Search

The paper reports on an empirical study based on qualitative interviews with staff from four Australian universities. These universities are shown to be undergoing significant social change as processes of marketisation impact on the everyday practices of academic workers. The universities are analysed as sites of contestation between the new professional managers and the established academic profession over the control of the conditions of work, the production of expert knowledge and the worksite itself. The theory of academic capitalism is examined, and the relevance of Bourdieu's work for the analysis of a university sector in a context of marketisation is assessed. Bourdieu's interlinked concepts of capital, habitus and the field are employed to investigate the nature of the contestation, revealing a dynamic process in which academics innovatively respond to threats to reduce their autonomy, to increased levels of surveillance and other constraints on practice. In addition, the study illustrates the processes through which actors within the sector, through acts of both conformity and resistance, contribute collectively to the growth of academic capitalism in the neoliberal university.

Much is made of the persistent structures of inequality that determine the production and distribution of goods and services across the world, but less is known about the inequalities of global academic knowledge production, and even a smaller amount about the nature of the publication industry upon which this production process depends. Reflecting on an international study of academic publishing that has been framed within the lens of Southern theory, this article explores some of the issues facing those who work and publish in the global South, and offers an analysis of several of the mechanisms that assist to maintain the inequalities of the knowledge system. The focus then moves to an examination of some recent developments in academic publishing which challenge the dominance of the global North: the building of alternative transnational circuits of publishing that provide effective pathways for the distribution of academic knowledge from ‘inside the global South’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports on an empirical study based on qualitative interviews with staff from four Australian universities. These universities are shown to be undergoing significant social change as processes of marketisation impact on the everyday practices of academic workers. The universities are analysed as sites of contestation between the new professional managers and the established academic profession over the control of the conditions of work, the production of expert knowledge and the worksite itself. The theory of academic capitalism is examined, and the relevance of Bourdieu’s work for the analysis of a university sector in a context of marketisation is assessed. Bourdieu’s interlinked concepts of capital, habitus and the field are employed to investigate the nature of the contestation, revealing a dynamic process in which academics innovatively respond to threats to reduce their autonomy, to increased levels of surveillance and other constraints on practice. In addition, the study illustrates the processes through which actors within the sector, through acts of both conformity and resistance, contribute collectively to the growth of academic capitalism in the neoliberal university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies Max Weber's proposition regarding the differences between the 'sciences' to the 'historicist controversy': the problems emerging from opposing approaches to understanding the past. The historiography in question is the development of the 'biomedical model' of health and disease, and the rise of 'medicine' in the course of 19th century Europe and Britain. While Weber's theoretical framework does not answer the questions posed by present-day scholars about specific historical events, it enables a critique of the process through which history is 'constructed', and offers an alternative approach to the 'transformation' of 19th century medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a sociological study on privatization with reference to policies of different nations, network analysis and the effects of privatization on different classes. It analyzes the financial and social impact of privatization policies, which is a shift in the direction of economic policies with empirical evidences while exploring current theories of the privatization policy processes. The article also discusses the relationship between government policies and ideational theories on change, and functionalist and pluralist orientation of privatization.