Academic researchers on the project market in the ethos of knowledge capitalism

Abstract

How knowledge capitalism retools the scope of academic research and researchers is an issue which this article ties to the project market in the ethos of knowledge capitalism. In Finland, academic research has been forced to apply for funding in project-based activities reflecting European Union policies. The project market, which in this article represents knowledge capitalism, shapes opportunities related to research and knowledge as well as in terms of researcher subjectivity. However, a critical approach that recognises the function of power can both highlight and challenge the forms of knowledge capitalism that reorganises the scope of research and researchers today.

Introduction

With the exposure of the public sector to market forces, external project funding has begun to shape and retool academic research. At the same time, critical discussion has emerged on the situation of academia in the midst of knowledge capitalism (e.g. Ozga, 2008; Ozga et al., 2006; Peters and Besley, 2006). All of these discussions, to which this article is intended to contribute, have raised concerns about the marketisation of research and knowledge. Knowledge capitalism is closely related to academic capitalism, which has been one perspective from which to study how higher education is integrated with the political economy and how higher education relates to states, markets and globalisation (Cantwell and Kauppinen, 2014; Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004). Based on previous research, one should take more seriously the complex ways in which universities and research are integrated into local, national, and global political economies (e.g. Marginson and Rhoades, 2002). As two critical scholars, we are interested in power and not interested in research for its own sake. We are keen on writing something that is politically relevant, something that makes sense of this world and our thinking in academia.

Furthermore, the growing number of projects in the public and third sectors (e.g. Rantala and Sulkunen, 2006) and in research work (e.g. Brunila, 2009, 2011, 2015; Grabher, 2004; Hakala, 2009; Hakala et al., 2003; Kallioniemi-Chambers, 2010; Pakkasvirta, 2009; Ylijoki, 2010) has gradually been recognised in Finland. In Finland, publicly funded academic research has been increasingly forced to apply for European Union (EU) funding in project-based activities (Brunila, 2009, 2011; Ylijoki, 2010). A significant proportion of domestic funds has been steered towards projects that specifically reflect EU policies (Andersson et al., 2006; Sjöblom, 2009). Consequently, the number of project researchers in academia has increased almost two-and-a-half fold (Ylijoki, 2010). Recipients of project funding tend to view it positively; it goes without saying that individual projects may promote many types of expertise and competence. But in this paper it is argued that, with the rapid increase of project-based research (e.g. Brunila, 2011; Ylijoki, 2010), analysis must move away from individual projects to the wider implications of the project market in the ethos of knowledge capitalism.

Brunila has previously examined the private, public and third sectors, particularly education and training, by asking what happens when operations that have been funded with budget resources transferred to publicly funded projects (Brunila, 2009, 2011; Brunila et al., 2010). Hannukainen has examined postgraduate studies from various fields of science as well as participation in publicly funded research projects. With a joint analysis of two separate and individual studies, the focus is on the situation of academic researchers in the project market, which in this article represents knowledge capitalism. Earlier research has already suggested how the ideal of a researcher dedicated over a lifetime to one’s research interests has been replaced by an effective, efficient and flexible team player, who is eager to embrace new funding opportunities, but also someone who is struggling as to how to present oneself the ‘right way’ (Brunila, 2015; Davies, 2005; Petersen, 2008; Ylijoki, 2015). The purpose of studying knowledge capitalism in the university is to enable researchers, who want a different kind of future, to understand and conceptualise what is happening and to work towards alternatives.

Project as a method to introduce a more market orientation

It could be claimed that the project market represents knowledge capitalism, which simultaneously enables and regulates the scope of researchers as well as what kind of knowledge is produced and for what purposes. In this paper knowledge capitalism is here interpreted in the spirit of Nigel Thrift, as capitalism with brains (Thrift, 2005). It functions by continuously seeking new and more predictable knowledge to promote competitiveness and being managed (Thrift, 2005; see also Peters and Besley, 2006). Jussi Vähämäki (2009) has referred to the concept of tietokykykapitalismi (cognitive capitalism) when emphasising the form of capitalist accumulation in which people’s general knowledge and knowing are subjected to economic utilisation and exploitation. Knowledge capitalism focuses on the role of knowledge and knowing precisely from the perspective of economic interests (see also Boutang, 2011; Peters and Bulut, 2011). The critical discussion on the current situation, mentioned in the introduction, is considered as a concern that science is being harnessed to a ‘techno-science’ of knowledge capitalism. Such capitalism focuses on the manipulation of human nature and the human mind, or, quoting Jussi Vähämäki, that investigates humans as ‘knowledge beings’ capable of producing meaning without a specific reason; that is, creating something new which must be more predictable and measurable (Vähämäki, 2005; see also Naskali, 2010).

In Finland, the formation of the project market is related to a change that took place in the public sector in the 1980s and 1990s and involved decentralisation, a new way of thinking about public administration, the reform of the government’s performance guidance and accession to the EU (Brunila, 2009; Rantala and Sulkunen, 2006). As a result, the public sector began to borrow the language of the private sector and the business world (Julkunen, 2006). The project market is a concrete result of this change, which several researchers have examined as a transfer from administration to (new) managerialism/new public management (e.g. Ball, 2007; Brunila, 2009; Popkewitz and Lindblad, 2004; Rantala and Sulkunen, 2006). Managerialism functions by assigning the responsibility for welfare politics to individual projects and the persons involved in them, or a project society (Rantala and Sulkunen, 2006). According to Pekka Sulkunen (2006), a project society means power without a centre and the project as a new nucleus in the system of power. The related new management system emerged in business administration, from which management has moved to public administration and moral issues.

Projects have become an ideological method to introduce greater market orientation, while researchers involved with projects have been made more accountable for their labour-market fates. In spite of the increasing number of project-based activities, there has been much less attention given to critical examination of this phenomenon. The concept of ‘projectisation’ (Brunila, 2009, 2012) can be used to examine the concrete functioning of knowledge capitalism. In this paper, projectisation represents a form of discursive practice, meaning especially knowledge formation. The focus is on how researcher subjectivities and knowledge are produced through plural and contingent practices across different sites of project-based research. This provides an opportunity to view the structure of the forms of power connected to project-based research and to investigate their effects on research subjectivities and the knowledge produced. Projectisation as a discursive practice can be viewed as a product of new public management/managerialism and a consequence of EU-driven contemporary societies that increasingly rely on voluntary contracts between individuals, groups, organisations, enterprises, states and their organs or officials. It represents market-orientated self-organising networks by incorporating, producing and positioning everyone involved in project-based work. It is productive in the sense that it shapes and retools, in order to fit in with its needs.

In other words, with the concept of projectisation we are able to acknowledge what shapes project-based activities and what is shaped by project-based activities. To study projectisation more deeply, we must understand subjectification. The concept of subjectification can be used to examine how we are simultaneously subjected to the conditions controlled by discursive practices and learn to manage these conditions ‘correctly’ (Davies, 1998; see also Brunila, 2012). In the university, subjectification refers to the construction of the researcher subject, and represents the processes through which we as researchers are subjected to, and actively take up as our own, the terms of our subjection. The formation of the researcher subject thus depends on powers external to itself. Researchers may resist and agonise over those powers, but, at the same time, they also depend on them for their existence.

In our joint analysis, subjectification describes the ongoing process whereby researcher subjects are placed and take place in projectised discourses. Through these discourses researchers become speaking subjects at the same time as they are subjected to the constitutive force of those discourses. Furthermore, it is the paradoxical simultaneity of submission and mastery, and the related ambivalence, that we explore in this article. ‘Correct’ governing refers to the ‘correct’ repetition of knowledge in the spirit of joint economic efforts as well as the extraction of pleasure from it. It may also simultaneously mean discomfort and recognising the form of power, in which case it also provides another perspective on knowledge and knowing and, thus, may also allow for more leeway. In addition, we consider that the projectisation as a form of discursive practice is always being constructed and is never fixed. In research, at any moment in time and space, a range of competing discourses exist, and some of them are given more space than others.

Data and analysis

The research data analysed for this article have been produced through two studies both conducted in the research group led by Kristiina Brunila. Research data of Brunila in this article consist of the documents associated with three publicly funded research and development projects from the 2000s. In addition, Brunila has interviewed six persons in senior research positions in the education and training sector, who also worked in academic research and development projects. The number of interviews totalled 30, and the project documents relate to just over 100 projects (research and development projects). All the data were produced between 2003 and 2010. The researchers in the data represent the tradition of critical research highlighting issues of social justice and equality in education and working life. The interview questions used in this article were related to various kinds of challenges in working in publicly funded, and especially EU-funded, projects. In the article the researchers are called ‘senior researchers’ due to their long experience (over 10 years) working in the field.

The research data of Hannukainen consist of 28 interviews of PhD researchers conducted between 2014 and 2015. The interviews conducted and collected by Hannukainen are part of her doctoral dissertation where the aim is to study knowledge capitalism, knowing and subjectification in relation to doctoral school management. The interview questions were related to various kinds of dimensions in working as a PhD student in doctoral schools in academia, as well as to doctoral studies and in the production of knowledge. The younger researchers were at various stages with their doctoral dissertations and they had accumulated different forms of funding. All the PhD students took part in project-based activities through their dissertation.

We acknowledge that projectisation as a form of discursive practice does not simply describe researchers but also helps to create them, not only as objects but also as subjects, due to the way in which they can also influence the individual’s sense of self. Our attention is directed to projectisation as a discursive practice, meaning especially knowledge formation. The focus is on how knowledge and subjectivities of researchers are produced and shaped through plural and contingent practices on the basis of their projectisation. Such an approach bridges a symbolic–material distinction and signals the ever-political nature of ‘the real’ (Bacchi and Bonham, 2014). This kind of analysis enables us to view the structure of the forms of power connected to projectisation and to investigate their effects on knowledge and subjectivities of researchers.

It was extremely interesting to start comparing our data. Although these data were produced in different projects and during different time periods, they still show the same kind of persistent ambivalences. We were haunted (and still are) by one question: what is the place and role of academic researchers and of knowledge in academia at a time when critique is silenced – even in such a progressive and democratic Nordic country as Finland? We directed our focus on the conditions related to project-based research in knowledge capitalism and the consequences that these interests and conditions have for the scope of researcher subjectivities, particularly from the perspectives of knowledge.

It is crucial to argue that the discursive practice we analyse includes some kind of premise or assumption, a dominant ideology which simultaneously erases other ways of knowing and creates the myth of harmony and mutual understanding. Elisabeth Adams St. Pierre writes about significant silences and absences, the places in a text in which the presence of ideology is most clearly felt. It is precisely these silences that must be made to speak (St. Pierre, 2000). In this article, this means sensitivity to repressed knowledge and the margins, that which is not heard and usually not talked about.

Academic research on the project market

It really matters what gets funded: you do what you get funding for. Finland is a small country, with small ministries and a small political elite. It’s like a merry-go-round. (Senior researcher)

I have worked as a researcher in several EU-funded projects for over ten years. You have to learn the jargon and perform your research in accordance to it. (Senior researcher)

The researchers’ comments above indicate the situation of what has been an important period in Finland, the EU policy period. Consequently, in the project market run by the EU, one must become flexible; as the senior researchers above describe, the basic idea is that you do what you get funding for, you learn to perform the jargon and you learn to sell it as well. The majority of EU-funded projects have been implemented with funding specifically reserved for a particular purpose. This is also one of the obstacles for continuity: as soon as the funding is over, the research ends. When the funding is over a completely new project with a new idea must be pursued. This circle of endless projects was reflected on during the interviews with cynicism and restlessness:

What you hear all the time is that you must do away with the frills […] They [i.e. projects] become sort of symbolic, in the sense that this theme has now been discussed. (Senior researcher)

The way some researchers babble, they are like annoying mosquito bites that just won’t go away. […] The conditions and funds have actually been restricted. (Senior researcher)

What you do in the project means nothing. The company (University) just wants the money to flow in. (Senior researcher)

All of the above researchers have studied education and training by focusing on practices and cultures that increase inequality. In Brunila’s interviews with them, they discussed their work as researchers and the conditions that control research. The expression ‘do away with the frills’ describes the essence of knowledge capitalism, which functions by defining and predicting essential knowledge and knowing, the core, the focus points and the pinnacle, as well as their opposites. The other researcher mentions short-term university projects on inequality as having a largely symbolic effect by demonstrating that the issue has been discussed.

This is what happens in the project market that aims to control knowledge in advance: researchers’ attempts to generate critical discussion may even become the ‘irritating babble’ described by one of the researchers above. This has its consequences, such as reduced scope. Nevertheless, all of the above researchers were continuing to conduct research, which increasingly resembles an entrepreneurial venture because of the emphasis on personal responsibility.

I was hired for this rather huge EU project to do research related to gender equality and how to conduct gender equality work, so that it would overcome some typical obstacles we know that exist. I was not able to do that at all. They even threatened not to publish my research results anywhere, if they did not support the project aims. (Senior researcher)

In the above research project, the research was seemingly forced to promote productivity and competitiveness, which were the aims of the project, according to the researcher. We heard many stories like this during the interviews. The excerpt above is just one example of the way in which projectisation steers operations in the direction of performance and efficiency.

In addition, projectisation works by positioning those involved in the project: how obedience is ensured and how the conditions for being heard are determined in each of the positions defined in the project.

If something is unclear, you first ask the project coordinator. If the project coordinator does not know the answer, you ask the project manager. If the issue is still unclear, the project manager clarifies it with the funder. If the project manager does not have the time or the issue is extensive, then someone else can ask about it, but that has to be separately arranged with the project manager. The reason is that […] the project must provide a coherent and good image to the funder. (Instructions for a publicly funded research and development project 2006)

Some exceptions were also included in our data, particularly where a joint effort had been made to recognise power relations. Brunila has previously shown how various kinds of tensions in the relations between the project participants manifest as silence, which may have serious consequences if not recognised. Consequently, those in different positions may live in very different realities that never come into contact with each other:

They are separated from each other, and what happens then is that what’s done in the field does not get analysed. […] Like there’s been this kind of rift between research and practice. Though people have tried to erode or dispel it. (Senior researcher)

In the above abstract, a researcher involved in several research projects describes a situation in which research and practice easily become viewed as separate. In the interviews, the ‘rift’ between research and practice usually meant that research was placed in a subordinate position. Many of Brunila’s interviewees mentioned that critical research with a social scientific orientation could even become a threat.

Working within the boundaries of the project market

I feel that I have all this responsibility all by myself. I do not expect that someone would help. For me it goes very well like this, maybe this is some kind of internal entrepreneurship. I do not even expect that someone would do something for me. (Younger researcher)

Being a researcher is very similar to being a private entrepreneur. You need to wade and build and sell your idea. It is a competitive situation. It’s a good thing. In a way, it’s a kind of exciting tension between competition and collaboration. (Younger researcher)

Projectisation guides academic researchers to become entrepreneurial, economic and financially accountable individuals (see also Brunila, 2009; Nikkola and Harni, 2015). However, it was still surprising to see how strongly this type of ideal researcher subjectivity occurred in the interviews with younger researchers. In Hannukainen’s interviews, younger researchers fluently discussed responsibility and the competitive situation in the university. Internal entrepreneurship was considered to be a natural part of becoming an expert and an integral part of research work.

Furthermore, while demonstrating this type of ideal subjectivity, a constant ambivalence was also demonstrated. Both younger and senior researchers were talking about how marginal research topics do not even reach the level of implementation because they do not receive external funding. The option that remains is to continue with one’s own personal funds, or adjusting one’s research topic to the popular and common themes presented by funders:

It looks like these ‘wow-projects’ tend to receive funding. In such projects the research part is a bit odd or undetailed, but the researcher is known or the topic has been made to sound eventful. There might be bitterness here […] My (field) is not very sexy. (Younger researcher)

In general it is easier to get funding for subjects which are related to what is of importance to Finland. If you do something related to the forest industry (one of the biggest industries in Finland) it is probably a bit easier than if you’re doing some research on African plants. (Younger researcher)

It is technology that gets all the funding. Then we just have to adjust our activities to technology. (Senior researcher)

If this division goes unrecognised, practice and theory will be hierarchically organised. This, in turn, will create the impression that they are two separate entities, which will result in the people involved in projects losing sight of their mutual dependence. According to our and previous results, a common problem related to projects is that the initial premise and practices are not subjected to sufficient analytical and critical examination (see also Brunila, 2009; Guttorm et al., 2014).

The interviewed researchers explained how the results they had obtained were not necessarily taken into account if they did not support the operational objectives set in advance. The results could be left out of publications, or the researcher could be pressured, threatened or even given notice of contract termination. In some cases, a notice of termination was preceded by bullying, invalidation and harassment.

In knowledge capitalism the emphasis on the management and predictability of knowledge has increased with the growing number of projects, and has led to the emergence of the profession of assessors. Ilkka Kankare has called this phenomenon the sinful alliance of the project society (Kankare, 2006). The natural next step is to perform commissioned research, in which the funder, various partners and assessors join in deciding on the research framework, analysis and results.

If there is a funder who wants to support some specific area, and if there is no such research area already, it will be created. If the funding channels get privatised, research will be more and more shaped according to a funder’s dictates. (Younger researcher)

You learn what the funders and assessors want. And you learn to write accordingly. (Senior researcher)

Therefore it is hardly surprising that the scope of commissioned research has increased alongside project-based research in higher education (e.g. Raatikainen, 2002). In Finland, universities have already acknowledged the crisis in basic research and found that they have lost ground to applied research and various customer-orientated and externally funded commissioned projects (e.g. Brunila, 2009; Guttorm et al., 2014; Tomperi, 2009; Ylijoki, 2003).

The users’ needs and the steering group’s instructions were taken into account and [the book] became concise, clear and hands-on. […] The expectation was that everyday language rather than scholarly language be used and that practical instructions rather than theory be emphasised. (Instructions for researchers in a publicly funded research and development project 2006)

The above project included extensive 2-year research on the promotion of equality in organisations. The aim was to publish a book written by two researchers based on their research results. The book was finished but never published. Instead, the project produced a leaflet highlighting practical instructions. The extract and the process with the book is an example of how researchers, administration and funders operate in very different discourses that simultaneously regulate their scope and how they are heard.

Concepts such as users’ needs, conciseness, clarity, a hands-on approach, everyday language and the avoidance of theory and scholarly language demonstrate the primary status of pragmatism. The problem of pragmatism is that it functions by directing attention away from the analytical examination of the initial premise, that is, why something is done or for what purpose. Accordingly, the other side of pragmatism is moral neutrality (Sulkunen, 2006: 29). This is how projectisation works by placing researchers in the position of responding to the funder’s wishes. In terms of subjectification it can be formulated accordingly: ‘Of course money guides what gets done, that’s obvious’. Consequently, once an academic researcher is categorised as such, s/he soon learns how to belong to that particular category, and thus becomes submissive to projectisation:

In Finland, we have learned to utilise what comes from above (…) It is simply turned into an aim to determine what this means exactly. (Senior researcher)

One can always say that the EU has decided to give money for this. So in this way one can get some prestige for his or her project. Money is sort of a good thing. (Senior researcher)

As the finance model of universities is based on productivity, research gets legitimated by ‘numbers’ such as the number of projects, the amount of funding and the citation index. Therefore it does not come as a surprise that younger researchers demonstrate this awareness of their ‘numbers’:

It is just quite clear that the only thing that matters is the number of publications. (Younger researcher)

If unrecognised, this way in which power functions may remain invisible. Therefore, especially in relation to younger researchers, it is important to consider the conditions under which academic researchers work and are heard.

What can be done?

Previously we showed how projectisation as a discursive practice produces certain types of ‘truths’, normative ways of being and doing, as well as ideas about the right kind of knowledge and knowing. This is crucial to understand in order to see how researcher subjectivity stems not so much from the individual, but from the condition of possibility – the discourses, which prescribe not only what is desirable, but also what is recognisable as an acceptable form of researcher subjectivity.

Acknowledging and recognising the critical voices related to projectisation is crucial in order to find ways to mobilise academic researchers for resistance. The aim to predict and manage knowledge, like the emphasis on defining the core, implies rational knowledge and knowing as well as a self-sufficient subject. The temptation for researchers is to place themselves in the position of someone who ‘gives a voice’ (Brunila, 2009) and proposes transferable solutions such as ‘good practices’ to various problems. Discourses have a tendency to turn into a customary, ‘self-originating’ language (Davies, 1998), which is not necessarily recognised as such. If the form of power is not recognised, it is easy to end up in a cycle that maintains repetition. This means that problems keep being produced in one place and addressed in another. For a critical senior researcher who analyses social justice and social power relationships, this may represent a constant sense of discomfort:

I left in the early 1990s to get away from […] which were implemented as projects […] I came to the university and breathed a sigh of relief […] and now I have again become tangled up with these […] projects. (Senior researcher)

I am so fed up with these endless project applications but what else can you do? (Senior researcher)

Furthermore, the discomfort is also present in the everyday life of younger researchers as distracting and confusing work:

This is what it is. It has been very stressful to work like this when you have to apply for those grants every month. I have sent these applications to several dozen places. It is somewhat frustrating. (Younger researcher)

If I want to be a researcher at the university, I have understood that it means I am working for a project. It might be that those projects do not interest me one bit. I’m not sure if I want to spend the rest of my career working in some project I am not interested in and, in addition, with a poor salary. So I would prefer to apply for a research position somewhere other than at the university. (Younger researcher)

In these extracts, the researchers describe their work in ways that show how working in project-based research positions represents a sense of both discomfort and commitment, acceptance and resistance (see also Ylijoki, 2010). The work can be seen as a form of subjectification, the simultaneous ‘correct’ mastering of, and submission to, the ideals stressed by knowledge capitalism and the project market. However, the interviews showed that research can also provide a certain amount of leeway:

The reason why I […] wanted to move over to research […] a sort of desire to understand, understand in depth, and also to help others understand […], how inequality and discrimination are constructed. (Senior researcher)

I cannot stop now. I just have to think of these projects as resources for social justice. (Senior researcher)

We understand that academic researchers inevitably function in the discursive practices whose products they also are. The project market tends to shape the notion of researcher subjectivity by enhancing the illusion of individual autonomy as a consequence of the ‘autonomisation’ and ‘accountability’ of the self. While shaping researcher subjectivity, the purpose of knowledge capitalism remains disguised: providing legitimation to become more economically productive subjects.

Accounts of research subjectivity as a subject-in-process could provide understanding in terms of capacity to act as both repetitions taking place in discourses, including the possibility to repeat it differently. This means that it is precisely the abandonment of the self-sufficient subject that allows for leeway (Davies, 1998; Lather, 2003; Naskali, 2003; St. Pierre, 2000). If we understood researcher subjectivity this way, it would help to see problems concerning projectisation not as objects, but rather as the products of different practices and power relations, and therefore negotiable and changeable. Within this kind of approach, knowledge is not seen as an exclusive right, and the power associated with knowledge is not deemed to belong to someone. Accordingly, when involved in academic discourses one is both conditioned by and dependent on the prevailing norms, and at the same time one needs to find one’s way ethically and responsibly. So it is the paradoxical simultaneity of submission and mastery, and the related ambivalence, which we were keen to explore further.

Such juxtapositions related to knowledge and knowing only serve to uphold the hierarchisation of knowledge and knowing. They also sustain the repetition of the juxtaposition between the researcher who ‘knows better’ and the subject of knowledge. Rather, the issue is one of negotiation, which means that it is not a one-way power relation and that the researcher’s leeway, knowledge and knowing are in a constant state of becoming. The researcher does not have access to ultimate knowledge, and acknowledging this may offer the opportunity to know differently.

Furthermore, repetition is not the same as permanence. Tuija Pulkkinen (2003) has noted that repetition always also includes an element of surprise. This draws attention from the pursuit of origin and the essential to the reproduction of the customary and the significance of repetition (Pulkkinen, 2003: 217). A more intricate analysis takes into account both functioning within the power relations in question and the conditions that define social power relations and differences. If one thinks that research work takes shape during the process itself, it is in a constant state of becoming and inevitably something that is about to become.

Once we understood this, we began to analyse interviews in another manner. We were able to examine activities that easily fall outside the reading. Brunila discussed with her interviewees about how they recognised inequality and promoted justice by utilising projectisation:

Here in Finland we’ve been able to use what is given from above […] so that was just simply turned into the goal of finding out what this is all about. (Senior researcher)

You could say that the EU has decided to give money for this purpose. So in a way it’s possible to get a little prestige for the project that way. Money is a good thing. (Senior researcher)

What do I do? I make sure I get enough project funding and then I do whatever I feel is important to do. (Senior researcher)

The activities described by the researchers above represent discursive skills, which Brunila has previously explored as discourse virtuosity in the project market (see also Brunila, 2009). We interpret these activities as cultural competence, a situational capacity for ‘correct’ management, which also refers to the discerning of a political agency having no essential core (cf. Pulkkinen, 2003). Discursive virtuosity was highlighted in the interviews in many ways. Language and discourses are learned to be used or even abused. This brings us to the situation in which discourses can be strategically used, adapted, rejected or surpassed, as Bronwyn Davies has noted (Davies, 1998: 60–61).

While discourses on projectisation address its target, the subject can move between and within discourses and see how they transform her or him. Knowledge and knowing are always connected to power. They are not, however, understood as originating from an individual or status. The issue at stake is also about politicising phenomena and opening up a space for the political. Recognising power relations associated with knowledge also challenges knowledge capitalism and the project market’s pre-written form of power, which leads to repetition.

However, while you operate within the system as an academic researcher it is crucial to be aware of various kinds of problems related to project-based research. Based on our results, we became deeply concerned, not so much with senior researchers, but with what happens when younger researchers enter the project market in situations when there is no support and insufficient critical knowledge available as regards the current ethos of knowledge capitalism.

Conclusion

Academic research is nowadays more likely to gain its legitimisation from knowledge capitalism and becomes responsible for individual short-term research and development projects. It is hugely important to widen the debate about researchers’ subjectivity, especially now when knowledge capitalism tends to shape it by enhancing the illusion of individual autonomy as a consequence of the autonomisation and responsibilitisation of the self. From the perspective of subjectification, it implies that the person involved in research has to submit to knowledge capitalism and must also master the language of the market in order to be heard. Consequently, projects with a market-orientated policy and using economic discourse have formed a new joint rhetorical discursive framework in the area of research. This alliance can be viewed as a response to the needs of a global economy where research is harnessed to market forces in order to help shape a more flexible and mobile labour force.

Our results indicate that, from the perspective of the scope of researchers, a better management of knowledge, as aimed for by knowledge capitalism, seems to sustain repetition or at most solution-centred updating. As Nigel Thrift (2005: 3) has argued, ‘capitalism is performative as it is highly adaptive and constantly mutating: it is always engaged in experiment, as the project is perpetually unfinished’. In this article, we have argued that in the ethos of knowledge capitalism, it is indeed activities built upon projects that suggest both repetition and constant change as well as micro-engineering of space and time. In the projectised activity one becomes capable of development and learns to produce the right kind of knowledge in accordance to a market-orientated discourse. The right kind of knowledge works by ensuring that researchers keep themselves busy by making themselves available to fulfil the needs of the market. This indicates a more instrumental idea in which research is seen as an investment and as a product of money. The rise of project-based activities all over Europe, not just in research but in politics and in practices on the whole, has resulted in enormous changes in social structure, power relations and knowledge.

This calls for a more critical appraisal including a study of the effects and the perspectives of subjectification, resistance and rebellion. We want to highlight that the academic research subjects who appear in the text are both competent selves who are discursively constituted, but also reflexive selves. When involved in academic discourses one is both conditioned by and dependent on the prevailing norms, but it does not take away the possibility of finding one’s way ethically and responsibly. What we wanted to argue is the importance of understanding how acting as academic subjects is always a ‘becoming’ something that involves active doing. Discussion with researchers inspired us to examine scope as well as knowledge and knowing in a way that allows us to consider both the functioning of power and functioning in power relations. Our purpose was not to criticise individual projects or those working in them. The persons we interviewed also seemed committed to their duties despite the continuum of projects. We were interested in a more extensive form of governing that addresses its subjects subtly and invisibly, yet persistently, and reduces the scope of researchers in the project market.

In Finland, and in the Nordic context in general, a more critical evaluation of policies and practices related to higher education and research is especially salient because our research results question the widespread view of the Nordic welfare state model including education as integral to equality. We consider it necessary to examine whether science and research are being harnessed as part of the production chain of knowledge capitalism. The project market challenges the whole Nordic welfare state model by harnessing the knowledge produced by researchers on vague fixed-term contracts through careful predictions so that the knowledge can more efficiently meet the needs of knowledge capitalism. On closer inspection, however, these needs seem poorly understood, even insubstantial. In knowledge capitalism, the production chain in question functions in the spirit of an updated version of Taylorist management as an assembly line, which continuously generates rational technological tools and good practices, but the results are insignificant and of no concern to anyone. In these circumstances, it may be quite difficult to call for a critical examination of the basic foundations of operations, let alone ethical or political perspectives. Therefore this form of power may have serious consequences. Obtaining understanding in relation to this means recognising that researchers can never be free from the discourses that have enabled their knowing and knowledge. Knowing and knowledge are controlled from above, but not in the sense that researchers have no other options. Rather, this is a process in which researchers learn to know and produce knowledge ‘correctly’.