The Eclipse of Morality: Science, State, and Market (Sociological Imagination and Structural Change)

Using the works of Bacon, Hobbes, and Adam Smith as well as historical examples drawn from the last two centuries, Busch shows how the ideas initially proposed by these thinkers became reified as scientism, statism, and marketism— systems of belief that a single mode of ordering could solve the riddle of society, and thereby supplant moral responsibility.  Busch contrasts this approach with concrete examples of successful attempts to extend democracy into these areas—to create multiple orderings— so that moral responsibility is neither crushingly heavy on individuals nor unbearably light on society.

The Eclipse of Morality: Science, State, and Market (Sociological Imagination & Structural Change Series)

Politics & Social Sciences

Busch, Lawrence

Philosophy

Routledge

Using the works of Bacon, Hobbes, and Adam Smith as well as historical examples drawn from the last two centuries, Busch shows how the ideas initially proposed by these thinkers became reified as scientism, statism, and marketism— systems of belief that a single mode of ordering could solve the riddle of society, and thereby supplant moral responsibility. Busch contrasts this approach with concrete examples of successful attempts to extend democracy into these areas—to create multiple orderings— so that moral responsibility is neither crushingly heavy on individuals nor unbearably light on society.

de Gruyter

Standards are the means by which we construct realities. There are established standards for professional accreditation, the environment, consumer products, animal welfare, the acceptable stress for highway bridges, healthcare, education -- for almost everything. We are surrounded by a vast array of standards, many of which we take for granted but each of which has been and continues to be the subject of intense negotiation. In this book, Lawrence Busch investigates standards as "recipes for reality." Standards, he argues, shape not only the physical world around us but also our social lives and even our selves. 
Busch shows how standards are intimately connected to power -- that they often serve to empower some and disempower others. He outlines the history of formal standards and describes how modern science came to be associated with the moral-technical project of standardization of both people and things. Busch suggests guidelines for developing fair, equitable, and effective standards. Taking a uniquely integrated and comprehensive view of the subject, Busch shows how standards for people and things are inextricably linked, how standards are always layered (even if often addressed serially), and how standards are simultaneously technical, social, moral, legal, and ontological devices.

Standards: Recipes for Reality (Infrastructures)

Science & Math

History & Philosophy

Mit Pr

How free-market fundamentalists have shifted the focus of higher education to competition, metrics, consumer demand, and return on investment, and why we should change this.
A new philosophy of higher education has taken hold in institutions around the world. Its supporters disavow the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and argue that the only knowledge worth pursuing is that with more or less immediate market value. Every other kind of learning is downgraded, its budget cut. In Knowledge for Sale, Lawrence Busch challenges this market-driven approach.
The rationale for the current thinking, Busch explains, comes from neoliberal economics, which calls for reorganizing society around the needs of the market. The market-influenced changes to higher education include shifting the cost of education from the state to the individual, turning education from a public good to a private good subject to consumer demand; redefining higher education as a search for the highest-paying job; and turning scholarly research into a competition based on metrics including number of citations and value of grants. Students, administrators, and scholars have begun to think of themselves as economic actors rather than seekers of knowledge.
Arguing for active resistance to this takeover, Busch urges us to burst the neoliberal bubble, to imagine a future not dictated by the market, a future in which there is a more educated citizenry and in which the old dichotomies―market and state, nature and culture, and equality and liberty―break down. In this future, universities value learning and not training, scholarship grapples with society's most pressing problems rather than quick fixes for corporate interests, and democracy is enriched by its educated and engaged citizens.

Knowledge for Sale: The Neoliberal Takeover of Higher Education (Infrastructures)

Business & Money

Economics

The MIT Press

An investigation into standards, the invisible infrastructures of our technical, moral, social, and physical worlds. 
Standards are the means by which we construct realities. There are established standards for professional accreditation, the environment, consumer products, animal welfare, the acceptable stress for highway bridges, healthcare, education―for almost everything. We are surrounded by a vast array of standards, many of which we take for granted but each of which has been and continues to be the subject of intense negotiation. In this book, Lawrence Busch investigates standards as “recipes for reality.” Standards, he argues, shape not only the physical world around us but also our social lives and even our selves.
Busch shows how standards are intimately connected to power―that they often serve to empower some and disempower others. He outlines the history of formal standards and describes how modern science came to be associated with the moral-technical project of standardization of both people and things. Busch suggests guidelines for developing fair, equitable, and effective standards. Taking a uniquely integrated and comprehensive view of the subject, Busch shows how standards for people and things are inextricably linked, how standards are always layered (even if often addressed serially), and how standards are simultaneously technical, social, moral, legal, and ontological devices.

Literature & Fiction

Short Stories & Anthologies

MIT Press]

Industries

The Chinese gooseberry was a minor fruit until New Zealanders, tagging it with a catchier name, began an aggressive global marketing campaign. Soon, transplanted to Italy, France, Spain, Chile, and California, the fuzzy little fruit with the bright green interior was known the world round and the kiwi production war was on. Globalization of food is not a new phenomenon. Columbus and his contemporaries helped open worldwide trade routes for the distribution of all types of goods. Yet over the last two decades, globalization has completely revolutionized the commercial production and marketing of kiwifruit and countless other consumer goods. Combining current theory on globalization with revealing case studies, the authors of this insightful collection tackle fundamental questions about the changing agricultural and food system in the era of ConAgra and other large transnational corporations. They look at the structure and operations of these new corporate giants, the state's influence in the global system, innovations in scientific research and technology, the roles of producers and consumers, and regional development. In the process, they take a look at why the winners and losers--countries, regions and even ethnic groups that ebb and flow within a vacillating global system--are constantly changing. Without question, globalization has become a hotly contested topic, as evidenced by the recent NAFTA debates and by a growing body of critical literature produced by economists, sociologists, historians, and geographers. The authors of From Columbus to ConAgra, writing at the cutting edge of these debates, suggest an emerging consensus to guide future research. Globalization, they conclude, will likely continue its expansion within the context of a new multinational division of labor that may drastically alter the main axes of international power. In an increasingly interdependent world, such shifts will affect life in every society and, for that reason, must be better understood. This book offers an important first step toward that goal.

From Columbus to ConAgra: The Globalization of Agriculture and Food

Bonanno, Alessandro

Mingione, Enzo

Friedland, William H.

Gouveia, Lourdes

Univ Pr of Kansas

The Chinese gooseberry was a minor fruit until New Zealanders, tagging it with a catchier name, began an aggressive global marketing campaign. Soon, transplanted to Italy, France, Spain, Chile, and California, the fuzzy little fruit with the bright green interior was known the world round and the kiwi production war was on. Globalization of food is not a new phenomenon. Columbus and his contemporaries helped open worldwide trade routes for the distribution of all types of goods. Yet over the last two decades, globalization has completely revolutionized the commercial production and marketing of kiwifruit and countless other consumer goods. Combining current theory on globalization with revealing case studies, the authors of this insightful collection tackle fundamental questions about the changing agricultural and food system in the era of ConAgra and other large transnational corporations. They look at the structure and operations of these new corporate giants, the state's influence in the global system, innovations in scientific research and technology, the roles of producers and consumers, and regional development. In the process, they take a look at why the winners and losers—countries, regions and even ethnic groups that ebb and flow within a vacillating global system—are constantly changing. Without question, globalization has become a hotly contested topic, as evidenced by the recent NAFTA debates and by a growing body of critical literature produced by economists, sociologists, historians, and geographers. The authors of From Columbus to ConAgra, writing at the cutting edge of these debates, suggest an emerging consensus to guide future research. Globalization, they conclude, will likely continue its expansion within the context of a new multinational division of labor that may drastically alter the main axes of international power. In an increasingly interdependent world, such shifts will affect life in every society and, for that reason, must be better understood. This book offers an important first step toward that goal.

University Press of Kansas

For ages, farmers have domesticated plant varieties, while scientists have “made” nature through hybridization and other processes. This give and take—mediated through negotiations, persuasion, the marketplace, and even coercion—has resulted in what we call “nature” and has led to a homogenization of plant crops. Yet homogenization has led to new problems: genetic vulnerability, and the lack of systems to maintain plant germplasm of varieties no longer grown in the fields. This book addresses issues previously viewed as primarily technical concerning the germplasm debate: that is, how, what, and where to store the range of genetic materials necessary to reproduce plants. By examining Brazil, Chile, France, and the United States, the authors show how different cultures respond to the decline in genetic diversity. The findings show that the quest for uniformity in foods, agriculture, and environment eventually threatens everyone. The politicization of this debate is inevitable because the destruction of human cultural diversity goes hand in hand with the destruction of plant varietal diversity. The authors agree that responses to the controversies must involve food security, relinking of food with agriculture and the environment, revaluing traditional knowledge, and rethinking development. They stress that answers will be found not by experts acting unilaterally but through the democratization of scientific and technical exchange.

Making Nature, Shaping Culture: Plant Biodiversity in Global Context (Our Sustainable Future)

Lacy, William B.

Burkhardt, Jeffrey

Hemken, Douglas

Moraga-Rojel, Jubel

Koponen, Timothy

Silva, José de Souza

Anthropology

University Of Nebraska Press

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