‘Globalizing’ academics? Ranking and appropriation in the transformations of the world-system

Welsh, John

doi:10.1080/14747731.2019.1638150

Cited by 18 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…The second touches on the problem of immanent critique, and the need to translate the negative moment of critique into a positive moment of properly transcendent critique. While I have attempted here to establish the terms of the former, the elaboration of the latter in the dialectical relation between appropriation and commodification proper will be the next step towards a complete immanent critique of the neoliberalization of academic life (see Welsh, 2019a).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dispossessing academics: The shift to ‘appropriation’ in the governing of academic life

Welsh

2019

European Journal of Social Theory

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This article offers a critical theoretical exploration of the transformation of academic life that is currently taking place under the sign of ‘neoliberalization’. The main aim is to differentiate appropriation from exploitation as strategies of surplus labour dispossession, to identify the growth of appropriative techniques in academic life, and to situate the proliferation of such techniques in the broader transformations of global political economy. Alloyed with poststructuralist social theory, the historical materialist thrust of the article demonstrates how, in the technologically articulate ‘social factory’ of advanced capitalism, the spatial operations of these techniques of dispossession have a particularly ‘aesthetic’ character that is immanent to their appropriative operation, and which renders their workings both more discreet and effective. The article aims: (1) to problematize the neoliberal concepts of efficiency, transparency, and autonomy, in terms of practical outcomes; (2) to stimulate reflexive consideration of the ‘positioning’ of academics themselves in the reproduction of these techniques; and (3) to ask how these techniques might generate new ‘historical subjects’ of struggle and organization in academic life.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dispossessing academics: The shift to ‘appropriation’ in the governing of academic life

Welsh

2019

European Journal of Social Theory

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“…Extended by Harvey (2002, 2010, 2015), Hudson (2012), Smith (1996, 2007) and Lapavitsas (2013a, 2013b), among others, the growing tendency towards ‘rent-seeking’ identified in the core of the world-system has been schematised in a particularly striking way by Jason Moore’s ecological exposition of the ‘inversion’ of the frontier of capitalisation in the world-system to the core states. This frontier inversion is driven by new accumulation imperatives, which have arisen as capital accumulation experiences increasingly acute world-ecological contradictions (Moore 2015, 2017, 2018; Welsh 2017a, 2019d, 2020; see also Felli 2014). This inversion has stimulated an intensification of what are actually perennial techniques of primitive accumulation through surplus appropriation across the core states (see Bin 2019; Bonefeld 2001; De Angelis 2001; Glassman 2006: 615; Harvey 2004; Perelman 2000), which were previously experienced mainly by the colonised ‘other’ of the global periphery throughout modernity (Federici 2004; Luxemburg 2003; Mies 1986), but which now have returned to the core states with a vengeance.…”

Section: Class and The Contemporary ‘Rent Offensive’mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This labour is co-productive of value, for it is neither reproductive labour nor productive labour as defined above. It takes place within value-relations but without value-form (see Welsh 2019a, 2020). Likewise, teaching could be considered productive labour, if undertaken directly for salary or fees, but reproductive when undertaken outside the terms of contract.…”

Section: Rent-seeking In the Categories Of The ‘Trinity Formula’mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this political economy, the commons of the university have become one of the ‘frontiers to capital’ (Kamola & Meyerhoff 2009: 9; see also Harvie 2000, 2006; Szadkowski 2019b), placing the academic space front and centre as a strategic site of accumulation and labour subsumption (Hall 2018; Szadkowski 2016b). When it comes to contemporary transformations in the governing of academic life, it is acutely apparent that a shift to ‘appropriation’ has taken place (see Reitz 2017; Schulze-Cleven et al 2017; Welsh 2019a, 2020). This has stark political implications, not merely for critical analysis of the political economy of that regime more generally but for the kind of academic politics in particular that seem now necessary, if we inhabitants of that space wish to promote emancipatory practices and concerted action within the ‘apparatuses’ that govern academic life and labour.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We might do better to demonstrate how such reforms do not even come close to establishing markets or properly competitive situations (Szadkowski 2016b). Academic rankings are illustrative, for though many denounce them as marketisations, they are in fact not only highly ineffective at establishing markets (Brankovic et al 2018; Locke 2014; Newfield 2016: 26–27) but are likely not even intended to (Welsh 2019a, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tolling academics: Rent-seeking and gatekeeping in the university space

Welsh

2020

Capital & Class

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Assuming the ‘neoliberalisation’ of academic life to be axiomatic, this article delves into the operations of its political economy with the aim of expanding critical vocabularies, analytical categories and research trajectories. In particular, it indicates where an immanent critique of neoliberal academia can be begun. While the capitalist transformations of academic life are justified by ideological claims eulogising ‘production’, ‘competition’ and ‘marketisation’, the neoliberal regime has proven decidedly ineffective at fulfilling these claims. An effective critique of neoliberal reform must, therefore, explore and interrogate the degree to which the practical effects of neoliberal reform diverge from its underpinning theoretical claims, and why this might be so. The principal question here pertains to rent and rent-seeking behaviour in the academic space, as a mode of activity inconsistent with the legitimating tenets of capitalist ideology. To the extent that rent-seeking activities can be identified in neoliberal academia – in distinction to ‘value-producing’ labour or ‘profit-making’ entrepreneurialism – a more potent critique of neoliberal reform will be forthcoming and an immanent critique of the neoliberal regime of capitalist accumulation in the academic space put into motion. By positioning the neoliberal regime within a broader shift towards accumulation by ‘appropriation’ in the world-system, a strategic reason can be identified for the proliferation of rent-seeking behaviours in academic life and beyond. The article argues that these rent-seeking behaviours have materialised in a range of gatekeeping techniques across the academic space, with which many inhabitants of that space have become complicit, resulting in the increasing dispossession of surplus through the practice of tolling realised in those techniques. The article develops a Marxian critique with additional insights from world-system theory, critical social theory and critical geography. Examples of gatekeeping technique considered throughout the article include master degree programmes, journal publication structures, conference fees and Graduate Record Examinations.

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Understanding the ‘Tipped Minimum Wage’: Critical Directions for US Policy Research

Ross¹,

Welsh²

2020

Social Policy and Society

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With the ‘gig economy’ moving to the forefront of research on service labour, interest has heightened in the techniques of labour control that reproduce it. Taking tipping as just such a technique, this article explores critically the policy research around ‘tipped’ employment in the United States. In the United States, tipping is a legally recognised form of labour remuneration that informalises the wage relation, incentivises the worker in precarity, and internalises social relations of subordination. Understanding tipped work, its legal status, its operative logic, and the contradictions that arise within its framework, is a priority for relevant social policy analysis. The aims here are: 1) to set out the ‘topography’ of the policy landscape on tipping in the United States; and 2) to problematise the current scope of this policy literature in societal terms. This research will focus on the restaurant industry, but will establish its broader societal significance.

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‘Globalizing’ academics? Ranking and appropriation in the transformations of the world-system

Cited by 18 publications

References 57 publications

Dispossessing academics: The shift to ‘appropriation’ in the governing of academic life

Dispossessing academics: The shift to ‘appropriation’ in the governing of academic life

Tolling academics: Rent-seeking and gatekeeping in the university space

Understanding the ‘Tipped Minimum Wage’: Critical Directions for US Policy Research

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