Martin Hall

Minerva’s owl. A response to John Houghton and Charles Oppenheim’s ‘The economic implications of alternative publishing models’

Like Hegel’s owl of Minerva, scholars are arriving at the realization of the existence of the knowledge economy after dusk. (Drahos and Braithwaite, 2002, p. 39) n nHoughton and Oppenheim’s cost–benefit analysis of different forms of scholarly publishing is a major contribution in considering the case for open access and for open institutional repositories as a standard resource in publicly-funded universities. Understanding these issues through empirically-informed profiles of national systems of research and innovation is a significant advance, but to focus only on this is to be distracted from significant and more general issues about the ways in which knowledge is produced, particularly in universities, and the requirements and opportunities for such work in the contemporary knowledge economy. As with Hegel’s owl of wisdom, the true meaning of major new ways of doing things can only be appreciated later in the day, when both the innovation and its implications are clearer.

New knowledge and the university

What forms of knowledge have legitimacy in the contemporary university? By using Actor-Network Theory to unravel the strands in a recent dispute about access to skeletons from a burial ground in Cape Town, this paper shows how circulating systems of references connect institutions, historical trajectories and differing sets of interests to form competing knowledge systems. Rather than falling back on a defence of established disciplines and academic authority, it is argued that there are considerable benefits in recognising the importance and validity of knowledge generated ‘in community’, and in the course of political discourse. Rather than undermining truth, such an approach will result in both better science and more informed community action.

New Subjectivities: Capitalist, Colonial Subject, and Archaeologist

This chapter is an analytic overview of the volume as a whole. Taken together, the papers in this collection have three key sets of qualities. The first is a deep grounding in the evidence, allowing its fissures and contradictions to challenge the assumed and presumed. The second is through an engagement with theory, plying between the abstract and the empirical to advance interpretation. The third is through engagement – taking a stand and making explicit the inevitable connection between the present and the past. Running through all of these chapters is a consistent critique of colonialism and economic forms and the dangers of totalizing interpretations that deny the valency of agency and local context. Taken together, they hover at the edge of a theory of our own, an archaeologist Baudrillard or Bourdieu or Bhabha who can pull together the strands into a theory of nonverbal representation of meaning Please revise the sentence “Taken together, they hover at the edge of a theory…” for clarity of thought..

Guest editorial: the end of the British public university?

Purpose – This editorial aims to review key changes in the legislation that governs student finance in England, showing how these changes will have a significant impact on the concept of the public university in Britain.Design/methodology/approach – The assumptions behind the 2010 review of student financing in England are analysed in the context of key aspects of the political philosophy of the British coalition government, elected in 2010.Findings – While presented as an immediate solution to challenges in public financing, the introduction of full‐cost graduate contributions will significantly affect the balance between the recognition of private benefit and public good in the role of the university as an institution.Practical implications – The review will contribute to informed discussion and debate for a key aspect of public policy in the UK.Originality/value – The review moves discussion from immediate concerns about the level of graduate contribution to aspects of the long‐term structure of the hi...

Review of Infernal traffic: excavation of a liberated African graveyard in Rupert's Valley, St Helena by Andrew Pearson, Ben Jeffs, Annsofie Witkin and Helen MacQuarrie

The island of St Helena is a tiny speck in the South Atlantic, unknown to humans until the Portuguese discovered it in 1502. Today it is mostly remembered * if at all * for Napoleon Bonaparte’s exile and death. But between 1840 and 1872 the island played a pivotal role in the politics of the transatlantic slave trade, abolitionism and the supply of indentured labour to Britain’s colonies, mostly in the Caribbean. These middle years of the nineteenth century are brought to life in Infernal Traffic, the report of excavations of a graveyard for liberated slaves in Rupert’s Valley, close to the island’s capital of Jamestown. This excellent publication brings together an insightful set of reports that open a window on these aspects of Britain’s imperial escapades. The Portuguese and the Dutch used the island as a way station and made various claims of sovereignty until 1659, when England’s East India Company resolved the issue of ownership by setting up a permanent settlement. Over the following century, the population rose to some 3,000 people, comprising the garrison, settlers, freedmen and * as the largest part of the permanent settlement * slaves. But in 1839, the Act for the Suppression of the Slave Trade resulted in dramatic changes for St Helena, as the Royal Navy began seizing Portuguese slave vessels. The first major capture sent to the island was the Julia, captured by HMS Waterwitch, with 215 slaves on board, most of whom had smallpox. By August 1841, Jamestown had taken a total of 1824 recaptives, of whom 467 had died and 136 had been allocated as servants on the island, with the remainder under the custody of the Collector of Customs. This situation was stretching existing facilities on the island beyond their limits and a camp, intended to be temporary, was therefore set up in Rupert’s Valley, a small garrison of some fortifications and a few sheds. The Colonial Office instructed that recaptives held in this ‘Liberated African Establishment’ should be embarked ‘either to the Cape of Good Hope or to any other British colony from which offers may come for paying the expense of their passage’ (page 16). Unfolding developments, however, made it futile for St Helena’s administration to limit the disruption caused by the Royal Navy’s activities in the South Atlantic. Attention shifted from Portuguese ships to Brazilian traders as agreements to limit slavery foundered in the face of economic opportunities. From 1845, Britain began unilateral action against Brazilian vessels and, over the next six years, a new wave of captured slavers was landed at Jamestown. Facilities at Rupert’s Valley were expanded with the construction of sixteen new sheds, each intended for a maximum of 38 people. The numbers of recaptives in Rupert’s Valley varied widely, from just a few people to over 3,000, housed in facilities designed for 600 people at the most. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa Vol. 47, No. 3, September 2012, 391 404

Learning technology and organisations: transformational impact?

This collection of papers contributes to a wide and ongoing strand of interest in alternative learning technologies: how are digitally-enabled ways of working transforming organisations? In ‘transformation’ we look for radical change, rather than just doing the same at a different scale. And in organisations we centre on educational institutions – across the full range of schooling, training, further and higher education – while recognising that conventional boundaries are increasingly broken as different kinds of organisations invest in digitally-enabled learning. DOI: 10.1080/09687769.2010.529314