Re: AUT: RE: fwd Ricercatori Precari

[David McInerney <borderlands@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I hear that there has been quite a bit of activity at UMass-Amherst,
where AESA (the group of Marxist academics and students that publish
Rethinking Marxism) is based, in the economics department especially.
I've deleted the various emails I've received on it though so I can't
find any of the info to pass on, sorry.  The same grad students were
involved in the 2000 Republican Convention stuff, other
anti-globalization and 'no sweat' stuff, and protests against the
'liberation' of Iraq, and have tended to be affiliated with the US
Greens, but I couldn't really tell you anything more, as I've forgotten
the details.

David


Nate Holdren wrote:

>The last issue of Mute had a somewhat similar piece, opposing
>neoliberalization of education, which looked a little funny alongside
>a more astute piece by Tiziana Terranova.
>
>I'm curious, is there much unionization among university
>teachers/researchers in Europe? Here in the US the National Labor
>Relations Board ruled recently that graduate employees don't have the
>right to unionize, which doesn't effect student employees at public
>universities (they're not covered by the NLRB) but does effect efforts
>at private universities (somewhat, the labor law was never much good
>anyway). I'm under the impression there's been an upward swing in
>activity around academic labor in the US, which may be connected to
>student activists (anti-sweatshop stuff was huge here for a while)
>going off to grad school. I only have anecdotal evidence for any of
>this though, through lefty friends who are grad students. Can anyone
>inside a US academic institution comment?
>
>
>
>
>On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 21:11:53 +1000, Thiago Oppermann
><difference_3ngine@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
>>Leaving aside jokes about mobilization and tenure being in the same
>>sentence, this sounds to me like the classic fable about universities: they
>>are free boroughs of civil society embedded in an otherwise nasty world, and
>>within them, the burgers, freed from the nastyness of manual labour and you
>>know, exploiting people, can go pursue their metaphysical splendour. This
>>bring back flashbacks to every stundent politics meeting I have ever been
>>to.
>>
>>Sometimes the most dangerous thing to do is to take the promises of
>>bourgeois society seriously - and that is the case here too, but it would be
>>easier to believe the radicalism of this proposal had sunk through if these
>>demands did not take  on a reactive character, as a defense of a
>>preestablished and now waning golden era, when unviersities were free,
>>tutors weren't even paid and military men gassed students.
>>
>>
>>
>>On 13/10/2004 1:43 PM, ".: s0metim3s :." <s0metim3s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Gee, is Berlusconi behind the times or what?
>>>
>>>Anyway, there's something that's not quite making
>>>sense to me.  Mobilisations, of precarious
>>>researchers, have followed in the wake of attempts
>>>to replace tenure by four-yr contracts?
>>>Intermittent researchers are fighting against
>>>this?  Seems more plausible that this mobilisation
>>>would be by those on tenure.
>>>
>>>And these snippets:
>>>
>>>: Globalisation,  academic flexibility
>>>: and the right to research:
>>>: A call for a European network of
>>>: precarious/temporary researchers and
>>>: for
>>>: the free circulation of knowledge
>>>
>>>: perceived as a process aiming to
>>>: develop practices of mutual recognition
>>>: and encounter amongst equals
>>>: rather
>>>: than strategies of competition and
>>>: selectivity amongst unequally
>>>: empowered actors.
>>>
>>>I expect a little more than pronouncements of some
>>>idealised version of the market as a counter to
>>>its actual, hierarchical, exploitative
>>>functioning.
>>>
>>>Angela
>>>_______________
>>>
>>><end message>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
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