Abstract accepted for ‘Friction: An interdisciplinary conference on technology & resistance‘, University of Nottingham, Thursday 8th May & Friday 9th May. In this paper I will argue for a different way of understanding the emergence of hacker culture. In doing so, I will outline an account of ‘the university’ as an institution that provided the … Continue reading “The university as a hackerspace”
Through our work on the Social Science Centre, Richard Hall and I have been approached to produce a book which documents and critically analyses ‘alternative higher education’ projects in terms of their being critical responses to ‘intellectual leadership’ in mainstream higher education. The book is intended to be part of a series already agreed with … Continue reading “Call for contributions to a book on ‘Mass Intellectuality: The democratisation of higher education’”
In my notes on Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme, I tried to get to grips with what Marx referred to as indirect and direct labour. Although I didn’t articulate it very well, I did make the point that the difference between indirect (capitalist) labour and direct (post-capitalist) labour was that direct labour was not … Continue reading “Value and the transparency of direct labour”
Abstract submitted to the CfP on ‘Critical Approaches to Open Education‘, Learning, Media and Technology journal. I have previously argued that open education is a liberal project with a focus on the freedom of things rather than the freedom of people. (Winn, 2012) Furthermore, I have argued that despite an implicit critique of private property … Continue reading “Open education and the emancipation of labour from teaching and learning”
Abstract of a paper accepted for the ‘Governing Academic Life‘ conference. UPDATE 16th June 2014: My paper for this conference is available here. We are witnessing an “assault” on universities (Bailey and Freedman, 2011) and the future of higher education and its institutions is being “gambled.” (McGettigan, 2013) For many years now, we have been … Continue reading “The university as a worker co-operative: Labour, property and pedagogy”
I was recently asked this question and here is my reply based on Marx’s critique of the commodity. Implicit in the question is whether something that does not cost anything (zero price) to consume can still be a commodity. Marx referred to the ‘commodity’ as “the elementary form of wealth. Our investigation begins accordingly with … Continue reading “Is an Open Access journal article a commodity?”
In April, I am running a workshop with Richard Hall at the Discourse, Power and Resistance 14 conference. Details below. This discussion takes as its premises the following: The University is being restructured through a neoliberal politics as part of a global pedagogical project. This project is aimed at the dispossession of free space/time so … Continue reading “For a co-operative university?”
The Social Science Centre In 2011, I helped set up a co-operative for higher education. It began as an idea that my colleague, Mike Neary, and I had been discussing the previous summer, and was partly influenced by the network of social centres that exist across the UK and elsewhere. In May this year, the … Continue reading “A co-operative university”
I’m drafting an article based on a series of blog posts I wrote on early hacker culture. I discuss four methods by which scientific research has been ‘valorised’ within US higher education since the late nineteenth century: Land grants and consultancy; Patents; War-time funding; and Venture Capital. Here’s my first attempt to outline what I … Continue reading “The Valorisation of the Academy”
There is an understandable tendency among critics of the current crisis in higher education to want to restore the university to what it once was, to defend the university from changing into something else, to resist the subsumption of academic labour under capital. I think this misunderstands the university as a means of production and … Continue reading “Helplessness”