Download Free The Public University As A Real Utopia Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Public University As A Real Utopia and write the review.

In a remarkable decade of public investment in higher education, some 200 new university campuses were established worldwide between 1961 and 1970. This volume offers a comparative and connective global history of these institutions, illustrating how their establishment, intellectual output and pedagogical experimentation sheds light on the social and cultural topography of the long 1960s. With an impressive geographic coverage - using case studies from Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia - the book explores how these universities have influenced academic disciplines and pioneered new types of teaching, architectural design and student experience. From educational reform in West Germany to the establishment of new institutions with progressive, interdisciplinary curricula in the Commonwealth, the illuminating case studies of this volume demonstrate how these universities shared in a common cause: the embodiment of 'utopian' ideals of living, learning and governance. At a time when the role of higher education is fiercely debated, Utopian Universities is a timely and considered intervention that offers a wide-ranging, historical dimension to contemporary predicaments.
Universities continue to expand, bringing considerable debate about their purposes and relationship to the world. In The Ecological University, Ronald Barnett argues that universities are short of their potential and responsibilities in an ever-changing and challenging environment. This book centres on the idea that the expansion of higher education has opened new spaces and possibilities. The university is interconnected with a number of ecosystems: knowledge, social institutions, persons, the economy, learning, culture and the natural environment. These seven ecosystems of the university are all fragile and in order to advance and develop them universities need to engage with each one. By looking at matters such as the challenges of learning, professional life and research and inquiry, this book outlines just what it could mean for higher education institutions to understand and realize themselves as exemplars of the ecological university. With bold and original insights and practical principles for development, this radical and transformative book is essential reading for university leaders and administrators, academics, students, and all interested in the future of the university.
For over a century, Americans have translated their cultural anxieties and hopes into dramatic demands for educational reform. Although policy talk has sounded a millennial tone, the actual reforms have been gradual and incremental. Tinkering toward Utopia documents the dynamic tension between Americans' faith in education as a panacea and the moderate pace of change in educational practices. In this book, David Tyack and Larry Cuban explore some basic questions about the nature of educational reform. Why have Americans come to believe that schooling has regressed? Have educational reforms occurred in cycles, and if so, why? Why has it been so difficult to change the basic institutional patterns of schooling? What actually happened when reformers tried to reinvent schooling? Tyack and Cuban argue that the ahistorical nature of most current reform proposals magnifies defects and understates the difficulty of changing the system. Policy talk has alternated between lamentation and overconfidence. The authors suggest that reformers today need to focus on ways to help teachers improve instruction from the inside out instead of decreeing change by remote control, and that reformers must also keep in mind the democratic purposes that guide public education.
Rising inequality of income and power, along with recent convulsions in the finance sector, have made the search for alternatives to unbridled capitalism more urgent than ever. Yet few are attempting this task-most analysts argue that any attempt to rethink our social and economic relations is utopian. Erik Olin Wright's major new work is a comprehensive assault on the quietism of contemporary social theory. A systematic reconstruction of the core values and feasible goals for Left theorists and political actors, Envisioning Real Utopias lays the foundations for a set of concrete, emancipatory alternatives to the capitalist system. Characteristically rigorous and engaging, this will become a landmark of social thought for the twenty-first century.
Transformational festivals, from Burning Man to Lightning in a Bottle, Bhakti Fest, and Wanderlust, are massive events that attract thousands of participants to sites around the world. In this groundbreaking book, Amanda J. Lucia shows how these festivals operate as religious institutions for “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR) communities. Whereas previous research into SBNR practices and New Age religion has not addressed the predominantly white makeup of these communities, White Utopias examines the complicated, often contradictory relationships with race at these events, presenting an engrossing ethnography of SBNR practices. Lucia contends that participants create temporary utopias through their shared commitments to spiritual growth and human connection. But they also participate in religious exoticism by adopting Indigenous and Indic spiritualities, a practice that ultimately renders them exclusive, white utopias. Focusing on yoga’s role in disseminating SBNR values, Lucia offers new ways of comprehending transformational festivals as significant cultural phenomena.
Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.
Introduction -- The contradictions of the capitalist world system at the beginning of the twentieth-first century -- 20th century attempts to create socialism: successes and failures -- Techno-liberal and counter-cultural visions of the future -- Efforts to re-conceptualize socialism -- The role of anti-systemic movements in creating a socio-ecological revolution -- Transitional systemic-challenge reforms -- Conclusion: the future in the balance
Michael Burawoy has helped to reshape the theory and practice of sociology across the Western world. Public Sociology is his most thoroughgoing attempt to explore what a truly committed, engaged sociology should look like in the twenty-first century. Burawoy looks back on the defining moments of his intellectual journey, exploring his pivotal early experiences as a researcher, such as his fieldwork in a Zambian copper mine and a Chicago factory. He recounts his time as a graduate and professor during the ideological ferment in sociology departments of the 1970s, and explores how his experiences intersected with a changing political and intellectual world up to the present. Recalling Max Weber, Burawoy argues that sociology is much more than just a discipline – it is a vocation, to be practiced everywhere and by everyone.
Universities have been subjected to continuous government reforms since the 1980s, to make them ‘entrepreneurial’, ‘efficient’ and aligned to the predicted needs and challenges of a global knowledge economy. Under increasing pressure to pursue ‘excellence’ and ‘innovation’, many universities are struggling to maintain their traditional mission to be inclusive, improve social mobility and equality and act as the ‘critic and conscience’ of society. Drawing on a multi-disciplinary research project, University Reform, Globalisation and Europeanisation (URGE), this collection analyses the new landscapes of public universities emerging across Europe and the Asia-Pacific, and the different ways that academics are engaging with them.