ON THE MORAL ECONOMY OF
ACADEMIC APPRAISAL
alfrehn
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

FEAR OF A
RAE PLANET
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

“…when we, as academics, plead powerlessness
in choosing what we research… because of
incentive and reward systems…, we
dehumanize our careers and our lives.”
Sara L. Rynes, Editor-in-Chief, Academy of
Management Journal (2007b: 747)
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

INTERPRETING APPRAISALS,
THE CRITIQUES
Reductionist
Cultural homogenization, towards the hard sciences
Cultural homogenization, the Americanization of
everything
The financialization of academia, short-term thinking
Polarizing meritocracies, winner-takes-all
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

THE ARGUMENTS FOR APPRAISAL
Enhancing transparency
Efficency concerns – “What gets measured gets done”
Building knowledge, not libraries
Concerns about fairness and justice
Reducing bias, leveling the playing field
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

POINTS OF AGREEMENT
The discussion concerns the issue of justice, quality and
diversity
Appraisals are increasingly a fact of academic life, and their
quantitative form is becoming evermore accepted (if not
liked), even by critics
Interestingly, most academics seem to see the current forms
of quantifying research output as flawed or sub-optimal
In other words, academia seems to become evermore
comfortable with a system that one still sees as flawed
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

SO, TWO QUESTIONS:
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

WHY THIS ACCEPTANCE?
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

ARE APPRAISALS MERELY A
MATTER OF MEASUREMENTS?
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

TOWARDS AN ECONOMIC
ANTHROPOLOGY OF ACADEMIA
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

SOMETHING OF AN IDEA
Appraisals need to be analyzed through the way they in fact
mirror the moral economy of academia
Quantitative appraisals follow quite logically from aspects of
the gift economy that is fundamental in academia
Critiques of quantitative appraisals may in fact hide a more
fundamental trauma in academia
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

THE ACADEMIC
GIFT ECONOMY
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

MISCONCEPTIONS
REGARDING
GIFT ECONOMIES
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

con•tri•bu•tion
from the Latin contribuere
“bringin together” or “paying tribute together”
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

CON-TRIBUTING
Contributions are by necessity:
Social acts
Acts that gain meaning in a network of power
Signifiers of status
Gain different value in different economic contexts (and
must be analyzed through them)
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

THE HYBRID MORAL
ECONOMY OF ACADEMIA
The gift relations
The status relations
The social relations
The market relations
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

APPRAISALS
A dual moral panic:
Appraisals and quantifications seem to
sully the pure forms of the academic
economy (gift/social)
Flawed systems of the same might pervert
the market and status logics of academia
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

AN ACADEMIC TRAUMA?
Might the worry about appraisals tell us
more about ourselves than we care to admit?
Towards a Lacanian analysis of academic
trauma, by way of Slavoj Žižek
tisdag, 2009 maj 12

an
alfrehn
production
tisdag, 2009 maj 12