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This book outlines the creative responses academics are using to subvert powerful market forces that restrict university work to a neoliberal, economic focus. The second volume in a diptych of critical academic work on the changing landscape of neoliberal universities, the editors and contributors examine how academics 'prise open the cracks' in neoliberal logic to find space for resistance, collegiality, democracy and hope. Adopting a distinctly postcolonial positioning, the volume interrogates the link between neoliberalism and the ongoing privileging of Euro-American theorising in universities. The contributors move from accounts of unmitigated managerialism and toxic workplaces, to the need to decolonise the academy to, finally, illustrating the various creative and counter-hegemonic practices academics use to resist, subvert and reinscribe dominant neoliberal discourses. This hopeful volume will appeal to students and scholars interested in the role of universities in advancing cultural democracy, as well as university staff, academics and students.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Prising Open the Cracks in Neoliberal Universities; Catherine Manathunga and Dorothy Bottrell.- PART I. Seeing in the Cracks.- Chapter 2. The New Culture Wars in Australian University Workplaces; Paul Adams.- Chapter 3. Weighing Up Futures: Experiences of Giving Up an Academic Career; Ruth Barcan.- Chapter 4. Resisting the Norming of the Neoliberal Academic Subject: Building Resistance Across Faculty Ranks; Joseph Schwartz.- Chapter 5. Creating a Positive Casual Academic Identity Through Change and Loss; Joanne Yoo.- PART II. Decolonising the Academy.- Chapter 6. On (Not) Losing My Religion: Interrogating Gendered Forms of White Virtue in Pre-possessed Countries; Fiona Nicoll.- Chapter 7. Academic Collaboration in Pursuit of Decolonisation: The Story of the Aboriginal History Archive; Edwina Howell.- PART III. Prising Open the Cracks.- Chapter 8. Assessment Policy and "Pockets of Freedom" in a
Neoliberal University: A Foucauldian Perspective; Rille Raaper.- Chapter 9. Professional Doctorates as Spaces of Collegiality and Resistance: A Cross-Sectoral Exploration of the Cracks in Neoliberal Institutions; Catherine Manathunga, Peter Shay, Rosemarie Garner, Preetha Kolakkot Jayaram, Paul Barber, Bhatti Thi Kim Oanh, Sunny Gavran, Loretta Konjarski, and Ingrid D'Souza.- Chapter 10. Interrogating the "Idea of the University" Through the Pleasures of Reading Together; Tai Peseta, Jeanette Fyffe, and Fiona Salisbury.- Chapter 11. Neoliberalism in Thai and Indonesian Universities: Using Photo-Elicitation Methods to Picture Space for Possibility; James Burford and Teguh Wijaya Mulya.- Chapter 12. Making Visible Collegiality of a Different Kind; Mark Selkrig, Ron "Kim" Keamy, Kirsten Sadler, and Catherine Manathunga.- Chapter 13. Seeking an Institution-Decentring Politics to Regain Purpose for Australian University Futures;Marie Brennan and Lew Zipin.- Chapter 14. Prising Open the Cracks Through Polyvalent Lines of Inquiry; Catherine Manathunga and Dorothy Bottrell.
About the author
Catherine Manathunga is Professor of Education Research at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. An historian who draws together interdisciplinary expertise to bring an innovative perspective to higher education research, she has published widely on doctoral education, cultural diversity and academic identity.
Dorothy Bottrell is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Sydney School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Australia and casual HDR Supervisor at Victoria University, Australia. Her research interest in critical studies in higher education centres on academic resilience and she has published widely on youth, crime, and education studies.
Summary
This book outlines the creative responses academics are using to subvert powerful market forces that restrict university work to a neoliberal, economic focus. The second volume in a diptych of critical academic work on the changing landscape of neoliberal universities, the editors and contributors examine how academics ‘prise open the cracks’ in neoliberal logic to find space for resistance, collegiality, democracy and hope. Adopting a distinctly postcolonial positioning, the volume interrogates the link between neoliberalism and the ongoing privileging of Euro-American theorising in universities. The contributors move from accounts of unmitigated managerialism and toxic workplaces, to the need to decolonise the academy to, finally, illustrating the various creative and counter-hegemonic practices academics use to resist, subvert and reinscribe dominant neoliberal discourses. This hopeful volume will appeal to students and scholars interested in the role of universities in advancing cultural democracy, as well as university staff, academics and students.
