Abstract:
There is a growing higher education literature that investigates the impact of neoliberalism on academic work and workers. Researchers such as Bronwyn Davies (2010), Marilyn Strathern (2000), Erica McWilliam (2004), and Cris Shore (2010) argue that new managerialist practices of accountability, audit, and development not only change the nature of academic work but also shape the behavior and subjectivities of academics, transforming what it means to ‘be’ and ‘become’ an academic. While critiques abound there are, however, few empirical studies that focus on the processes and practices of becoming an academic in the modern university.
This paper and the research upon which it is based uses the concept of kindness to explore stories from academics about ‘becoming’ an academic. Kindness, developed as a view to ‘selves in relation to others’, shifts the focus beyond individualizing accounts of development typical in contemporary development narratives to views that privilege the relational and social and examine the role relationships play in the development of academic subjectivity. This view brings a more generative view to the ‘crisis’ narratives that emerge from research into the impact of neoliberalism on universities, which suggest a bleak future for academia.
This paper draws upon interviews with three academics from different backgrounds who have come into academia through different pathways. The analysis aims to move beyond the ‘big’ stories they tell about becoming an academic, which can tend towards ideals ‘such as academic success or doing the `right thing’’ (Ryan, 2008), towards eliciting ‘small stories’, which are things about the everyday and mundane, often told in passing, often in fragmented ways, which might not be `tellable’ as stories (Bamberg, 2006). These include not just what the participants say but how they say it and accounts that construct emotions, worldviews, characters or events in ways that illuminate why particular accounts are produced in particular ways. Ryan (2008) suggests that by locating these `insignificant small stories, and by analyzing their discursive function in this context, a more complex view of the participants subjectivities and world views can be made visible’ (p 219).
Through this focus on the ‘small stories’ the research aims to bring a view to unique, multifaceted, everyday and sometimes contradictory stories of these academics to both enrich and challenge views of academic ‘becoming’. Such accounts might complicate the neoliberal orthodoxy by interfering with dominant theories and narratives that privilege abstract argument and theory, or universal ‘truths’ over local stories of the particular and the everyday.
This paper and the research upon which it is based uses the concept of kindness to explore stories from academics about ‘becoming’ an academic. Kindness, developed as a view to ‘selves in relation to others’, shifts the focus beyond individualizing accounts of development typical in contemporary development narratives to views that privilege the relational and social and examine the role relationships play in the development of academic subjectivity. This view brings a more generative view to the ‘crisis’ narratives that emerge from research into the impact of neoliberalism on universities, which suggest a bleak future for academia.
This paper draws upon interviews with three academics from different backgrounds who have come into academia through different pathways. The analysis aims to move beyond the ‘big’ stories they tell about becoming an academic, which can tend towards ideals ‘such as academic success or doing the `right thing’’ (Ryan, 2008), towards eliciting ‘small stories’, which are things about the everyday and mundane, often told in passing, often in fragmented ways, which might not be `tellable’ as stories (Bamberg, 2006). These include not just what the participants say but how they say it and accounts that construct emotions, worldviews, characters or events in ways that illuminate why particular accounts are produced in particular ways. Ryan (2008) suggests that by locating these `insignificant small stories, and by analyzing their discursive function in this context, a more complex view of the participants subjectivities and world views can be made visible’ (p 219).
Through this focus on the ‘small stories’ the research aims to bring a view to unique, multifaceted, everyday and sometimes contradictory stories of these academics to both enrich and challenge views of academic ‘becoming’. Such accounts might complicate the neoliberal orthodoxy by interfering with dominant theories and narratives that privilege abstract argument and theory, or universal ‘truths’ over local stories of the particular and the everyday.