This book provides a critique of the knowledge business, and describes and evaluates its different manifestations in, and impacts on, the university sector. Its focus is the social sciences and, in particular, housing and urban studies. Drawing on a wide range of experiences, both in the UK and elsewhere, it highlights the different ways in which the academy is being put to work for commercial gain and investigates the implications for the academic labour process.

Contents: Preface; The knowledge business: a critical introduction, Chris Allen and Rob Imrie; Part I The Institutional Politics of the Knowledge Business: The interrelationships between contract research and the knowledge business, Rob Imrie; The political economy of contract research, Jim Kemeny; In the name of the people?: the state, social science and the 'public interest' in urban regeneration, Chris Allen and Pauline Marne; Knowing the city: local coalitions, knowledge and research, Huw Thomas; Entrepreneurial_research at enterprising-university.co.uk, Chris Allen and Pauline Marne; Knowledge intermediaries and evidence based policy, Gary Bridge. Part II Entrepreneurialism and the Academic Labour Process: Partnership, servitude or expert scholarship? The academic labour process in contract housing research, Tony Manzi and Bill Smith-Bowers; Managing sensitive social relations in planning policy research: co-production and critical friendship in the enterprising university, Paul O'Hare, Jon Coaffee and Marian Hawkesworth; Collaborative postgraduate research in a contract research culture, Loretta Lees and David Demeritt; Cultivating the business researcher: a biographical account of postgraduate educational research training, Victoria Cooper; The knowledge business and the neo-managerialisation of research and academia in France, Gilles Pinson. Part III Conclusions: Contract research, universities and the 'knowledge society': back to the future, Noel Castree; Reconstructing the knowledge business, Rob Imrie and Chris Allen; Bibliography; Index.

Chris Allen is Professor of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and Rob Imrie is Professor of Geography at King's College London, UK and Director of the Cities Group