The Knowledge Business: The Commodification of Urban and Housing Research - Hardcover

'Expectations of universities and celebrations of their enterprising activities appear unbounded. Far fewer are prepared to critically examine their effects on the knowledge production process. This book does that with insightful contributions from those newer and more established in urban and housing research. It is a significant contribution to debate in this area and deserves a wide readership.' Tim May, University of Salford, UK 'The most comprehensive collection to date on the impacts of neo-liberalism on academic life, especially in the UK. Ranging from the impact of contract-based employment on individuals to the institutional fixation on 'impacts' as such, this book takes seriously the idea that the norms governing a nation's universities afford a unique opportunity to peer into the state of a society's soul - and the view in either case is not pretty.' Steve Fuller , University of Warwick, UK 'The editors and contributors have produced a wide-ranging, historically, theoretically and empirically informed collection that should be required reading for all those engaged in housing and urban studies... The editors are to be commended on the diversity of views presented across the contributions... the book works because of the willingness of authors to provide honest and damning accounts (Allen & Marne and Pinson) and to present controversial solutions (Crabtree). One may disagree with some of the forthright arguments but it is impossible not to engage with these debates, which is the very purpose of the book and why it achieves its aims so successfully. International Journal of Housing Policy 'Allen and Imrie have started an important conversation here with a collection of bold arguments that are intended to raise ire amongst European (especially UK) faculty... This book should prompt researchers outside the UK to join the conversation with more empirical studies and constructive counter-points...' Urban Geography Research Group 'Publication of The Knowledge Business could not [...] be more topical. Its raison d'etre is to attentively enquire into what academia has been, what it is being turned into and, most importantly perhaps, what it should be. The book should be read widely. I would especially commend it to Vice Chancellors and ministers for education, though they may not want to hear its arguments. Certainly, it should be core reading for student and higher education union members seeking to define the value of universities and the aspects of them that should be defended. A core readership in urban studies will also find much that is useful in the book... Overall, this book forcefully addresses a conspicuous gap in the literature on housing and urban research. The more strident contributions are usefully contextualised with firsthand reflections from a range of scholars on the difficulties of working at the coalface of applied housing and urban research. The tone is, perhaps rightly, dark and disturbing - a warning of where we are headed.' Housing Studies 'The Knowledge Business provides a veritable feast of insights and evidence providing educators with an ideal source for teaching methodology and ethics, and our profession with the basis of a moral compass that is sorely needed right now to navigate through the neo-liberal fog that engulfs our workplaces... this is a powerful intellectual resource and a fitting legacy of Chris Allen, who left academia in 2011.' Urban Studies

This book provides a critique of the knowledge business, and describes and evaluates its different manifestations in, and impacts on, the university sector. Its focus is the social sciences and, in particular, housing and urban studies. Drawing on a wide range of experiences, both in the UK and elsewhere, it illustrates the changing management of the academy, and the development, by university managers, of instruments or techniques of control to ensure that academics are disciplined in ways that are commensurate with achieving commercial goals. The individual chapters highlight the different ways in which the academy is being put to work for commercial gain, and they evaluate how far the public service ethos of the universities is coming apart in a context in which what is to be serviced is increasingly a private clientele defined by their 'ability to pay'. The Knowledge Business examines the contradictions and tensions associated with these processes, highlighting the implications for the academic labour process, and the future of the academy.