For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University

Authors

  • Alison Mountz Wilfrid Laurier University
  • Anne Bonds Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  • Becky Mansfield Department of Geography, Ohio State University
  • Jenna Loyd Zilber School of Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  • Jennifer Hyndman Departments of Geography and Social Science, Centre for Refugee Studies, York University
  • Margaret Walton-Roberts Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University
  • Ranu Basu Department of Geography, York University
  • Risa Whitson Department of Geography and Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Ohio University
  • Roberta Hawkins Department of Geography, University of Guelph
  • Trina Hamilton Department of Geography, University at Buffalo (SUNY)
  • Winifred Curran Department of Geography, DePaul University

Keywords:

slow scholarship, neoliberal university, resistance, collective action, feminism

Abstract

The neoliberal university requires high productivity in compressed time frames. Though the neoliberal transformation of the university is well documented, the isolating effects and embodied work conditions of such increasing demands are too rarely discussed. In this article, we develop a feminist ethics of care that challenges these working conditions. Our politics foreground collective action and the contention that good scholarship requires time: to think, write, read, research, analyze, edit, organize, and resist the growing administrative and professional demands that disrupt these crucial processes of intellectual growth and personal freedom. This collectively written article explores alternatives to the fast-paced, metric-oriented neoliberal university through a slow-moving conversation on ways to slow down and claim time for slow scholarship and collective action informed by feminist politics. We examine temporal regimes of the neoliberal university and their embodied effects. We then consider strategies for slowing scholarship with the objective of contributing to the slow scholarship movement. This slowing down represents both a commitment to good scholarship, teaching, and service and a collective feminist ethics of care that challenges the accelerated time and elitism of the neoliberal university. Above all, we argue in favor of the slow scholarship movement and contribute some resistance strategies that foreground collaborative, collective, communal ways forward.

Author Biography

Alison Mountz, Wilfrid Laurier University

Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair in Global Migration, Geography & Environmental Studies

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Published

2015-08-18

How to Cite

Mountz, A., Bonds, A., Mansfield, B., Loyd, J., Hyndman, J., Walton-Roberts, M., … Curran, W. (2015). For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 14(4), 1235–1259. Retrieved from https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1058