Becoming an academic researcher : The productive body of academia

• What subjectivities are allowed in Academia? As others, we argue that the neo-liberal restructuring process of higher education has given certain discourses and subjectivities legitimacy. We analyze how this process has affected the conditions of making subjectivities, e.g. becoming different, how academics move and try to be productive. From our point of view nomadology (Braidotti, 1994, 2002 a, Deleuze & Guattari, 2004) may be an interesting teoretical departure in order to analyse how junior researcher in academia, in the field of education, negotiate subject positions, make choices and shape their academic career. We argue that career is a process of transit, where researchers move, from place to place, in order to become a researcher. We work in line with Deleuze & Guattari (2004; Colebrook, 2010) and Braidotti (1994, 2002) concept of nomadology, which offers a way to analyze and understand how young researchers negotiate subject positions and shape their academic career. However, we do not use nomadology in a rigorous way, but as Rajchman (2000) describes as a map of connection. A connection with other possibilities: ... making visible problems for which there exists no program, no plan, no "collective agency (Rajchman, 2000, p.8). Rajchman (2000) points out the importance of not individualize the individual and instead try to look beyond the taken for granted social representation, that emerges from the informants' stories. The reserachers in this study are seen as: ... the tellers of experience, but every time telling is constrained, partial, and Determined by the discourses and histories That prefigure, even as They Might promise, representation (Britzman, 1995, p 232). Our "nomadic toolbox" therefore consists of the concepts of desire and becoming, nomadic subject position, the minority in becoming and deterritorialization. The empirical study was carried out at two large (research-based) and two small regional (poly-techs, non-doctoral) universities in Sweden. At these universities, institutions (5-8) as well as research units, embedded in educational sciences, have been analysed by means of interviews of 70 early career academics. In this article, we present a selection of these narratives (12 researchers) using pseudonyms. The in-depth interviews (Alvesson, 2011) varied between 50 and 100 minutes. The interviews concern how individual academics, describe their experiences of the positioning process, the conditions and the consequences, the sacrifices, choices and rewards. Discourse analysis is used to analyse how discourses and material conditions intersect in the construction of a nomadic subject positions (Braidotti, 1994, 2002 b). The results are presented by using metaphors illustrating one specific subject position, the nomad position of academia. The results, so far in progress, illustrate how these nomads move in spaces of transition, searching for legitimacy and power. Their bodily differences seem to give them various resources in order to become aware, conscious and safe. They express being un-recognized, left outside and not appreciated. Therefore, some distance themselves from learning the code of majority, describe how they feel caught in spaces in-between unable to become satisfied. However, some of them also give example of how e.g. intellectual freedom as a political standpoint, can compensate for the loss of a physical “home”, or even create other spaces of stability and satisfaction.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Academia

nomadism

researcher

educational sciences

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)