The Knowledge Business: The Commodification of Urban and Housing Research

摘要

In today's neo-liberal university where money rules over us, critical reflexivity on the part of academic labourers is becoming a scarce and unwelcome commodity. There has of course been a marked increase recently in writings within geography and sociology on questions of relevance and public scholarship, but this renewed concern with the nature and purpose of academic knowledge has only occasionally ventured into the academic labour process itself. That's why it is so refreshing and inspiring to see a book that lays bare "the relationships between universities, academics and the organisations that buy their knowledge" (p. 3) be able to emerge out of the knowledge business.