My interest in Adam Smith was sparked by George Davie, who taught me philosophy at Edinburgh University and who later became a valued friend. One passage in particular from Smith’s writings inspired Davie. It is a passage which, he considered, ought to be famous. It runs as follows:
This is presentation is about constructing resilient education in the fractured environment examining social practices which form community. It was given to the National Education Union conference on Friday, 3rd February 2022 which was staged at The University Centre West Anglia, King’s Lynn. Participants were invited to reflect on the theme of communities of practice. This is a copy of the presentation along with the written article which has been annotated with multimedia resources and verbatim excerpts from original sources in the grey boxes.
Coming shortly…. This is a placeholder for an article which is to be published soon as an appendix to a peer reviewed paper submitted to the PRISM Journal and presented at the 2020 Working Class Academics conference. The paper submitted to PRISM is called ‘The Tragedy of the Commons People: A Marmot Overview’ and lays out a perspective on how ‘workingclassness’ can be interpreted as being on a spectrum of having to perform to gain access to sufficiency, the mechanics of a hierarchy of permissions and allowances, the psychology of exclusion, and the effects on life expectancy and health as drawn from Michael Marmot‘s work. Read more…
What follows is the section of my action research project analysing the metrics and bureaucracies inserted into the support-need junctures which influence and determine the support which people receive from various organisations and support services. Read more…
The notion of ‘student as consumer’ represents a sign of a global pathology of finance eating itself and everything else it encounters. The process of transforming the world into products to be consumed is presenting itself as a global pathology. It is a kind of ‘locust economy’ initiated through unaccountable agents and algorithm driven stockmarkets which move through the world consuming everything for profit before moving on. We are evermore set up and posed as consumers as managerial echelons normalise the surreal imposition of new semiotics on our identities as human beings. Read more…
This is an exploration of class, opportunity and how the Lesser Minds Problem of dehumanized perception affects relations in everyday life. What follows is an annotated and extended version of a paper which was accepted for publication in PRISM journal. PRISM is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that fosters innovative approaches to progressing critical thinking in all areas of teaching and learning. You can find the edition in which this paper is published by following THIS LINK.
