Beyond Vulnerability

Beyond McDonaldization

Beyond McDonaldization provides new concepts of higher education for the twenty-first century in a unique manner, challenging much that is written in mainstream texts. This book undertakes a reassessment of the growth of McDonaldization in higher education by exploring how the application of Ritzer’s four features efficiency, predictability, calculability and control has become commonplace. This wide-ranging text discusses arguments surrounding the industrialisation of higher education, with case studies and contributions from a wide range of international authors. Written in an accessible style, Beyond McDonaldization examines questions such as: Can we regain academic freedom whilst challenging the McDonaldization of thought and ideas? Is a McDonaldization of every aspect of academic life inevitable? Will the new focus on student experience damage young people? Why is a McDonaldized education living on borrowed time? Is it possible to recreate the university of the past or must we start anew? Does this industrialisation meet the educational needs of developing economies? This book brings international discussions on the changing world of higher education and the theory of McDonaldization together, seeking to provide a positive future vision of higher education. Analysing and situating the discussion of higher education within a wider social, political and cultural context, this ground-breaking text will have a popular appeal with students, academics and educationalists.

To Kill Another

Basing his argument on natural law, Graham J. McAleer asserts that only public authority has the right to intentionally kill. He draws upon the work of Thomas Aquinas and Francisco de Vitoria, defending the claim that these natural law theorists have developed the best available theory of homicide. To have rule of law in any meaningful sense, the author argues, there must be protections for the guilty and prohibition against killing innocents. Western theories of law have drifted steadily towards the privatization of homicide,despite the fact that it runs counter to rule of law. Public acts of homicide like capital punishment are now viewed by many as barbaric, while a private act of homicide like the starvation of comatose patients is viewed by many as a caring gesture both to patient and family. This subversion of the rule of law is prompted by humanitarian ethics. McAleer argues that humanitarianism is a false friend to those committed to the rule of law. The problem of human vulnerability makes political theology an inescapable consideration for law. Readers will find much to reflect upon in this book. McAleer’s argument can be read as a cultural chapter in the history of moral ideas, but also as a close and timely reading of a grim subject.

Pathways to Inclusion