Academic Legitimacy Research Articles

GENDER, FEMINIST ACTIVISM AND CONSERVATISM IN LATIN AMERICA: AN INTERVIEW WITH FLÁVIA BIROLI, FLAVIA FREIDENBERG AND VERÓNICA GAGO

This interview discusses the challenges to gender studies and feminist movements facing the radicalization of the right-wing in Latin America. To this purpose, it selects three interlocutors of academic legitimacy in the region: Flávia Biroli, Flávia Freidenberg e Verónica Gago. The conversation is structured around two central points: on the one hand, it debates the recent conservative reactions and public spaces changes resulting from women’s mobilization for rights and in defense of democracy; on the other hand, it confronts the definition that “gender studies” constitute a specific theme of Social Sciences, describing feminist perspectives as transformative biases that are essential to a broad understanding of political and social phenomena.

The role of accreditation in establishing academic legitimacy in graduate level non-profit management education

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the tension that a graduate education field called non-profit management education (NME) faces as it decides whether or not to adopt accreditation. The tension at hand is the politically wrought process of accreditation and the challenge many professional graduate education programs face in maintaining distinctive characteristics of their programs while conforming to the perceived legitimate norms within the larger field of higher education. Design/methodology/approach This case study is focused on a multi-day Summit, collecting data from participant presentations and discussions, observations and field notes and documents. Inductive coding and deductive coding are used to analyze data, framed under the theoretical framework of organizational legitimacy, strategy and homogeneity. Findings Three major themes are identified that illuminate the inherent tension between the ambiguous nature of legitimacy and the structured character of accreditation: arguing the field is unique, establishing threats to innovation and drawing boundaries. Originality/value This study offers unique insights into the political nature of accreditation and its ties to legitimacy for professional graduate education programs. With the expansion of graduate education into more applied fields and the increased pressure to provide programs that are directly related to professional and career advancement, many programs may benefit from accreditation standards while garnering legitimacy. However, it is imperative that those seeking accreditation understand they may risk losing the very elements that make their programs distinct.

A systematic literature review of the evolution of pedagogy in entrepreneurial education research

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to create a better understanding of how entrepreneurial education research has evolved with regard to pedagogy over the past decades.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employed systematic review methodology to enable an in-depth analysis of the literature in a process that was both replicable and transparent. Guided by the research purpose, the systematic review of 395 articles published between January 1980 and December 2018 was influenced by a configurative approach aimed at interpreting and understanding the phenomenon under study.FindingsThe analysis suggests that the scholarly discourse on pedagogy in entrepreneurial education research has developed over time from teacher-guided instructional models to more constructivist perspectives. A shift in the literature was also observed, where scholarly discussions moved from addressing the issue of teachability to a greater emphasis on learnability. Contemporary discussions centre on the theoretical and philosophical foundations of experience-based teaching and learning.Originality/valueThe study illustrates how entrepreneurial education has evolved into a distinct research theme, characterized by a practice-oriented research agenda that emphasizes the need to connect teaching to “real-world” environments. The practice-oriented agenda has led to continued societal interest in promoting entrepreneurial education, while at the same time creating low academic legitimacy.

Doings with the land and sea: Decolonising geographies, Indigeneity, and enacting place-agency

Indigenous and decolonising geographies should be unsettling and challenging to the ontological foundations of the geographical discipline. Yet despite many scholars recognising and arguing for the need for these perspectives, Indigeneity remains marginal and Indigenous knowledge has been denied academic legitimacy within geography. Using ‘doings’ as an active, emergent, and evolving praxis, this paper examines how we can do Indigenous and settler geographies better. It illustrates how knowledge, emotions, feelings and intuition only come into being through the doings of the body with other bodies, places, and objects, including non-humans. Action and thought are indistinguishable, feeling is knowing, and the world becomes known through doing and movement. In these doings, place – particularly the land and sea – is an active agent in the making of beings and knowledge. By focusing on active doings in place, and acknowledging the temporalities of Indigenous ontologies, geographers are better able to support political and everyday struggles, situate our work in relation to colonialism, recognise and value everyday practices of resurgence, and spend time building relationships. ‘Doing’ geography differently would decentre academics as the source of knowledge production, employ more diverse voices in our teaching and provide embodied and material resistance to colonialism and neoliberal capitalism.

‘Pussy Panic’ and Glass Elevators: How Gender is Shaping the Field of Animal Studies

ABSTRACTThe ‘pussy panic’ of our title is a phrase that belongs to Susan Fraiman. It is a diagnosis, a lament, and a warning about how Animal Studies (AS) is currently torn between rising academic respectability bestowed through the ‘installation of Derrida as founding father’, and the neglect that this entails for AS’s deep roots in feminist scholarship going back decades, and across a number of disciplines. Finding that a ‘proximity to this feminized realm’ of ‘siding with animals’ can bring about a ‘pussy panic’ in male scholars, Fraiman draws a parallel between academic mainstreaming and the suppression of the ‘emotionally and politically engaged’ work of earlier feminist writers (93). Inspired by Fraiman’s reading and her sense of a lingering pussy panic in the field of AS, we were interested to inquire whether or not the academic legitimacy the field deserves has also brought with it a privileging of men’s voices as it has developed over the years. We conducted a large, broad-ranging international survey of AS scholars. From that larger survey, the issue of gender stood out and enabled us to investigate Fraiman’s observations further. Our data lend support to the idea that ‘pussy panic’ has indeed shaped the direction of the field so far.

Estrategias de legitimación para un espacio disputado. La inserción del Instituto de Psiquiatría de Rosario en las redes y agenda científica disciplinares (Argentina, 1929-1944)

El trabajo se ocupa del proceso de profesionalización y autonomización disciplinar de la Psiquiatría en la Argentina de entreguerras estudiando una de sus ángulos, referida a la legitimación académica, inserción y posicionamiento en un campo internacional de debates. Para ello toma el caso de la ciudad de Rosario, con la creación del Instituto de Psiquiatría de la Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Éste emergió como resultado de una disputa disciplinar entre neurología y psiquiatría –en su vertiente de higiene mental-, suscitada con la creación de la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas local en 1920. Partiendo de los estudios sociales de la ciencia y la historia psi, se reconstruyen y analizan las estrategias desplegadas por los miembros del Instituto para legitimar y consolidar su disciplina tanto al interior del campo médico rosarino como del campo psiquiátrico en conformación a nivel nacional, regional e internacional, que oscilaron entre la participación en distintos eventos científicos, el sostenimiento de sociabilidades científicas de alcance nacional y latinoamericano y la generación de redes a partir del canje de revistas con distintas latitudes.

Cuerpo y comunicación. Reflexiones teóricas y breve estado de la cuestión en México

El estudio del cuerpo en el campo de las ciencias sociales es relativamente reciente. En el contexto latinoamericano empezó a gozar de legitimidad académica a fines de los años ochenta y su desarrollo ha sido mucho mayor ya iniciado el siglo XXI. Existen la sociología del cuerpo y la antropología del cuerpo, y también son muchos los aportes desde miradas filosóficas, sobre todo fenomenológicas. Pero ¿qué sucede con el cuerpo como objeto de estudio de la comunicación? ¿Qué potencial tienen el cuerpo y la corporalidad como objetos de reflexión en nuestro campo de conocimiento? Más allá de los estudios sobre comunicación interpersonal, más teóricos que empíricos, o de las categorías relacionadas con los procesos de comunicación no verbal (kinésica y proxémica), es poca –o al menos insuficiente- la reflexión sobre la esencia corporal de la comunicación, y sobre el cuerpo como vehículo para la comunicación. En estas páginas se presenta una revisión general del cuerpo como objeto de estudio de la comunicación en el contexto mexicano, con base en el análisis documental de los trabajos que aparecen publicados en el Catálogo en línea “Documentación en Ciencias de la Comunicación”. Previamente, presentamos algunos aportes sociológicos y filosóficos sobre el cuerpo que nos parecen pertinentes para situar el debate.

Revisiting the rigor–relevance relationship: An institutional logics perspective

The question of whether academic research should emphasize scientific rigor, practical relevance, or both simultaneously has been hotly debated in HRM research and other related disciplines for much of the past century. That said, empirical investigations of whether these values are mutually exclusive or compatible are surprisingly rare. Moreover, the perspective of the end consumers of research—practitioners—as to what research is relevant has been almost completely ignored. In the present study, we adopt an institutional logics perspective to assess the perceived relevance of common management research findings with two samples of 298 and 143 practicing managers, respectively. Further, we examine whether objective indicators of rigor and manager‐rated relevance impact academic legitimacy. The results indicate a positive relationship between rigor and relevance. Interestingly, practitioner ratings of relevance were stronger predictors of academic legitimacy than methodological rigor. Finally, research findings that deal with leadership topics are rated as most relevant to practitioners, whereas job characteristics, demographics, and human resource practices are seen as the least relevant to managers. The contributions of this study and implications for future research conclude the article.

Epistemic Values in the Humanities and in the Sciences

AbstractSome scholars have defended the academic legitimacy of the humanities by drawing attention to their distinct goals or methods. In this essay, I argue for their legitimacy by doing the oppos...

In search of academic legitimacy: The current state of scholarship on graffiti and street art

Much has changed since the 1960s when the first scholarship on contemporary graffiti appeared. The current paper is an attempt to outline and contextualize a number of recurrent challenges facing researchers of graffiti and street art, as well as developments that have taken place in this scholarly field. The aim of creating this outline is to assist in increasing the amount, and improving the quality, of future scholarship on graffiti and street art. We recognize, however, that although many of the challenges have at one time seemed insurmountable, over time they have lessened as graffiti and street art have grown as art movements, and because a small cadre of tenacious scholars focusing on graffiti and street art has published and taught in this area. An increasing, though limited, number of academic venues focused on graffiti and street art scholarship has slowly emerged. We also recognize that with increased scholarship that has laid the foundation, new avenues to explore graffiti and street art have become apparent.

Stand your ground: The case for publishing in hospitality and tourism journals

The hospitality and tourism field has been struggling for academic legitimacy since its founding. Despite the impressive growth of research in the field, as well as the publication of a respectable number of high-quality scientific journals, voices are being heard from the community of hospitality and tourism researchers calling for more focused efforts on publication in journals of more established and traditional disciplines. It is argued here that this demand may have negative implications for research in the field, on the contribution of academia to the industry, and on the advancement of the career of hospitality and tourism scholars. The scientific community should reverse this trend and instead concentrate its efforts on developing the field by promoting publishing in hospitality and tourism journals in order to promote relevant, up-to-date, and innovative research for the benefit of science and industry.

Learning From and With Community Organizations to Navigate the Tensions of Democratic Engagement

In his 2015 framing essay for the Service-Learning & Community Engagement Future Directions Project (SLCE-FDP), Edward Zlotkowski challenges the movement to think carefully about where we locate the center of our (p. 84) and reconsiders whether the focus on academic legitimacy and institutional transformation he called for in his 1995 essay Does Service-Learning Have a Future? ought still to be the priority 20 years later. He also commends several of the 2015 SLCE-FDP thought pieces for calling attention to voices often unrepresented or underrepresented (p. 84). In this essay, we try to further deepen the role of community members and organizations in the movement's efforts to understand and address the opportunities and challenges of the present and future. Specifically, we call on our campus-based colleagues to seek out and learn from examples of community organizations that, in their day-to-day work, enact the principles of democratic engagement; and we call on our community-based colleagues to share and critique their own efforts. We envision the future of SLCE as bringing to life the commitments of democratic engagement and thereby nurturing shared responsibility for and shared power in nudging the world toward peace and justice. And we believe the SLCE movement as a whole can learn much from what may prove to be more democratic and cutting edge approaches in the broader community than are often found in the academy. We have first-hand experience as leaders, staff, partners, and volunteers with community organizations that work diligently to achieve democratic ends through democratic means in social and cultural contexts that make doing so difficult. We find in candid examination of two of our organizations' efforts some illumination of the tensions associated with democratic engagement: asset-oriented norms and co-creation (as they occur within the Interactive Resource Center, described below by Kathleen) and place-based partnerships and a process orientation toward impact (as they occur within ioby, described below by Brandon). We offer these examples not as success stories full of lessons learned and words of wisdom but rather as demonstrations of both challenges and possibilities--attempting in this way to shine light on the complexities of democratic engagement as experienced in communities. Interactive Resource Center The Interactive Resource Center (IRC, hup://gsodaycenter.org/) in Greensboro, North Carolina, is a daytime center for people experiencing homelessness. The IRC's mission is to assist people who are homeless, recently homeless, or facing homelessness [in reconnecting] with their own lives and with the community at large. We offer practical services: laundry, showers, access to computers and Internet, case management, and referrals. We also partner with other nonprofits and grassroots organizations, sharing our space as an incubator for multiple services and activities (e.g., medical services, art therapy, gardening, transportation via refurbished bicycles, GED courses, and weekly community vegetarian dinners). The following analysis of the IRC's efforts to enact an asset-based orientation and co-creation is based on a snapshot of the organization from 2010-2014, a period that most honestly reflects the aspirations relevant to this thought piece. At its inception, the people designing the IRC--many of whom were experiencing homelessness at the time--intentionally adopted an asset orientation: peer-based, strengths-focused, and collaborative. As we say every day in our morning meeting: This is the Interactive Resource Center. Your best resource is each other. Our intention is for everyone affiliated with the organization to experience it as their community. The term guest displaces the term client--the common social service agency name for a person accessing services--because we believe it better establishes a respectful space and affirms non-hierarchical, multi-directional relationships. …

Values-Engaged Assessment: Reimagining Assessment through the Lens of Democratic Engagement

What is one value that grounds you in your civic engagement work? How are you walking the of that value in your work? Or, how might you? And, what both helps and gets in the way of your doing that? These questions were recently posed to service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) faculty and staff gathered for an institute. Answering the first was easy. Collaboration. Reciprocity. Vulnerability. Intentionality. Humility. And on and on. But the second question was, at first, a dead weight in the room. Finally, one participant stood and spoke candidly: I care about risk-taking. I am always encouraging my students to take risks and embrace the vulnerability that comes along with that. We have to be vulnerable in order to grow. But when I think about my work, vulnerability is the last thing I want. I am not taking risks in that part of my work; I am looking for answers, usually in ways that keep everyone happy. That's not what I want my students to do, and I realty have to look at that. We believe the SLCE movement as a whole also really has to look at this: at the role SLCE values play in SLCE practices. Zlotkowski's 1995 essay on the future of SLCE called the movement to focus on achieving academic legitimacy. Since that time, academic legitimacy has become inextricably linked with academic assessment, which now, 20 years later, we need to critically examine and creatively reimagine. We are concerned that the ongoing quest for legitimacy, coupled with uncertainties about funding, often leads SLCE practitioner-scholars to a disempowered and inauthentic relationship with --one in which we find ourselves conforming to the practices of the world around us rather than holding to the values that drew many of us to SLCE. We see this potential tension between our values and our practices as a microcosm of the broader struggles SLCE as counter-normative work faces. It is challenging to live out commitments to democratic engagement in an academic culture and a society often characterized by technocratic tendencies to privilege academic expertise over broad community participation in knowledge creation (Saltmarsh, Hartley, & Clayton, 2009) and by neoliberal (market-driven) imperatives to frame SLCE merely in terms of charity, public relations, or revenue generation (Brackmann, 2015). Assessment is always undergirded by values, but which values and who determines them? And do we default to them, let ourselves be pressured into alignment with them, or deliberately choose them? Our vision for SLCE is to the talk of democratic engagement (Clayton et al., 2014; Saltmarsh, Hartley, & Clayton, 2009). Democratic engagement focuses on relationships as much as results and on effectiveness as much as efficiency. It sees all participants in SLCE as co-inquirers and co-creators. It calls for transformative learning and change--in higher education, in communities, and in ourselves. How might we better walk the of the values of such engagement in our work, navigating constraints while empowering all stakeholders through critical reflection on values? Realizing this vision, we believe, requires that we go beyond assessing community and campus outcomes by counting participants, hours, or dollars or by reporting levels of satisfaction; it invites us to inquire into qualities of relationships, the transformation of systems, and the empowerment of all partners over time. As we see it, democratic engagement invites us to reimagine assessment. It is our conviction that the work of SLCE practitioner-scholars can embody and nurture a set of relationships, practices, and modes of inquiry that is potentially transformative of technocratic and neoliberal tendencies in our institutions. To fulfill this potential, we call for what we have begun referring to as values-engaged assessment --by which we mean that is explicitly grounded in, informed by, and in dialogue with the (contested) values of SLCE understood and enacted as democratic civic engagement. …

Nationalism and Religion in the Discourse of Russia’s ‘Critical Experts of Islam’

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on a number of prominent journalists and experts distinctive for their critical attitudes towards both radical Islam and the Russian official representatives of the Muslim umbrella organizations (muftiates) in the Russian Federation, and implicitly, for what they see as the Kremlin’s lenient policies towards Islam in Russia. As many of these journalists have links to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), and some also to the intelligence community, the central argument of this contribution is that the debate on Islam should be seen within the triangle of state, ROC and Islam. While some of these experts work in Moscow and have access to resources in the centre, others operate in republics such as Tatarstan, where they also criticize the local administration for its pro-Islamic and anti-Orthodox policies. As most of these critics of Islam have academic qualifications (though usually not in Islamic studies), they give academic legitimacy to the view that there is an oppositional dichotomy between ‘traditional Islam’ and ‘non-traditional Islam’, the latter term being used as an umbrella for all trends in Islam that are perceived as being of foreign origin. Similarly, ‘traditional Islam’ is not defined by its Islamic content but simply by its loyalty to the Kremlin. The article also touches upon Muslim responses to these discursive constructions, which reflect the strong competition between the existing muftiates in Russia.

Has (Downturn‐)Austerity Really Been ‘Constitutionalized’ in Europe? On the Ideological Dimension of Such a Claim

In current debate, it is frequently argued that EU law requires or facilitates the implementation of ‘downturn‐austerity’, that is, spending cuts, wage deflation, and tax increases during an economic downturn. More specifically, this ‘thesis of the constitutionalization of downturn‐austerity in Europe’ has two dimensions: a (narrow) normative and a (broader) causal one. The former holds that downturn‐austerity is a legal obligation under EU law; the latter assumes that the European constitutional framework effects downturn‐austerity without necessarily claiming a legal obligation. I will argue that the former is incorrect, and yet shapes the hegemonic understanding of EU law. I will maintain that the normative constitutionalization thesis should be understood as an ideological communication, which aims to cloak the significant distributive effects of the crisis measures with an unwarranted aura of legal necessity, political coherence, and academic legitimacy.

Professionalization in Cyberinfrastructure

In this report we address whether the cyberinfrastructure community should professionalize as it continues to encourage participation in cyberinfrastructure-related occupations, provide a career path, and continue to gain academic legitimacy. We brought members of the cyberinfrastructure community (high-performance computing, software, data, and infrastructure) together with organization scientists to discuss the professionalization of, and career paths for, emerging cyberinfrastructure roles. The cyberinfrastructure workforce is increasingly important to science, and this RCN will bring those interested in the cyberinfrastructure workforce together with scholars of technical workers and technical professions together. Among other contributions, we identified four general roles for cyberinfrastructure personnel: systems facing, software facing, researcher facing, and application facing.We discuss organization science research in professionalization and reflect on whether it makes sense to create a cyberinfrastructure profession at this stage.

Arts-based health research and academic legitimacy: transcending hegemonic conventions

Using the Canadian context as a case study, the research reported here focuses on in-depth qualitative interviews with 36 researchers, artists and trainees engaged in ‘doing’ arts-based health research (ABHR). We begin to address the gap in ABHR knowledge by engaging in a critical inquiry regarding the issues, challenges and benefits of ABHR methodologies. Specifically, this paper focuses on the tensions experienced regarding academic legitimacy and the use of the arts in producing and disseminating research. Four central areas of tension associated with academic legitimacy are described: balancing structure versus openness and flexibility; academic obligations of truth and accuracy; resisting typical notions of what counts in academia; and expectations vis-à-vis measuring the impact of ABHR. We argue for the need to reconsider what counts as knowledge and to reconceptualize notions of evaluation and rigor in order to effectively support the effective production and dissemination of ABHR.

Comment: Advertising Won't Die, But Defining It Will Continue to be Challenging

The evolution of the field of advertising has constantly demanded redefining what advertising is and what topics fit under the rubric of “advertising research.” In response, both academic and indus...

Vállalkozói képzés a 21. században a felsőoktatásban - lehetőségek, módszerek, jó gyakorlatok

Challenges of the 21st century require answers from higher education as well. In Europe, most of the entrepreneurship programmes on the higher education institutions are less than ten years old. Whilst business studies may battle for academic legitimacy, it has a clear advantage when it comes to graduate employability. The aim of this paper is to give answer to the following questions: why entrepreneurship education is important, what are the methods which are already used and what are the results of them. The answers to the questions are based on literature reviews, a case study and in-depth interviews with alumni carried out at the University of Debrecen, where since 2010 Team Academy Debrecen, a new education model from Finland is implemented. Tiimiakatemia education is an innovative Finnish model founded in 1993 by Johannes Partanen that develops team entrepreneurs. Based on the results some of the important elements of entrepreneurship teachability are: learning by doing, passion, learning in teams, coaching and mentoring.

Asserting academic legitimacy: the influence of the University of Technology sectoral agendas on curriculum decision-making

ABSTRACT This paper argues that curriculum decision-making in the South African University of Technology (UoT) environment is affected not only by industry and disciplinary demands, but also by socio-structural features and ideologies particular to this educational sector. It supports the view that recontextualisation processes are subject to multiple socio-epistemic factors. The theoretical concept of regulative discourse is used to understand sectoral influences that direct recontextualisation rules. Two vignettes, taken from graphic design and Film Production courses at a UoT are drawn upon to illustrate recontextualisation processes. Curriculum and assessment practices in these courses ensure that industry texts and practices dominate the assessment regime, while reductionist and decontextualised approaches to academic writing are privileged. The argument advanced here has implications for practitioners seeking to ensure that vocational education students gain meaningful opportunities to actively participate and progress in both their fields of practice and in higher education.