Abstract
The neo-liberal university not only changes systems of governance but also impacts on how subject positions are valued. These changes justify critical questions on how academics manoeuvre in academia. In this study focus is on the told experiences of 18 researchers who describe how they made an excellent career in academia. The results show that most of the researchers express awareness about a performative culture in terms of how it is affecting their careers and how they should make mindful and rewarding choices. Accordingly, the “excellent researcher” is expected to know how to use specific locations in order to move in a profitable way. Some express that they move as they like, due to their individual competence. The results also illustrate how women more than men express uncertainties and complex self-images that create barriers (mental and physical). Men seem to think less about their conditions than women, and express clear views about where to go and how to move. Women move less distinctly and less collaborative, but also seem less rewarded. Many of the women appear anxious, especially in relation to the boundaries between private- and work-life, which partly could disable them in using their capacity of making distinct choices in their career.
Introduction
That higher education is currently being exposed to a significant neo-liberal policy change in Europe and more broadly is beyond contention (Olssen and Peters, 2005). Also, this policy change articulates and forms discourses of performativity (Ball, 2012), marketization (Deem et al., 2007) and excellence (Marginson, 2011), which all have significant impact on how academic subjectivity is constructed (Archer, 2008a, 2008b; Davies and Petersen, 2005), as well as on how subject positions are valued. This justifies critical questions on how academics manoeuvre in academia. The aim of this article is to contribute to key knowledge by investigating how the changes sketched above affect the processes of becoming a researcher and how research careers are formed. More specifically, the intention is to focus on how a specific group, labelled as successful researchers, move and think as both active and restricted in their academic career.
The policy changes have resulted in a change between the state and its relation to academic institutions. The changes have not only created demands of competition between universities (and other institutions), but also affected how they produce research and teaching (Beach, 2013). These demands of competition are articulated as and by systems of ranking, publication rates and measures of success (Deem et al., 2007). According to Ball (2013), these systems are used as performative techniques in order to create a “system of terror”: this is a regime of accountability that employs judgements, comparisons and displays as means of control attrition and change (Ball, 2013:57). Two of the key “outcomes” of this academic culture are, in regards to Ball (2012), that academics increasingly are expected (and demanded) to gain external revenue for research or consultancy and by this gain excellence in higher education.
The study has developed by following an approach related to Braidotti and Roets (2012) and Colebrook’s (2010) analysis. Focus is on the processes of becoming by means of analysing meaning concentrations of 18 early career researchers 1 and their experiences of making a successful career. These researchers are active in Education Sciences. This field is considered to be particularly well suited for this kind of study. It is a new scientific field in Sweden, which consists of a particular patterned set of practices, as designed for developing research of relevance to teaching and teacher education (Beach, 2011). According to Öhrn and Lundahl’s (2012) study, the number of women in this field dominates over the number of men, both among students and staff, even though men tend to have the most prestigious positions.
As illustrated above, the focus on the process of becoming an academic implies a combination of several related questions. In regards to Deleuze and Guattari (1994), the idea is to use the concept of the academic subject as multi-layered, and concerned with how the becoming of the subject occurs, what it means to become, for whom and why. The study is also placed in relation to the research work by both Davies (Davies, 2006; Davies and Petersen, 2005) and Hey and Morely (2011), who deal with aspects of subjectivity, gender and space.
Competition and gender in academia
Excellence is a term often articulated by and within the dominant Western discourses of higher education. According to European Union (EU) policy, the purpose of using this term is to create a stronger higher education area (The European Union Council of Ministers, 2007, 2009) and a more “competitive university”. The intentions are clear, as described by The European Council (2001). A stronger higher education area will support the EU as the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.
It is illustrated (by, e.g., Archer, 2008a; Van den Brink, 2010) how excellence has come to represent and influence a particular and powerful academic culture. “Excellence” is used as a standard of measurement in order to create and give legitimacy to the competitive and high-quality academic institution: “within the contemporary ‘corporate’ university the production of (at least) four ‘high quality’ publications…//…is necessary” (Archer, 2008a: 389).
The academic institution, accordingly, consists of and creates a highly competitive system, where subjects are competing for funding and merits (see e.g. in Angervall and Gustafsson, 2015). Through setting individuals against each other with defined measures of success, they become de-individualized and “herded” into being members of an auditable group (Davies and Bansel, 2010). When defining and comparing these different groups, how they move and achieve, clear relations of power become visible. For example, patterns of gender appear to form academic careers, where the careers of women and men often are described as unequal and unjust. In a recent study, the state-funded and very top research institutes in Sweden were found to be dominated by homogenous groups of men. Even though the idea with “state-funding for excellent research” is to stimulate top researchers and teams to perform high-quality research, the study also shows that these are actually producing less research than other research groups. They continuously get these funds anyway. Moreover, the results of the report show that women tend to move towards teaching and administration more than research, which affects how they climb the career ladder. This gives some explanations to why women are less likely to receive research funds, as well as a status as excellence in research, even if they apply (Sandström et al., 2010).
In Angervall et al.’s (2015) study a clear pattern is described in how men and women move in academic careers. Men make career advancements faster than women, do more research and less teaching, and work in international networks. Women work more often than men with teaching and administration, often in horizontal and national networks. Many studies also illustrate how men’s actions are interpreted as more advantageous than women’s (see, e.g., Acker and Armenti, 2004; Van den Brink, 2010). At the same time, according to Davies and Petersen (2005), Davies (2006) and Hey and Morely (2011), the mechanisms behind how men and women “do gender” in their careers is often difficult to see and understand. It seems as if women often are measured from other angles than men, and therefore sometimes understood as less capable. Feelings of trust can also affect career advancements, as these feelings affect how men and women understand their conditions. Van den Brink (2010), for example, argues that women experience fewer opportunities than men in academia, which is related to the understanding that men are more able to focus and reach higher standards than women. Davies (2006) states that only by the presence of women in academia can they transgress the boundaries of what is understood as “correct practice”.
Another important aspect to consider in the understanding of gender and career in academia is also, as Braidotti (2010) argues, how men and women interpret their own actions in career. She claims that women, more than men, tend to talk of their sacrifices in life, their needs of recognition, and also how they try to take responsibility for others. She states that women often suffer from the syndrome of the dutiful daughter: “… as they unquestioningly and implicitly believe in the role /…/ a master discourse” (p. 4).
Methodology
In the present investigation the concept of the nomadic subject has been used to give a deeper understanding of a becoming subjectivity as such, that is, a subject searching for legitimacy and territory within an academic institution. This subject is in a transit space, in a constant process of becoming, changing, mediating levels of power and desires (Braidotti, 2010, 2013).
Consequently, the researchers in this study are seen as in constant search for conscious-ness, for material recognition and subtle needs. In line with Braidotti, the construction of the nomadic subject, and its values and constrains, is an intersectional process (see also Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). This is determined by and is the consequence not only of gender (as of particular interest in this study) but also by class, ethnicity, age and other social relations.
The researchers are more or less seen as entrapped in spaces, by their cultural representations as to their gender, by their mental positions and their material resources. Accordingly, analysing the process of a becoming subjectivity means to focus not only on the material and discursive conditions, the mental and physical resources available, but also their cultural representations that they as subjects articulate and deal with (Braidotti, 1994). From this perspective individuals gain or lose power by their constant movements and shifts between wilful choice and unconscious actions. Power can, in this process, not only be negative in that it constrains and entraps, but also positive in what it enables.
Subsequently, the assumption is that the nomadic subject can be characterized as decentred relative to the flow of emotions that constitutes the subject and the creating of subjectivity. Desires, most often an unconscious process, are essential to the subject’s constitution and produce multiple relationships. Thus, I have a special interest in locations of transit and places: “/…/ where all ties are suspended and time is stretched to a variety of continuous gifts //oases of non-belonging, spaces of detachment, no-(wo) man’s land” (Braidotti, 1994: 18–19). Travelling or being in transit is not a target in itself for a nomad. It is a strategy for exploiting scarce or widely spread resources, as well as an expression of an uncertainty of existence.
The empirical study was carried out at three large (research-based) and three small regional (poly-techs, non-doctoral) universities in Sweden. At these universities, 20 departments as well as research units, defined as embedded in educational sciences, have been analysed by means of texts and interviews (in total 110). In this study, 18 early career researchers 2 were selected (13 men, 5 women) on the basis of their specific career movements. They are identified as successful, not only by their formal positions at their departments, but also by their own descriptions. They know how to move and think in accordance with majority interests, as part of and formed by the discourse of excellence.
Data was produced by in-depth interviews that varied between 50 and 100 minutes in length. During the interviews, I focused on how the researchers describe their experiences, career paths and relations to multiple others, the conditions and the consequences, the sacrifices, choices and rewards. Data were summarized through meaning concentration (Kvale and Brinkman, 2009) in order to create detailed descriptions of their experiences and career paths.
In the analysis, nomadology offers a way to investigate how researchers negotiate subject positions and shape their academic careers. The nomadic concept is used in order to point to the importance of not overly individualizing the individual and instead looking beyond the taken-for-granted cultural and social representation that emerges in the interviews (Rajchman, 2000). Thus, when referring to the researchers in the study as nomadic subjects, this is based on an analytical perspective. Of course, I am not trying to say that they are nomads in true life. However, what respondents say and do in interviews, are what they say and do. “We have no right to impute more” (Thomas, 1998: 145). This means, in regards to Tamboukou and Ball (2002), that my analysis is only one of several possible and is based on the researcher stories.
Becoming an excellent researcher
In the section below the results of the analysis are presented. I have identified three empirically grounded and intersected themes: (a) a clear line of career; (b) being part of a community; and (c) the balance of contradictory locations.
A clear line of career
All of the researchers in this study articulate themselves, in their acts and talk (to various extent), as recognized by the dominant discourses of success. In their descriptions they all appear to move close to a place near the majority (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994). Some of them explain how they gained influence and recognition early in their careers. Robert, for example, describes himself as aware of how to manoeuvre in order to become successful: I have probably been lucky, or spoiled, but have been able to move on, use the contacts I have made, done the work, been given a lot of support /…/… and been able to move in order to move on, and of course I am happy and appreciate the fact that I have been able to do research the whole time, on issues that really concern me. //I don’t want to change anything, and it is more and more to do for me in a good way, so I know where I am going … (Robert)
Also others explain how they feel safe and in control of their movements. Marcus describes his qualities as a researcher and how he feels that these qualities are necessary in order to get good publication rates: To be honest, I am quite rigid and structured, so to speak, and can put text in order without too many words involved /…/ I also like to sit on my own, write and think, and I really enjoy it, to be in a room on my own, with my writing/…/, and analyse my data, try to structure the pieces together /…/ and the analysis. It is actually fun to work on your own sometimes, and it’s an advantage if you like to do that. So, when you ask me what it is that I think I do well, I must say it is to write articles on my own. (Marcus)
Chris, who is explaining how he feels in relation to time restrictions, responsibilities and work efforts, draws a similar picture: … to work boundary-less is a condition, here, if you want to get success. I actually asked the head of department and he said, that well /…/ “In order to have time to get the right merits, you need to enjoy your work so much, that the effort must get personal”. We don’t get overtime, if you know what I mean. To ask if you will get paid for it, is to go over a limit that is not seen as reasonable for a successful researcher. (Chris)
Laura has made her career successful by, as she describes it, showing her wide range of competences during her doctoral studies. These competences not only made her attractive, and sought after, but they also made her sure of her own capacities. She says: As a master student I was invited to join a research project. But /…/ it took a while before I decided to do research education, even though I already had a position as research project assistant at this university. (Laura) I did a lot of different tasks during research education, and it gave me a foundation for my career /…/ even if I don’t work with my research group anymore, or have the help of my former supervisor. I see myself as very independent /…/ and it’s up to me to solve my career. (Laura)
Both Laura and Chris act as successful but still not fully content in their careers. By using Braidotti’s description they are in some respects: “/…/taking any kind of identity as permanent. //The nomad has no passport- or has too many of them” (Braidotti, 1994: 33). What is referred to as a passport is, as I understand it, the various competences, skills, contacts, areas of interests and possible lines in a career. From that perspective neither Laura nor Chris express certainty (that is why they need several “passports”).
Being part of a community
Several of the researchers stress the importance of being able to keep a clear focus, in order to move in and out of specialized networks and to use specific contacts. Some describe how early, even as under-graduates, they were offered individual support by a mentor, often a professor (e.g. Chris, Andrew, Robert). Below, Chris gives an example of the support he was given: When I wrote my essay the professor handpicked me and offered me to work on a research project and then helped me with my application to the research education program. (Chris)
Also, other kinds of support are seen as needed in order to make advancements in a career. Quite a few in the study mention their supervisors’ contributions to their individual opportunities to move and find safe locations. Henry, for example, says: … especially my co-supervisor, and I really think that is important. It is so difficult to publish and compete for merits on your own. You need help and mentoring several years after your doctorate. After a while, you don’t need a supervisor, more a senior co-worker, who knows where to go and what to do. (Henry)
Most of the researchers talk of the importance of being part of a community and how that is making them secure in career. They describe how they have and use connections to numerous physical places, to several research teams, to people at the local department and to other, both national and international, departments. Andrew, for example, mentions how he used contacts, both academic and administrative, in order to become part of different kinds of networks: I know the Dean, but I also know an influential professor, who I have a good relationship with/…/ I also had contacts with those who were recruiting someone for a position at another department, so when I then applied there, I also had contacts to refer to … (Andrew)
Some of the researchers also describe how networks and research teams compete for creating the best community, to give its members a sense of belonging and create productivity. One of the researchers, Margret, describes how her connection to a research team gives her opportunities to produce high-quality scientific merits: I wouldn’t say it is something that is expressed, but sure, our research team needs to compete for merits, internationally, and our team leader is anxious that we work hard and do our job, and we need more publication merits. Our standards are maybe a bit to low, even though we are not forced into anything, but of course, we all feel in in the air, because our work contributes to our status and opportunities as a team, and we want to be successful of course. (Margret)
Accordingly, the excellent researcher is both expected to act and think cooperatively, but only if this aids his or hers competitiveness and merits. The suggestion is that the researchers must be able to deal with and move in-between several locations, knowing how to use them and choose.
The balance of contradictory locations
What is indicated above is that the researchers in the study are expected to be both individually strong in their careers, whilst also supporting and representing the interests of the majority. For some, these expectations seem to create uncertainty and confusion, and there are indications that these sometimes contradictory locations and movements are defined by and related to gender. Robert, for example, is able to move in a way that makes him able to carve out different spaces and interests that provide the work-opportunities he needs in his career. It seems as if depending on how researchers deal with this act of balance, which is related to how they are defined in different contexts, they are able to put their priorities right and accordingly get rewarded.
Robert explains how researchers need to work together, in productive networks: We help each other, with bits and pieces /…/ and we try to offer each other help with reading and comments, and if someone has a research application and gets a good evaluation we are all involved, and get to read and give good input … so, sure, we help each other. (Robert)
Some of the researchers, in particular women, also express an uncertainty concerning time limits and career borders. Angela, for example, appears to be quite certain of the necessity of using both work and leisure time to make advancements in her career. However, she is not completely sure if it is right: I have never had any clear borders between leisure time and work. And, you need to be able to say no if you are aware of these borders, and I don’t find that easy, but, sure, if you work really hard during a couple of weeks, or months, you are able to take time off after … and that suits me fine. Even so, I don’t see any problem with reading email during weekends, or evenings (laughing), I rather feel it is necessary, but maybe I am wrong, and well it can anyway result in your being able to take time off if necessary … when you need to. (Angela)
Accordingly, understandings of success are influenced by tensions created by moving in-between various locations (with different expectations), between what is seen as individual choices and needs and the collective collaborative, and through tensions in relation to the idea of high performance and what appears as gender-biased solutions.
However, even though it seems as if success, in the researchers’ descriptions, is constructed as something that is choice driven and personal, other desires in life appear equally important for some of the researchers. Sometimes these “desires” also collide with the majority interests. For instance, Alice argues that the demands of high performance are making it difficult for her to get a healthy balance in her life: … the expectations for high performance are creating a very stressful situation, and, well it is almost an impossible situation. If you want to combine and get a balance in life, between what is private- and working hours. Why do we need to think of our work as a matter of life and death? Deadlines are made into a matter of succeeding to all costs. How to get this kind of career in balance with kids, and this workload hanging over you /…/ I don’t know. I can’t work like that anymore, and I don’t really want to either, but how to manage career then, well, how to be successful and set borders /…/ it is difficult. (Alice)
These conditions, described by Alice, are probably, just as in other examples above, the consequence of how the “competitive university” has created a performative “regime of terror” (Ball, 2013). Within this culture we are to become: “… responsible for our performance and for the performance of others” (Ball, 2012: 19).
Discussion
This study reflects on policy change in higher education concerning what has been defined as the “competitive university” (The European Council, 2001), and how this has affected career movements in research. The aim has been to analyse how a group of researchers in Education Sciences that are described as “excellent”, act and experience their lines of career development in academia.
The results illustrate some of the core representations of the subjectivity behind having an excellent academic career. Most of the researchers express awareness about a performative culture in terms of how it is affecting their careers and how they should make mindful and rewarding choices. For example, the researchers act as if they know what is rewarding, how to prioritize correctly and how to best use the spaces and resources given to them. For instance, Andrew, Robert and Marcus give some examples of how they move, how they get support and how they think in order to get recognition. Andrew says that he “knows where he is going” and, accordingly, he acts as if he is in a temporary transition with a clear line in mind for his career. Robert, talks about being “lucky or spoiled” when he describes his career. Marcus asks for a “structured” and lonely space in order to have “fun”. It seems, moreover, as if these ways to think about career moves are also recognized by the “majority”, which might explain how material career resources are gained and how researchers move and feel in relation to their “territories” (Braidotti, 2013).
The more satisfied with their career development the researchers describe themselves as, the more they seem to be aware of what is required of them in relation to the performative culture: there seems to be some kind of possible correlation here. Several of them also appear to be rather independent in terms of how they think of their needs (see similar in Davies and Petersen, 2005), but in general most of these more satisfied researchers appear to represent a stable and secure subjectivity about where they are going, why and how. Consequently, by using ideas from Deleuze and Guattari (1987), these researchers have “territories” (subjects, networks, funding, support, pathways) in their careers, which are giving them a sense of belonging, stability and influence over their choices. They become successful by being aware, by thinking strategically of their moves, the support they are given and the boundaries concerning, for example, how to be effective or flexible enough. The suggestion is that the “competitive university” is rewarding those, maybe more so than ever, who are able to manoeuvre strategically in between locations that are giving them recognition.
The results also illustrate some of the difficulties researchers experience, as they express uncertainty and anxieties. For example, although all of the women in this study express an appreciation of their situations in career, at the same time they also all express something about the difficulties they are in. Alice articulates her working life, for instance, both in relation to the public narrative of excellence and in relation to her family life and she also identifies certain tensions between the two. Others, like Angela and Margret, express an ambivalence concerning their performance and whether they do enough career-wise. Women in academia tend to face a lack of trust in their careers and that creates lower expectations on their capacity, which in turn might create difficulties for them to get funds and invitations to social networks. Ball (2012) would see these patterns as more general, as if the researchers that are burdened with the responsibility to perform also are at risk or in “danger” of being seen as irresponsible if they do not. As he wrote, “performativity is a moral system that subverts and re-orients us to its ends. It makes us responsible for our performance and for the performance of others” (Ball, 2012: 19). This means that when the tendency is that several of these successful women express uncertainty or even lack of trust at their departments (as described by Van den Brink, 2010), this could lead to what Braidotti (1994) recognizes as a growing “incapacity” to choose. Women more than men risk being captured by various and complex self-images that could create barriers (both mental and material) for them.
In conclusion, the question is one of what kind of subjectivity is rewarded within the “competitive university”. The results in this study suggest that the researchers’ movements (at least partly) express how the discourses within the “competitive university” re-construct the academic career. For example, it seems as if these excellent researchers are expected to follow and keep close to very specific and dominant “locations of ideas”. As it appears, these locations of ideas are (as described by the researchers) strategic and specialized, supported by the majority interests, and therefore to some extent may be more constraining than explorative and open minded. Finally, there are indications that these movements are expressions of the academic career as more adapted to men, due to how: (1) men express security and contentment in their career movements (more than women); and (2) structural patterns that illustrate how men tend to have advantages in comparison to women, concerning how they gain influence, status and resources in their career. Thus, gender is part of how these researchers act and mediate levels of power.
Conclusion
The results illustrate how the excellent academic subject is, in the context of the “competitive university” and within the field of Education Sciences, constructed by expectations to fully understand and appreciate the demands of the dominating discourse of performativity. Consequently, this researcher can determine what departmental spaces are valuable to reach success in a research career, even though they are moving in a field where there are expectations and demands of partly different characters, such as those of teacher education. It also seems as if most of these top performers, just as in other scientific fields, are mostly men (see Öhrn and Lundahl, 2012), who seldom work in teaching.
In this study, women more than men express anxiety and uncertainty. In regards to Braidotti (1994, 2010) and her ideas on gender and space, women, more than men, also tend to act or be judged as unsecure. My point is that this pattern, in a performative academic culture where (1) individual choices are expected to result in an academic reputation, (2) open-minded “desires” create confusion and worries and (3) researchers must answer to a very clear moral system of acting individually responsible, is creating greater risks for women than men for being judged as underperformers.
In summary, this study illustrates how a group of successful researchers use spaces of transit in a profitable way, find locations of ideas that are valuable, and think the thoughts that are institutionally determined as needed for making a science reputation. Several express that they feel appreciated in a high-performance academic culture. However, the difference between the researchers is how a few, mostly women, express uncertainty, worries or even a slight change of perspective concerning the values of a high-performance career.
Footnotes
Author's note
At the time of this research, the author was affiliated to Universitetslektor pa° IPS, Sweden and now the author is associated with Department of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Funding
This study is part of a large research project, “Gender and Career in Academia”, financed by the Swedish Research Council 2009–2012.