Reclaiming The Public

This book asks how we can reclaim the university for the public good. The editors and contributors argue that the sector is in crisis, accelerated by the passing of the UK Higher Education Research Act in 2017 and made visible during the University and College Union strikes in April 2018. In response to this, there are widespread demands to reclaim the university and protect education as a public good, using co-operative structures. Taking an interdisciplinary and social justice perspective, the editors and contributors offer concrete examples of alternative higher education: in doing so, analysing how the future of the university can be recovered. This intersectional volume discusses a broad range of approaches to higher education while disseminating new ideas. It will be of interest and value to those disenchanted with the current state of higher education in the UK and beyond, as well as activists and policy makers.

*** Winner of the Myrdal Prize for Evolutionary Political Economy *** The last few years have seen the spectacular failure of market fundamentalism in Europe and the US, with a seemingly never-ending spate of corporate scandals and financial crises. As the environmental limits and socially destructive tendencies of the current profit-driven economic model become daily more self-evident, there is a growing demand for a fairer economic alternative, as evidenced by the mounting campaigns against global finance and the politics of austerity. Reclaiming Public Ownership tackles these issues head on, going beyond traditional leftist arguments about the relative merits of free markets and central planning to present a radical new conception of public ownership, framed around economic democracy and public participation in economic decision-making. Cumbers argues that a reconstituted public ownership is central to the creation of a more just and sustainable society. This book is a timely reconsideration of a long-standing but essential topic.

Lawrence Vale explores the rise, fall, and redevelopment of three public housing projects in Boston. Vale looks at these projects from the perspectives of their low-income residents and assesses the contributions of the design professionals who helped to transform these once devastated places during the 1980s and 1990s.

This book explores the nature of public universities and higher education reforms in emerging economies, with a focus on India, South Africa and Brazil. Drawing on context-based case studies, the essays in the volume highlight the state of public universities amongst the developing world with their shared colonial past and social, caste and race inequalities. Based on comparative and multidisciplinary studies, the book provides a critical account of the policy reforms and changes on account of globalization and markets in higher education in public universities of the Global South regions. The chapters also compare methodological approaches to university reform and restructuring of public universities and higher education systems in USA, Australia, the European Union and India, and examine the California model, the Bologna process, the Melbourne model, the University of Delhi reforms, and engage critically with the New Public Management inspired reform policies. The book further lays the groundwork for understanding 'massification' in a contextual way, and the possibilities for expansion of scale of mass higher education through public provision. With its empirical findings and social theory analyses by global experts, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of education, higher education, sociology and social anthropology, development studies, public policy and administration, politics, political economy, and Global South studies. It will also be useful to educationists, policymakers and civil society organizations.

How Bill de Blasio’s mayoral victory triggered a seismic shift in the nation’s urban political landscape—and what it portends for our cities in the future In November 2013, a little-known progressive stunned the elite of New York City by capturing the mayoralty by a landslide. Bill de Blasio’s promise to end the “Tale of Two Cities” had struck a chord among ordinary residents still struggling to recover from the Great Recession. De Blasio’s election heralded the advent of the most progressive New York City government in generations. Not since the legendary Fiorello La Guardia in the 1930s had so many populist candidates captured government office at the same time. Gotham, in other words, had been suddenly reclaimed in the name of its people. How did this happen? De Blasio’s victory, journalist legend Juan González argues, was not just a routine change of government but a popular rebellion against corporate-friendly policies that had dominated New York for decades. Reflecting that broader change, liberal Democrats Bill Peduto in Pittsburgh, Betsy Hodges in Minneapolis, and Martin Walsh of Boston also won mayoral elections that same year, as did insurgent Ras Baraka in Newark the following year. This new generation of municipal leaders offers valuable lessons for those seeking grassroots reform.

2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award - Political and Social Sciences The religious Right taught America to misread the Bible. Christians have misused Scripture to consolidate power, stoke fears, and defend against enemies. But people who have been hurt by the attacks of Christian nationalism can help us rediscover God's vision for faith in public life. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove explores how religious culture wars have misrepresented Christianity at the expense of the poor, and how listening to marginalized communities can help us hear God's call to love and justice in the world. He highlights people on the frontlines of issues ranging from immigration policy and voting rights to women's rights and environmental stewardship. Through these narratives, we encounter a recovery of values that upholds the dignity of all people. Rediscover hope for faithful public witness that serves the common good. Join the revolution.

Even in the midst of an economic boom, most Americans would agree that our civic institutions are hard pressed and that we are growing ever more cynical and disconnected from one another. In response to this bleak assessment, advocates of "civil society" argue that rejuvenating our neighborhoods, churches, and community associations will lead to a more moral, civic-minded polity. Christopher Beem argues that while the movement's goals are laudable, simply restoring local institutions will not solve the problem; a civil society also needs politics and government to provide a sense of shared values and ideas. Tracing the concept back to Tocqueville and Hegel, Beem shows that both thinkers faced similar problems and both rejected civil society as the sole solution. He then shows how, in the case of the Civil Rights movement, both political groups and the federal government were necessary to effect a new consensus on race. Taking up the arguments of Robert Putnam, Michael Sandel, and others, this timely book calls for a more developed sense of what the state is for and what our politics ought to be about. "This book is bound to incite controversy and to contribute to our ongoing grappling with where our own democratic political culture is going. . . . Beem helps us to get things right by offering a corrective to any and all visions of civil society sanitized from politics."—Jean Bethke Elshtain, from the Foreword "[Beem] makes an impressive case. At the end of the day, there really is no substitute for governmental authority in fostering the moral identity of the body politic."—Robert P. George, Times Literary Supplement

An engaging look at how technology is undermining our creativity and relationships and how face-to-face conversation can help us get it back.