116 research outputs found
Reflections on Academia from a Perspective of Time(s) [article]
No full textThe slogan "Academia on Sale”1 includes addressing managerialism, the decline of autonomy and the deterioration of the organisational climate, as well as how to maintain commitment and engagement, love for teaching, and how to revive our enthusiasm, maintain solidarity among the disciplines, and strive for a socially and academically sustainable context in universities. Performance pressure is high; many of us suffer from the stress of overwork and, at the same time, we “can’t get no satisfaction”. In this essay I propose an additional perspective on academia, a “timescape” view (cf. Adam 1998, Sabelis 2002) that aids in criticising the current neoliberal climate, or rather, the dominance of efficiency-driven managerial cultures. In this, I introduce the elements of a time perspective, followed by some reflections on “Bildung”, education, and concluding with some observations by colleagues who have researched the increasing time pressure and desperation of academics in the context of growing workloads and shifting temporalities
Timescapes in academic life. Cubicles of time control
Get PDFUnder current conditions, it seems not enough to construct a plea for ‘slow science’. Temporalities of academia under TINA require close scrutiny in order to bring out the time regimes of academic life. Economy, efficiency, and effectiveness have produced measures by which not only work processed are uniformized and controlled, but especially the design, the character, and the pace of work, including the embodied experience of working. Consequently, (academic) work determines a lot of other aspects of our existence and it tends to uniformize work load as a given. The image arises of not only 24/7 availability for academic work, but the inevitability of compliance to working in individual bubbles of time control, causing a narrower focus for ‘the academic’ and possibly less space for the rhythms of academic creation and creativity. Autobiographical ‘vignettes’ illustrate this development, highlighting the working of regimes that are not questioned on a daily basis
Review of the book Television and postfeminist housekeeping. No time for mother, Nathanson, E.
Get PDFDiversity in cycle policies
No full textFrom the preface of the book Cycling Culture:In her chapter, Ida Sabelis considers how the very ordinariness of the bicycle as a transport choice in the Netherlands can actually render it invisible despite its ubiquity. Whereas the resurgence of Dutch cycling in the 1970s was brought about by concerted policy intervention (Stoffers 2012), the very success of these processes four decades on risks losing grasp of the mechanisms needed to bring about change. Moreover, normative assumptions about what it means to travel and about the travelling body become problematic for those who do not, for whatever reason, conform to those norms. A process of “othering” takes place. Applying insights developed in the sociology of diversity and applied in business, she shows how these barriers, physical and conceptual, might be overcome. Whilst not explicitly discussed in the chapter, it is worth noting that the manner in which the topic is explored here typifies work emerging from the mobilities field in that it is clearly indebted to postcolonial and feminist theory for its framing of the problematic and in the search for solutions
[Review of: Bert Coenen (2004) Het verborgen lijden in organisaties. Een pleidooi tegen de aanpassing]
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