on the moral economy of academic appraisal

ON THE MORAL ECONOMY OF ACADEMIC APPRAISAL

alfrehn

tisdag, 2009 maj 12

FEAR OF A RAE PLANET

tisdag, 2009 maj 12

“…when we, as academics, plead powerlessness in choosing what we research… because of incentive and reward systems…, we dehumanize our careers and our lives.”Sara L. Rynes, Editor-in-Chief, Academy of Management Journal (2007b: 747)

tisdag, 2009 maj 12

INTERPRETING APPRAISALS, THE CRITIQUES

Reductionist

Cultural homogenization, towards the hard sciences

Cultural homogenization, the Americanization of everything

The financialization of academia, short-term thinking

Polarizing meritocracies, winner-takes-all

tisdag, 2009 maj 12

THE ARGUMENTS FOR APPRAISAL

Enhancing transparency

Efficency concerns – “What gets measured gets done”

Building knowledge, not libraries

Concerns about fairness and justice

Reducing bias, leveling the playing field

tisdag, 2009 maj 12

POINTS OF AGREEMENT

The discussion concerns the issue of justice, quality and diversity

Appraisals are increasingly a fact of academic life, and their quantitative form is becoming evermore accepted (if not liked), even by critics

Interestingly, most academics seem to see the current forms of quantifying research output as flawed or sub-optimal

In other words, academia seems to become evermore comfortable with a system that one still sees as flawed

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SO, TWO QUESTIONS:

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WHY THIS ACCEPTANCE?

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ARE APPRAISALS MERELY A MATTER OF MEASUREMENTS?

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TOWARDS AN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY OF ACADEMIA

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SOMETHING OF AN IDEA

Appraisals need to be analyzed through the way they in fact mirror the moral economy of academia

Quantitative appraisals follow quite logically from aspects of the gift economy that is fundamental in academia

Critiques of quantitative appraisals may in fact hide a more fundamental trauma in academia

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THE ACADEMIC GIFT ECONOMY

tisdag, 2009 maj 12

MISCONCEPTIONS REGARDING

GIFT ECONOMIES

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con•tri•bu•tionfrom the Latin contribuere“bringin together” or “paying tribute together”

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CON-TRIBUTING

Contributions are by necessity:

Social acts

Acts that gain meaning in a network of power

Signifiers of status

Gain different value in different economic contexts (and must be analyzed through them)

tisdag, 2009 maj 12

THE HYBRID MORAL ECONOMY OF ACADEMIA

The gift relations

The status relations

The social relations

The market relations

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APPRAISALS

A dual moral panic:

Appraisals and quantifications seem to sully the pure forms of the academic economy (gift/social)

Flawed systems of the same might pervert the market and status logics of academia

tisdag, 2009 maj 12

AN ACADEMIC TRAUMA?

Might the worry about appraisals tell us more about ourselves than we care to admit?

Towards a Lacanian analysis of academic trauma, by way of Slavoj Žižek

tisdag, 2009 maj 12

an

alfrehnproduction

tisdag, 2009 maj 12