This contribution explores East-West hierarchies since the fall of state socialism. It suggests that the early struggles of eastern European scholars show how institutional structures and global dynamics reproduce enclosures. A look at younger scholars shows the costs of producing worlded academia.
Paper long abstract:
This contribution seeks to extend the discussion from a focus on colonialism and the global south to an exploration of East-West hierarchies in academia since the fall of state socialism. Since the 1990s a number of short but poignant exchanges highlight hierarchies in knowledge production that continue to benefit scholars from the Anglophone world based at such institutions and disadvantage scholars 'at home' in the former state-socialist countries. The reasons for this are manifold including ideological othering, language, finances, and they affect in particular scholars who were already academics at the time of state-socialism's fall. However, while younger scholars seem less affected, their seeming 'success' is likely predicated on a willingness to be hypermobile as PhD students and graduates. As being able 'to make it' in academia seems dependent on a graduate education at an institution in the USA or UK, we need to ask whether the growing diversity of our scholarly community is coterminous with the production of an academic precariat.
This paper will explore what the early exclusion and struggles for recognition and value of eastern European scholars tells us about the institutional structures and global dynamics that reproduce enclosures. It will go on to begin interrogating what the seeming success of a younger group of scholars tells us about what it takes to produce a worlded academia and whether that is indeed the direction of travel of the discipline. It will end with some more positive considerations of the small steps we can take to begin to disenclose by bringing such debates into the classroom early on producing undergraduates that not only understand concepts and theoretical debates but also the material and institutional structures and dynamics of academic knowledge production.
Accepted Contribution:
Contribution description:
Paper long abstract:
This contribution seeks to extend the discussion from a focus on colonialism and the global south to an exploration of East-West hierarchies in academia since the fall of state socialism. Since the 1990s a number of short but poignant exchanges highlight hierarchies in knowledge production that continue to benefit scholars from the Anglophone world based at such institutions and disadvantage scholars 'at home' in the former state-socialist countries. The reasons for this are manifold including ideological othering, language, finances, and they affect in particular scholars who were already academics at the time of state-socialism's fall. However, while younger scholars seem less affected, their seeming 'success' is likely predicated on a willingness to be hypermobile as PhD students and graduates. As being able 'to make it' in academia seems dependent on a graduate education at an institution in the USA or UK, we need to ask whether the growing diversity of our scholarly community is coterminous with the production of an academic precariat.
This paper will explore what the early exclusion and struggles for recognition and value of eastern European scholars tells us about the institutional structures and global dynamics that reproduce enclosures. It will go on to begin interrogating what the seeming success of a younger group of scholars tells us about what it takes to produce a worlded academia and whether that is indeed the direction of travel of the discipline. It will end with some more positive considerations of the small steps we can take to begin to disenclose by bringing such debates into the classroom early on producing undergraduates that not only understand concepts and theoretical debates but also the material and institutional structures and dynamics of academic knowledge production.
Decolonising the academy?
Session 1