Academic Narratives Research Articles

Operating as a Social Enterprise within Resource and Institutional Constraints

Abstract This study explores questions around the abilities of social enterprises (SEs) to obtain market-based revenues in the context of a middle-income country with significant institutional and economic constraints (Egypt). Our main research question focuses on analyzing the reasons why SEs in this context are unable to obtain their desired level of market-based revenues. Through the analysis of 22 SEs with some degree of a mixed revenue model, we draw three major conclusions that contribute to both academic theory and SE practice: (a) the importance of investing in new cohorts of SE employees, (b) ways to increase SEs’ ability to respond to institutional barriers, and (c) the promotion of adaptive organizational models able to respond to changing external conditions. The study makes several contributions to the literature. Most importantly, it seeks to add findings to discussion around how SEs operate within constraints by providing real-life empirical data from a context that faces significant institutional and resource barriers. It adds to the current literature by offering insights on organizational capacity, institutions, legitimacy, and adaptability that can be applied to other countries with similar socio-economic contexts. Methodologically, it also makes an effort to move beyond biases of studying only successful SEs, to offer micro-level qualitative analysis of SEs, and to hear unique and potentially alternative perspectives to academic narratives rooted in concept and theory by better understanding how social entrepreneurs themselves perceive their own work and practices.

Counterhegemonic Narratives of Innovation: Political Discourse Analysis of Iberoamerican Countries

From the 1970s onwards, changes in economic theory began to draw attention to the relationship between economic growth and technological innovation. Technological innovation has come to be considered fundamental to boosting international trade, increasing productivity and generating more and better jobs, among other benefits. However, more recent academic narratives began to change through considering the importance of technological innovation for social purposes such as social inclusion and sustainable development. This recovered the concept of social innovation and alongside the development of a plethora of alternative innovation concepts – such as sustainable innovation, open innovation, responsible innovation, green innovation, among other “x-innovation” concepts (Gaglio et al. 2017). Nevertheless, little is known about the extent to which these counterhegemonic concepts emerge and feature in Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) policy discourses. In this sense, this article aims to understand the use of “x-innovation” concepts and the role attributed to innovation for (allegedly) counterhegemonic purposes in the STI national policies of Iberoamerican countries within the framework of disclosing the specificity of this discourse.

Pedagogic democracy versus pedagogic supremacy: migrant academics’ perspectives

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the underexplored area of othering of migrant academics within their teaching context. Nine personal narratives of migrant academics’ teaching were analysed qualitatively for indications of pedagogical othering. Migrant academics indicated the need to align their own pedagogic values and practices with that of their host institutions they work in as they felt their own values and practices were considered less desirable. We argue, from a Gramsci’s hegemonic perspective, that the pedagogic adaptation by migrant academics aimed at improving student learning is not problematic in itself, but more problematic is the inequality of opportunity for migrant academics to contribute to pedagogical decisions which can meaningfully influence the departmental culture. Lack of pedagogic democracy where the ‘home’ academic environment has a monopoly of knowledge and a hegemonic position regarding learning and teaching can compromise the student-learning experience by limiting articulation of alternative pedagogical perspectives by the migrant international academics.

ПАНСЛАВІЗМ У СУЧАСНІЙ РОСІЇ: АКАДЕМІЧНИЙ І ПОЛІТИЧНИЙ ВИМІР (на прикладі ідейної спадщини М. Данилевського) Natalia KOVALCHUK

Abstract Background: While international tensions increase and Russia's relations with the US and the European Union are worsening as a result of the annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Eastern Ukraine, the presence of Panslavic ideas in the Kremlin's propaganda arsenal becomes more and more visible. Russian politicians, scholars, and conservative public figures often voice the central thesis of Panslavism about the difference and the eternal confrontation between Russia and the West and explain the nature of actual conflicts in the light of this thesis. Purpose: To analyze the contemporary manifestations of Panslavism in the academic, educational and political circles of the Russian Federation by examining the current role of the intellectual heritage of Nikolai Danilevsky, a Russian scientist and conservative philosopher, author of the well-known book “Russia and Europe.” Results: The material presented in the article testifies that Panslavism continues to function in various cultural and political contexts, including undergoing a new rise in Russia in the XX-beginning of the XXI centuries. Slavic motives today are not only present in artistic or academic narratives – as the contemporary appeal to Danilevsky's ideas shows, but they are also periodically instrumentalized for political purposes. In the imagined world of Russian Panslavism, Russia looks stronger than the Western powers, capable of becoming a center of attraction for Slavic neighbors. Radical Russian nationalism borrowed the agenda of the Panslavists of the second half of the XIX century with a view to restoring lost influence in Central and Southeastern Europe. Key words: Panslavism, Russian imperialism, M. Danilevsky, “Russia and Europe”.

Gender Studies and Women's Equality as Orwellian "Thoughtcrimes"? The Threat of Self-Censorship and Polish Academic Autobiographical Resistance

Given the significant increase of recent threats by the far right against Polish gender studies scholars, this article focuses on the life narratives of Polish academics who have been intimidated because of their research. It argues that the danger of substituting self-censorship for free inquiry can be partially prevented by acts of academic autobiographical resistance. It has developed not in book-length memoirs, but in various life narratives, such as acts of self-presentation through extended biographical interviews, personal essays, open letters of protest, online accounts of witnessing, and the visual arts. Such an approach involving common autobiographical acts in multiple media best enacts both intellectual and affective forms of academic resistance to widespread misrepresentations of gender studies.

The Influence of Foreign-born Population on Immigrant and Native-born Students’ Academic Achievement

With recent increases in international migration, some political and academic narratives argue for limiting migration because of possible negative effects on the host country. Among other outcomes, these groups argue that immigrant students have an impact on education, negatively affecting native-born students’ academic performance. The authors contextualize the relationship between immigrant status and academic achievement by considering a macro social setting: country-level foreign-born population. The authors examine achievement from the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment in 41 high-income countries. The authors use within- and cross-level interactions to examine (1) the relationship between immigrant status and academic achievement, (2) the moderating effect of student socioeconomic status on achievement, and (3) how country-level foreign-born population affects both immigrant and native-born students’ performance. The findings indicate that immigrant students perform similarly to native-born students when considering other contextual factors, with socioeconomic status moderating the effect of immigrant status. Furthermore, all students, immigrant and nonimmigrant students alike, benefit academically from more immigration.

Coproduction and the third sector in France: Governmental traditions and the French conceptualization of participation

AbstractResearch on coproduction has tended to assume a coherence of conceptualizations of coproduction across borders, and little analysis of the framing and discourse of coproduction in different contexts has been undertaken. In the French language literature on citizen participation and the social and solidarity economy, the term coproduction is little used. This paper investigates the narratives of French academics, public, and third sector actors in order to identify what, if anything, is different about the French context that explains this gap. Drawing on semistructured interviews, I identify four key narratives that distinguish the French conceptualizations of coproduction and the third sector from the dominant English language coproduction literature: (a) a mainstreaming of coproduction as part of organizational purpose in the social and solidarity economy, (b) an emphasis on formalized involvement of citizens in organizational governance, (c) the motivation of citizen empowerment and democracy over cost and efficiency, and (d) the use of the term coconstruction rather than coproduction. I argue that these narratives are shaped by the governmental traditions of France, which emphasize formal rules, hierarchy, representative democracy, and a suspicion of particularistic interests. I conclude by questioning the universality of some of the axioms of coproduction theory in the English language literature.

Allegories of the Campus in Polish Academic Narratives

[full article and abstract in English]
 In the paper, two Polish academic narratives Krzysztof Zanussi’s movie “Camouflage” (“Barwy Ochronne”) of 1976, and Wit Szostak’s novel “A Hundred Days Without Sunshine” (“Sto dni bez słońca”) of 2014 are discussed from the perspective of the use of the campus space as an image of the state. Drawing from the tradition of the British and American campus novel – a literary genre that developed in the 1950s and reached the peak of its popularity in the 1990s, the two narratives, created in two different political realities, make use of the absence of academic campuses in Poland and offer the campus as a miniature of the social space of the state in which conflicting ideas and ideologies clash, revealing the mechanisms of meritocratic privileging and hierarchization of positions. Such elements as imagery, the presentation of characters, forms of narration, literary / film techniques, use of language are analysed in order to show that they are used by the authors to stress an allegorical meaning in the analysed narratives.

Claiming Identity, Delineating Category

Identity is an important focus for discourse in the contemporary world, used as an indicator of elements that are felt by an individual to be an important part of how they see and understand themselves. Self-identification commonly employs terms that can also be used to signify an analytic category, and the understanding that underlies these different uses is often neither wholly shared nor entirely distinct. Recognition of different use is thus potentially significant in research related to the groups, behaviours or concepts signified by such terms. This paper utilises concepts of religion(ing) and kink - both terms which can be, and are, used as claimed identities and as analytic categories - to reflect upon the porosity of such concepts when they are deployed in individual and academic narratives. Qualitative research into kink (understood as a marker of identity) is used to explore how personalised practices contribute to religioning processes (understood as a category label). This offers opportunities to consider how personalised practices contribute to the religioning processes of world- and/or meaning- and/or story-making, and also demonstrates the porosity of concepts like kink and non-kink, religious and non-religious, as they are constructed, maintained and/or disrupted within individual and academic narratives.

The Institutionalisation of the Public Intellectual

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.

Representations of Black Womanhood in Mexico

Popular narratives ambiguously recognize the presence of Black women in Mexico. While registering the existence of Afro-descendants on the American Continent, Mexicans simultaneously deny the genetic, cultural, and economic contributions of Black women, subduing their voices. The refusal to incorporate the perspective of African and Afro-Mestiza women into popular and academic narratives has consequently resulted in a distorted view of Afro-Mexican populations and of the elements that compose Mexican national identities. If Francisco Rojas Gonzalez’s novel La negra Angustias tells the story of a complex protagonist, countering stereotypes of Black womanhood, most other popular representations cancel the multidimensional subjectivities of women of African descent in Mexico. This article discusses La negra Angustias and other images of women of African descent in twentieth-century Mexican popular culture. Film, music, and literature productions are discussed through the analysis of rumbera films, Gabilondo Soler’s lyrics, and Café Tacuba’s performance of “Rarotonga,” originally a comic character. The study of these images supports the idea that Mexican popular culture has adopted globalized forms of racism and sexism, strengthening an already-exclusive whitened national identity. Although there is no uniform adoption of racist and sexist approximations in Mexico to Black women representations, the persistence of Eurocentric models is potentiated by the rapid and wide coverage of hegemonic ideas through globalization projects.

Ineptitude, ignorance, or intent: The social construction of failure in development

This paper explores the social construction of failure in development policy and academic narratives. Talk of failure is commonplace in development, and this paper seeks to use that as a heuristic to understand what that it signifies beyond face value. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary texts to provide illustrative evidence, the paper explores how failure is constructed, and advances a three-fold typology of failures that vary in terms of their positionality, the critical variables they identify as responsible, their epistemological stance, and the importance they accord to politics.

Enlivening the senses: engaging sight and sound to (re)consider the hidden narratives of academics in the histories of university education

This article interrogates the construction of a visual and sound installation that juxtaposes contemporary material with historical artefacts regarding academic work to offer an aesthetic mode of interruption in explorations of academic voice in university histories and in the contemporary university. Drawing upon Foucauldian histories of the present (particularly genealogy), this installation combines text, images and sound to take audiences on an emotive journey of the university. As historical research increasingly takes on an aesthetic and sensual turn, moving beyond content and context to consider other forms of representation, the article draws on theories concerning the functions of art and the semiotics involved when we engage with art to explore the emotional dimensions of academic work. Art in story and story in art methodologies are used to situate attempts at engaging in aural and visual ways of knowing time and place to (re)consider academics’ silenced historical and contemporary narratives.

“It’s hard to be strategic when your hair is on fire”: alternative food movement leaders’ motivation and capacity to act

Despite decades of struggle against the industrial food system, academics still question the impact of the alternative food movement. We consider what food movement leaders themselves say about their motivation to act and their capacity to scale up their impact. Based on semi-structured interviews with 27 food movement leaders in Michigan, our findings complicate the established academic narratives that revolve around notions of prefigurative and oppositional politics, and suggest pragmatic strategies that could scale up the pace and scope of food movement impacts. In contrast to the apolitical perspective some scholars see guiding alternative food movements, local leaders we interviewed see the food system from a structural-political lens. Though some see strength in fragmentation, most are not under the illusion that they can work alone and aspire to build their collective strength further. Concerns about organizational survival and conflicting views about the goals of the food movement, however, present ongoing challenges. Ultimately, we argue that there is a middle ground food movement leaders can walk between prefigurative and oppositional politics, one that still attempts to intentionally change the state, while also maintaining the inventiveness that can come from autonomous, grassroots initiatives. Specifically, interviewees suggested that increased strategic capacity around policy advocacy, critical food systems education, and negotiation could help them extend cross-movement networks and mainstream more equitable food policies, while continuing to experiment with customized solutions.

Internationalisation and migrant academics: the hidden narratives of mobility

Internationalisation is a dominant policy discourse in the field of higher education today, driven by an assemblage of economic, social and educational concerns. It is often presented as an ideologically neutral, coherent, disembodied, knowledge-driven policy intervention—an unconditional good. Mobility is one of the key mechanisms through which internationalisation occurs, and is perceived as a major form of professional and identity capital in the academic labour market. Yet, questions remain about whether opportunity structures for mobility are unevenly distributed among different social groups and geopolitical spaces. While research studies and statistical data are freely available about the flows of international students, there is far less critical attention paid to the mobility of academics. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 14 migrant academics from diverse ethnic backgrounds, including Roma and Latin American communities, and the theoretical framings of the new mobility paradigm and cognitive and epistemic justice, this article explores some of the hidden narratives of migrant academics’ engagements with mobility in the global knowledge economy. It concludes that there is a complex coagulation of opportunities and constraints. While there are many gains including transcultural learning, enhanced employability and inter-cultural competencies, there are also less romantic aspects to mobility including ‘otherness’, affective considerations such as isolation, and epistemic exclusions, raising questions about whose knowledge is circulating in the global academy.

Entre denominações geracionais: o que as narrativas acadêmicas nos ensinam sobre crianças e jovens digitais

A partir da intensa relação de crianças e jovens com artefatos digitais (tablets, smartphones, entre outros), este artigo – inscrito sob o referencial teórico dos Estudos Culturais em Educação – tem por objetivo expor algumas interlocuções entre tecnologias e educação, tendo como subsídio a emergência de diversas denominações geracionais. O estudo comtemplou três movimentações: apresentação de um panorama sobre o conceito de geração; o mapeamento das narrativas acadêmicas; uma análise de como tais narrativas estão implicadas em produzir um tipo de geração e de educação ao estilo “digital”. O aporte teórico se apoia em autores como Feixa e Leccardi, Tapscott, Prensky, Carr e Buckingham. As narrativas sinalizam os benefícios e perigos da imersão tecnológica, o que vem permeando igualmente a convocação ao uso dos aparatos tecnológicos nos espaços escolares.

Supporting scholarly identity and practice: Narratives of occupational therapy academics

Introduction Internationally, an increasing number of occupational therapists are making the transition from clinical practice to academia. Many make this transition with strong practitioner identities, limited academic skills, and inadequate preparation for a competitive academic environment. A group of 13 Australian occupational therapy academics participated in blogs as part of a 12-month action research project, with the aim of being and becoming more scholarly academics. Method Throughout an action research project titled Growing Scholarship, co-participants/researchers participated in a closed blog for sharing experiences of being and becoming more scholarly academics. In the present study, qualitative data from the blogs were analysed through an iterative and inductive process and themes generated by the research team. Findings Constructing and reconstructing identity emerged as a key theme during analysis of the blogs, with the sub-themes striving to reach one’s potential and growing through collaboration and support emphasising the significance of individual and macro factors in shaping academic identity formation. Conclusion This study demonstrated how the occupation of blogging can be used to support the scholarly identity and practice of occupational therapy academics. Other professionals facing change and uncertainty in the workplace could consider a similar approach to support the process of identity reconstruction.

Paradise Lost? Patterns and Precarity in Working-Class Academic Narratives

Through an analysis of eight collections of autoethnographic essays written by working-class academics and published over the span of thirty-two years, I identify stable themes and emergent patterns in lived experiences. Some broad and stable themes include a sense of alienation, lack of cultural capital, encountering stereotypes and microaggressions, experiencing survivor guilt and the impostor syndrome, and struggling to pass in a middle-class culture that values ego and networking. Two new and troubling patterns are crippling amounts of student debt and the increased exploitation of adjunct labor. I emphasize the importance of considering social class background as a form of diversity in academia and urge continued research on the experiences of working-class academics.

‘Moving to stay in the same place?’ Academics and theatrical artists as exemplars of the ‘mobile middle’

This article provides insights into mobility in the context of geographical, economic, professional, temporal and imaginary movements of academics and theatrical artists. It explores how these dimensions of mobility intersect in the narratives of academics and theatrical artists, thereby producing a position ‘in between’ choice and necessity, and privilege and disadvantage with regard to movement. The analysis shows how both academics and theatrical artists engage in mobility to secure, maintain or improve their professional and economic position. On this basis, we suggest that they are part of an emerging category of professionals: the ‘mobile middle’, for whom mobility is a crucial part and principle of life. We argue that the phenomenon of the ‘mobile middle’ and mobility in general have wide-ranging implications for our understanding of contemporary careers, work and life organisation.

Narrativas académicas e historia oral en el pueblo de los Pastos

While exploring the literature available about the Pastos people, this paper describes the alleged tensions between academic narratives and oral history. This paper argues the existence of politics of within chronicles, essays, papers, books, dissertations, and other sources written about the subject. However, from the author´s point of view, this literature dives into a permanent dialogue with other non-official narratives, being answered, subverted and resignified by the same people it represents. Throughout the article, several narratives collected during ethnographic fieldwork carried out by the autor together with members of the Pastos community, show that oral history is one of the crucially important non -official narratives for the history and memory of their people.