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Accessing Academic Citizenship: Excellence or Micropolitical Practices?

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Gendered Academic Citizenship

Part of the book series: Citizenship, Gender and Diversity ((FEMCIT))

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the concept of ‘academic excellence’, analysing its repercussions for academic citizenship. It challenges assumptions about the universal and objective nature of excellence and highlights the importance of informal power relations in the definition of ‘excellence’ as a meritocratic metric. Based on data from three empirical studies, the chapter identifies four micropolitical practices in relation to ‘academic excellence’, including: procedural subversion and selective gender blindness; gendered devaluation and stereotypes; relational practices involving sponsorship by individual power holders and, finally, inbreeding favouring ‘insiders’. Micropolitical practices reflect the operation of informal power and arise in a context where constructions of excellence are neither as universal nor as objective as they are depicted. Finally it recognises that academic citizens are not de-gendered automatons that exist outside informal power, but agents with identities and interests who engage in everyday practices with consequences for access to academic citizenship.

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Acknowledgements

Funding for the cross-national FESTA project was provided by the EC Directorate-General for Research and Innovation: Grant number 287,526. The Riksbankens Jubileumsfond: the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, Stockholm funded the Nordic Spaces evaluation. The Spanish study received financial support from the University of Salamanca through a research grant to Estrella Montes Lopez. The contributions of all those involved in these projects are gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Pat O’Connor

  2. Geary Institute, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Pat O’Connor

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Correspondence to Pat O’Connor .

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Sevil Sümer

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O’Connor, P. (2020). Accessing Academic Citizenship: Excellence or Micropolitical Practices?. In: Sümer, S. (eds) Gendered Academic Citizenship. Citizenship, Gender and Diversity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52600-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52600-9_2

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