<editorial board> draft of the call

[info at edu-factory.org]

Dear all,

We've written a draft of the call for the zero issue of the
journal, based on the rich list debate in the last weeks. In
order to improve and facilitate our collective work, we've
put the draft in a wikipage (you can find below the
details). We tried to write a simple and provocative call:
everyone is welcome to improve and change it directly in the
wiki.

Best,
 
edu-factory collective

http://www.wikispaces.com/site/signin 
Username: edufactory
Password: may1968
Click on link edufactory, and then 'edit this page'; after
the changes, click on 'save' and then 'sign out'.



Theme for Zero Issue: The Double Crisis of the University
and the Global Economy 

The zero issue of the new transnational journal edu-factory
will critically interrogate the proposition that the present
is a time of crisis. What are the connections between the
global economic downturn and the ongoing transformations of
the university? In mainstream analysis, the current economic
situation is referred to as a global financial crisis, as if
a distinction could be drawn between finance and the
productive economy. The notion of crisis has also been long
deployed to describe the changes to higher education under
neoliberal conditions that seem to be mutating with the
present economic instability. What are the mutual
implications of these two senses of crisis? Does it make
sense to speak of a double crisis of the university and the
global economy? Is it possible to isolate the current
predicament as pertaining only to economics as if it
doesn’t extend into other spheres of human activity? How
can we question the current use of the category of crisis,
rethinking it to open spaces and times for new institutional
forms and new kinds of social relations? 


edu-factory seeks articles that engage the following themes:

- The implications of the economic downturn for universities
(academic employment, higher education export, research
degree recruitment, etc.) 
- Shifts in the production of knowledge and/or the
organization of such production around innovation 
- Effects of the economic meltdown across higher education
settings in different global contexts 
- Student debt in an era of credit crunch 
- Universities and finance (the contribution of the higher
education sector to the current economic 'meltdown') 
- Ranking systems – the relations between league tables
and credit rankings 
- The place and role of conflicts and social movements in
the nexus of universities and economic transition 
- Temporalities of ‘crisis’ – does the model of the
cycle still apply to economic rhythms and/or those of
struggles? 
- The return of economic determinism as an analytic key for
understanding the current moment and its dangers for
struggles against sexism, racism, heteronormativity,
neo-colonialism, islamophobia 
 
- Autonomous education in a time of ‘crisis’