Mike Neary

Student as producer: an institution of the common? [or how to recover communist/revolutionary science]

Abstract This paper presents the further development of the concept of student as producer from a project that seeks to radicalise the idea of the university by connecting research and teaching, to a vision of higher learning and revolutionary science based on the reconnection of the natural and the social sciences. The argument is sustained and developed by a critical engagement with classical texts in management studies as well as Marxist writing that has emerged out of the recent wave of student protests against the increasing privatisation and financialisation of higher education. The paper provides a case study where the natural and the social sciences are being brought together in a postgraduate research education programme at the University of Lincoln. The case study includes a debate about the essence of revolutionary science through an exposition of the work of two major revolutionary scientists, Robert Grosseteste (1170–1253) and Karl Marx (1811–1883).

Time and Speed in the Social Universe of Capital

In contemporary society it appears that speed and the ‘tyranny of time’ (Reeves, 1999) are forces gathering increasing strength in all areas of social life. Matthews (1999) notes that, subjectively, we experience this as a sense of acceleration in our daily lives (p. 44). These effects, notes Luke (1998), are ‘global in their scope and impact’ (p. 163). The speed of life has increased throughout society: objectively, as all social processes are subject to an increasing ‘Need For Speed’ (Matthews, 1999) as we try to ‘save time’, and subjectively, as we experience the sensation of speed in social life (Gleick, 1999). For Luke, the speed of life in contemporary society has now reached such intensity that it ‘recreates the world as humans have not known it’ (1998, p. 165). Davis and Meyer (1998) assure us that we are not imagining things when we experience life as ‘blur’ — the sum of electronic connectivity, speed and intangibles, which are the ‘derivatives of time, space and mass’ (p. 6). These three phenomena in combination are inexorably ‘blurring the rules and redefining our businesses and our lives’ (ibid.).

Working Schoolchildren in Britain Today

In the scary media world of abused childhoods, child labour has become a major journalistic event. The news headlines record children working in conditions thought to have been abolished by social democratic reform. In spite of this mounting documentary evidence—supported by research undertaken by trade unions and pressure groups such as the Low Pay Unit—Tory ministers argued that child labour was not a problem. The Governments interest in youth was not the demoralisation of young workers at work, but the insubordination of youth, expressed as, among other things, crime, drug-taking and classroom disorder. The problem for conservative policy is the remoralisation of young people through the imposition of a new authority and the production of guides to the virtuous life.

From the Law of Insurance to the Law of Lottery: An Exploration of the Changing Composition of the British State

It is a commonplace assumption that human life has become increasingly risky, and the concept of risk has become increasingly central to social scientific investigation. In this paper the increasing riskiness of everyday life is explored through an analysis of the origins, development and crisis of the welfare state. It is argued that the development of the National Lottery is part of a fundamental recomposition of the state which reflects the decomposition of the ‘law of insurance’ as the organising principle of the Keynesian Welfare State and its replacement by the ‘law of lottery’ as the principle regulatory mechanism of the neo-liberal capitalist state

Against academic identity

‘Academic identity’ is a key issue for debates about the professionalisation of university teaching and research, as well as the meaning and purpose of higher education. However, the concept of ‘academic identity’ is not adequate to the critical task for which it is utilised as it fails to deal with the real nature of work in capitalist society. It is important to move on from the mystifying and reified politics of identity and seek to understand academic life so that its alienated forms can be transformed. This can be done by grasping the essential aspects of capitalist work in both its abstract and concrete forms, as well as the historical and social processes out of which academic labour has emerged.

The Social Science Centre, Lincoln: the theory and practice of a radical idea

The Social Science Centre, Lincoln (SSC), is a co-operative organising free higher education in the city of Lincoln, England. It was formed in 2011 by a group of academics and students in response to the massive rise in student fees, from £3000 to £9000, along with other other government policies that saw the increasing neo-liberalisation of English universities. In this essay we chart the history of the SSC and what it has been like to be a member of this co-operative; but we also want to express another aspect of the centre which we have not written about: the existence of the SSC as an intellectual idea and how the idea has spread and been developed through written publications by members of the centre and by research on the centre by other non-members: students, academics and journalists. At the end of the essay we will show the most up to date manifestation of the idea, the plans to create a co-operative university with degree awarding powers where those involved, students and academics, can make a living as part of an independent enterprise ran and owned by its members for their benefit and the benefit of their community and society.