~Glen Jankowski, site co-editor
Being critical in a neoliberal discipline can often feel exhausting. We’re fighting an uphill battle and it can seem like little progress has been made, especially when we look at how long we’ve been fighting it.
Go back to 1987 for instance when the gods of discourse analysis, Jonathon Potter and Margaret Wetherell (1987, p. 174) tried to address the need to get out of the ivory tower in psychology in their book on discourse analysis:
“We feel that researchers should pay considerably more attention to the practical use of their work over and above the amassing of research findings and the furtherance of careers…the image of a benign body of practitioners waiting to read the journals of pure scientists and put research findings into practice is heart-warming but unrealistic”.
