Session Information
32 SES 13, From Alma Mater to VUCA-demia? Strategies of Organizational Change in Academia Between Risks and Alternative Futures
Symposium
Contribution
In 2005, German legislation introduced the Excellence Initiative, which has not only altered the rationalities and subjectivities of academia but also produced new visibilities: on the one hand, the (young), emerging female scientist (McRobbie 2007) and on the other hand the “entrepreneurial universities” (Clark 1998) with a growing number of third space professionals (Whitchurch 2008) who – among other topics – administer and develop organizational policies concerning gender equality and emerging researchers’ careers. The relationship between gender equality, emerging researchers’ careers and excellence, however, is not one of unilateral understanding but ‘contested terrain’ where different discourses and rationalities fight for legitimation (Binner und Weber 2018). Where the ‘excellence’ discourse legitimizes competition and produces market-like behaviors, the demand for gender equality originates from the long tradition of the women’s movement in Germany since the 19th century where virtues such as solidarity and sisterhood were expressed. Yet, studies by Gill (2014) and Scharff (2011) point to individualizing discourse in the latest feminist movements that disguise structural inequalities and celebrate competition and individual achievement. This contribution looks at the ‘contested terrain’ of gender equality and excellence through the ‘eyes’ of third space professionals in the field of gender equality and young researchers in German academic organizations. From a Foucauldian discourse perspective, we regard them as discourse agents that have to navigate and combine these different discourses and thus produce organizational realities. But how are excellence and gender equality connected? Based on Foucault’s (1973) Archaeology of Knowledge and the question of “Who speaks?”, we analyze the organizational strategies and institutional programmatics of two German scientific organizations regarding gender equality and young researchers. Our empirical data stems from three ‘surfaces of emergence’: organizational websites, interviews with third space professionals as well as videographies. These approaches enable us to analyze the new order of visibilities: Does gender equality simply blend in into the excellence discourse? Or do we find contesting – and maybe even heterotopic (Foucault 1984; Adler and Weber 2019) – discourses? Can gender equality policies break the silence (Gill 2009) so that the volatile and precarious VUCA-Demia might after all allow space for subversive modes of change?
References
Literature Binner, Kristina; Weber, Lena (2018): Prekäre Gleichstellungspolitiken in der unternehmerischen Universität im europäischen Vergleich. In: Mike Laufenberg, Martina Erlemann, Maria Norkus und Grit Petschick (Hg.): Prekäre Gleichstellung. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, S. 27–48. Clark, Burton R. (1998): Creating enterpreneurial university. Organization pathways of transformation. [S.l.]: [s.n.]. Foucault, Michel (1973): The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon Books. Gill, Rosalind (2009): Breaking the silcen. The hidden injuries of neo-liberal academia. In: Roisin Ryan-Flood und Rosalind Gill (Hg.): Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process. Feminist Reflections, Bd. 2009. London: Routledge. Gill, Rosalind (2014): Unspeakable Inequalities: Post Feminism, Entrepreneurial Subjectivity, and the Repudiation of Sexism among Cultural Workers. In: Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 21 (4), S. 509–528. DOI: 10.1093/sp/jxu016. McRobbie, Angela (2007): TOP GIRLS? In: Cultural Studies 21 (4-5), S. 718–737. DOI: 10.1080/09502380701279044. Scharff, Christina (2011): Disarticulating feminism: Individualization, neoliberalism and the othering of ‘Muslim women’. In: European Journal of Women's Studies 18 (2), S. 119–134. DOI: 10.1177/1350506810394613. Whitchurch, Celia (2008): Shifting Identities and Blurring Boundaries: the Emergence of Third Space Professionals in UK Higher Education. In: Higher Education Quarterly 62 (4), S. 377–396. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2273.2008.00387.x.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.