Full Description
Academia is standing at a junction in time. Behind lies the community of the curious, ahead the mass and the market. This book joins in a growing stream of works that explore the vicissitudes of present-day European universities in what Bauman coined as liquid times. Here, a number of concerned (engaged) European scholars attempt to defend and brush up academic core values and practices, starting from their own life worlds and positions in higher education. They share the view that there is no point in turning back, nor in mechanically marching straight on. Above all, they uphold that there is no alternative to treasuring academia as a space for thinking together. Hopefully the fruit of this sine qua non invites to think with, and envision academic activism.
Contributors are Samuel Abraham, Stefano Bianchini, Simon Charlesworth, Leonidas Donskis, Frans Kamsteeg, Joost van Loon, Ida Sabelis, Tamara Shefer and Harry Wels.
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Introductory Thoughts
Tamara Shefer
1 Toward an Educational Dystopia? Liquid Evil, TINA, and Post-academic University
Leonidas Donskis
2 Academic Homecoming. Stories from the Field
Frans Kamsteeg
3 Universities as Laboratories. Internationalisation and the Liquidity of National Learning
Stefano Bianchini
4 Liberal Arts to the Rescue of the Bachelor's Degree in Europe
Samuel Abrahám
5 Academia in the Fast Lane vs. Organisational Ethnography and the Logic of Slow Food
Harry Wels
6 Timescapes in Academic Life: Cubicles of Time Control
Ida Sabelis
7 A Nomad of Academia: a Thematic Autobiography of Privilege
Joost van Loon
8 The Truth is Out There: 'Educated fo' bollocks. Uni's Just Institutional Daylight Robbery': Universities in Crisis? What's New?
Simon J. Charlesworth
Epilogue
Ida Sabelis
Index
