Bursting Bubbles of HAPPINESS & HEALING

Left alternative to the neoliberal university

From Dave Harris comes a link to work by Mike Neary http://www.edu-factory.org/wp/teaching-politically/

Stefan Collini 'Sold Out'

This post on the London Review of Books by Stefan Collini may be of interest to those of you following our discussions on the idea of the university.

Update on the Social Theory Reading Group at Plymouth University

Published today on Inside Higher Ed University of Venus is my blog post about the reading group. We're meeting again on Wednesday 30 October to discuss papers sourced by Jonathan Clark on the construction of the canon, and a curriculum theory paper that I've recommended from Thomas Popkewitz. Contact me if you'd like further information about the readings.

Weber

I have added another summary here (only mine - nothing authoritative), this time of the discussion about Weber.
Dave

Partial notes

I have a couple of sides of notes I took at the first two meetings, purely for my own use. I would not claim they are accurate summaries -- but if anyone would like to see them they are welcome. Add to them and post them back?

meeting 1 -- Marx
meeting 2 -- Durkheim

Incidentally, talking about Durkheim stirred some old memories and I went back and had a look at his Moral Education. It is good stuff on two grounds: (1) it summarise all the main themes in his work in the form of really clear, non-scholastic and useful lectures; (2) it has some strong arguments for the connections between individualism and social morality, discipline and constraint that should serve as an excellent antidote to students who only know dreamers like Rousseau (who is rebuked on p. 2).

Future Reading

The group has kicked off with some foundational readings in social theory - we've had a look at Marx and Durkheim. At the next meeting we're discussing Weber, and then we'll move onto some work by Simmel. Where do we go from here?

I've had requests that we investigate the work of the following social/political theorists:

• John Dewey
• Talcott Parsons
• Norbert Elias
• Antonio Gramsci
  
• Mary Douglas
• Anthony Giddens
• Ulrich Beck
• Pierre Bourdieu
• Hannah Arendt
  
• Karl Mannheim
• Michel Foucault
• Margaret Archer
  

And there's also been some requests for philosophers:

• Jacques Derrida
• Roland Barthes
• Alain Badiou
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty

If you have an opinion on the order in which we work through this list, suggestions for additions/deletions or strong views about whether we remain strictly social theory, please comment below.