Tuesday 24 March 2009

Academics Caught Between Plagiarism and Bullshit

New on my reading list is Steve Fuller's latest book. I haven't got hold of it yet, so until I do I'll be monitoring reviews as they trickle in. The title of this post is actually a chapter in Fuller's book, so it seems he is not pulling back on the critical style I enjoyed so much in The Intellectual when he skewered one of my favourite bugbears, contemporary practitioners of Continental philosophy.

The Sociology of Intellectual Life
The Career of the Mind in and Around Academy

Steve Fuller
University of Warwick, UK
August 2009
224 pages
SAGE Publications Ltd
Series: Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society

Hardcover
ISBN:
9781412928380
£60.00


Table of Contents:
Introduction
I. THE PLACE OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE: THE UNIVERSITY
1. The University as an Institutional Solution to the Problem of Knowledge
2. The Alienability of Knowledge in our so-called Knowledge Society
3. The Knowledge Society as Capitalism of the Third Order
4. Will the University Survive the Era of Knowledge Management?
5. Postmodernism as an Anti-University Movement
6. Regaining the University's Critical Edge by Historicizing the Curriculum
7. Affirmative Action as a Strategy for Redressing the Balance between Research and Teaching
8. Academics Rediscover their Soul: The Rebirth of 'Academic Freedom'
II. THE STUFF OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE: PHILOSOPHY
1. Epistemology as 'always already' Social Epistemology
2. From Social Epistemology to the Sociology of Philosophy
3. Is the Sociology of Philosophy Merely the Codification of Professional Prejudices?
4. Interlude: Seeds of an Alternative Sociology of Philosophy
5. Prolegomena to a Critical Sociology of 20th century Anglophone Philosophy
6. Analytic Philosophy's Ambivalence toward the Empirical Sciences
7. Professionalism as Differentiating American and British Philosophy
8. Conclusion: Anglophone Philosophy as a Victim of Its Own Success
III. THE PEOPLE OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE: INTELLECTUALS
1. Can Intellectuals Survive If the Academy Is a No Fool Zone?
2. How Intellectuals Became an Endangered Species in Our Times: The Trail of Psychologism
3. A Genealogy of Anti-intellectualism: From Invisible Hand to Social Contagion
4. Re-defining the Intellectual as Agent of Distributive Justice
5. The Critique of Intellectuals in a Time of Pragmatist Captivity
6. Pierre Bourdieu: A Successful Case of an Academic Sociologist Becoming a Public Intellectual
7. Conclusion: Recovering Sociologist's Voice in British Intellectual Life
EPILOGUE: THE IMPROVISATIONAL NATURE OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE
1. Academics Caught Between Plagiarism and Bullshit
2. Bullshit: A Disease Whose Cures Are Always Worse
3. The Scientific Method as a Search for the (Piled) Higher (and Deeper) Bullshit
Other Titles in: Social Theory Philosophy of Social Science Philosophy of Education

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