SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2023-10-10DOI: 10.3898/soun.84-85.rev01.2023
Emma Parker
{"title":"Wild things: Global histories in rural England","authors":"Emma Parker","doi":"10.3898/soun.84-85.rev01.2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.84-85.rev01.2023","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136360439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2023-10-10DOI: 10.3898/soun.84-85.01.2023
Jonathan S. Davies, Adam Standring
{"title":"Beyond the consolations of professionalism: resisting alienation at the neoliberal university","authors":"Jonathan S. Davies, Adam Standring","doi":"10.3898/soun.84-85.01.2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.84-85.01.2023","url":null,"abstract":"The British university system is in a deep crisis, born of a two-pronged assault. The crisis is born firstly from decades of neoliberal marketisation and the rise of a remote and authoritarian executive elite presiding over a downwardly mobile and culturally deprivileged academic profession. We call this process neoliberal managerialism. It is born secondly from the ideological and political assault on universities, currently led by the Tories, reflecting the resurgence of anti-intellectualism since the millennium. The paper argues that although these currents embody ostensibly conflicting values, they combine and reinforce each other. We illustrate this argument by discussing lacunae in the decolonisation of British universities, notably the colonial ideologies and practices inscribed in neoliberal university governance and management. The final section reflects on how to resist and overcome the crises engulfing UK higher education. Framed by reflections on the positionalities of the authors, it argues that no consolations can be found in old-style academic professionalism, which historically was no less regressive than neoliberal managerialism and often complicit in its rollout. We conclude that academics could instead embrace the ineluctable dynamics of de-professionalisation and work towards an authentic and solidaristic public intellectuality.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136360444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2023-10-10DOI: 10.3898/soun.84-85.08.2023
Michael Rustin
{"title":"The idea of a democratic university","authors":"Michael Rustin","doi":"10.3898/soun.84-85.08.2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.84-85.08.2023","url":null,"abstract":"This article sets the current crisis of universities in the UK in its recent historical, post–1960s context. It argues that an expansionary and initially broadly progressive phase of development from the 1960s onwards, lasting for twenty-five or so years, has come in the recent neoliberal decades to be seen as a threat to the dominant social order, in the context of a broader resistance to the egalitarian and democratic trends of post-war British society. Since the 1980s this now large sector of social and cultural production and reproduction has been subject to a purposeful restructuring, to render it consistent with the norms of a society dominated by capital. This restructuring can be broadly understood as taking place within a neoliberal framework of assumptions. Unless this wider situation, and the changes which have led to them, is understood, in historically and theoretically coherent terms, resistance to what is happening is unlikely to succeed. The article first discusses the phase of university expansion, the forces which brought it about, and the social and cultural changes and opportunities to which it gave rise. It then discusses the counter-reaction, and the attempts to remodel the practices and institutions of higher education that constitute its active elements. Finally it explores what might be involved in resetting this path of development in a more positive direction, and considers the many theoretical and political difficulties involved in imagining this and making it possible. Here it argues the need for a dismantling of the graduate meritocracy over society, and for bringing into being an educated democracy. It is crucial to create the conditions for a broad debate on the place and function of universities in our society, in which these larger issues of direction and purpose can be debated. The author notes, however, that only in a society that becomes less grossly unequal than ours is it possible to imagine education being designed or indeed allowed to serve these generally democratic and enabling purposes.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136360578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2023-10-10DOI: 10.3898/soun.84-85.06.2023
Fatema Khatun, Gary Poynton, Josh Evans
{"title":"Hallways to learning: creating brave spaces inside contemporary Higher Education","authors":"Fatema Khatun, Gary Poynton, Josh Evans","doi":"10.3898/soun.84-85.06.2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.84-85.06.2023","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last two decades, two contradictory processes have been notable within the development of Higher Education. The marketisation of the sector has advanced steadily at the same time as professed policies of widening participation, and this has left universities stuck between a rock and a hard place. The datafication of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) policies has rendered invisible the minoritised experience in HE, and the needs of non-traditional student identities. As early career researchers and casualised members of staff, the authors are expected to fulfil dual roles in the institution, and operate under conditions of 'in-extremis'. Drawing on Wenger's ideas of identity as a negotiated experience, and the notion of Communities of Practice, they show how different senses of achievement have been framed for non-traditional students and staff, through both policy and practice. Because of the precarity of their posts, the authors are expected to edgewalk their way through conditions of crisis. To address some of these issues they have introduced the concept of hallway teaching - a practice that exists within a liminal space - to highlight their sense of transience between the position of student and staff. This transience affects their ability to create long-term engagement, while they are simultaneously expected to be the most likely people to create bridges between EDI policy, staff and students","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136360210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2023-10-10DOI: 10.3898/soun.84-85.02.2023
Beverley Hayward
{"title":"Resisting higher education's (re) production of elitism in an ethos of care-taking","authors":"Beverley Hayward","doi":"10.3898/soun.84-85.02.2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.84-85.02.2023","url":null,"abstract":"The University for the Creative Arts (UCA) is undergoing a transformation. This is the perspective sold to the staff as jobs are terminated. This time it is not so much a restructure as a complete closure of further education across all campuses in Surrey and Kent. The UCA is 'stepping back' as a Further Education provider, to focus on undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees. In addition, the campus that most serves the local community, in Chatham, Kent, is to be closed and sold, most likely for redevelopment. This essay explores the neoliberal agenda that led to this sad erasure of a prestigious arts community, whose alumni included Zandra Rhodes, Tracey Emin and Billy Childish. It exposes the common-sense discourses employed by the university to compel the staff and student body to consent to the neoliberal methods at play. A mixed media embroidery artwork and poetry have been created for this article, and referenced is a recent exhibition, UCA - Retrospective: Creativity Past, Present & Future. Creative arts practices illustrate this story, as well as many conversations with students and staff. The stories of those living through this experience are woven within the narrative. In the sadness of loss there is also celebration, as our own transformations are made possible: leaving one collective space of creativity enables openings. To stitch and repair the soul of self and others creates understandings and an awareness. In this way freedoms are fostered, and social justice prevails.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136360213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2023-10-10DOI: 10.3898/soun.84-85.03.2023
Ian M. Cook, Prem Kumar Rajaram, John Clarke
{"title":"Leadership, excellence and the marginalisation of refugees in Higher Education","authors":"Ian M. Cook, Prem Kumar Rajaram, John Clarke","doi":"10.3898/soun.84-85.03.2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.84-85.03.2023","url":null,"abstract":"In this article we trace the changing fortunes of an education initiative for refugees and other displaced people located at Central European University (CEU). The programme (OLIve - the Open Learning Initiative) has shifted: instead of being celebrated as an innovative response to the 'migrant crisis' of 2015 it was marked for closure by CEU's leadership in 2023. We locate this change in OLIve's fortunes in CEU's adaptations to the changing conditions of higher education, not least the potent combination of dynamics of marketisation and managerialisation. We suggest these have produced a reorganisation of power and authority within the university, encapsulated in the person of the Leader - and the organisational phenomenon of 'leaderism'. The Leader both announces and embodies the pursuit of 'excellence' as the core mission of the university, underpinned by the accumulation of financial and cultural capital ('prestige'). We trace some of the ways in which this mission reorganises the landscape of the university, marginalising those deemed non–excellent and the programmes that might support them. We suggest that these dynamics remain contested and contestable in important ways","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136360573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2023-10-10DOI: 10.3898/soun.84-85.13.2023
Aled Singleton
{"title":"The long resolution? Responding to economic and social change in postwar South Wales","authors":"Aled Singleton","doi":"10.3898/soun.84-85.13.2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.84-85.13.2023","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the period between the late-1950s and the mid-1970s, a time when millions of people in Britain moved from towns and older industrial settlements to the urban periphery. South Wales offers a particularly interesting perspective here, as many moves were within twenty miles and seemed to be driven by high levels of state investment in industry, housing and road infrastructure. This essay aims to examine the long-term impact of these decisions on later generations and to demonstrate the determination - or will - of political actors in Wales, who are often competing with other places. As well as adapting Raymond Williams's well–known The Long Revolution for my title, I use his structure of feeling concept to seek an understanding of how change was experienced. This is achieved by presenting four recent interview accounts gathered from people who lived in South Wales in the first three decades after World War Two","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136360577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2023-10-10DOI: 10.3898/soun.84-85.15.2023
Adam Peggs
{"title":"The rise and rise of real estate neoliberalism","authors":"Adam Peggs","doi":"10.3898/soun.84-85.15.2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.84-85.15.2023","url":null,"abstract":"Noting the recent ascent of the housing emergency back up the political agenda, this essay takes a materialist view on the genesis of the current crisis. Since the 1970s, the state has shifted away from its role as manager of a mixed housing economy to take on the role of engineer, particularly on behalf of financial actors. This is leading to a tendency toward the financialisation of all housing, with social housing now arguably at the forefront of this trend. A crucial symptom of the trend toward financialisation is the UK's unequal outcomes in the housing system: key outcomes in housing - such as security of tenure, quality and affordability - are all deeply unequal (although the UK is not a complete outlier when judged against comparable economies). The essay ends by making the case for analysing the current housing regime under the lens of 'real estate neoliberalism', and for the transformation of this system into one founded on 'public housing luxury'","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136361156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SOUNDINGSPub Date : 2023-10-10DOI: 10.3898/soun.84-85.07.2023
David Featherstone, Bill Schwarz, John Narayan, Lucia Pradella
{"title":"Branch life: negotiating national and local activism in UCU","authors":"David Featherstone, Bill Schwarz, John Narayan, Lucia Pradella","doi":"10.3898/soun.84-85.07.2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3898/soun.84-85.07.2023","url":null,"abstract":"Two members of the King&'s College London branch of the University College Union (UCU) discuss the union's long-running national dispute over the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), as well as more local disputes they have been involved with at the College level. Their actions over conditions within King's - including on equalities issues, specifically child care issues, London weighting and institutional democracy - illustrate how a branch can link up local disputes with national disputes, making them more concrete and specific, and seeking to create an institution that has a local form of democracy running through it. They also discuss how union debate and action has expanded during the period of the dispute: the union, both nationally and locally, has taken up issues of precarity and casualisation; pay gaps and structural inequalities; workloads; and questions of decolonisation. At King's, the union are negotiating for free childcare support for all staff, available on the same basis for everyone, as part of a wider collective agreement with the college on all issues of pay and conditions of employment. They have also sought to democratise the Council - the decision-making body of the College - partly through drawing attention to the increasing number of corporate figures who sit on the Council, including its chair, Lord Geidt. As well as increasing involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a radicalising of the branch's activities on imperialism, including calling attention to the role of the college in imperialism, and demands to demilitarise both the USS and the university itself.","PeriodicalId":45378,"journal":{"name":"SOUNDINGS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136361160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}