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

Lawson, Stuart; Sanders, Kevin; Smith, Lauren

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.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 8, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Mar 10, 2015
• Publication Date: Mar 10, 2015
• Deposit Date: Jun 24, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 24, 2019
• Journal: Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication
• Print ISSN: 2162-3309
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 1
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1182
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1906333
• Contract Date: Jun 24, 2019