This article investigates the political potency of ‘precarity’ as an organising axiom in contingent workers’ grassroots organisations. It studies a nationwide network of precarious researchers in Germany and deploys Frame Analysis to illuminate how the Network articulates diverse criticisms as parts of a coherent struggle against precarious academic work. Empirically, the article substantiates the postulate of ‘precarity as a mobilising source’ by depicting the construction of precarity on strategic, organisational and individual levels, drawing on protest campaigns, coordinative work and in-depth interviews, respectively. On a theoretical level, it contributes to the literature by proposing a refinement of the concept of ‘master frame’. Arguing that ‘precarity’ creates a broader class actor with branches in different sectors, to which the contingent academics link their struggle by derivatively describing themselves as the ‘ academic precariat’, the article proposes the novel category of ‘class-formative frame’ in difference to operational (diagnostic/prognostic) or relational (supportive/oppositional) frames.
The ongoing witch-hunt in Turkish universities adds a political dimension to the economic precarization of the academic labour force, and should be seen as part of a wider, distinctly neo-liberal attempt on the part of the state to eradicate rational agency. By eliminating qualified oppositional cadres en masse on false accusations, the government implements a policy of systematic deinstitutionalization in the sphere of intellectual production. The erosion of critical subjectivity via deregulation and precarization has certainly been under way for a while now, albeit in different degrees and with diverse intensity. Yet in Turkey, it found an exceptionally fertile breeding ground due to some historical peculiarities of Turkish society, such as the state-oriented institutionalization process of academic structures and the pervasive anti-intellectualism.The current war against universities in Turkey is being fought (and apparently won) with the help of academia itself. The universal values of knowledge production are being trampled down by the very institutions that are supposed to be dedicated to the safeguarding of these values. University administrations team up with the state in suppressing opposition by exploiting the economic vulnerability of the academic labour force to silence, intimidate or directly punish critical voices within the universities. The actual significance of the Academics for Peace Petition, originally intended as an attempt to bring peace back to the agenda, lies perhaps rather in the fact that it has surprisingly unveiled this unholy correlation between local circumstances and the dynamics of neo-liberalism.
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