Challenging the corporatist logic of social impact

Society and impact are the two definitive constructs that make up the concept of social impact.

Yet, this very nature of social impact that is guided toward the question of social good and the role of knowledge in contributing to social good is increasingly obfuscated from corporatized metrics for measuring social impact and from the benchmarks put forth by university administrators speaking to this corporatized structure of Universities globally.

In this narrowly corporatist view, social impact is defined and measured in instrumental metrics that serve the interests of transnational capital. The guiding principles for articulating and evaluating social impact are narrowly constrained within corporatist agendas.

Metrics such as industry engagement, patents, and revenue generated are thoughtlessly calculated and put forth as metrics of social impact. Inherent in these uncritical adoption of corporatized metrics is the fundamental rift between social impact and the corporate agenda.

Not all forms of industry engagement are socially impactful. While indeed some forms of industry engagement might generate local jobs, strengthen employment, and contribute to social good, many other forms of industry engagement might actually be harmful to society and social good. Consider for instance the engagement of a Communication professor with Phillip Morris. While this engagement does qualify as industry engagement, it is broadly harmful to human health.

In other instances, social impact of academic work in terms of working with the poor, with migrants and refugees, is not countable in terms of metrics of patents and industry engagement. Yet in other instances, the social impact of scholarly work is precisely in its debunking of the corporatist logic and countering of the corporatist influence on policy making.

As we push for greater accountability of knowledge production to communities, we simultaneously need to debunk the narrowly corporatist logic of social impact.

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...

Zionist hate mongering, the race/terror trope, and the Free Speech Union: Part 1

March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University. Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute ...

Upper caste Indian women in the diaspora, DEI, and the politics of hate

Figure 1: Trump, Vance and their partners responding to the remarks by Mariann Edgar Budde Emergent from the struggles of the civil rights movement , led by African Americans , organized against the oppressive history of settler colonialism and slavery that forms the backbone of US society, structures around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) formed an integral role in forging spaces for diverse recognition and representation. These struggles around affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion were at the heart of the changes to white only immigration policies, building pathways for migration of diverse peoples from the Global South. The changes to the immigration policies created opportunities for Indians to migrate to the US, with a rise of Indian immigration into the US since the 1970s into educational institutions, research and development infrastructures, and technology-finance infrastructures. These migratory structures into the US were leveraged by l...

Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

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