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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Arabica Robusta

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Arabica Robusta

Capitalism and the University | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...capitalism-and-university

globalization corporate-led academia cooptation social movements neoliberalism

shared by Arabica Robusta on 15 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • The University has long had a contested relationship to power and authority, providing both a legitimation of the status quo and independence from it, capable of both instrumental thought and critical debate. While sometimes profoundly conservative, the autonomy and independence of the University within the existing power structures is an essential part of the development of an effective challenge to them.
  • he consequences of the decision in 2008 to move universities into the remit of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, of the 2010 Browne Report into university funding, and of 2011 white paper on higher education will be to turn the University into an extension of capitalism.
Arabica Robusta

Is the 'impact agenda' stifling methodological innovation? | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...ling-methodological-innovation

globalization corporate-led academia cooptation social movements neoliberalism

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  • Apart from submitting academics to disciplinary management styles and high levels of commercial pressure, this new environment and economy of knowledge is affecting academic practice in ways that have potentially damaging implications for the ‘real world’. The pressure on scholars to secure external funding, amass prestige, and demonstrate influence in order to help fund their universities has resulted in academics compromising their values, altering the directions of their research, opting to pursue ‘safer’ research strategies, and allowing themselves to be co-opted into governmental/corporate research agendas.
  • In theory, universities should distance themselves from governmental and corporate interests in order to uphold one of the core aims and values of higher education: to be impartial enough to ‘speak truth to power’ where needed. This critical distance is arguably closing, and scholars have begun to change their research designs and trajectories in order to appeal to the needs/wishes of external bodies in order to secure funding.
  • There is already evidence that scholars are shying away from critical study and focusing on producing ‘statistics’ and other forms of knowledge that do not challenge prevailing power structures. Policymakers demand numbers and many academics are volunteering to supply them, preferring the path of least resistance to insisting on space for qualitative research in the form of interviews or ethnography.
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  • Second, the pressure to publish only in certain journals—many of which have methodological biases towards ‘scientific’ (quantitative) methods—gives academics plenty of incentive to adopt those same methodologies. Scholars have arguably become overly cautious, even conformist, in order to meet the perceived demands of editors and reviewers.
  • To increase one’s chances of being published, scholars are likely to adopt ‘safer’ publication strategies and shy away from pursuing methodological innovation which is deemed as ‘risky’. Safer publication strategies can include working within recognised methodological frameworks, especially those preferred by the designated ‘mainstream’. What this means for academics researching forced labour is that institutional pressures could condition such scholars to abandon methodological innovation, which is sorely needed.
  • This can jeopardise the reputations and careers of even established scholars, let alone junior academics. The structural pressures are reinforcing, and scholars are once again encouraged to pursue methods that are likely to yield findings in line with funder’s expectations. With regard to forced labour, this once again reinforces the clear preference for quantitative research that produces numeric ‘facts’.
  • Certain commentators would argue yes. Yet despite the problems laid out above, scholars do have a responsibility to share their knowledge and make it available both within and outside of their academic communities
Arabica Robusta

RESISTING WTO's CULTURE OF TERROR AND IMPUNITY | Yash Tandon - 0 views

yashtandon.com/culture-of-terror-and-impunity

globalization corporate-led neoliberalism social movements international trade tradeagreements wto

shared by Arabica Robusta on 27 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • In between the powerful and the weak are countries like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that do have some – but limited – negotiating leverage, provided they act in concert. Opposed to BRICS and the Global South is the Empire – a term that is not admissible in diplomatic – including WTO – discourse. But the Empire exists; it is an existential reality.
  • When the DDA was launched in November 2001 it was under overbearing pressure from the Empire. Following 9/11 (the terrorist attack on New York), the US had announced that if the Doha Round was not launched, those opposing it would effectively be ‘siding with the terrorists’. The emphasis during the negotiations was largely on market access – primarily for the benefit of the Empire. As a member of the Tanzanian delegation – then negotiating on behalf of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) – I remember how very disappointed we were at the outcome(i)
  • one area where the DDA anchor is not allowing the ship to drift is the so-called Singapore (and other new) issues. It gives the developing countries policy space to determine their own development priorities, to give preferences to local companies over foreign corporations and foreign imports. It is no wonder that the Empire wants to kill the DDA. The corporate interests that sit waiting to take over the helm are now even more powerful – but also desperate – than they were fourteen years ago.
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  • The Empire manipulates the process inside and outside the Green Room – including all kinds of wheeling and dealing and pressure on governments in Africa and other poor nations – and it gets away with what can only be described as terror and bully tactics. It enjoys unparalleled impunity from responsibility for serious violations of the principles of fairness and justice.
  • To start with it said nothing on the DDA; it totally ignored the DDA mandate. • Then, having claimed that it will not have language on New Issues, it opened the door to these in a roundabout way by, for example, looking at the systemic implications of Regional Trade Agreements s (RTAs) and their coherence with WTO rules. It was a very serious setback for the South as their demand to continue talks on DDA was simply set aside. On December 2, the report by TNC Chairman, Azevêdo, was postponed. On December 3, the DG was forced by the Global South to insert specific language for DDA continuance post-Nairobi. The South was no longer in a mood to take further beating from the Empire and its agents within the very structure of the WTO. (v)
  • 3. The WTO’ ideology of ‘free trade’ is a pure fiction. Nothing like that ever existed in history, not even during its ‘high point’ of 19th century English mercantile system. 4. The WTO is not neutral. Its DG – Azevêdo – is not neutral. He is a ‘free market fundamentalist and works for the Empire.
Arabica Robusta

Social sciences neglect leads to narrow development view by Wachira Kigoto / CODESRIA - 0 views

codesria.org/spip.php

academia corporate-led neoliberalism academe

shared by Arabica Robusta on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • “Attempts to improve Africa’s development prospects by focusing on scientific advances and the benefits accruing from them have masked the critical role of social sciences and humanities as torchbearers of African values, systems of power, production and distribution,” said CODESRIA coordinator Professor Ibrahim Oanda Ogachi.
  • Scholars in the diaspora will mentor and conduct PhD supervision in order to alleviate shortages of academics in the social sciences and humanities in African universities, and to bolster institutions with valuable international experience and insights.“Currently there is under-enrolment in certain disciplines, as well as a prevailing perception that social sciences and humanities disciplines do not matter, especially in the debate on Africa’s development agenda,” Ogachi told University World News in Nairobi
  • In order to increase the numbers of scholars with PhDs in African universities, Langa stressed that deliberate efforts should be made to provide flexible conditions for teaching, research supervision and thesis examination.He also called for strengthening the academic culture in universities through joint research initiatives with scholars in the diaspora, as well as regional partnerships.
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  • Highlighting the premise that no sound society can be built on natural sciences and technology alone were Dr Winfred Avogo, associate professor of sociology at Illinois State University in the US, and Clifford Odimegwu, professor of population studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.Outlining a proposed project on labour migration, social networks and HIV-Aids risk in South Africa, the researchers pointed out the importance of highly trained demographers if policy-makers are to understand the real causes of African migrations to Europe, environmental challenges imposed by climate change and causes of population increases.
  • “It is commonplace to find literature suggesting that African countries are now more unequal, and ethnically, religiously and economically more divided than they were in the context of colonialism,” noted a CODESRIA concept paper that formed the basis of the Nairobi forum.The crux of the matter is that social problems like insecurity, intolerance, environmental pollution and food insecurity are becoming more and more widespread, even as societies in Africa invest more in science and technology to try and alleviate these problems.The concept paper highlighted the fact that while African governments were putting trust in natural sciences and technology to curb labour migration and brain drain, as well as improve social cohesion, trade and gender relations, other countries – such as Brazil, China and India – had seen the importance of increasing the number of social scientists to address such issues.
  • CODESRIA has raised the red flag of neglect and discrimination against social sciences and humanities within Africa’s development agenda. There is sufficient testimony to suggest that the skewed emphasis on natural sciences and technology needs to be balanced by inputs from other areas of human interest.
Arabica Robusta

The Perils of Being a Public Intellectual » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Na... - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...of-being-a-public-intellectual

corporate-led academia cooptation social movements cornel west michael eric dyson

shared by Arabica Robusta on 05 May 15 - No Cached
  • Dyson resents West’s critique of Obama’s domestic and foreign policies. But rather than judiciously and analytically weigh such criticisms, hardly confined to West, he positions him as a spurned lover, angry and bitter because among other things, he did not get a ticket to Obama’s 2008 inauguration.
  • In what appears as an act of infantilism, Dyson claims that West is a talker rather than a scholar, as if speaking truth to power does not have its place as a legitimate mode of political intervention or that the realm of university-based scholarship is the only true space where truth can hold power accountable.
  • West in this attack is simply a stand in for a range of public intellectuals who no longer believe in existing political formations and are redefining politics through both their words and actions.
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  • In fact, Dyson’s article is important less because of its focus on Cornel West’s shortcomings, personal and political, however fabricated,  than as an exemplar of the crisis facing the work of many prominent intellectuals in the academy who have silenced themselves or lost themselves in the corridors of power, refusing to extend their intellectual capacities to addressing important social issues while defending higher education as a public good and reaffirming the connection between scholarship and social justice.
  • ornel West believes in Palestinian liberation. He believes in amnesty for undocumented immigrants. He believes that the bankers responsible for the 2008 crisis should be brought to justice. He believes that capitalism is a driving engine of much of the injustice in our world. He believes that Obama’s drone program is an act of state-sanctioned murder. One can choose to agree or disagree with these points, but one cannot ignore that West has been relentless in his efforts to place them in the political discourse.
  • While Dyson uses the rubric of faulty scholarship and character assassination to condemn West, what he is really doing is defending the illiberal politics of centrism, the permanent warfare state, the power of the financial elite, the surveillance state, the attack on whistle blowers, and the suppression of civil liberties.
  • What they do that other critics do not do is also expose Dyson’s genuflection not simply to Obama but to the dominant registers of a lethal kind of politics that makes it impossible to associate the United States with even a vestige of democracy. And for that their piece should be widely read.
  • What Dyson disregards in his self-appointed role of being an arbiter for legitimate scholarship is that West does not define himself as a scholar but as an intellectual. Nor is West first allegiance to the standards of academic scholarship. West begins with important social problems and uses theory as a tool to address such issues.
  • est we should forget, he is not the lonely intellectual preaching from the Olympian heights of Princeton University. What is notable about his work is that he is one of the few public intellectuals in the United States who embraces the assumption that domination is not simply about economic structures but also about beliefs, rhetoric, and the pedagogical.
  • West’s politics is a call to educated hope, a recognition that knowledge can only speak to power and truth when people can locate themselves in the narratives it provides. West does that and he does it brilliantly and he does it as a public intellectual who not only embarrasses liberals but provocatively reveals their most poisonous and cowardly attributes. West is not a hero; he is not a celebrity; he is not a political romantic. On the contrary, he is a fighter. Someone who struggles in the name of justice and uses all of the intellectual resources, outlets and ideological and affective spaces at his disposable. Rather than impugning him, we should learn from him, be in dialogue with him, and be grateful that such a teacher is in our midst.
  • let’s not forget that all of us who take on this role as engaged public intellectuals will not get rewards, we will not be invited to the White House, and we will not receive the usual empty accolades from the mainstream press. Instead, we will be considered dangerous, but as Hannah Arendt once said, thinking itself is dangerous in dark times. What Michael Dyson’s critique of Cornel West has done is make Arendt’s point obvious.
Arabica Robusta

The Chronicle: 5/5/2006: The Self-Inflicted Wounds of the Academic Left - 0 views

web.archive.org/...reprint.php

academia academic academe liberalacademics

shared by Arabica Robusta on 02 May 15 - No Cached
  • Among the topics they might explore: the academic left's ignorance of main currents of American life, their positive tropism for foreign saviors, their reliance on intricate jargon, their commitment to keeping up with post-everything hotshots of "theory" from more advanced continents. Instead, in a time-honored ritual of the left, a number of academic polemicists choose this moment to pump up rites of purification. At a time when liberals hold next to no sway in any leading institution of national government, when the prime liberal institution of the last century — organized labor — wobbles helplessly, when most national media tilt so far to the right as to parody themselves, the guardians of purity rise to a high pitch of sanctimoniousness aimed at ... heretics.
Arabica Robusta

Questions Concerning The World Bank and Chad/Cameroon Oil and Pipeline Project -- Makin... - 0 views

www.edf.org/article.cfm

chad cameroon petroleum development africa world bank ifc exxonmobil mobil exxon edf

shared by Arabica Robusta on 29 Apr 15 - Cached
  • The World Bank claims that the project will alleviate poverty because revenue from the oil for the Government of Chad and royalties for the Government of Cameroon for the use of the pipeline would be invested in poverty programs. This argument has little credibility, however, in view of the demonstrated lack of commitment by either government to alleviate poverty.
  • An environmental impact assessment is being carried out and an Environmental Panel was put in place to mitigate these problems. But the best environmental reports are of little help when there is no government commitment to carry out its recommendations. This lack of commitment is especially evident in Cameroon, a country with one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. Once the money is flowing, the unholy trinity of oil, power, and corruption will make corrective action difficult.
  • In both Chad and Cameroon, civil society organizations struggling to increase democracy and defend human rights and the environment are taking root. The presence and growth of these organizations is a source of hope for more equitable and environmentally sound development, yet they face difficulties and threats from the existing power structures. They need strengthening and support, but the oil project may undermine hopes for a greater democratic opening.
  • Arabica Robusta on 29 Apr 15
     
    Good early article.
Arabica Robusta

Inverted Totalitarianism: A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled | Democ... - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...85728

repression us political democracy wolin totalitarianism governmentality hegemony culture media

shared by Arabica Robusta on 29 Apr 15 - Cached
  • Given this historical backdrop, Wolin introduces three new concepts to help analyze what we have lost as a nation. His master idea is "inverted totalitarianism," which is reinforced by two subordinate notions that accompany and promote it -- "managed democracy" and "Superpower," the latter always capitalized and used without a direct article. Until the reader gets used to this particular literary tic, the term Superpower can be confusing. The author uses it as if it were an independent agent, comparable to Superman or Spiderman, and one that is inherently incompatible with constitutional government and democracy.
  • Wolin writes, "Our thesis is this: it is possible for a form of totalitarianism, different from the classical one, to evolve from a putatively 'strong democracy' instead of a 'failed' one." His understanding of democracy is classical but also populist, anti-elitist and only slightly represented in the Constitution of the United States. "Democracy," he writes, "is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs." It depends on the existence of a demos -- "a politically engaged and empowered citizenry, one that voted, deliberated, and occupied all branches of public office."
  • Among the factors that have promoted inverted totalitarianism are the practice and psychology of advertising and the rule of "market forces" in many other contexts than markets, continuous technological advances that encourage elaborate fantasies (computer games, virtual avatars, space travel), the penetration of mass media communication and propaganda into every household in the country, and the total co-optation of the universities. Among the commonplace fables of our society are hero worship and tales of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds, and a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose adepts are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge. Masters of this world are masters of images and their manipulation.
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  • To reduce a complex argument to its bare bones, since the Depression, the twin forces of managed democracy and Superpower have opened the way for something new under the sun: "inverted totalitarianism," a form every bit as totalistic as the classical version but one based on internalized co-optation, the appearance of freedom, political disengagement rather than mass mobilization, and relying more on "private media" than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda that reinforces the official version of events. It is inverted because it does not require the use of coercion, police power and a messianic ideology as in the Nazi, Fascist and Stalinist versions (although note that the United States has the highest percentage of its citizens in prison -- 751 per 100,000 people -- of any nation on Earth). According to Wolin, inverted totalitarianism has "emerged imperceptibly, unpremeditatedly, and in seeming unbroken continuity with the nation's political traditions."
  • Wolin argues that to the extent the United States on occasion came close to genuine democracy, it was because its citizens struggled against and momentarily defeated the elitism that was written into the Constitution.
  • Many analysts, myself included, would conclude that Wolin has made a close to airtight case that the American republic's days are numbered, but Wolin himself does not agree. Toward the end of his study he produces a wish list of things that should be done to ward off the disaster of inverted totalitarianism: "rolling back the empire, rolling back the practices of managed democracy; returning to the idea and practices of international cooperation rather than the dogmas of globalization and preemptive strikes; restoring and strengthening environmental protections; reinvigorating populist politics; undoing the damage to our system of individual rights; restoring the institutions of an independent judiciary, separation of powers, and checks and balances; reinstating the integrity of the independent regulatory agencies and of scientific advisory processes; reviving representative systems responsive to popular needs for health care, education, guaranteed pensions, and an honorable minimum wage; restoring governmental regulatory authority over the economy; and rolling back the distortions of a tax code that toadies to the wealthy and corporate power."
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 29 Apr 15
       
      What does Wolin mean by "populist"? Certainly not the populism of Dornbusch and National Endowment for Democracy theorists. See, for example, http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/7418.ctl. Certainly not the populism of an Obama or Lula, attempting to simultaneously echo the 'voice of the dispossessed' and Wall Street.
  • One other subordinate task of managed democracy is to keep the citizenry preoccupied with peripheral and/or private conditions of human life so that they fail to focus on the widespread corruption and betrayal of the public trust. In Wolin's words, "The point about disputes on such topics as the value of sexual abstinence, the role of religious charities in state-funded activities, the question of gay marriage, and the like, is that they are not framed to be resolved. Their political function is to divide the citizenry while obscuring class differences and diverting the voters' attention from the social and economic concerns of the general populace." Prominent examples of the elite use of such incidents to divide and inflame the public are the Terri Schiavo case of 2005, in which a brain-dead woman was kept artificially alive, and the 2008 case of women and children living in a polygamous commune in Texas who were allegedly sexually mistreated.
  • Superpower is the sponsor, defender and manager of American imperialism and militarism, aspects of American government that have always been dominated by elites, enveloped in executive-branch secrecy, and allegedly beyond the ken of ordinary citizens to understand or oversee. Superpower is preoccupied with weapons of mass destruction, clandestine manipulation of foreign policy (sometimes domestic policy, too), military operations, and the fantastic sums of money demanded from the public by the military-industrial complex. (The U.S. military spends more than all other militaries on Earth combined. The official U.S. defense budget for fiscal year 2008 is $623 billion; the next closest national military budget is China's at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.)
  • On inverted totalitarianism's "self-pacifying" university campuses compared with the usual intellectual turmoil surrounding independent centers of learning, Wolin writes, "Through a combination of governmental contracts, corporate and foundation funds, joint projects involving university and corporate researchers, and wealthy individual donors, universities (especially so-called research universities), intellectuals, scholars, and researchers have been seamlessly integrated into the system. No books burned, no refugee Einsteins. For the first time in the history of American higher education top professors are made wealthy by the system, commanding salaries and perks that a budding CEO might envy."
  • Unfortunately, this is more a guide to what has gone wrong than a statement of how to fix it, particularly since Wolin believes that our political system is "shot through with corruption and awash in contributions primarily from wealthy and corporate donors." It is extremely unlikely that our party apparatus will work to bring the military-industrial complex and the 16 secret intelligence agencies under democratic control. Nonetheless, once the United States has followed the classical totalitarianisms into the dustbin of history, Wolin's analysis will stand as one of the best discourses on where we went wrong.
  • Arabica Robusta on 29 Apr 15
     
    To reduce a complex argument to its bare bones, since the Depression, the twin forces of managed democracy and Superpower have opened the way for something new under the sun: "inverted totalitarianism," a form every bit as totalistic as the classical version but one based on internalized co-optation, the appearance of freedom, political disengagement rather than mass mobilization, and relying more on "private media" than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda that reinforces the official version of events.
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