A Challenge to Metrics as Evidence of Scholarity

Abstract

Now that universities have shifted their priorities to those of the ‘cash nexus’, they increasingly articulate their accomplishments and validate their existence in business terms for a globally competitive academic market. But corporatizing trends and the use of bibliometric tools that rank publication and quantify scholarity impact a redefinition and reconceptualization of what it means to be a scholar as an instrument of the corporate regime. Judith Butler's notion of normalizing categories is the lens through which this article examines European and United Kingdom corporatizing strategies such as the Bologna Process and Research Assessment Exercise. Key to the discussion is a critique of bibliometric accountability mechanisms that privilege quantification and promote academic materialism. These devices become normative, and, thus, the definition of scholarity to which academics default.