Fungibility in the Academia

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-170
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
North America ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
The People ◽  
Education Needs ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Position Article

In this position article, we tackle fungibility, precariousness and separateness in the academia. Speaking as young humanities and social sciences scholar in North America, we argue that the current neoliberal conditions in higher education can be understood as alienation from work in the Marxian sense. Hence, the kind of intervention that challenges the fungibility has to be anti-alienation. Based on our collective organizing, we would delineate and call for a collective turn in terms of how new academics organize themselves and produce knowledge. Indeed, this piece should be read as a collective manifesto rather than a once and for all solution to profound problems in higher education. The true ‘for the people’ higher education needs to be constructed around collectivism and sustainable knowledge production.

Leaving Academia: The Shifting Terrain of Higher Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 102 (102) ◽  
pp. 92-107
Author(s):  
Lynne Segal
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
Academic Life ◽  
Student Debt ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Teaching Research ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Fault Lines

Leaving academia, this essay joins a steady chorus of reflection now thinking backwards over the last half century of extraordinary transformations in higher education. The industry is booming, more students than ever are entering universities, yet the academy is seen as increasingly in crisis. Staff workloads keep mounting, student debt soaring, and staff and student anxieties alike are multiplying, even as government underfunding, imposed managerialism and commercialisation threaten to reduce the underlying logic of higher education to market principles. In this context it is more urgent than ever to record the half century of struggle that opened up and enriched academic life, gradually ensuring the entry of hitherto excluded voices and topics into research and scholarship, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Drawing on my own involvement, I recall some of these always-incomplete attempts to challenge the fault-lines of intellectual life in the academy, knowing that we need always to cherish the value of teaching, research and learning, simply for its own sake.

Intersectionality of Caste, Gender and Occupation: A Study of Safai Karamchari Women in Maharashtra

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hemangi Kadlak ◽  
Pradeep S. Salve ◽  
Payal Karwade
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Methods ◽  
The People ◽  
The Family ◽  
And Gender

The issues of women safai karamcharis are less discussed in academic sphere compared to male safai karamcharis and given minimum importance. These women face multiple problems at the family level, at the working places and in the society; their problems are largely unheard. In the light of this limitation, the present study aimed to give visibility to their problems and their coping mechanisms. It is a collaborative work of three different surveys conducted with 115 safai karamcharis women in Nagpur (60), Kalyan (30) and Mumbai (25) cities applying qualitative and quantitative methods in Maharashtra. The results revealed that women aged 19 years to 46 years are engaged in safai kam and majority of them are widowed or currently married. Almost three-fourths of women resumed this occupation through preferential treatment (PT) case and those of direct recruitment are because of their Scheduled Caste background. Health problems and discrimination at the workplace are common and most of the time neglected. There is a need to establish a strong bridge between workers and academicians who form the policies and welfare programmes for safai karamcharis in order to realize their real conditions and needs. In social sciences, theories of knowledge production have to be utilized for the upliftment or betterment of the people irrespective of the caste and gender.

scholarly journals What does decolonising the curriculum mean for STEM subjects?

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Fernandes
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Technical Knowledge ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

The concept of decolonising the curriculum is currently under widespread discussion in higher education. While it is clearer how this can be done in disciplines within Humanities and Social Sciences, it is less obvious how it may be achieved in the STEM subjects, which are based more on technical knowledge and problem-solving.

scholarly journals La investigación post-disciplinaria como alternativa en comunicación

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (15) ◽  
pp. 2-23
Author(s):  
Raúl Fuentes Navarro
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Higher Education Systems ◽  
Sociocultural Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of The University ◽  
The University

This paper takes up previous works by the author and reformulates them to argue that there are increasingly clear indications of the adoption of “post-disciplinary” modalities in the institutionalized practices of knowledge production on communication in various regions of the world. Faced with the growing epistemic fragmentation and dispersion of this academic field, and the evident transformations of the sociocultural practices that are its references and subject matters, post-disciplinary research may represent a useful alternative consistent with the very history of the university institutionalization of this specialty, in which contributions from the humanities and social sciences converge, with apparent independence from the different conditions of national higher education systems. Some of the more developed formulations of this perspective and their strategic implications for university practices in the field are analysed.

scholarly journals Portuguese Higher Education Graduates’ Views on Academic Writing

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Maria L. Cabral
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
Language Choices ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Portuguese Higher Education

This paper examines the language choices and the process of academic writing of a group of 35 Portuguese graduate students in the fields of humanities and social sciences with the aim of illustrating their language preferences, as well as the aspects they take into consideration while writing either in Portuguese or in English.Results of this study indicate that the participants prefer to write their papers in Portuguese, their first language, and that they use similar approaches when writing in both languages. However, findings also reveal they are concerned with slightly different process aspects when composing and revising their texts in Portuguese and in English. These differences seem to be associated with acquired discourse traditions in Portuguese language, as well as with the participants’ lower competence in English language writing.

scholarly journals Attracting new users or business as usual? A case study of converting academic subscription based journals to open access

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Lars Wenaas
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
Open Access ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Business As Usual ◽  
Access Policies ◽  
Selection Of

This paper studies a selection of eleven Norwegian journals in the humanities and social sciences and their conversion from subscription to open access, a move heavily incentivized by governmental mandates and open access policies. By investigating the journals’ visiting logs in the period 2014-2019, the study finds that a conversion to open access induces higher visiting numbers; all journals in the study had a significant increase which can be attributed to the conversion. Converting a journal had no spillover in terms of increased visits to previously published articles still behind the paywall in the same journals. Visits from previously subscribing Norwegian higher education institutions did not account for the increase in visits, indicating that the increase must be accounted for by visitors from other sectors. The results could be relevant for policymakers concerning the effects of strict polices targeting economically vulnerable national journals, and could further inform journal owners and editors on the effects of converting to open access. Peer Review https://publons.com/publon/10.1162/qss_a_00126

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