On politics and precarity in academia

Loher, David; Strasser, Sabine; Monterescu, Daniel; Dabağcı, Esra; Gallo, Ester; Shore, Cris; Gupta, Akhil; Mathur, Chandana; Anton, Lorena; Zane, Rodica; Lems, Annika; Khosravi, Shahram; Sarıaslan, Zeynep; Salazar, Noël B.; Montoya, Ainhoa; Pérez, Marta Domínguez; Kovač, Uroš; Tilche, Alice; Loperfido, Giacomo; Matos, Patrícia Alves de; Santer, Kiri Olivia; Thorkelson, Eli

doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12695

Cited by 13 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Therefore, there is an ongoing discussion about precarious working conditions inside academia and their side effects (e.g. Borgwardt, 2010;BuWiN, 2021;Herschberg et al, 2018;Loher et al, 2019).…”

Section: Doctoral Graduates' Contract Typesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How does obtaining a permanent employment contract affect the job satisfaction of doctoral graduates inside and outside academia?

2022

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Previous research has shown that temporary employment is negatively associated with many psychological and job-related outcomes, such as well-being, health, wages, organisational commitment, and job satisfaction. Among recent doctoral graduates, the proportion of temporary contracts is particularly high. However, research on the association between contract type and job satisfaction specifically among doctoral graduates is scarce. Therefore, whether and how obtaining permanent employment affects doctoral graduates’ job satisfaction remains a notable research gap that we intend to narrow by using panel data from a recent doctoral graduation cohort and by adopting a panel research design. We examine what effect obtaining permanent employment has on doctoral graduates’ job satisfaction and whether this effect differs by labour market sector. We use panel data that are representative of the 2014 doctoral graduation cohort in Germany and their career trajectories up to five years after graduation. We apply fixed-effects regression to approximate the within-effect of obtaining a permanent employment contract on job satisfaction. The analyses indicate that obtaining permanent employment increases doctoral graduates’ job satisfaction and that this increase is not driven by time-varying confounders. We also find that doctoral graduates’ labour market sector moderates the effect: the increase in job satisfaction is highest in the academic sector and statistically significantly different from that in the private sector. Overall, this paper offers new insights into the effect of obtaining a permanent contract on the job satisfaction of recent doctoral graduates throughout their first years after graduation, when they are often employed on temporary contracts.

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Section: Doctoral Graduates' Contract Typesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How does obtaining a permanent employment contract affect the job satisfaction of doctoral graduates inside and outside academia?

2022

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“…Many studies have highlighted the precarious positions that many graduate students find themselves in, as the number of people pursuing doctoral degrees have increased over the years while the number of academic positions decline in intensively competitive neoliberal academic environments and polarising political landscapes (Loher et al, 2019;Nature, 2019;Siegel & Keeler, 2020). Based on a survey of 2279 graduate students (90% Ph.D. and 10% Master's students) from 26 countries Evans et al (2018: 282) found that graduate students were six times more likely to experience anxiety and depression than the general population.…”

Section: Crossing Needles Carrying Yarn---my Fieldwork Storymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Fieldwork Story Told Through Knitting

Sadjad

2022

Gender, Development and Social Change

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During a multi-sited ethnographic research on responses towards the presence of refugees from abroad in Indonesia, I brought along my knitting needles and five colours of yarn. Knitting was an effective outlet to manage the emotions and anxieties of fieldwork. The chapter documents my fieldwork experiences through a knitting project that would use colours to “code” my feelings on a weekly basis. The chapter explores how arts and crafts are used as metaphors to capture the intuitive and emotional dimensions of academia that are often missing from research methodology teaching. The coloured yarns have now been knitted into a striped cloth “scarf” representing the emotional labour of doing research that is partial to fieldwork but often excluded from its retelling.

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“…Authoritarian hostility to the fundamental principles of the liberal humanities has seen an assault on academic freedom unprecedented in Europe since the 1930s. Following on the heels of the withdrawal by the Russian state of the accreditation of the European University of St Petersburg, the Orbán regime in Hungary has waged a war of attrition against the Central European University, a beacon of liberal thought funded by the global financier and philanthropist George Soros (Loher et al 2019). Particular venom was reserved for such contested curricular elements as gender studies in the state campaigns against these institutions.…”

Section: Authoritarianism Austerity and Audit: The Fraying Of The Acmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Reflecting her experience of the Austrian academic climate, Rogler (2019) identifies increasing competition for academic positions and funding alongside enhanced managerial control of academic work as key features of the contemporary university. Stoica et al (2019) and Loher et al (2019) highlight the increasing number of PhDs competing within a diminishing pool of academic opportunity where tenure, or even its prospect, is scarcer and scarcer, and credit in the attribution of work is frequently denied to subaltern staff within teams, so that early career anthropologists subsist in a climate of what Lauren Berlant (2011) has called ‘cruel optimism’. A shift towards large (often multidisciplinary) projects brings with it new precarities and hierarchies.…”

Section: Authoritarianism Austerity and Audit: The Fraying Of The Acmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exquisite Corpses and backward glances: European social anthropology 2019

Martin

2020

Soc Anthropol

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This article provides an overview of the main European social anthropology journals during 2019. It uses the concept of Exquisite Corpses, a technique devised by the Surrealists, an avant-garde art group of the early 20th century, to suggest a practice of transmitting knowledge across periods of fracture. It argues that this process characterises the way that some aspects of social anthropology's canon continue to be transmitted and remain influential, despite having been superseded by time, fashion and changes in social and academic attitudes. A wide range of scholarship is highlighted. Topics focused on include time, relations, borders, bureaucracy, ethics, and the challenges faced by academics in general and anthropologists in particular. These challenges are driven by the emergence of an authoritarian spirit across a number of fields in Europe and beyond, continuing austerity following on from the economic crisis, and the consolidation of an audit culture that drives the university in an ever more neoliberal direction. Despite the current rigorous climate, European social anthropology continues to be vital and relevant.

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On politics and precarity in academia

Cited by 13 publications

References 8 publications

How does obtaining a permanent employment contract affect the job satisfaction of doctoral graduates inside and outside academia?

How does obtaining a permanent employment contract affect the job satisfaction of doctoral graduates inside and outside academia?

A Fieldwork Story Told Through Knitting

Exquisite Corpses and backward glances: European social anthropology 2019

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