Exploitation of academics (was reparations)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>At 10:54 PM 3/20/01 -0500, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>Dennis Breslin says:
>>>
>>>The resort to functionalism is a tad premature.  While there are
>>>programs
>>>out there actively recruiting wannabees, my experience at UConn and
>>>the rumor/whine mill over the years has the opposite operating.  Since
>>>the low point in the early 80s, faculty in sociology have been
>>>realistic,to put it mildly, about the career prospects of their 
>>>students.  The
>>>programs keep admitting wannabees in part because no one seriously
>>>wants to eliminate graduate programs or because graduate work is
>>>valued in terms other than economic reward - that medieval
>>>apppreciation for scholarship that is oblivious to the spectre
>>>of starvation.  I don't think the labor discipline thing is at
>>>work.  That would require some real world expertise and finesse
>>>that I find lacking among academics.
>>
>>Labor discipline is not so much intentions of the departmental 
>>powers that be as an effect of the expansion of higher education 
>>without a corresponding growth in funding for it, I think.
>
>but this IS a form of functionalist explanation!  no intentions on 
>the part of individuals need be involved at all. i thought we 
>covered this recently!?
>
>kelley

A functionalist explanation & a historical materialist explanation 
are not the same, though the latter may contain the former as one of 
its moments, as Justin noted: "there is a dialectic between 
functional explanation of social stability and nonfunctional, 
anti-functional (fettering) explanation of social change."  This 
dialectic is a useful heuristic in an analysis of what happens under 
capitalism (though not for an explanation of the origins of 
capitalism).

That "X is functional" doesn't mean, however, that "only X is 
functional," even under capitalism, I believe.  Take the "welfare 
reform," for example.  The "welfare reform" is functional for 
capitalism (especially under the hegemony of neoliberalism).  That 
doesn't mean, though, that the working class could never have stopped 
the "welfare reform."  It was not inevitable that AFDC was abolished, 
"workfare" was instituted, etc.  The same goes for an astonishing 
degree to which academy has come to rely upon TAs, "part-time" 
adjuncts, "full-time" professors hired on the contract basis, etc. 
It was & is not inevitable.

Yoshie