Privatizing the University and the New Political Economy of Socio‐Legal Studies: Remaking the (Legal) Academic Subject

Date01 September 2013
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2013.00634.x
Published date01 September 2013
Review Article
Privatizing the University and the New Political Economy of
Socio-Legal Studies: Remaking the (Legal) Academic Subject
Richard Collier*
PRIVATISING THE PUBLIC UNIVERSITY: THE CASE OF LAW by
MARGARET THORNTON
(Routledge: Abingdon and New York, 2011, 274 pp., £85.00 (hbk) £24.99
(pbk))
INTRODUCTION
Universities add enormous value to our society and economy, enriching the
lives of all of us through the education and research they provide. But in a[n]
. .. age, where knowledge is money and growth is elusive, powerful forces are
bending the university to serve short-term, primarily pragmatic, and narrowly
commercial ends. And no equal and opposite forces are organised to resist
them.
1
While the idea of the university as a community of scholars engaged in the
dispassionate pursuit of truth may never have accorded precisely with the
reality, any semblance of the idea now seems to have gone forever as the
market assumes centre-stage and governments seek to deploy universities for
instrumental ends. Inevitably, the transformation has profound ramifications
for the legal academy ± what gets taught and how it is taught, and the
relationship between the institution, academics and students.
2
At the 2013 Socio-Legal Studies (SLSA) annual meeting at the University of
York, Professor Philip Thomas, the editor and co-founder of this journal in
450
ß2013 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2013 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*Newcastle Law School, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1
7RU, England
richard.collier@newcastle.ac.uk
1 Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU), at .
2 M. Thornton, Privatising the Public University: The Case of Law (2012) 2, emphasis
omitted.
1974, and a founding member of the SLSA itself, was awarded the 2012
Prize for Contributions to the Socio-legal Community. In a short speech at
the conference dinner, reflecting on how socio-legal scholarship had evolved
over the subsequent forty years, he made reference to the original grounding
of this journal as a home for critical, contextual scholarship.
3
He further
noted the need for socio-legal studies to remain ever vigilant and self-
reflective with regard to the social, political, and economic context in which
academic work is undertaken and in which, as Fiona Cownie has evocatively
termed it, following Martin Trow, the `private life' of the university law
school is lived.
4
At the conference, at tended by over 350 dele gates
5
from diverse
disciplines, these words may have appeared to jar with a general tone of
celebration of just `how far' socio-legal studies has travelled and flourished
since the debates of the 1970s and 1980s.
6
This is a British legal academic
community, after all, in which, against a range of indicators, the present and
future of socio-legal scholarship would appear healthy (whether judged by
critical mass, research assessment successes, the proliferation of new journals
and book series or simple declarations of professional identity);
7
a field in
which, moreover, over time, `once outsiders' have `become the insiders'.
8
As
Alan Norrie observes, echoing themes in Anthony Bradney's Conversations,
Choices and Chances,
9
one may therefore question the evoking of a `sense of
change for the worse . . . of a more or less golden earlier period' in accounts of
changes in universities; `these were', he warns, for those of us who remember
university law schools of the not too distant past, `not so jolly times.'
10
Ten months earlier, at a conference in Bonn, Germany,
11
an `Author
Meets Readers' session took place focused on Margaret Thornton's new
451
3 See, further, P. Thomas, `Socio-Legal Studies: The Case of Disappearing Fleas and
Bustards' in Socio-Legal Studies, ed. P. Thomas (1997).
4 F. Cownie, `Women Legal Academics ± A New Research Agenda?' (1998) 25 J. of
Law and Society 102; see, further, F. Cownie, Legal Academics: Culture and
Identities (2004).
5 Socio-Legal Studies Association 2013 conference, York Law School, University of
York, 26±28 March 2013, at .
6 See, further, on this trajectory, Thomas, op. cit., n. 3; A. Bradney, Conversations,
Choices and Chances: The Liberal Law School in the Twenty-First Century (2003); P.
Hillyard, `Invoking Indignation: Reflection on Future Directions of Socio-Legal
Studies' (2002) 29 J. of Law and Society 645.
7 Cownie, op. cit. (2004), n. 4.
8 Across many British universities individuals who are or have been engaged in socio-
legal research are now in senior managerial positions either within central university
administrations (as Deans, Faculty Directors of Research, Pro-Vice Chancellors, Vice
Chancellors, and so forth) or else Heads of Law Schools, Chairs of Professional
Associations or RAE/REF panel members.
9 Bradney, op. cit., n. 6.
10 A. Norrie, `These Are The Days' The Reporter (Winter 2011) 1.
11
International Working Group for Comparative Studies of Legal Professions Conference,
Bonn, Germany, 1±4 July 2010, at .
ß2013 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2013 Cardiff University Law School

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