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Thank you Roger for your insights into the "marketization" of universities. I was not able to attend Inkshed and thus missed the context of this issue, but I wonder at what point were North American universities no longer participants in a/the market? Roger's comment seems to echo C. Knoblauch's piece in Myra Kogen's collection of essays (Kogen, 1989) where Knoblauch reminds us of Bowles and Ginis work (see also Bourdieu and Passeron) who have rather effectively shown that schooling plays an vital role within capitalist economies. Knoblauch writes: "Bowles and Gintis, among others, have pointed out that resemblances between the organization of schools, including personnel, departments, and curricula, and the organization of (other) managerial hierarchies and labor specializations in the capitalist workplace are far from coincidental. The former is both a reflection of the latter and a contributor to its maintenance" (p. 247). In addition, it is hard to dis-associate universities from the education and reification of the professions and other workforces vital to the economy. As Roger seems to suggest (if I can put keystrokes in his computer) the issue is not so much "whether or not scholars participate in the market" it is "*how* will we negotitate the demands of the market within our scholarship." For example, G. Ulmer (1985?) offers a detailed discussion of the ways in which French philosophers (yes, Derrida et al.) created political strategies for re-integrating philosophy into the French school system -- working beyond the university and in co-operation with legislative and political branches of government. I think Roger is correct when he notes that universities need to provide (and many do) services that the public will pay for. Now, this doesn't mean that we blindly serve the whims of the population any more than Microsoft sits back and waits for people to "appreciate" Windows '95. We simply need to be a little more rhetorically ambitious. . . . Brenton Faber -------------------------------------------------------------- Brenton Faber [log in to unmask] University of Utah University Writing Program Salt Lake City UT.