Global Creation

Global Creation travels through history and place to explore the spread of knowledge and ideas. This innovative volume demonstrates the importance of new communications technology and its limits. More students than ever travel to study, despite the online alternatives. Cities remain crucial sources of creativity, as they have for centuries. Global forces reshape the cultures and economies of campuses and cities rather than reduce their significance. Global Creations distinguished authors bring research, experience and reflection to a timely and compelling set of contemporary questions. (Glyn Davis, Vice-Chancellor, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia) Marginson, Murphy and Peters have created a tour de force on globalization. They have broken away from analyses that are in the moment, as if globalization is a late 20th century invention, and instead offer an erudite read on a complex topic. I know of no other studies of the topic that begin with a synopsis of Mozarts work and also take into account the terrifying firestorms in Australia in 2009. The authors move back and forth in history to fortify their analyses that globalization is both an extension and disruption of the past. The authors perform a narrative high wire act for the readers, and we come away thrilled, wanting more. (William G. Tierney, University Professor, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA) This is a book of enormous significance: it highlights the importance of creativity in the new knowledge economy, and shows how cross-border flows of people, capital and knowledge are re-shaping the global architecture of science, research and education. It describes the communicative conditions that are entailed in making the global. Rejecting the temptation to close borders, Marginson, Murphy and Peters argue convincingly that the current global financial crisis demands, more than ever, open collaborative spaces in which to realize the creative potential of the global age characterized by a diversity of cultural forms, as well as the processes of hybridization and critical reflexivity. (Fazal Rizvi, Professor, Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA) This second book in the trilogy on creativity in the age of the knowledge economy could not be timelier. At the point when the world is in the midst of the first truly global economic recession, the authors set out to document the history of the global dimension. In Global Creation, Marginson, Murphy and Peters focus on how time and space are compressed by the global knowledge economy and identify the emergence of a universal mind. In this most ambitious endeavor, the reader is taken on the historical journey of the global dimension of action, a dimension that each year is larger and more visible. Simultaneously our world becomes more complex and simpler. The authors invoke the Bourdieuian concept of field to have us imagine a global territory in which the competition for dominance is housed in the potential for creativity. The circulation of knowledge is shaped by the dialectic between continuity and discontinuity, between homogeneity and heterogeneity. Yet within the struggle for power, the inequalities of access and the continuing maldistribution of resources, the authors conclude that we enjoy an enlarged freedom to create. The story they tell from the earliest times to the present day documents how the invisible has become visible. They posit the idea that the visible global dimension of action provides us with an unprecedented opportunity in world history to use knowledge and creativity to construct a better, more open world. (Donald Fisher, Co-Director, Centre for Global Creation travels through history and place to explore the spread of knowledge and ideas. This innovative volume demonstrates the importance of new communications technology

The Authors: Simon Marginson is a Professor of Higher Education in the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He works on higher education policy, globalization, and comparative and international education. His books include The Enterprise University (with Mark Considine, 2000) and International Student Security (with Chris Nyland, Erlenawati Sawir and Helen Forbes-Mewett, 2010). Peter Murphy is Associate Professor of Communications at Monash University, Australia. His books include Civic Justice: From Greek Antiquity to the Modern World (2001) and Dialectic of Romanticism: A Critique of Modernism (with David Roberts, 2004). He is coordinating editor of the international critical theory and historical sociology journal Thesis Eleven. Michael A. Peters is Professor of Education in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His interests focus broadly on education, philosophy and social theory. His books include Building Knowledge Cultures (with Tina Besley, 2006), Knowledge Economy, Development and the Future of the University (with Tina Besley, 2007) and Showing and Doing: Wittgenstein as a Pedagogical Philosopher (with Nick Burbules and Paul Smeyers, 2008). He edits Educational Philosophy and Theory and ejournals Policy Futures in Education and E-Learning.