(Re)Occupying a cultural commons: reclaiming the labour process in critical sports studies

Abstract

Scholars have been slow to recognize the impact of the developing ‘information society’ on the political economy of intellectual work. This paper draws on recent work exploring critical models of higher education practice in art education as well as in political economy and philosophy exploring copying, accumulation by dispossession and the threats of commodification of the commons of culture, external and internal nature to explore the current circumstances of scholarship in sport. It draws on theories of the commons to argue that sport social scientists must grapple with the antagonisms between scholarship and copyright and between membership of a ‘secular vocation’ and the relations of intellectual production and labour processes of the contemporary corporate university. Finally, drawing on the principles of critical social science, this paper considers a range of desirable, viable and achievable objectives of the teaching, writing and publishing to propose ways that scholars can respond to these emerging relations of intellectual labour and production.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to participants in the symposium ‘The Social Sciences of Sport: Quality, Position and Relevance’ at Malmö University, 19–21 April 2012, and the ‘North American Society of Sports History’, Berkeley 2–4 June 2012, as well as discussions with Steve Draper, Russell Field, Jim McKay, Samaya Farooq Samie, Kate Mori, Chris Potter and Dave Webster that have helped me refine these ideas. I am especially grateful also to John Hockey, Russell Field and Maureen Smith for comments on an earlier version of this paper. None of them should be held responsible for anything here, although Steve demanded that I look much more closely at co-operatives.

Notes

^1. Cf. Silk, Francombe and Andrews, ‘Slowing the Social Sciences of Sport’; Gopal, ‘How Universities Die’ and Ruin, ‘On the Role of the University’.

^2.Scotini, ‘The Disobedient Class’.

^3.Gielen, ‘Artistic Praxis’.

^4.Harvey, Limits to Capital, xvii.

^5.Harvey, Ibid.; Harvey, Enigma of Capital; Žižek, First as Tragedy; Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias; Boltanski and Chiapello, New Spirit of Capitalism; Robbins, Secular Vocations; Boon, In Praise of Copying; Fitzpatrick, Planned Obsolescence; Moore, Unmarketable; Boyle, The Public Domain and Goldsmith and Wu, Who Controls the Internet.

^6. The SIGJ2 Writing Collective, ‘What Can We Do?’ and Bailey and Freedman, Assault on Universities.

^7.Boltanski and Chiapello, New Spirit of Capitalism; Gielen, Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude and Ross, Nice Work if You Can Get It.

^8.Allen and Ainley, Great Reversal.

^9.Blake, Body Language.

^10. I am grateful to Maureen Smith for this insight.

^11.Burawoy, ‘Redefining the Public University’.

^12.Hardt, ‘Note from the Editor’.

^13.Calella, ‘Factory of Precarious Workers’.

^14.Burawoy, ‘Redefining the Public University’, 30.

^15.Gielen, ‘Artistic Praxis’, 19.

^16.Ibid., 20.

^17.Ibid., 21.

^18.Ibid., 27.

^19.Hardt, ‘Note from the Editor’.

^20.Scholette, Dark Matter.

^21.Robbins, Secular Vocations and Holmwood, ‘Death by Metrics’.

^22.Standing, The Precariat and Boltanski and Chiapello, New Spirit of Capitalism.

^23.Harvey, Limits to Capital.

^24.Boyle, The Public Domain and Goldsmith and Wu, Who Controls the Internet.

^25.Žižek, First as Tragedy.

^26.Ibid., 91.

^27. Cf. Ross, Nice Work if You Can Get It, 189–205.

^28.Boon, In Praise of Copying.

^29.Russell Field, personal correspondence.

^30.Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias, 6.

^31.Robbins, Secular Vocations, 25.

^32.Edwards, Civil Society.

^33.Eichberg, Bodily Democracy and Perelman, Barbaric Sport.

^34.Burawoy, ‘Redefining the Public University’, 32.

^35.Gielen, ‘Artistic Praxis’, 28.

^36.Russell, In Praise of Idleness.

^37.International Co-operative Alliance, ‘Co-operative Identity, Values and Principles’.

^38. D. Shaw, ‘London's Free University’, Occupied Times, September 11, 2012, http://theoccupiedtimes.co.uk/?p = 6922 (accessed January 3, 2013).

^39.Mondragon University, ‘Cooperative University’ and D. Matthews, ‘Inside a Cooperative University’, Times Higher Education, August 29, 2013, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/inside-a-cooperative-university/2006776.article (accessed August 30, 2013).

^40.Castles and Wüstenburg, Education of the Future, 175–82.

^41.Agergaard, ‘Sport as Social Formation and Specialist Education’.

^42.Public School.

^43. Russell Field, personal correspondence; Fixico, American Indian Mind in a Linear World and Patterson, Exploring Maori Values.

^44.Masucci, ‘Precarious Life’.

^45.Carrot Workers Collective, ‘On Free Labour’.

^46. Fitzpatrick, Planned Obsolescence, 155.

^47.Frow, Time and Commodity Culture.

^48. At the time of writing, its future remains in doubt.

^49.Finch, ‘Accessibility, Sustainability, Excellence’.

^50. I am acutely aware of the irony of that statement in this publication.

^51. I am grateful to Russell Field for this observation.

^52.Cohen, On the Wrong Side; Perryman, Why the Olympics Aren't Good for Us; Perryman, London 2012. London's Free Word Centre (http://www.freewordonline.com/) has explored Olympic related issues, and during the summer of 2012 had an extensive critical cultural programme.

^53.Harvey, Limits to Capital, 349–58.

^54.Morrison, ‘Creative Commons and Open Access to Scholarly Works’.

^55.Weedon, ‘Writing's on the Firewall’.

^56. Cf. Scandinavian Sports Studies Forum (http://www.sportstudies.org/) and idrottsforum (http://idrottsforum.org/).

^57.Fitzpatrick, Planned Obsolescence, 178–87.

^58.Haynes, ‘Scholarly Publishing’.