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Honorary authorship and symbolic violence
- Source :
- Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. 20:51-59
- Publication Year :
- 2016
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2016.
-
Abstract
- This paper invokes the conceptual framework of Bourdieu to analyse the mechanisms, which help to maintain inappropriate authorship practices and the functions these practices may serve. Bourdieu's social theory with its emphasis on mechanisms of domination can be applied to the academic field, too, where competition is omnipresent, control mechanisms of authorship are loose, and the result of performance assessment can be a matter of symbolic life and death for the researchers. This results in a problem of game-theoretic nature, where researchers' behaviour will be determined more by the logic of competition, than by individual character or motives. From this follows that changing this practice requires institutionalized mechanisms, and change cannot be expected from simply appealing to researchers' individual conscience. The article aims at showing that academic capital (administrative power, seniority) is translated into honorary authorship. With little control, undetected honorary authorship gives the appearance of possessing intellectual capital (scientific merit). In this way a dominant position is made to be seen as natural result of intellectual ability or scientific merit, which makes it more acceptable to those in dominated positions. The final conclusion of this paper is that undemocratic authorship decisions and authorship based performance assessment together are a form of symbolic violence.
- Subjects :
- Biomedical Research
Health (social science)
Health Policy
Field (Bourdieu)
Publications
Social Theory
06 humanities and the arts
0603 philosophy, ethics and religion
Authorship
Education
Intellectual capital
Epistemology
Competition (economics)
Power (social and political)
03 medical and health sciences
Philosophy of biology
0302 clinical medicine
Humans
The Conceptual Framework
060301 applied ethics
030212 general & internal medicine
Sociology
Academic capital
Social theory
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15728633 and 13867423
- Volume :
- 20
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....6d4d9ec9fccc6f7d8b93969c45f2a1f0