In the social sciences, neoliberalization (Benner & Holmqvist, 2023) and marketization (Cheek, 2017) of higher education (HE) over the past 50 years have profoundly changed the way researchers work. As a result of the growing importance of bibliometric measures of success, researchers are encouraged to compete for funding, promotions and journal placements, which influences the habitual ways in which academics act, feel and think (Benner & Holmqvist, 2023; Köbli et al., 2024; Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023). What emerges are strategies for playing the academic game well - or better than the competition. While this is consistent with a general entrepreneurial ethos in higher education (Audretsch, 2014; Guerrero et al., 2016), it seems at odds with the overarching values and themes of the social sciences, which aim to promote a better understanding of society and critical thinking. This leads to the question of how changing dynamics in relation to the neoliberalization, marketization and entrepreneurialization of HE affect the habitus(con)figurations of social scientists.

Our four-year project on publication processes in the social sciences (FWF- P 35575) approaches this research question by investigating the habitus(con)figurations of researchers in the disciplines of sociology, education and sociology of education at a global level, but with a focus on non-English-native scholars in the DACH region.

Our findings show that the internationalization of the social sciences is seen as a key symptom of becoming an entrepreneurial university on the local level. However, in non-English speaking countries like the DACH region, 'internationality' does not signify a global exchange of local knowledge but instead is enacted as a new space with its own rules and norms – a meta-national research assemblage. The self-contained meta-national research assemblage prioritizes English as the lingua franca (Schluer, 2015), Anglo-American academic norms of scholarship (Canagarajah, 2014) as well as theoretical and methodological norms specific to certain fields. To be a 'successful' academic, non-English-native researchers face the dual challenge of adhering to meta-national norms while simultaneously preserving and engaging with their local academic traditions. This dual-track approach fosters a 'chameleon habitus' (Abrahams & Ingram, 2013) that allows scholars to switch across the linguistic, theoretical and methodological contexts of their local and the meta-national research assemblage. This way, researchers can enact different versions of their habitual ways of doing, feeling and thinking (about) the social sciences according to the demands of their social and material environments.

Our findings also show that the (con)figuration of a chameleon habitus can create conflicting dynamics, particularly when researchers are also involved in university teaching. Especially in the case of non-tenured academics without a professorship, it can be observed that academics feel that core values of the social sciences are being suppressed in the meta-national research assemblage. For example, non-English-native researchers argue that translating local-language qualitative data into English for bibliometric success compromises the authenticity and ethical integrity of the findings. Yet they engage in these 'incorrect' practices because their success and employment in academia depend on it. This results in the urge to transfer the 'correct' values of the social sciences to the next generation, i.e. to students. However, our findings suggest that this transfer is not always possible because students are also embedded in entrepreneurial university structures. These structures render studying as collecting points and collecting them fast – i.e. becoming an entrepreneurial homo academicus (Laalo et al., 2019) rather than having the time to internalize core values of the social sciences. This assemblage, in turn, produces specific (con)figurations of teacher and student habitus, which are connected and currently being further explored in our project.

In total, we interviewed 38 scholars about their research dissemination strategies as well as their embeddedness in entrepreneurial university structures. Through a theoretical sampling process, we decided to focus on non-English-native scholars and the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), resulting in 34 interviews with non-English-native scholars of which 21 were from the DACH region. All interviews were conducted with researchers from the disciplines of sociology, education and sociology of education. We are also currently conducting interviews with sociology students to further explore processes of knowledge and value transfer in university teaching. The choice of these disciplines is based on the assumption that the business-like structures of universities foster entrepreneurial behavior and thinking. This may be at odds with the academic habitus of the social sciences, where the link with entrepreneurship is not very strong. For example, while collaborating with companies, founding start-ups and working in research and development (R&D) positions in industry are common pathways in the natural sciences (Cunningham & Menter, 2021), social scientists do not have such a strong connection to entrepreneurship, either in their subject areas or in their career opportunities. In our interviews, therefore, we aim to better understand and describe the dynamics and habitus(con)figurations that emerge when the entrepreneurial ethos of HE meets the values and realities of the social sciences. In the interviews with scholars, we ask about everyday tasks of doing research in the social sciences, including dissemination pathways, writing styles, strategies, economic structures, local circumstances and norms and values. The interviews with students focus more on how they structure their studies and what they think they learn at university. Our research is designed along the lines of new materialist ethnography (Schadler, 2019) and assemblage analysis (Feely, 2020), resulting in a multi-method research design. The data is analyzed by tagging and referencing the data, mapping the entities of the assemblages, and creating material-discoursive continua until an ethnographic text can be reconstructed.

Our findings show that changing publication patterns in the social sciences have deeper impacts than current research suggests and that these impacts can be traced by exploring the habitus(con)figurations of social scientists. When we think of human action, feeling and thinking as situated (con)figurations with human and non-human things (Köbli, 2024), it becomes clear that the changing social and material environments associated with the marketization of knowledge profoundly alter the ways in which academic habitus can be enacted. In the business-like university, English proficiency, strategic publishing, and adherence to “international” norms determine success in the social sciences. Despite criticizing these values as incompatible with their discipline, scholars must conform to a meta-national research assemblage to succeed. Only in teaching can they promote the ethical principles of the social sciences and their role in forming a democratic society. However, students focused on graduating quickly, accumulating points economically, efficiently and entrepreneurially to position themselves in the labor market seem to prioritize entrepreneurial goals over these values - even though the social field jobs they pursue value social skills over entrepreneurial thinking. This shows that the values and practices favored by entrepreneurial HE structures significantly influence the habitus(con)configuration of both researchers and students. In conclusion, marketization, neoliberalization and entrepreneurialization of HE produces flexible, responsive and situated habitus(con)figurations that can quickly change depending on the social and material environments they are (con)figured with. Success is therefore measured not only by bibliometrics, but also by the ability to react and adapt to changing environments. However, our findings also show that the boundaries of habitus(con)figurations are fluid, as there appear to be multiple links between the academic habitus of researchers and students in relation to the entrepreneurialization of HE. This points to the transversal nature of habitus(con)figurations, which needs to be further explored.

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