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Transformations in Academic Production

Content, Context and Consequence

University of Salford, UK, t.may{at}salford.ac.uk

Universities are subject to considerable changes as environmental pressures increasingly place their futures in question. As core sites of social scientific activity, it is important to understand not only why these changes are occurring, but their consequences for practices within universities. Without this and a concern with the future, their distinction and value as sites of activity are left to those whose instrumental practices are short-term and act according to apparent economic necessities. Frequently, explanations for this state of affairs focus upon the problems of increasing management and bureaucracy, but remain relatively silent concerning the activities of academics. This article argues that there is an affinity between forms of academic professionalism and the managerialism we find in universities as an answer to the changing pressures to which they are subject. Both exhibit an individualism and separate knowledge from knowing. Overall, this detracts from the cultures of universities and how these contexts relate to the content of the work that is produced within them.

Key Words: context-sensitivity • globalization • knowledge capitalism • managerialism • professionalism • universities

European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 8, No. 2, 193-209 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1368431005051763


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