Mg-Ed-Dv-ers,
We are fortunate to have Valerie Hey with us as an eGuest with to present
and discuss her recent article in the Journal of Education Policy
(2001)16,1:67-84, "The construction of academic time: sub/contracting
academic labour in research."
Specifically you are invited to read her comments on her article and
respond to them in an eDiscussion (by posting to
Mg-Ed-Dv@maelstrom.stjohns.edu ).
-----Original Message-----
From: Valerie Hey [mailto:
Valerie.Hey@brunel.ac.uk]
Dear eColleagues,
My own experience of contract research in higher education seemed to be an
appropriate place to consider aspects of the politics of time as a scarce
and thus vital resource in a time-starved educational environment. Using the
experience of casualised academic work I explored the class, gender and
wider status dimensions and contradictions of research teams, research
knowledge production and the relations of authority. I looked at the broader
patterning of higher education expansion had made opportunities for women
(see AUT 1994) from particular class backgrounds to enter the 'academy' but
in the least favourable employment circumstances. Other work, especially
that of Diane Reay (2000) suggested the importance of theorising the
practices of working class women researchers. We are both particularly
interested in and incensed by the
discursive terms through which 'field work' is usually described as 'leg
work' as opposed to 'head work'. This is the space and practice where a
largely female labour force is employed as generators of the data - who then
bring home the data' for a largely male, senior professoriate to work their
magic upon and thus make claims as to be the creators of new (and thus most
prestigious) forms of knowledge. Even when female researchers are rightly
acknowledged as first authors, it has been known that others 'read against
the text' to assume that the professor has in fact taken the lead on the
publication. So what we are talking about here are clearly irrational,
historical and still prevalent assumptions about who can be a constructor of
knowledge. The contradictions of this are explored in terms of time-poverty,
when increasingly senior core staff are called upon for the corporate
university's capacity building business, thus requiring increasing levels of
essential dependence on the 'gofers'.
This experiential and sociological material is situated in a larger policy
discussion about the new knowledge economy as it shifts the terms of
academic work. I draw on the work in Australia of Simon Marginson and in the
UK on the work on the 'Taylorisation' of academic work by Dominelli and
Hoogvelt. My main reference though is the work of Stephen Ball who using
Lyotard's notion of 'performativity' and 'fabrication' has pursued a
discussion about the stage-management of appearances in higher education in
a culture of audit and performance management. My article is an
interrogation of Stephen Ball's ideas as these are played out within the
team-work. Team work and ideas sharing is vital to intellectual capital
making. It is though surprisingly largely undertheorised in an increasingly
differentiated academic sector. I consider that the market has bitten deep
within institutional culture corroding the character (as Sennett would
argue)
and it has consolidated and further entrenched distinctions between
institutions and people. What happens to the peripheral workers who make it
in the new knowledge economy is a strong test case of both collegiality but
also the nature of public sector (as opposed to private sector) social
divisions and relations. I also note the bittersweet paradox of market
forces producing increased opportunities for contract staff to make the
break into 'proper', i.e. permanent, positions. It is precisely their
productivity as researchers, (preferably as sole authors) that makes their
collateral increase. They are only likely to make this move if they 'break
free' from team-commitments and become single voices able to 'brand' their
own ideas, which of course
undermines the ethos of collegiality/shared intellectual capital building -
where I still consider the best work to have been done. I look at the
implications of these paradoxes in terms of the biography of contract staff.
I consider how and why certain women seem to have made the move and suggest
it is yet another paradoxical consequence of marginalisation that produces
the 'hyper-performativity' that now seems to secure certain sorts of
rewards. However, it is precisely this manic pace of fast knowledge' and
impossible deadlines that is corrosive of the high quality critical
intellectual labour which should constitute an important aspect of the role
of critical intellectuals - precisely to question an increasingly
corporatist turn in the academy. The article urges greater reflection on the
conditions of (intellectual) work in the academy.
Valerie Hey
Brunel University, UK
edstvvh@brunel.ac.uk
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Post comments and/or questions on this to
mg-ed-dv@maelstrom.stjohns.edu .