[SSC] Research in Critical Education seminar, June 3rd, 12:30-2pm

[Joss Winn]

The Research in Critical Education (RiCES) research group at the 
University of Lincoln is holding a lunchtime seminar next week. You are 
very welcome.


Unpacking the ‘transnational associations of capitals’ in global higher 
education: rankings and the subsumption of academic labour under 
academic publishing capital (Krystian Szadkowski, Adam Mickiewicz 
University)

3 June | 12:30–2:00pm | Minerva Building 3202

This presentation explores the concept of ‘transnational association of 
capitals’ in the context of higher education (Hall, 2014; Ball, 2012). 
The focus will be on the conditions and consequences of the expansion of 
merchant capital (or capital involved in circulation), limited to large 
and quasi-monopolistic academic publishers. The claim behind this talk 
is that in order to grasp the specificity of the process of subsumption 
of academic labour under academic publishing capital, it is not enough 
to focus exclusively on proprietary relations (i.e. expropriation, 
enclosures, primitive accumulation, alienation). Such an analysis, 
although providing extremely rich material, has its limitations: capital 
may opt out from the private property form and ownership, but will never 
give up domination. The tool of capitalist domination and control, in 
all sectors of production, even immaterial and biopolitical, is measure. 
For this reason, this presentation will focus on the functionality of 
the capitalist mechanisms of establishing measures for the expansion of 
academic publishers’ capital based on the subsumption of global academic 
labour.


Krystian Szadkowski (1986), is an assistant professor at the Institute 
of Philosophy and a researcher at the UNESCO Chair for Institutional 
Research and Higher Education Policy of Adam Mickiewicz University in 
Poznań, Poland. His research interests cover Marxian political economy, 
autonomist Marxism and transformation of higher education systems in 
Europe. In 2014 he defended his PhD thesis entitled Towards the 
University as an Institution of the Common. Philosophical Foundations of 
the Critical Higher Education Studies [in Polish]. Recently, he 
co-edited a collected volume Joy Forever: The Political Economy of 
Social Creativity (MayFly 2014). He is also an editor-in-chief of 
peer-reviewed journal Praktyka Teoretyczna/Theoretical Practice.