Monoculture: How One Story is Changing Everything

by Michaels, F. S.

  8. “Arts Degrees ‘Reduce Earnings,’” BBC News, March 6, 2003.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Jason Tan, “The Marketisation of Education in Singapore: Policies and Implications,” International Review of Education 44 (1998): 47-63; Ka-ho Mok, “Education and the Market Place in Hong Kong and Mainland China,” Higher Education 37 (1999): 133-158; Yin Qiping, “The ‘Marketisation’ of Chinese Higher Education: A Critical Assessment,” Comparative Education, 30 (1994): 217-233.

  11. Rising tuition rates for professional programs in Canada is highlighted by Marc Frenette in “The Impact of Tuition Fees on University Access: Evidence From a Large-Scale Price Deregulation in Professional Programs,” Statistics Canada 11F0019MIE - Number 263 (2005).

  12. For more on changes in financial aid, see Sean Junor and Alex Usher, “The End of Need-Based Student Financial Aid in Canada?” Educational Policy Institute (2007); “Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation,” Brief Submitted to The House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance 2006 Pre-Budget Consultations.

  13. Douglas M. Priest and Edward P. St. John, Privatization and Public Universities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).

  14. Simon Marginson, “National and Global Competition in Higher Education,” Australian Educational Researcher 31 (2004): 1-28.

  15. Sally Power and Geoff Whitty, “Teaching New Subjects? The Hidden Curriculum of Marketized Education Systems.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, Illinois, March 24-28, 1997.

  16. Michael Pearce, “The Marketization of Discourse About Education in UK General Election Manifestos,” Text 24 (2004): 245-265; Ingolfur Asgeir Johannesson, Sverker Lindblad, and Hannu Simola, “An Inevitable Progress? Educational Restructuring in Finland, Iceland, and Sweden at the Turn of the Millennium,” Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 46 (2002): 325-339; Izhar Oplatka, Jane Hesley-Brown, and Nick H. Foskett, “The Voice of Teachers in Marketing Their School: Personal Perspectives in Competitive Environments,” School Leadership & Management 22 (2002): 177-196.

  17. Brian Pusser, “Higher Education, Markets, and the Preservation of the Public Good.” In Earnings From Learning. Edited by David W. Breneman, Brian Pusser, and Sarah E. Turner (New York: State University of New York Press, 2006), pp. 23-49; Kathryn Hibbert and Luigi Iannacci, “From Dissemination to Discernment: The Commodification of Literacy Instruction and the Fostering of Good Teacher Consumerism,” Reading Teacher 58 (2005): 716-727; Susan Wright, “Markets, Corporations, Consumers? New Landscapes of Higher Education,” Learning & Teaching in the Social Sciences 1 (2004): 71-93; Ka-ho Mok, “Education and the Market Place in Hong Kong and Mainland China,” Higher Education 37 (1999): 133-158.

  18. For an excellent and early overview of the spread and influence of the market in higher education, see Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, Academic Capitalism and the New Economy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

  19. Douglas M. Priest and Rachel Dykstra Boon, “Incentive-based Budgeting Systems in the Emerging Environment.” In Earnings From Learning. Edited by David W. Breneman, Brian Pusser, and Sarah E. Turner (New York: State University of New York Press, 2006), pp. 175-188.

  20. The statistical decline in tenure and tenure-track faculty positions is found in the 2006 Contingent Faculty Index, put out by the American Association of University Professors, cited in Peter Conn, “We Need to Acknowledge the Realities of Employment in the Humanities,” The Chronicle Review, April 4, 2010.

  21. Marc Bousquet outlines how job security in academia has been impacted by marketization in his book How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation (New York: New York University Press, 2008).

  22. Marc Bousquet, How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation (New York: New York University Press, 2008). See also Sheila Slaughter and Larry L. Leslie, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

  23. The rise of economic language in academia is described by Fazal Rizvi, “The Ideology of Privatization in Higher Education: A Global Perspective.” In Earnings From Learning. Edited by David W. Breneman, Brian Pusser, and Sarah E. Turner (New York: State University of New York Press, 2006), pp. 65-84; Peter Roberts, “The Future of the University: Reflections from New Zealand,” International Review of Education 45 (1999): 65-86; Ka-ho Mok, “The Cost of Managerialism: The Implications for the ‘McDonaldisation’ of Higher Education in Hong Kong,” Journal of Higher Education Policy 21 (1999): 117-127.

  24. Jerome R. Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971).

  25. Ibid.

  26. On knowledge commercialization and science and industry partnerships, see, for example, Eyal Press and Jennifer Washburn, “The Kept University,” Atlantic Monthly 285 (2000): 39-53; David Blumenthal, Eric G. Campbell, NancyAnne Causino, and Karen Seashore Louis, “Participation of Life-Science Faculty in Research Relationships with Industry,” New England Journal of Medicine 335 (1996): 1734-1739.

  27. Eric G. Campbell, Joshua B. Powers, David Blumenthal, and Brian Biles, “Inside the Triple Helix: Technology Transfer and Commercialization in the Life Sciences,” Health Affairs 23 (2004): 64-76. Today, most commercialization activity happens in the biosciences. In 2001, almost half of academic patents in the U.S. were from the life sciences in chemistry, molecular biology, and microbiology, up from 15 percent in 1980.

  28. On the salary gap between business schools and the humanities, see James Engell and Anthony Dangerfield, “The Market-Model University: Humanities in the Age of Money,” Harvard Alumni Magazine (May/June 1998).

  29. See, for example, Robert N. Watson’s “The Humanities Really Do Produce a Profit,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 21, 2010.

  30. John Mursell, Principles of Democratic Education (New York: W.W. Norton, 1955).

  31. Clifford Geertz, Available Light (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).

  Additional Sources

  The first epigraph, a quote from then-93-year-old Sophie Mumford, is found in Studs Terkel’s Coming of Age (New York: New Press, 1995).

  John Lombardi is quoted in Marc Bousquet’s How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation (New York: New York University Press, 2008).

  8. Your Creativity

  1. For a wonderful overview of the history of the idea of art, see Larry Shiner’s The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

  2. Ibid.

  3. The Louvre in Paris opened in 1973 with art that had been confiscated from the monarchy and the aristocracy during the French Revolution. See Larry Shiner, The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

  4. Eric Moody, “Politics and Museums.” In Museums 2000: Politics, People, Professionals, and Profit. Edited by Patrick J. Boylan (London: Routledge, 1992).

  5. The relationship between the artist and the market is described by Lee Hye-Kyung in “When Arts Met Marketing,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 11 (2005): 289-305.

  6. Hugh Honour, Romanticism (London: Allen Lane, 1979); Larry Shiner, The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

  7. On our relationship with museums, see Russell Keat, Cultural Goods and the Limits of the Market (London: MacMillan Press, 2000); Linda Moss, “Encouraging Creative Enterprise in Russia.” In Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries: An International Perspective. Edited by Colette Henry, (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007), pp. 142-158; Stephen Weil, Rethinking the Museum (Washington: Smithsonian, 1990), p. xviii.

  8. Stephen Weil, Beauty and the Beasts: On Museums, Art, the Law, and the Market (Washington: Smithsonian, 1983).

  9. Ibid.

  10. Stephen Weil, Rethinking the Museum (Washington: Smithsonian, 1990).

  11. Perry T. Rathbone, “Influences of
Private Patrons: The Art Museum as an Example.” In The Arts and Public Policy in the United States. Edited by W. McNeil Lowry (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984); Stanley N. Katz, “Influences on Public Policies in the United States.” In The Arts and Public Policy in the United States. Edited by W. McNeil Lowry (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984); W. McNeil Lowry, “Introduction.” In The Arts and Public Policy in the United States. Edited by W. McNeil Lowry (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984); Perry T. Rathbone, “Influences of Private Patrons: The Art Museum as an Example.” In The Arts and Public Policy in the United States. Edited by W. McNeil Lowry (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984); Stephen Weil, Beauty and the Beasts: On Museums, Art, the Law, and the Market (Washington: Smithsonian, 1983).

  12. John F. Kennedy’s quote about the arts is found in “A Symposium: Issues in the Emergence of Public Policy.” In The Arts and Public Policy in the United States. Edited by W. McNeil Lowry (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984).

  13. Larry Shiner, The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). What is considered high or low culture changes over time. High culture in one era is pop culture in another. In the 1700s, for example, chamber music was considered pop culture.

  14. Stephen Weil, Beauty and the Beasts: On Museums, Art, the Law, and the Market (Washington: Smithsonian, 1983).

  15. W. McNeil Lowry, “Introduction.” In The Arts and Public Policy in the United States. Edited by W. McNeil Lowry (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984).

  16. Stephen Weil, Beauty and the Beasts: On Museums, Art, the Law, and the Market (Washington: Smithsonian, 1983); “A Symposium: Issues in the Emergence of Public Policy.” In The Arts and Public Policy in the United States. Edited by W. McNeil Lowry (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984).

  17. The definition of the creative industries from The Hong Kong Centre for Cultural Policy Research, University of Hong Kong, is found in “Baseline Study on Hong Kong’s Creative Industries,” The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, September 2003.

  18. For more on the creative industries, including their meteoric growth and worth, see Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries: An International Perspective. Edited by Colette Henry (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007).

  19. Colette Henry, “Introduction.” In Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries: An International Perspective. Edited by Colette Henry (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007), pp. 1-6. Note that it’s difficult to compare the creative industries from country to country because nations use different definitions and data sources; National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, “Creating Growth: How the UK Can Develop World Class Creative Businesses,” April 2006.

  20. Calvin Taylor, “Developing Relationships Between Higher Education, Enterprise and Innovation in the Creative Industries.” In Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries: An International Perspective. Edited by Colette Henry (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007), pp. 178-196; Paul J. DiMaggio, “The Nonprofit Instrument and the Influence of the Marketplace on Policies in the Arts.” In The Arts and Public Policy in the United States. Edited by W. McNeil Lowry (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984); “A Symposium: Issues in the Emergence of Public Policy.” In The Arts and Public Policy in the United States. Edited by W. McNeil Lowry (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984).

  21. Ian Youngs, “Radiohead Guitarist Ed O’Brien Warns of Money Pressure,” BBC News, January 24, 2010.

  22. On the rise of the market in the arts, see, for example, Lee Hye-Kyung, “When Arts Met Marketing,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 11 (2005): 289-305; Paul J. DiMaggio, “The Nonprofit Instrument and the Influence of the Marketplace on Policies in the Arts.” In The Arts and Public Policy in the United States. Edited by W. McNeil Lowry, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984).

  23. Alberta museums, for example, started to see themselves as competing with West Edmonton Mall — then the world’s largest mall. See Leslie S. Oakes, Barbara Townley, and David J. Cooper’s “Business Planning as Pedagogy: Language and Control in a Changing Institutional Field” Administrative Science Quarterly 43 (1998): 257-292.

  24. Paul J. DiMaggio, “The Nonprofit Instrument and the Influence of the Marketplace on Policies in the Arts.” In The Arts and Public Policy in the United States. Edited by W. McNeil Lowry (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984).

  25. Museum exhibits provided by corporations was reported by Robin Pogrebin in “And Now, An Exhibition From Our Sponsor,” The New York Times (August 21, 2009).

  26. “Swiffer Named ‘Official Cleaner of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis’,” Procter & Gamble press release, December 22, 2009, on PR Newswire website; Lee Rosenbaum, blog post on “New Frontiers in Corporate Sponsorship: A Museum’s ‘Official Cleaner,’” CultureGrrl Blog, posted December 23, 2009.

  27. “The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and Mattel Present Barbie™: The Fashion Experience,” The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis press release, November 13, 2009; Lee Rosenbaum, blog post on “New Frontiers in Corporate Sponsorship: A Museum’s ‘Official Cleaner,’” CultureGrrl Blog, posted December 23, 2009.

  28. Linda Moss, “Encouraging Creative Enterprise in Russia.” In Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries: An International Perspective. Edited by Colette Henry (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007).

  29. Quoted in Tom Brown, Stuart Crainer, Des Dearlove and Jorge Nascimento Rodrigues, Business Minds: Connect with the World’s Greatest Management Thinkers (Prentice Hall Financial Times: London, 2002).

  30. See, for example, Maev Kennedy, “Jewellers sponsor Fay Weldon’s latest literary gem,” The Guardian, September 4, 2001.

  31. Don Thompson, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2008); Adrian Dannatt, “Jeff Koons On His Serpentine Show, His Inspirations and How His Studio System Works,” The Art Newspaper 204 (2009).

  32. Don Thompson, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2008).

  33. Sean O’Hagan, “Damien of the Dead,” The Observer, February 19, 2006.

  34. Sarah Thornton interviews Takashi Murakami and Marc Jacobs in Seven Days in the Art World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008).

  35. Oliver Bennett, Cultural Policy and the Crisis of Legitimacy: Entrepreneurial Answers in the United Kingdom (1996) p. 11, Centre for the Study of Cultural Policy, University of Warwick, Coventry, cited in Lee Hye-Kyung, “When Arts Met Marketing,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 11 (2005): 289-305.

  Additional Sources

  The first epigraph is from Stanley Kunitz’s The Wild Braid (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005).

  The second epigraph is from economist Tyler Cowen’s In Praise of Commercial Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

  9. The Monoculture Effect

  1. Richard Feynman tells his story about wobbling plates in Frank Barron, Anthea Barron, and Alfonso Montuori’s Creators on Creating (New York: Tarcher, 1997).

  2. Joseph Campbell talks about following your bliss with Bill Moyers in The Power of Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1988).

  3. Václav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless.” In Living in Truth. Edited by Jan Vladislav (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), pp. 36-122.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Craig McInnis and Malcolm Anderson, “Academic work satisfaction in the wake of institutional reforms in Australia.” In The Professoriate. Edited by Anthony Welch (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2005), pp. 133-145.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1999).

  9. Abraham Maslow describes higher level human needs and metapathologies in The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 1971).

  Additional Sources

  The epigraph is from Karen Armstrong’s memoir The Spiral Staircase (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). />
  10. Finding Another Way

  1. Václav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless,” in Living in Truth, ed. Jan Vladislav (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), pp. 36-122.

  2. The criteria for parallel structures are derived from Václav Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless.” In Living in Truth. Edited by Jan Vladislav (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), pp. 36-122.

  3. Václav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless.” In Living in Truth. Edited by Jan Vladislav (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), pp. 36-122.

  4. E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).

  5. Wendy Parkins and Geoffrey Craig, Slow Living (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2006).

  6. Geoff Andrews, The Slow Food Story: Politics and Pleasure (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008).

  7. Jean Vanier’s comments about the pleasures of eating together are found in Be Not Afraid (Toronto: Griffin House, 1975).

  8. Ilse Crawford, Home is Where the Heart Is (London: Quadrille, 2005).

  9. Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).

  10. Ibid.

  11. William Saunders is quoted in a National Building Museum interview with Michael Mehaffy regarding Christopher Alexander and his impact on the profession on the occasion of Alexander being awarded the 2009 Vincent Scully Prize.

  12. Christopher Alexander, “The Origins of Pattern Theory, the Future of the Theory, and the Generation of a Living World.” Keynote speech, the ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programs, Systems, Languages and Applications, 1996.

  13. Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).