Abstract
As the way academics work becomes increasingly specified and regulated, the role of the public intellectual, as championed by Burawoy and exemplified by Jakubowicz, is changing. Engagement with the professions and industry is being proposed as a requirement for a research-active academic. Prescriptions for the way this might happen have the potential to remove the sense of responsibility inherent in Burawoy’s notion of the public intellectual and the suggested use of social media to promote new knowledge potentially dilutes the notion of ‘publics’ which is fundamental to the notion of the public intellectual, substituting the individual for the collective. This in turn has an impact on the kind of informed debate that can influence policy development. This paper explores the narratives of new academics as they seek to answer the questions Giddens asserted were fundamental to the creation of identity in late modernity – What to do? How to act? Who to be? It positions these narratives of identify in a broader discourse of the role of the academic in the creation of new knowledge, perceptions of the role of the university in contemporary Australian culture and the constraints of work planning and performance management.
Highlights
IntroductionThe university sat outside of democratic processes and outside of the flow of societal communication
Background to the StudyScholarship and SocietyThe mission of the university has developed and expanded, from an original focus on teaching and learning to incorporate research, the creation of knowledge for the sake of knowledge or for the sake of societal improvement, where there was a focus on society and its problems; and the emergence of the entrepreneurial university, the notion of the partnership between the university and business or industry to work together to solve problems which will strengthen the economy (Etkowitz, 2004; Roper and Hirth, 2005).Delanty argues that, traditionally, the university sat outside of democratic processes and outside of the flow of societal communication
This paper explores the narratives of new academics as they seek to answer the questions Giddens asserted were fundamental to the creation of identity in late modernity – What to do? How to act? Who to be? It positions these narratives of identify in a broader discourse of the role of the academic in the creation of new knowledge, perceptions of the role of the university in contemporary Australian culture and the constraints of work planning and performance management
Summary
The university sat outside of democratic processes and outside of the flow of societal communication It was this positioning that allowed the institution of the university to retain its autonomy, a key aspect of the creation of scholarly knowledge. He separates the work of the university from democracy and societal change He argues that scholarly knowledge is structured, created according to a set of rules and practices which encompass the way in which its authority can be judged. In expanding his discussion of the modern university (Delanty, 2003), Delanty argues that the academy is a site of many cultural contradictions as the emergence of the knowledge society has enabled the massification of education, the diffusion of new ideologies such as neo-liberalism and the marketisation of academic institutions
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