Full Product Details
Author: John Buschman
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Imprint: Scarecrow Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.00cm
, Length: 22.80cm
Weight: 0.381kg
ISBN: 9780810885288
ISBN 10: 081088528
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 30 July 2012
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Libraries and other U.S. educational institutions can reject neo-liberalism, but first we need to understand the evolution of this soul-limiting strategy of self interest that pervades U.S. institutions in the 21st century. John Buschman explicates the advance of neo-liberalism in Libraries, Classrooms, and the Interests of Democracy and provides thoughtful philosophical insight with contemporary examples such as the effects of the Citizens United decision. Buschman extends the deliberations of critical educational theory, communitarianism, and Jurgen Habermas among others to the enterprise of librarianship. He demonstrates that libraries are one of the important cultural sites that provide for the capacities of sound judgment in a democracy. The model of the Occupy Wall Street library provides a respite from institutional weariness and gives promise to a break with the neo-liberal ideas. As in his Dismantling the Public Sphere, Buschman provokes librarians to understand the political and social context of our practice. -- Kathleen de la Pena McCook The author is an erudite scholar who helps the reader to think about how democracies can deal with the challenges of this current historical phase. Dr. Buschman understands that neoliberalism is hegemonic, and he draws on wide scholarship to explore some of the history of democratic theory and its intertwinements with capitalism. We meet Tocqueville, John Dewey, Marx, Michael Sandel, Habermas, and many others who have wrestled with these issues in historical and contemporary terms. These complex arguments are brought to bear with clarity on an explanation of how the market has pierced classrooms and libraries with advertising and marketing-and why this is of concern in the interests of democracy. Paraphrasing Michael Parenti about the wants of the wealthy and powerful, when asking what neoliberalism seeks to shape, the answer is: most everything. -- Richard A. Brosio, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Libraries and other U.S. educational institutions can reject neo-liberalism, but first we need to understand the evolution of this soul-limiting strategy of self interest that pervades U.S. institutions in the 21st century. John Buschman explicates the advance of neo-liberalism in Libraries, Classrooms, and the Interests of Democracy and provides thoughtful philosophical insight with contemporary examples such as the effects of the Citizens United decision. Buschman extends the deliberations of critical educational theory, communitarianism, and Jurgen Habermas among others to the enterprise of librarianship. He demonstrates that libraries are one of the important cultural sites that provide for the capacities of sound judgment in a democracy. The model of the Occupy Wall Street library provides a respite from institutional weariness and gives promise to a break with the neo-liberal ideas. As in his Dismantling the Public Sphere, Buschman provokes librarians to understand the political and social context of our practice. -- Kathleen de la Pena McCook The author is an erudite scholar who helps the reader to think about how democracies can deal with the challenges of this current historical phase. Dr. Buschman understands that neoliberalism is hegemonic, and he draws on wide scholarship to explore some of the history of democratic theory and its intertwinements with capitalism. We meet Tocqueville, John Dewey, Marx, Michael Sandel, Habermas, and many others who have wrestled with these issues in historical and contemporary terms. These complex arguments are brought to bear with clarity on an explanation of how the market has pierced classrooms and libraries with advertising and marketing--and why this is of concern in the interests of democracy. Paraphrasing Michael Parenti about the wants of the wealthy and powerful, when asking what neoliberalism seeks to shape, the answer is: most everything. -- Richard A. Brosio, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Author Information
John Buschman is Dean of University Libraries at Seton Hall University. He was previously Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources and Services at Georgetown University. Buschman is currently on the editorial boards of Library Quarterly and the Journal of Academic Librarianship. He is the author of Dismantling the Public Sphere: Situating and Sustaining Libraries in the Age of the New Public Philosophy (2003); editor of Critical Approaches to Information Technology in Librarianship: Foundations and Applications (1993); co-editor of Library as Place: History, Community and Culture (2006), Information Technology in Librarianship: New Critical Approaches (2008), Critical Theory for Library and Information Science: Exploring the Social from Across the Disciplines (2010), and many articles.
