In this paper we consider relationships between national research assessment and publication output targets within academic workload models, theorising their potential impact on research practices and the academic habitus. Thinking with Bourdieu's theory of practice, we draw on examples from higher education systems within the United Kingdom and Australia to argue that what an agent has done in the past plays a potentially significant role in the reformation of their own habitus. In relation to academics complying with publication output targets, whatever form those targets may take, we posit that this has implications for what research is done, how, by whom and where, and also for how researchers are disposed, or not, towards what research is perceived to be possible or desirable.
AdamsJ., and GurneyK. (2014) Evidence for Excellence: has the signal overtaken the substance?An analysis of journal articles submitted to rae 2008. London: Digital Science.
BlackmoreJ. (2010) Research assessment: a calculative technology governing quality, accountability and equity. In: BlackmoreJ, BrennanM. and ZipinL. (eds) Re-Positioning University Governance and Academic WorkRotterdam: Sense, 67–84.
6.
BourdieuP. (1977) Outline of a theory of practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7.
BourdieuP. (1984) Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste, London: Routledge & Keegan Paul.
8.
BourdieuP. (1985) The social space and the genesis of groups. Theory and Society14: 723–744.
9.
BourdieuP. (1986) The forms of capital. In: RichardsonJ.G. (ed) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education.New York: Greenwood, 241–258.
10.
BourdieuP. (1988) Homo Academicus, Cambridge: Polity.
11.
BourdieuP. (1990) The Logic of Practice, Cambridge: Polity.
12.
BourdieuP. (1996) The State Nobility: Elite schools in the field of power, Cambridge: Polity.
13.
BourdieuP. (1998) Practical Reason: On the theory of action, Cambridge: Polity.
14.
BourdieuP. and PasseronJ.-C. (1977) Reproduction: In education, society and culture, London: Sage.
15.
BourdieuP. and WacquantL.J.D. (1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers.
16.
BuchholzL. (2016) What is a global field? Rethinking Bourdieu's field theory beyond the nation-state. The Sociological Review 64: 31–60.
BurrowsR. (2012) Living with the h-index? Metric assemblages in the contemporary academy. The Sociological Review 60: 355–371.
19.
ButlerL. (2003) Modifying publication practices in response to funding formulas. Research Evaluation 12: 39–46.
20.
ButlerL. (2010) Impacts of performance-based research funding systems: A review of the concerns and the evidence. Performance-based Funding for Public Research in Tertiary Education Institutions: Workshop Proceedings. oecd Publishing.
21.
ChubbJ., WatermeyerR. and WakelingP. (2017) Fear and loathing in the academy? The role of emotion in response to an impact agenda in the UK and Australia. Higher Education Research & Development 36: 555–568.
22.
de AngelisM. and HarvieD. (2009) ‘Cognitive capitalism’ and the rat-race: how capital measures immaterial labour in British universities. Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory 17: 3–30.
23.
Fukuda-ParrS., YaminA.E. and GreensteinJ. (2014) The power of numbers: A critical review of millennium development goal targets for human development and human rights. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 15: 105–117.
24.
GaleT. and MillsC. (2013) Creating spaces in higher education for marginalised Australians: principles for socially inclusive pedagogies. ELiSS 5: 7–19.
25.
GeunaA. and PiolattoM. (2016) Research assessment in the uk and Italy: Costly and difficult but probably worth it (at least for a while), Research Policy, 45: 260-271. Research Policy 45: 260–271.
26.
GlaserJ. (2016) German universities on their way to performance-based management of research portfolios. Sociologia Italiana 8: 151–176.
27.
GrenfellM. (2010) Being critical: the practical logic of Bourdieu's metanoia. Critical Studies in Education 51: 85–99.
28.
GrenfellM. (2012) Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts, Stocksfield, England.: Acumen.
29.
HammarfeltB. and de RijckeS. (2015) Accountability in context: effects of research evaluation systems on publication practices, disciplinary norms, and individual working routines in the faculty of Arts at Uppsala University. Research Evaluation 24: 63–77.
HicksD. (2009) Evolving regimes of multi-university research evaluation. Higher Education 57: 394–404.
33.
HicksD. (2012) Performance-based university research funding systemsResearch Policy 41: 251–261.
34.
JenkinsR. (1982) Pierre Bourdieu and the reproduction of determinism. Sociology 16: 270–281.
35.
JohnstonJ. and ReevesA. (2018) An investigation into the role played by research assessment in the socio-geographic fragmentation of undergraduate economics education in the UK. Higher Education 76: 589–614.
36.
KennyJ. (2017) Re-empowering academics in a corporate culture: an exploration of workload and performativity in a university. Higher Education: 1–16.
37.
KennyJ. and FluckA. (2014) The effectiveness of academic workload models in an institution: a staff perspective. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 36: 585–602.
38.
KennyJ. and FluckA. (2017) Towards a methodology to determine standard time allocations for academic work. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 39: 503–523.
39.
KhazraguiH. and HudsonJ. (2015) Measuring the benefits of university research: impact and the ref in the UK. Research Evaluation 24: 51–62.
40.
KruckenG. (2014) Higher education reforms and unintended consequences: a research agenda. Studies in Higher Education 38: 1439–1450.
41.
KwokJ.T. (2013) Impact of era research assessment on university behaviour and their staff. Melbourne, Australia: nteu National Policy and Research Unit.
42.
LewisJ.M. (2014) Research productivity and research system attitudes. Public Money & Management 34: 417–424.
43.
LucasL. (2006) The research game in academic life, Maidenhead, England.: The Society for Research in Higher Education and Open University Press.
44.
MarginsonS. (2006) Dynamics of national and global competition in higher education. Higher Education 52: 1–39.
45.
MarginsonS. (2008) Global field and global imagining: Bourdieu and worldwide higher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education 29: 303–315.
46.
MarquesM., PowellJ.J., ZappM., . (2017) How does research evaluation impact educational research? Exploring intended and unintended consequences of research assessment in the United Kingdom, 1986-2014. European Educational Research Journal: 1–23.
47.
MayT. (2005) Transformations in academic production content, context and consequence. European Journal of Social Theory 8: 193–209.
48.
McNayI. (2015) Does research quality assessment increase output and give value for money?Public Money & Management 35: 67–68.
49.
McNayI. (2016) Imbalancing the academy: the impact of research quality assessment. Sociologia Italiana 8: 119–150.
50.
MeadG. (2016) Bourdieu and conscious deliberation: an anti-mechanistic solution. European Journal of Social Theory 19: 57–73.
51.
MillsC., and GaleT. (2011). Re-asserting the place of context in explaining student (under) achievement. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 32(2), 239–256.
52.
OanceaA. (2014) Research assessment as governance technology in the United Kingdom: findings from a survey of rae 2008 impacts. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft 17: 83–110.
53.
OECD. (2014) The state of higher education 2014. Paris: oecd Higher Education Programme (imhe).
54.
PapadopoulosA. (2017) The mismeasure of academic labour. Higher Education Research & Development 36: 511–525.
55.
RawolleS. (2010) Practice chains of production and consumption: mediatized practices across social fields. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 31: 121–135.
56.
RawolleS. and LingardB. (2013) Bourdieu and Educational Research: thinking tools, relational thinking, beyond epistemological innocence. In: MurphyM. (ed) Social theory and education research: understanding Foucault, Habermas, Bourdieu and Derrida.New York: Routledge, 117–137.
57.
ReayD. (2004a) Cultural capitalists and academic habitus: classed and gendered labour in UK higher education. Women's Studies International Forum 27: 31–39.
58.
ReayD. (2004b) ‘It's all becoming a habitus’: beyond the habitual use of habitus in educational research. British Journal of Sociology of Education 25: 431–444.
RowlandsJ. (2013) Academic boards: less intellectual and more academic capital in higher education governance?Studies in Higher Education 38: 1274–1289.
63.
RowlandsJ. (2017a) Academic Governance within Contemporary Universities: Perspectives from Anglophone nations, Singapore: Springer Nature.
64.
RowlandsJ. (2017b) Deepening understandings of Bourdieu's academic and intellectual capital through a study of academic voice within academic governance. Studies in Higher Education.
65.
RowlandsJ. and GaleT. (2017) Shaping and being shaped: extending the relationship between habitus and practice. In: LynchJ, RowlandsJ, GaleT, . (eds) Practice theory: diffractive readings in professional practice and education.Oxford: Routledge.
66.
SatoI. and EndoT. (2014) From the rae-able to the ref-able? A note on formative reactivity in national research quality assessment. Research on Academic Degrees and University Evaluation 16: 85–104.
67.
Schulze-ClevenT. and OlsonJ.R. (2017) Worlds of higher education transformed: toward varieties of academic capitalism. Higher Education 73: 813–831.
68.
ShoreC. and WrightS. (2015) Audit culture revisited: rankings, ratings, and the reassembling of society. Current Anthropology 56: 421–444.
69.
StrathernM. (2000) The tyranny of transparency. British Educational Research Journal 26: 309–321.
70.
SwartzD. (2002) The sociology of habit: the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu. The Occupational Therapy Journal of Research 22: 615–695.
71.
TeichlerU., ArimotoA. and CummingsW.K. (2013) The Changing Academic Profession: major findings of a comparative survey, Dordrecht: Springer.
72.
VardiI. (2009) The impacts of different types of workload allocation models on academic satisfaction and working life. Higher Education 57: 499–508.
73.
WacquantL. (1989) Towards a reflexive sociology: a workshop with Pierre Bourdieu. Sociological Theory 7: 26–63.
74.
WacquantL. (2011) Habitus as topic and tool: reflections on becoming a prize fighter. Qualitative Research in Psychology 8: 81–92.
75.
WacquantL. (2016) A concise genealogy and anatomy of habitus. The Sociological Review 64: 64–72.
76.
WaitereH.J., WrightJ., TremaineM., . (2011) Choosing whether to resist or reinforce the new managerialism: the impact of performance-based research funding on academic identity. Higher Education Research & Development 30: 205–217.
77.
WardeA. (2004) Practice and field: Revising Bourdieusian concepts, cric Discussion Paper No. 65.Manchester: University of Manchester.
78.
WatermeyerR. (2016) Impact in the ref: issues and obstacles. Studies in Higher Education 41: 199–214.
79.
WebbJ. (2012) The logic of practice? Art, the academy, and fish out of water. Text 14: 1–15.
WilsdonJ., AllenL., BelfioreB., . (2015) The Metric Tide: Report of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management. London: Higher Education Funding Council for England.
82.
WrightS. (2014) Knowledge that counts: Points systems and the governance of Danish universities. In: SmithD. and GriffithA. (eds) Under new public management: Institutional ethnographies of changing front-line work. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 294–337.
83.
WrightS., CurtisB., LucasL., . (2014) Working paper 24: Research assessment systems and their impacts on academic work in New Zealand, the UK and Denmark. Working Papers on University Reform.Copenhagen: Department of Education, Aarhus University.
