From Financial Crisis to Social Change

Description

This edited collection critically engages with a range of contemporary issues in the aftermath of the North Atlantic financial crisis that began in 2007. From challenging the erosion of academic authority to the myth that parliamentary democracy is not worth engaging with, it addresses three interrelated questions facing young people today: how to reclaim our universities, how to revitalise our democracy and how to recast politics in the 21st century. This book emphasises the crucial importance of generational experience as a wellspring for progressive social change. For it is the young generations who have come of age in a world marred by crises that are at the forefront of challenging the status quo. With insight into new social movements and protests in the UK, Canada, Greece and Ukraine, this stimulating collection of works will be invaluable for those teaching, studying and campaigning for alternatives. It will also be of relevance to scholars in social movement studies, the sociology and anthropology of economic life, the sociology of education, social and political theory, and political sociology. Front Matter ....Pages i-xxi Introduction (Torsten Geelan, Marcos González Hernando, Peter William Walsh)....Pages 1-12 Consecrating the Elite: Culturally Embedding the Financial Market in the City of London (Alex Simpson)....Pages 13-30 Front Matter ....Pages 31-31 The Never-Ending Crisis in British Higher Education (Mike Finn)....Pages 33-51 The Coming Crisis of Academic Authority (Eric R. Lybeck)....Pages 53-66 Consuming Education (Alice Pearson)....Pages 67-86 Front Matter ....Pages 87-87 Local Maidan Across Ukraine: Democratic Aspirations in the Revolution of Dignity (Olga Zelinska)....Pages 89-113 Opportunity in Crisis: Alternative Media and Subaltern Resistance (Benjamin Anderson)....Pages 115-127 The Battle of Barton Moss (Steven Speed)....Pages 129-148 Front Matter ....Pages 149-149 The Limits of Populism: Mills, Marcuse and 1960s Radicalism and Occupy (Mike O’Donnell)....Pages 151-169 The Myth of Bourgeois Democracy (Andreas Møller Mulvad, Rune Møller Stahl)....Pages 171-195 Seeing Like a PIG: The Crisis in Greece as a Tale of Hope and Disillusionment (Rosa Vasilaki)....Pages 197-213 Unleashing the Emancipatory Power of the ‘Spirit of Free Communal Service’: G.D.H. Cole, Dialogical Coordination and Social Change (Charles Masquelier)....Pages 215-232 Afterword (Torsten Geelan, Marcos González Hernando, Peter William Walsh)....Pages 233-241 Back Matter ....Pages 243-285