Contextualizing and Organizing Contingent Faculty: Reclaiming Academic Labor in Universities

(Hardback)

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Contextualizing and Organizing Contingent Faculty: Reclaiming Academic Labor in Universities seeks to develop a counterculture that eschews the neoliberal ideology and interloping market values in higher education. More than merely lamenting the disruptive effects of these marketplace values in higher education institutions, it develops both theoretical insights and practical organizing strategies pertinent to challenging new academic-capitalist values and behaviors. Contributors, local and international, present cases from various institutions to illuminate how national trends concerning contingent faculty are articulated, implemented, and challenged at the local level. They present organizing strategies which are analyzed from an interdisciplinary perspective, providing a thorough and comprehensive view of the contingent labor movement. This book will provide useful lessons to a broad array of audiences in universities, labor movements, and national and local governments.

Reviews

Contextualizing and Organizing Contingent Faculty: Reclaiming Academic Labor in Universities offers significant insights into the ways academic labor has been reshaped through the market place, the reconfiguration of faculty power, and the reliance on contingent labor. This critical text provides a remarkable array of historical, economic, and political analyses centered on one institution while also developing parallels on how these issues play out in global contexts. The volume moves beyond an analysis of the ways in which contingent labor is used/abused to move to provide strategies for envisioning how pressure can be put on institutions to promote transformational change. -- Gerald Wood, Northern Arizona University
This book provides an in-depth analysis of the situation facing adjunct faculty in our society today. It represents a menacing and terrifying account of devastating patterned processes happening to otherwise highly valued and valuable faculty members who have demonstrated long-term dedication and commitment to their institutions of higher learning. -- Edythe E. Weeks, Webster University

Author Bio

Ishmael I. Munene is professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Northern Arizona University.