Abstract
Two new phrases have recently entered the lexicon of British academia: ‘REF returnable’ and ‘the impact agenda’ – usually used alongside ‘income generation’. The cross-institutional collective neurosis over the REF (Research Excellence Framework) – the chip-off-the-oldblock offspring of the widely despised Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) – provides the context in which I respond to the article by Pain, Kesby and Askins (2011), hereafter PKA. Their article exhibits not what they call ‘a politics of positive anticipation’ (p 185) to the REF but rather a politics of obedience: the authors appropriate the notion of ‘impact’ and mould it to suit their own research agendas, precisely what the audit technocrats are hoping for. Their apparent impetus is that the time has come for ‘participatory geographers’ in the form of an audit that purports to recognise the benefits of scholarship beyond the academy. However, their neglect of the institutional arrangements damaging British higher education means that their promotion of participatory geographies falls short of its aims, both scientifically and politically. PKA are largely dismissive of those who have challenged the impact agenda, inviting audit critics ‘to reflect on the degree to which their own position manifests an investment in a very particular construction of the purpose, practices and outputs of the academy’ (p 185). On the contrary, those critics remind us that the RAE and its offspring need to be understood as input–output assessment instruments rooted in neoclassical economics, designed to turn universities into factories competing against each other for scarce resources. As Smith has argued in respect of this industrialisation of the academy:
Published Version
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