The Critique of Commodification

The Critique of Commodification
Author: Christoph Hermann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2021
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0197576753

The Critique of Commodification -- A Theory of Commodification -- Politics of Commodification -- Consequences of Commodification -- Limits of Commodification -- Rediscovering Use Value -- Alternatives to Commodification: Use Value Society.

College For Sale

College For Sale
Author: Wesley Shumar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2013-10-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135399778

This text provides a framework for understanding higher education in the US and other western countries since the 1970s whereby the logic of the market place has increasingly come to dominate all arenas and, in context, the education system. The author calls this process "commodification" and he describes the transformation of universities in the US and elsewhere as they attempt to accomodate the enforced changes on their academic lives and those of their students.; The book chronicles changes with the increasing focus on career and the movement towards the instrumental functions of education; the financial crisis and the development of a more corporate approach to education; of consumption that produce universities heavy with expensive, well-equipped and powerful administrations and decreasing numbers of ever more disenfranchised faculty.

Living Books

Living Books
Author: Janneke Adema
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2021-08-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0262046024

Reimagining the scholarly book as living and collaborative--not as commodified and essentialized, but in all its dynamic materiality. In this book, Janneke Adema proposes that we reimagine the scholarly book as a living and collaborative project--not as linear, bound, and fixed, but as fluid, remixed, and liquid, a space for experimentation. She presents a series of cutting-edge experiments in arts and humanities book publishing, showcasing the radical new forms that book-based scholarly work might take in the digital age. Adema's proposed alternative futures for the scholarly book go beyond such print-based assumptions as fixity, stability, the single author, originality, and copyright, reaching instead for a dynamic and emergent materiality. Adema suggests ways to unbind the book, describing experiments in scholarly book publishing with new forms of anonymous collaborative authorship, radical open access publishing, and processual, living, and remixed publications, among other practices. She doesn't cast digital as the solution and print as the problem; the problem in scholarly publishing, she argues, is not print itself, but the way print has been commodified and essentialized. Adema explores alternative, more ethical models of authorship; constructs an alternative genealogy of openness; and examines opportunities for intervention in current cultures of knowledge production. Finally, asking why it is that we cut and bind our research together at all, she examines two book publishing projects that experiment with remix and reuse and try to rethink and reperform the book-apparatus by taking responsibility for the cuts they make.

The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx

The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx
Author: Matt Vidal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 752
Release: 2019-03-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0190695560

Karl Marx is one of the most influential writers in history. Despite repeated obituaries proclaiming the death of Marxism, in the 21st century Marx's ideas and theories continue to guide vibrant research traditions in sociology, economics, political science, philosophy, history, anthropology, management, economic geography, ecology, literary criticism, and media studies. Due to the exceptionally wide influence and reach of Marxist theory, including over 150 years of historical debates and traditions within Marxism, finding a point of entry can be daunting. The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx provides an entry point for those new to Marxism. At the same time, its chapters, written by leading Marxist scholars, advance Marxist theory and research. Its coverage is more comprehensive than previous volumes on Marx in terms of both foundational concepts and state-of-the-art empirical research on contemporary social problems. It is also provides equal space to sociologists, economists, and political scientists, with substantial contributions from philosophers, historians, and geographers. The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx consists of six sections. The first section, Foundations, includes chapters that cover the foundational concepts and theories that constitute the core of Marx's theories of history, society, and political economy. This section demonstrates that the core elements of Marx's political economy of capitalism continue to be defended, elaborated, and applied to empirical social science and covers historical materialism, class, capital, labor, value, crisis, ideology, and alienation. Additional sections include Labor, Class, and Social Divisions; Capitalist States and Spaces; Accumulation, Crisis, and Class Struggle in the Core Countries; Accumulation, Crisis, and Class Struggle in the Peripheral and Semi-Peripheral Countries; and Alternatives to Capitalism.

The Commodification of Academic Research

The Commodification of Academic Research
Author: Hans Radder
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2010-09-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0822977583

Selling science has become a common practice in contemporary universities. This commodification of academia pervades many aspects of higher education, including research, teaching, and administration. As such, it raises significant philosophical, political, and moral challenges. This volume offers the first book-length analysis of this disturbing trend from a philosophical perspective and presents views by scholars of philosophy of science, social and political philosophy, and research ethics. The epistemic and moral responsibilities of universities, whether for-profit or nonprofit, are examined from several philosophical standpoints. The contributors discuss the pertinent epistemological and methodological questions, the sociopolitical issues of the organization of science, the tensions between commodified practices and the ideal of "science for the public good," and the role of governmental regulation and personal ethical behavior. In order to counter coercive and corruptive influences of academic commodification, the contributors consider alternatives to commodified research and offer practical recommendations for establishing appropriate research standards, methodologies and institutional arrangements, and a corresponding normative ethos.

The Commodification of Language

The Commodification of Language
Author: John E. Petrovic
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2021-04-16
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000372790

This volume seeks to add to our understanding of how language is constructed in late capitalist societies. Exploring the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of the so-called "commodification of language" and its relationship to the notion of linguistic capital, the authors examine recent research that offers implications for language policy and planning. Bringing together an international group of scholars, this collection includes chapters that address whether or not language can rightly be referred to as a commodity and, if so, under what circumstances. The different theoretical foundations of understanding language as a resource with exchange value – whether as commodity or capital – have practical implications for policy writ large. The implications of the "commodification of language" in more empirical terms are explored, both in terms of how it affects language as well as language policy at more micro levels. This includes more specific policy arenas such as language in education policy or family language policies as well as the implications for individual identity construction and linguistic communities. With a conclusion written by leading scholar David Block, this is key reading for researchers and advanced students of critical sociolinguistics, language and economy, language and politics, language policy and linguistic anthropology within linguistics, applied linguistics, and language teacher education.

College For Sale

College For Sale
Author: Wesley Shumar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2013-10-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135399700

This text provides a framework for understanding higher education in the US and other western countries since the 1970s whereby the logic of the market place has increasingly come to dominate all arenas and, in context, the education system. The author calls this process "commodification" and he describes the transformation of universities in the US and elsewhere as they attempt to accomodate the enforced changes on their academic lives and those of their students.; The book chronicles changes with the increasing focus on career and the movement towards the instrumental functions of education; the financial crisis and the development of a more corporate approach to education; of consumption that produce universities heavy with expensive, well-equipped and powerful administrations and decreasing numbers of ever more disenfranchised faculty.

Concepts of Capital

Concepts of Capital
Author: Jacek Tittenbrun
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351526960

Borrowing terminology from the economic discipline‘specifically the concept of "capital" has led to an abundance of new terms in the social sciences: human capital, social capital, and cultural capital, to name the most prominent representatives on an ever-growing list. In this interdisciplinary transaction, the concept is borrowed and the original meaning extended until the new concepts often have nothing left in common with their initial referents.Here Jacek Tittenbrun offers a critical analysis of human, social, and cultural capital on the basis of their uses and misuses across a wide range of social sciences, simultaneously revealing the source of conceptual diffusion in the real world. He presents a two-pronged analysis of an intellectual fashion popular in the social sciences and offers a critical analysis of a range of concepts constructed around the common core of "capital." The analysis is innovative, as it is underpinned by a theoretical framework rooted in economic sociology and the concept of ownership in particular. The approach is one of the sociology of knowledge coupled with a substantive critique-application of the given concepts.The volume reveals a range of processes in the real world that account for the conceptual diffusion. The general reader will be drawn to the discussion in the second half of the book, a study of a variety of relatable real life situations that illuminate privatization and commodification in our lives.

Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from The Baffler

Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from The Baffler
Author: Thomas Frank
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2011-07-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0393342808

From the pages of The Baffler, the most vital and perceptive new magazine of the nineties, sharp, satirical broadsides against the Culture Trust. In the "old" Gilded Age, the barons of business accumulated vast wealth and influence from their railroads, steel mills, and banks. But today it is culture that stands at the heart of the American enterprise, mass entertainment the economic dynamo that brings the public into the consuming fold and consolidates the power of business over the American mind. For a decade The Baffler has been the invigorating voice of dissent against these developments, in the grand tradition of the muckrakers and The American Mercury. This collection gathers the best of its writing to explore such peculiar developments as the birth of the rebel hero as consumer in the pages of Wired and Details; the ever-accelerating race to market youth culture; the rise of new business gurus like Tom Peters and the fad for Hobbesian corporate "reengineering"; and the encroachment of advertising and commercial enterprise into every last nook and cranny of American life. With its liberating attitude and cant-free intelligence, this book is a powerful polemic against the designs of the culture business on us all.

Contested Commodities

Contested Commodities
Author: Margaret Jane Radin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2001-11-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674007166

This work looks at ethical and moral questions surrounding certain economic "commodities" such as body parts and babies. It argues that commodification should remain incomplete, with some contested things being bought and sold only under strict regulation.