| Synopsis: |
Since the publication in 2003 of the first in the acclaimed "Discourse, Power, Resistance" series, "DPR" has offered a sustained critique of educational and academic theory and practice in the UK, the US and, increasingly, elsewhere. This seventh volume is written by renowned academics concerned to sustain that critique and to affirm the true - and lasting - values of the academy, and how these values are maintained.Terry Eagleton leads this exploration of how power operates in the academy with the argument that power is itself no bad thing, and Slavojiek maintains that the people always have power and should be roused to use it. But Cameron McCarthy follows with a hard disconcerting look at power and culture in the academy, Chris Langley points to the corrosive effect on UK universities of military contracts, and Sechaba Mahlomaholo extends this analysis to the South African scene, showing that it is not only money that corrodes the contemporary academy: personal forces are also at work. Sarah Ahmed draws this discussion together in her analysis of the cultural politics of power in the strange world of personal relationships.Contributors from the Caribbean, the USA, China and the UK discuss the impact of power on research. These four chapters show power - both overt and covert, internal and external to the universities - at work to determine what research may be done, what methodology used and what constraints and protocols observed. The analysis is forbidding. But this book is not about submission. The message, culminating in Pat Sikes' celebratory account of auto/biography as a valid research method, remains positive throughout. It may seem that power in the academy is vested in agencies whose programmes have little to do with the free advancement of learning, yet the book shows clearly how good educational and good research practice can thrive and maintain the best traditions of the academy, come what may.The chapters include: Loving Power Terry Eagleton (UK); In 1968, Structures Walked the Streets - will they do it again? Slavojiek (Slovenia) Culture, Power and the Academy Cameron McCarthy (USA); Commercialised Universities: the influence of the Military Chris Langley (UK) Academic; Envy in a Post Apartheid Higher Education Institution Sechaba Mahlomaholo (S Africa); Affect Aliens: Happiness as a Cultural Politics Sara Ahmed (UK); Enabling research: whose voice gets heard? Ann Phoenix (UK); Degrees of Freedom: The Internet, the Academy and Digital Rights Michael Peters (USA); Resisting the Unethical in Formalised Ethics: Perspectives and Experiences Ansgar Allen (UK), Karin Anderson (USA), Laurette Bristol (Trinidad and Tobago), Yvonne Downs (UK), Daniel O'Neill (UK), Nicky Watts (UK) and Qi Wu (China); and, the Study of Teachers' Lives and Careers: An auto/biographical life history of the genre Pat Sikes (UK). |