Keyword: austerity

Review of The University and Social Justice: Struggles across the Globe edited by Aziz Choudry and Salim Vally (Pluto Press / Between the Lines)

Long Row (2016). Courtesy of Judy (CC BY-NC 2.0)
By Vineeta Singh

In this edited collection, Aziz Choudry and Salim Vally present reflections and analyses from scholar-activists in education studies, anthropology, literature, and cultural studies describing university-based and affiliated social movements. Through thirteen essays covering case studies in twelve countries, the anthology offers a broad review of student organizing against neoliberalization and more specifically, the privatization of higher education; intersectional and coalitional strategies imagined through these struggles; and alternative modes of knowledge production pre-figured in their organizing. Geographic and disciplinary breadth make the anthology a welcome addition to the growing corpus of (transnational) critical university studies.

Review of Crip Times: Disability, Globalization, and Resistance by Robert McRuer (NYU Press)

Courtesy of Kent Landerholm (CC BY-NC 2.0).
By Caroline Alphin

In his new book Crip Times: Disability, Globalization, and Resistance, Robert McRuer offers his notion of “crip time” as an analytic through which we may critique the spatio-temporalities of austerity, late capitalism, and the cultural logic of neoliberalism. McRuer’s position is that disability is at the core of a global politics of austerity and of neoliberalism. What does it mean that disability is central to a global politics of austerity? For McRuer, it means that thinking about austerity through “crip time” can highlight an ongoing politics of representation of disability. That is, neoliberalism actively produces certain ways of being disabled that are conducive to its continued operation. But, “crip time” points to the ways in which this politics of representation does not fully capture disability. Disability exceeds austerity and neoliberalism. Crip Times, then, offers a critical examination of how disability is represented within the cultural logic of neoliberalism. At the same time, McRuer cautions against, as some past projects in disability and queer theory have done, fully rejecting or embracing the politics of identity, representation, and rights.

Editors’ Introduction: Opening Access

Aerial photo of Euphrates River, 2009. Courtesy of NASA.
By Robert F. Carley, SAJ, Eero Laine and Chris Alen Sula

This introduction discusses the importance of open access scholarship and its relation to the academy. The introduction provides an overview of the articles in the journal, which include responses to the forum on universal basic income (UBI) published in issue 7.2. Finally, this issue marks the beginning of the Years in Cultural Studies project.