Abstract
The changes in and transformations of academic institutions and practices we are currently witnessing are complex. I argue that there are no clear-cut historical transitions between different regimes of science, such as from the ‘public knowledge regime’ to ‘academic capitalism’. Drawing upon John Law’s analysis of ‘modes of ordering’, I investigated the multiplicity of academic realities at a leading social science department at a university in the Czech Republic. Using ethnographic data generated during my fieldwork in the department in 2006–2008, I explore how the modes of ordering operate and how they are strategically mobilised by different actors. In contrast to Law, I particularly focus on the interfaces and switches between modes, where, I observe, power is prominently enacted. I conclude by arguing that resistance to the rising managerial governance of universities cannot simply resort to citing the ‘traditional’ academic values of autonomy, vocation and internal quality but must also challenge those values.
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Notes
The writing of the paper has been supported by grant no. P404/11/0127 of the Czech Science Foundation. It is partly based on a book chapter I wrote titled ‘Political and moral economy of science’ and published in Czech (Stöckelová, 2009).
There are 26 public and 44 private higher education institutions in the country; the majority of students (79% in the academic year 2011–2012) attend a public one (Koucký, 2012). While public institutions provide both academic and professional education, private ones focus primarily on professional training.
Neither my colleague nor I had a Ph.D. at the time the fieldwork as done, which made us ‘naturally’ closer to the junior members of the department. For example, we were on informal terms (tykání) with them, while on formal terms (vykání) with the seniors.
All the interviews were conducted in Czech. Quotations from recorded interviews were edited to standards of written language and authorised by the interviewees. Translations to English used in this article are mine.
For an analysis of the genesis of the Czech research assessment and its impact on the social sciences, see Linková and Stöckelová (2012) and Stöckelová (2012), respectively.
For a sociological analysis of the power mechanisms of screenings, see Konopásek and Kusá (2006).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Veronika Wöhrer and HEP anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on an earlier version of the article.
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Stöckelová, T. Power at the Interfaces: The Contested Orderings of Academic Presents and Futures in a Social Science Department. High Educ Policy 27, 435–451 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2014.20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2014.20