirit of vengeance against the country he detests, dismantle as much of the post-war social contract he can in four years of virtually absolute power.

Read more: http://murraydobbin.ca/2011/05/03/a-conservativ-majority-now-what/

+++++

BUY THIS BOOK!

From LBO News, Doug Henwood
Excellent collection of interviews … Perfect for teaching, or just reading. Order your copies here.

Sasha Lilley, Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult (PM Press, 2011)

Interviewees: Ellen Meiksins Wood, David Harvey, Doug Henwood, Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, Greg Albo, David McNally, John Bellamy Foster, Jason W Moore, Ursula Huws, Gillian Hart, Vivek Chibber, Mike Davis, Tariq Ali, John Sanbonmatsu, Andrej Grubacic, and Noam Chomsky.

Through a series of incisive conversations with some of the most eminent thinkers and political economists on the Left—including David Harvey, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Mike Davis, Leo Panitch, Tariq Ali, and Noam Chomsky—Capital and Its Discontents illuminates the dynamic contradictions undergirding capitalism and the potential for its dethroning.

The book challenges conventional wisdom on the Left about the nature of globalization, neoliberalism and imperialism, as well as the agrarian question in the Global South. It probes deeply into the roots of the global economic meltdown, the role of debt and privatization in dampening social revolt, and considers capitalism’s dynamic ability to find ever new sources of accumulation—whether through imperial or ecological plunder or the commodification of previously unpaid female labor.

Read more: https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=267

+++++

VIDEO – ONLY KNOWN RECORDING OF MOTHER JONES

You have to see the only known audio and video recording of Mother Jones. On what is believed to be her 100th birthday in 1930, the legendary union organizer is still full of fire for worker justice.

Watch the video: http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/05/03/only-known-videoaudio-of-mother-jones/

(END)
++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++

ABOUT CSEW (CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION & WORK, OISE/UT):

Head: Peter Sawchuk
Co-ordinator: D’Arcy Martin

The Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW) brings together educators from university, union, and community settings to understand and enrich the often-undervalued informal and formal learning of working people. We develop research and teaching programs at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (UofT) that strengthen feminist, anti-racist, labour movement, and working-class perspectives on learning and work.

Our major project is APCOL: Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning. This five-year project (2009-2013), funded by SSHRC-CURA, brings academics and activists together in a collaborative effort to evaluate how organizations approach issues and campaigns and use popular education. For more information about this project, visit http://www.apcol.ca

For more information about CSEW, visit: http://www.csew.ca

END ***

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

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