Publication Date

Spring 2017

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation

Volume

11

Issue

1

DOI

10.13169/workorgalaboglob.11.1.0048

First Page

48

Last Page

70

Abstract

There has been little analysis of how neoliberal adjunctification and online education (OLE) are shaping a new academic division of labour in US colleges and universities. OLE rationalises academic labour by separating it from the delivery of educational content while transforming learning into the self-disciplined completion of sequential tasks (e.g. ‘competency-based learning’) under the panoptic surveillance of online course management systems (CMS). OLE is subtly shifting the very hidden curriculum of higher education to meet the needs of global capital for a more effectively disciplined labour force that can work contingently and remotely with little or no overt coercion. This analysis of the process by which OLE is rationalising academic labour draws upon the ideas of Foucault and Tronti to argue that OLE is a tool for producing a type of disciplined labour that breaks down the borders between productive and reproductive labour in order to colonise all life as work.

Comments

This is the Version of Record and can also be read online here.

Department

Political Science

Download

Share

COinS