Abstract
This article uses ancient views of knowledge and citizenship to defamiliarize contemporary discursive paradigms and to suggest that they can, in some respects, provide a template for rethinking our views of citizenship and of the social function of the humanities. The discourse of the knowledge-based economy is at the heart of contemporary higher education policy. It implies not only the central significance of knowledge production and circulation for the economy, but also the primacy of economic considerations in defining the function of knowledge. By contrast, in the ancient world, the end of education and knowledge was conceptualized in political rather than economic terms, and this primacy of the political over the economic is historically one of the central tenets of a liberal education. Hence, the discourse of the knowledge-based economy itself plays a decisive role in bringing about the current crisis of the humanities. While this crisis cannot be resolved without rethinking the relationship between the economic and the political aspects of society, both philanthropic funding and a discursive engagement with the premises of the knowledge-based economy can constitute pragmatic ways of dealing with the crisis while it lasts.
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Notes
In this sense, we are talking about the humanities not so much as a set of specific disciplines but rather as an attitude or an approach towards education and its purposes.
While the terms “knowledge economy” and “knowledge-based economy” are frequently used synonymously (cf., e.g., Carlaw et al. 2006 for an exploration of a wide range of different definitions of the knowledge economy or knowledge-based economy), in the following, the term knowledge-based economy is preferred, as it more clearly specifies the relationship between “knowledge” and “economy” than the alternative, “knowledge economy”, does. Furthermore, it is the term used in the 1995 OECD publication The Implications of the Knowledge-Based Economy for Future Science and Technology Policies, which is a foundational text in the context of the contemporary discourse on the knowledge (-based) economy.
This article primarily engages with UK, USA, and EU policies, though these are placed in an international context where appropriate. As the UK is frequently considered as a model to emulate by other EU countries as far as higher education is concerned, the situation in the UK particularly clearly elucidates the tendencies underlying current trends in European higher education policy.
Erik Swyngedouw provides a magisterial analysis of the disappearance of the political from contemporary societies (Swyngedouw 2011). It is important to note that Swyngedouw, drawing upon Mouffe’s theorization of the relationship between the political and politics, does not see recent events, including the protests in Greece and the Arab Spring, as evidence of a resurgence of the political in the sense of an agonistic (rather than an antagonistic or consensual) relationship between political agents. He therefore regards the disappearance of the political as a global phenomenon.
The list of priorities presented in the work plan does not include citizenship; neither do the seven working groups formed as part of the work plan include citizenship in their remit.
While it is by no means impossible for higher education to have beneficial effects in both the economic and the political realm, what is at stake, here, is which of the two is considered a means and which is considered an end.
For the concept of the “knowledge society”, see, for example, Delanty 2001.
For a detailed exploration of concepts of liberal education in the ancient world, see Morgan 1998.
This ancient education was unabashedly restricted in terms of class and gender, therefore, throughout this article, the pronoun “his” is used to reflect the exclusive nature of ancient conceptions of citizenship.
For a critical assessment of the concept of post-nationalism, see Koopmans and Statham 1999.
If the ideal city-state, outlined in The Republic, is ever to be realized, then “philosophers [must] become kings…or those now called kings [must]…genuinely and adequately philosophise.” (Plato, The Republic, 5.473d).
For more information on the importance of stoicism within Roman politics in both Republic and Empire, see Reydams-Schils 2005.
On the concept of the oikos, see Nevett 1999, pp. 4–20.
From a contemporary perspective, the participation in the oikos as a precondition of participation in the polis may be read merely as confirmation of the exclusive nature of ancient conceptions of citizenship. However, it can also be used to argue that a modicum of material well-being and independence is necessary for the performance of free and critical citizenship and therefore needs to be a right for citizens in modern democratic societies.
The lecture was subsequently published in 1963.
However, it should be noted that precisely this “civilizing” discourse surrounding the humanities was widely used within the British Empire to justify the Empire’s continuing existence and to subjugate the many people within it. Although this emphasis on the civilizing power of education (especially classical education) played a significant part in ensuring that (in general) (racial) discrimination within the British Empire did not descend into notions of eradicable difference and calls for the extermination of other peoples, we should not ignore or forget its role in sustaining an apparatus of colonial domination for many decades.
At the time of writing, concern is being voiced in Hong Kong over plans by the Chinese government to implement education in civics in Hong Kong schools, for similar reasons.
Faulks distinguishes “social rights” from “market rights” and uses the latter term to designate those limited civil rights advocated by Locke and Paine, to delimit them from the many other civil rights including, for instance, freedom of assembly, that were not considered essential to the functioning of liberal society (Faulks 1998, pp. 29–30).
For a detailed analysis of the ideology of the New Right, see Levitas 1986.
The non-rivalrous nature of knowledge is also emphasized by Stiglitz 1999.
For a survey of 44 scholars’ definitions of data, information, and knowledge, cf. Zins 2007.
Cf. Stiglitz 1999, pp. 309–310 for an explanation of the partially excludable nature of knowledge.
While structural inequalities as well as copyright legislation arguably inhibit the free flow of knowledge, and the significance particularly of the latter is therefore an important subject of debate among proponents of the knowledge-based economy, there seems to be a relatively broad consensus that any restriction of the flow of knowledge by these means is bound to be temporary. Hence, they are ignored for the purposes of this argument, as the aim is to show that, even assuming a best-case scenario, the implications of the knowledge-based economy are problematic.
Both the Research Excellence Framework in the UK and the Exzellenzinitiative in Germany are based on the principles of letting individual researchers and whole universities compete for state funding. Likewise, the primary purpose of the Bologna Process is to ensure the competitiveness of the EHEA in an era of increasing mobility and the ever-easier dissemination of knowledge.
This certainly seems to be occurring across many Western European countries as well as in the USA. For numbers, cf. Kreckel 2012. According to this survey, the problem is particularly prevalent in the Germanophone countries, with 68 % of German academics, 73 % of Swiss academics and 56 % of Austrian academics employed on temporary contracts in 2009. By comparison, 27 % of French academics, 28 % of English academics and 17 % of US-American academics were employed on temporary contracts in the same period. In spite of the relatively low proportion of temporary staff in the USA, an “adjunct crisis” is widely held to be taking place, partly as a result of the exploitative working conditions experienced by many adjuncts.
The peculiar relationship between what Martha Nussbaum considers the defining characteristics of world citizenship and American national identity are explored in more detail in Nussbaum et al. 1996.
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Christinidis, G., Ellis, H. Knowledge, Education, and Citizenship in a Pre- and Post-National Age. J Knowl Econ 4, 63–82 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-012-0120-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-012-0120-9