Commodification of the information profession : a critique of higher education under neoliberalism

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Lawson, Stuart and Sanders, Kevin and Smith, Lauren (2015) Commodification of the information profession : a critique of higher education under neoliberalism. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 3 (1). eP1182. (https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1182)

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Abstract

The structures that govern society’s understanding of information have been reorganised under a neoliberal worldview to allow information to appear and function as a commodity. This has implications for the professional ethics of library and information labour, and the need for critical reflexivity in library and information praxes is not being met. A lack of theoretical understanding of these issues means that the political interests governing decision-making are going unchallenged, for example the UK government’s specific framing of open access to research. We argue that building stronger, community oriented praxes of critical depth can serve as a resilient challenge to the neoliberal politics of the current higher education system in the UK and beyond. Critical information literacy offers a proactive, reflexive and hopeful strategy to challenge hegemonic assumptions about information as a commodity.

ORCID iDs

Lawson, Stuart, Sanders, Kevin and Smith, Lauren ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4467-2234;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)