Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor

Michael A. Peters is Professor of Education at the University of Waikato (New Zealand) and Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the executive editor of Educational Philosophy and Theory and editor of two international e-journals, Policy Futures in Education and E-Learning. His interests are in education, philosophy and social policy and he has written over fifty books, including Creativity and the Global Knowledge Economy (Lang, 2009) (with Simon Marginson and Peter Murphy).Ergin Bulut is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is interested in political economy of labor and its intersection with education, communication and culture.

• Contents: Antonio Negri: Foreword – Michael A. Peters/Ergin Bulut: Introduction – Timothy Brennan: Intellectual Labor – George Caffentzis: A Critique of «Cognitive Capitalism» – Silvia Federici: On Affective Labor – Christian Fuchs: Cognitive Capitalism or Informational Capitalism? The Role of Class in the Information Economy – Jonathan Beller: Cognitive Capitalist Pedagogy and Its Discontents – Ergin Bulut: Creative Economy: Seeds of Social Collaboration or Capital’s Hunt for General Intellect and Imagination? – Mark Coté/Jennifer Pybus: Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: Facebook and Social Networks – Emma Dowling: Pedagogies of Cognitive Capitalism - Challenging the Critical Subject – Alex Means: Creativity as an Educational Problematic within the Biopolitical Economy – Toby Miller: For Fun, For Profit, For Empire: The University and Electronic Games – Michael A. Peters: Algorithmic Capitalism and Educational Futures – Alberto Toscano: The Limits of Autonomy: Cognitive Capitalism and University Struggles – Nick Dyer-Witheford: In the Ruined Laboratory of Futuristic Accumulation: Immaterial Labour and the University Crisis – Tahir Wood: The Confinement of Academic Freedom and Critical Thinking in a Changing Corporate World: South African Universities – Cameron McCarthy: Afterword. The Unmaking of Education in the Age of Globalization, Neoliberalism and Information.

«‘Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor’ provides us with a series of very thoughtful and provocative analyses of the relationship among political economy, education and new forms of knowledge and labor. It is definitely worth reading and then discussing its implications at length.» (Michael W. Apple, John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison)«This volume is a ‘tour de force’. Through its chapters, a new space is opened for understanding education in the contemporary world. With an magisterial introduction by its indefatigable editor, Michael A. Peters, and his colleague Ergin Bulut, ‘Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor’ implicitly shows the limitations of postmodernism and offers a large conceptual framework that will surely be mined and critically examined for some years to come.» (Ronald Barnett, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education, Institute of Education, London)«‘Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor’ is extraordinarily instructive in studying the living bestiary of capitalism, a provocative text that enervates capitalism through helping us cultivate our critical faculties creatively and exultantly in the service of its demise. An important advance in our understanding the production of subjectivity in capitalist societies.» (Peter McLaren, School of Critical Studies in Education, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland)«This valuable, lithe volume explores the ever-evolving, mutating forms of capitalism. It is a work of craft, intelligence and provocation. It reflects on some of the most important subterranean trends in contemporary societies. These unite the material and the immaterial, biology and power, economics and education. The contributors parse the intersections of intellectual and physical labour, paid and unpaid work, labour and pedagogy, research and gaming, free information and multi-national corporations, autonomy and liberalism, accumulation and enclosure, class and creativity. They do so with verve, steel and tenacious insight.» (Peter Murphy, Professor of Creative Arts and Social Aesthetics, James Cook University)«If you read just a single book in the field of educational theory this year, make sure it’s this one. Drawing on the rich tradition of Marxist autonomism, the contributors pinpoint what the transmutation of labor and opening of new domains of class struggle under cognitive capitalism mean for education. The editors have assembled an impressive team, all accomplished scholars adept at envisioning changes in the sites and forms of knowledge-making, acquisition and contestation. For anyone interested in the educational implications of technologically-driven shifts in capitalism’s socio-economic structures, this is the volume to buy. Brimming with insight, balanced and lively – it will attract attention from scholars and students well beyond the confines of education faculties.» (James Reveley, Associate Professor, Faculty of Commerce, University of Wollongong)«We have now for some time been undergoing intense technological and social revolutions that transformed the nature of labor, education and the capitalist economy. Peters and Bulut and their collaborators in ‘Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor’ chart out the changes in the new economy and social life and explore its consequences for education. All educators and those concerned with transformations of contemporary culture and society should be concerned with these issues and learn from this book.» (Douglas Kellner, UCLA; Author of ‘Guys and Guns Amok’ and ‘Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy’)«The mainstream discourse of the knowledge economy is empty. The