Confronting the Institutional, Interpersonal and Internalized Challenges of Performing Critical Public Scholarship

Authors

  • Colin Ray Anderson Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience. Coventry University.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v19i1.1786

Keywords:

Participatory Action Research, Performativity, Professionalization, Public Scholarship, Transformative Research

Abstract

Universities are increasingly becoming self-referential, reflective of neoliberal values and are abandoning commitments to the public interest. In response, there have been efforts to assert a “public scholarship” that can contribute to the progressive transformation of society for social justice and sustainability. Yet, the performance of public scholarship within the neoliberal and elitist university is ambiguous, fraught and contested. I engage with Judith Butler’s work to examine academic professionalization as performativity and unpack the disciplinary systems that shape the possibilities to perform public scholarship. I present an autoethnographic script to critically analyze the contradictions, tensions and challenges of pursuing transformative research paradigm within the professional academy. My analysis discusses three relational mediums of performativity: Internal(ized) (selves), Interpersonal (relationships) and Institutional (institutions). Each medium reflects citations of pre-existing discourse manifested in materials, customs, texts, disciplinary procedures and habits. The professional academy holds disciplinary power through these three mediums molding extractive, elitist and ultimately unjust performativity. Performativity is iterative and thus these mediums are not fixed but constituted through their performance and there are always possibilities for disruption, subversion and thus transformation. These three mediums, and their intersections, are sites for critical self- and collective reflexivity and action.

References

Anderson, C. R., and McLachlan, S. M. (2012). Exiting, enduring and innovating: Farm household adaptation to global zoonotic disease. Global Environmental Change, 22(1), 82-93.

Anderson, C. R., and McLachlan, S. M. (2016). Transformative research as knowledge mobilization: Transmedia, bridges, and layers. Action Research, 14(3), 295-317.

Anderson, C. R., McLachlan, S. M., McDonald, W., and Gardiner, J. (2014). Navigating the fault lines in civic food networks. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development, 4(3), 79–99.

Anderson, C. R., Silivay. J. and K. Lobe. (2017). Community organisations for food systems change:
Reflecting on food movement dynamics in Manitoba. In: Peoples Knowledge (Eds). Everyday Experts: How People’s Knowledge Can Transform the Food System. Coventry University. Reclaiming Citizenship and Diversity series. Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University.

Apple, M. W. (2005). Education, markets, and an audit culture. Critical Quarterly, 47, 11-29.

Archer, L. (2008). The new neoliberal subjects? Young/er academics’ constructions of professional identity. Journal of Education Policy, 23(3), 265-285.

Askins, K. & Blazek, M. (2016) ‘Feeling our way: Academia, emotions and a politics of care’. Social and Cultural Geography, 18(8), 1086-1105.

ASA Task Force. (2005). Public Sociology and the Roots of American Sociology: Re-establishing Our Connections to the Public. American Sociological Association Task Force on Institutionalizing Public Sociologies. Retrieved Jan. 31, 2020 from http://www.asanet.org/images/asa/docs/pdf/TF on PS Rpt (54448).pdf

ASA Task Force. (2007). Standards of public sociology: Guidelines for use by academic departments in personnel reviews. American Sociological Association Task Force on Institutionalizing Public Sociologies.

Bezruchka, S. (2008). Becoming a public scholar to improve the health of the US population. Antipode, 40(3), 455-462.

Bok, D. 2009. Universities in the marketplace: The commercialization of higher education, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Bourdieu, P., and Collier, P. (1988). Homo academicus (P. Collier, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Burawoy, M. (2005). For public sociology. American Sociological Review, 70(1), 4-28.

Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519-531.

Butler, J. (1997). “The” psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Butler, J. (1999). Gender trouble. New York: Routledge.

Calhoun, C. (2005). The promise of public sociology. British Journal of Sociology, 56(3), 355-363.

Catungal, J. P. (2017). Feeling bodies of knowledge: Situating knowledge production through felt embeddedness. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 108(3), 289-301.

Castree, N., Chatterton, P., Heynen, N., Larner, W. and Wright, M. W. (2010). Introduction: The point is to change it. Antipode, 41, 1-9.

Chatterton, P. (2008). Demand the possible: Journeys in changing our world as a public activist-scholar. Antipode, 40(3), 421-427.

Chatterton, P., Gidwani, V., Heynen, N., Kent, A., Larner, W. and Pain, R. (2011). Antipode in an antithetical era. Antipode, 43(2), 181-189.

Cloke, P. (2004). Exploring boundaries of professional/personal practice and action: Being and becoming in Khayelitsha Township, Cape Town. In D. Fuller and Kitchin, R. (Eds.), Radical theory/critical praxis: making a difference beyond the academy (pp. 92-102). Vernon, BC: Praxis (e)Press.

Conti, A. 2005. Metropolitan proletarian research. Retrieved January 31, 2020 from: www.ecn.org/valkohaalarit/english/conti.htm

Davis, H., & Todd, Z. (2017). On the importance of a date, or decolonizing the anthropocene. ACME, 16(4), 761-780.

Denzin, N. K. (2003). Performance ethnography: Critical pedagogy and the politics of culture. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Denzin, N. K. (2003). Performing [auto] ethnography politically. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 25(3), 257-278.

De Sousa Santos, B. (2004). The World Social Forum: Toward a counter-hegemonic globalisation. In: Sen, J., Anad, A., Escobar, A. & Watterman, P. (eds.), World Social Forum: Challenging empires. New Delhi: Viveka Foundation.

Deem, R. (2001). Globalisation, new managerialism, academic capitalism and entrepreneurialism in universities: Is the local dimension still important? Comparative Education, 37, 7-20.

Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Ellis, C. and Bochner, A. P. (Eds.). (1996). Composing ethnography: Alternative forms of qualitative writing. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.

Fuller, D. (2008). Public geographies: Taking stock. Progress in Human Geography, 32(6), 834-844.

Fuller, D., and Askins, K. (2007). The Discomforting rise of “public geographies”: A “public” conversation. Antipode, 39(4), 579-601.

Fuller, D., and Askins, K. (2010). Public geographies II: Being organic. Progress in Human Geography, 34(5), 654-667.

Gabriel, J., Harding, J., Hodgkinson, P., Kelly, L. and Khan, A. (2009). Public sociology: Working at the interstices. The American Sociologist, 40(4), 309-331.

Gergen, M. and Gergen, K. (2002). Ethnographic representation as relationship. In A. P. Bochner & C. Ellis (Eds.), Ethnographically speaking: Autoethnography, literature, and aesthetics (pp. 11-33). New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006). A postcapitalist politics. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Giroux, H. A. (2007). The university in chains: Confronting the military-industrial-academic complex. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers

Glenn, E. N. (2007). Whose public sociology? The subaltern speaks, but who is listening? In D. Clawson (Ed.), Public sociology: Fifteen eminent sociologists debate politics and the profession in the twenty-first century (pp. 213-230). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gonzalez, J. C. (2006). Academic socialization experiences of Latina Doctoral Students: A qualitative understanding of support systems that aid and challenges that hinder the process. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 5, 347-365.

Greenwood, D. J. (2012). Doing and learning action research in the neo-liberal world of contemporary higher education. Action Research, 10(2), 115-132.

Gregson, N. and Rose, G. (2000). Taking Butler elsewhere: Performativities, spatialities and subjectivities. Environment and Planning D-Society & Space, 18(4), 433-452.

Gutiérrez y Muhs, G., Niemann, Y. F., González, C. G., & Harris, A. P. (2012). Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for women in academia. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Hawkins, H., Sacks, S., Cook, I., Rawling, E., Griffiths, H., Swift, D., . . . Askins, K. (2011). Organic public geographies: “Making the connection”. Antipode, 43(4), 909-926.

Hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York, Routledge.

Kemmis, S. (2007). Critical theory and participatory action research. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), The Sage handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice (pp. 121-138). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Kinpaisby, m. (2008). Taking stock of participatory geographies: Envisioning the communiversity. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33(3), 292-299.

Kitchin, R. and Fuller, D. (2005). The academic’s guide to publishing. London: Sage.

Laforge, J. M. L., Anderson, C. R., and McLachlan, S. M. (2017). Governments, grassroots, and the struggle for local food systems: Containing, coopting, contesting and collaborating. Agriculture and Human Values, 34(3), 663-681.

Loader, I. and & Sparks, R. (2013). Public criminology? New York: Routledge.

McCune, N. & Sánchez, M. (2018). Teaching the territory: Agroecological pedagogy and popular movements. Agriculture and Human Values, 36(3), 595-610.

Mitchell, K. (2006). Writing from left field. Antipode, 38(2), 205-212.

Moore, J. (2004). Living in the basement of the ivory tower: A graduate student’s perspective of participatory action research within academic institutions. Educational Action Research, 12(1), 145-162.

Moss, P. (2012). Taking Stock in the Interim: The Stuck, The Tired, and The Exhausted, Antipode. Retrieved January 31, 2020 from: https://radicalantipode.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/moss-response.pdf

Noy, D. (2009). The contradictions of public Sociology: A view from a graduate student at Berkeley. The American Sociologist, 40(4), 235-248.

Noy, S. and Ray, R. (2012). Graduate students’ perceptions of their advisors: Is there systematic disadvantage in mentorship? The Journal of Higher Education, 83, 876-914.

O’Brien, K. (2011). Global environmental change II: From adaptation to deliberate transformation. Progress in Human Geography, 36(5), 667-676.

Offstein, E. H., Larson, M. B., McNeill, A. L. & Mwale, H. M. (2004). Are we doing enough for today’s graduate student? International Journal of Educational Management, 18, 396-407.

Pain, R. (2003). Social geography: On action-orientated research. Progress in Human Geography, 27(5), 649-657.

Pimbert, M. (2018). Food sovereignty, agroecology, and biocultural diversity: Constructing and contesting knowledge. London: Routledge.

Raphael, D. (2008). Beyond positivism: Public scholarship in support of health. Antipode, 40(3), 404-413.

Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. (Eds.) (2008). The Sage handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Roth, W.-M. and Bowen, G. M. (2001). Of disciplined minds and disciplined bodies: On becoming an ecologist. Qualitative Sociology, 24(4), 459-481.

Rosado-May, F.J., Kú Martínez, M.V., Poot Moo, C. de Dios, H.C. and Dzul, S. A. 2016. Formación universitaria de agroecólogos mayas. Un enfoque intercultural. Agroecología, 11(1), 75-82.

Seidl, R., Brand, F. S., Stauffacher, M., Krütli, P., Le, Q. B., Spörri, A., Meylan, G., Moser, C., González, M. B. & Scholz, R. W. 2013. Science with society in the anthropocene. AMBIO, 42, 5-12.

Shukaitis, S., Graeber, D. and Biddle, E. (2007). Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Oakland, CA: AK Press.

Slaughter, S., and Rhoades, G. (2004). Academic capitalism and the new economy: Markets, state, and higher education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Smith, K. (2010). Research, policy and funding – academic treadmills and the squeeze on intellectual spaces. British Journal of Sociology, 61(1), 176-195.

Solorzano, D. G. (1998). Critical race theory, race and gender microaggressions, and the experience of Chicana and Chicano scholars. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11, 121-136.

Spry, T. (2001). Performing autoethnography: An embodied methodological praxis. Qualitative Inquiry, 7(6), 706-732.

Tanaka, K., and Mooney, P. H. (2010). Public scholarship and community engagement in building community food security: The case of the University of Kentucky. Rural Sociology, 75(4), 560-583.

Taylor, E. & Antony, J. S. (2000). Stereotype threat reduction and wise schooling: Towards the successful socialization of American doctoral students in education. The Journal of Negro Education, 69, 184-198.

Trauger, A. & Fluri, J. (2014) Getting beyond the “God Trick”: Toward service research. The Professional Geographer, 66(1) 32-40.

University of Manitoba Dissertation Guidelines. (2013). Retrieved October 12, 2013, from http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/graduate_studies/thesis/guidelines.html

Wilder (2013). Ebony and ivory: Race, slavery, and the troubled history of America's Universities. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

Downloads

Published

2020-04-15

How to Cite

Anderson, C. R. (2020). Confronting the Institutional, Interpersonal and Internalized Challenges of Performing Critical Public Scholarship. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 19(1), 270–302. https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v19i1.1786