‘They know they're getting the best knowledge possible’: locating the academic in changing knowledge economies

As the discussant of this special issue, I focus on two related ideas: choice and self-interest. First, I explore the idea of choice and its relevance within research that concerns itself with a heavily loaded concept like ‘social justice’. My proposal here is that future scholarship that explores the consequences of privatised health and physical education (HPE) might at least factor in choice as one from a list of competing priorities. For example, does greater choice trump concerns about equity? Is it possible that increasing choice is one of the ways in which important social policy outcomes might be achieved? Second, like a number of the papers in this special issue, I argue that the privatisation of HPE portends significant changes in the way knowledge is produced, consumed and evaluated. Through all of this, old ideas about the role of the academic are increasingly salient. But rather than limiting our critical gaze to the purveyors of privatised HPE, I suggest that financial self-interest is only one kind of self-interest amongst many others, each of which deserve our attention.