Tomorrow’s a mystery: constructions of the future and ‘un/becoming’ amongst ‘early’ and ‘late’ career academics

Abstract

Constructing a secure sense of a professional future has become increasingly difficult for early career researchers, whilst concerns about present and future job in/security have also been expressed in relation to already-established academics. In this paper, we draw on qualitative data from a U.K. study to explore everyday conceptualisations of the future for both ‘early career’ and ‘late career’ academics, in the context of increased fears and actualities of occupational precarity. We utilise theories of the social construction of time, as well as a conception of precarity and ‘precarization’ utilised by Butler (2009a, 2009b) and Lorey (2015), relating to ‘politically induced’ forms of insecurity that are a direct product of neoliberalism. The research reveals a variety of forms and levels of concern and anxiety by both groups for their own futures, and for the future of the academy as a whole.     

The use of feedback mechanisms in interpreting the robustness of a neoliberal educational assemblage

This article demonstrates how using feedback mechanisms or ‘loops’ as heuristic devices can help ethnographers explain the interior logic, robustness and contradictions within complex educational assemblages. After reviewing the use of feedback mechanisms in the natural and social sciences, particularly practice theory, the article presents two feedback loops drawn from the first author's four-year ethnographic study of class culture and neoliberal schooling in suburban Ohio, USA. The first identifies ‘hypercredentialing’ as the key process underlying the production of the performative worth of achievement-oriented students; the second identifies ‘reflexive awareness’ as a key process underlying the insufficient performativity of under- and lower-achieving students. The article uncovers hidden dynamics regarding neoliberal governmentality and performativity within a particular educational context and, more broadly, shows how using feedback mechanisms enables ethnographers to make cultural processes, as well as their interpretations of them, more transparent.     

建设高校和谐校园的管理途径探析

高校是促进和谐社会建设的一支重要力量,构建和谐校园是高校肩负的特殊历史使命。高校和谐校园是社会主义和谐社会的稳定基础和人才保障。从管理的角度提出建设高校和谐校园的途径主要有：营造和谐人际关系、坚持民主法治、营造诚信氛围、树立科学发展观、采取切实有效措施,确保校园安定有序等。     

The Myth of “Migrants as Problems”: Public School in Neoliberal Times and the Construction and Contestation of “Migrant” Identity

This article reports the findings of a sociolinguistic ethnographic inquiry into the constructions of internal rural-to-urban migrant students by one urban public school in China, and how these students positioned themselves to these constructions against the background of the school’s neoliberal transformation. This inquiry finds that, due to the case school’s pursuit of exam-performance-based academic excellence, its official documents discursively constructed migrant students as being of “low quality,” and a problem for and potential danger to the school. However, the daily positioning practices of school administrators, teachers, and these students did not just reproduce this uniformly negative discursive construction; rather, they contested it in a complex and contradictory manner. This article offers further evidence showing the complexity of identity constructions in late modern urban schools, wherein professionals and students are all involved in a marketized education context that brings crises and dilemmas to institutions.     

走向人文形态的大学存在

大学存在的基本形态有三个层面:一是物的层面,二是大学人的活动层面,三是大学人与物的互动中所积淀而成的人文形态层面.一所成熟的现代大学应该是拥有良好的大学人文品格.对于我们当前的大学建设而言,关注大学人文形态的建构,全面提升大学的人文品格乃是当务之急.     

What is ethnography? Can it survive? Should it?

This paper notes that, in the field of education and beyond, the term ‘ethnography’ has acquired a range of meanings, and comes in many different versions, these often reflecting sharply divergent orientations. I argue that this is a major problem that requires attention; particularly since today there are some serious threats to the practice of ethnographic work, on almost any definition. However, while we need to forge greater agreement about the meaning of the term, this is a challenging task. Indeed, if we take ‘ethnography’ to refer to a whole methodological approach little agreement will be possible. I argue that it may be feasible if we treat ethnography as one methodological strategy among others, each having varying advantages and disadvantages for the purposes of investigating particular topics. However, the fundamental disagreements among ethnographers today about ontological, epistemological, and axiological matters render even this by no means unproblematic.     

内在世界秩序的构建:历史境遇中的《恶心》

日记体小说《恶心》是存在主义哲学家萨特的代表作。通过主人公洛根丁对存在的意识,萨特揭示出了人的存在特性和方式。人的存在具有偶然性、普遍性与时间性,人的存在方式表现为自欺与自我。     

加强大学生生态道德教育的对策

在生态危机不断加剧的今天,加强大学生的生态道德教育显得尤为重要,本文主要从生态道德教育的理论资源、目标和主要内容以及方法途径三方面进行了探讨。     

网络辅助外语写作教学

随着社会的实际需求和高等院校语言教学的发展,外语写作教学日益受到重视。文章主要探讨如何结合网络环境资源,整合多种写作教学法,从而有效地组织外语写作教学,改变传统写作课堂枯燥和沉重的局面。     

体制改革背景下高校学报发展途径探析

分析高校学报的现状和其成因以及期刊改革的必要性。认为在学术期刊改革的背景下,高校学报的发展途径主要有以下几种:创办名刊工程,打造精品学报;地方高校走特色化发展之路;开放办刊,加强联合办刊;加强数字化、网络化建设;积极争取国家政策经费支持等。     

Neoliberal contradictions in two private niches of educational ‘choice’

This article brings together ethnographies of two privileged educational settings in the United States – a private school in California’s Central Valley following the progressivist Sudbury model, and an affluent New England boarding school’s summer enrichment program. Each of these institutions serves as an alternative to and/or extension of publicly accessible education institutions during a neoliberal era of marketization and growing educational inequality. By comparing findings from ethnographic studies of each institution, we find that both celebrate open access and socially responsible pedagogical values in ways that obscure mechanisms of exclusion and an entrenched individualist ideology. We discuss two particular contradictions that manifest in both settings: first, a discourse of openness and inclusivity that belies the ways in which access is mediated by constructions of who best ‘fits’ the special learning community; and second, an outspoken allegiance to socially engaged values of diversity and democracy that belies the ways in which these values are commodified and appropriated for students’ individual advantage(s). In comparing such sites, we argue for the importance of tracing the mechanisms of advantage in under-researched ‘niches’ of the dynamically shifting and unequally accessed neoliberal marketplace for educational opportunity.     

社团生活与研究生教育

宏观地看,社团生活已经成为现代人存在方式的一个重要方面,在校研究生积极参与社团生活可顺利完成学校与社会的对接;微观地看,参与社团生活可以有效锻炼、提高研究生多方面能力,为他们适应以能力为核心竞争力的现代生活打下基础。     

大学生就业现状对高校人才培养模式改革的启示

大学生就业难的问题已经成为社会关注的热点.这其中的原因当然是多方面的,但作为培养人才的高校,更应该深刻反思自己人才的培养模式、办学理念以及办学目的,积极探索适应社会经济发展的新型的人才培养模式,以便在新形势下谋求更好更快的发展.     

高校廉洁教育方法途径的生态化实践

应用生态原则、生态方法和生态思维来认识和确立高校廉洁教育方法途径,是提高高校廉洁教育有效性的重要内容。廉洁教育方法途径的生态化就是有效地把方法途径整合为一个有机体,为此就需要确立其原则、建构其主要内容并处理好各种现实关系,在实践中不断完善。     

高校精品课程建设途径探析

随着我国高等教育事业的发展,高校陆续开展了精品课程建设工作,有效地提高了教学质量和人才培养质量。通过对精品课程的内涵进行阐述,明确了精品课程建设的重要意义,并从师资队伍、教学内容、教学方法、教材建设、实习基地、教学管理机制等方面提出加强课程建设的有效途径和策略,为高校精品课程建设指明了方向。