(Further) Reflections on Scholarly Identities: From quantified selves to self-qualifying selves

Paul Prinsloo, University of South AfricaSharon Slade, Open University

(Further) Reflections on scholarly identities: From quantified selves to self-qualifying selves

Presentation at TAU – Kievitskroon, Pretoria, 12 July 2015Paul Prinsloo (Prof) University of South Africa

Teaching Advancement @ University (TAU) Fellowships Programme

Image credit: Vitruvian man – Da Vince - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_ManData - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BinaryData50.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSI do not own the copyright of any of the images in this presentation*. I hereby acknowledge the original copyright and licensing regime of every image and reference used. All the images used in this presentation have been sourced from Google labeled for non-commercial re-use.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

* Except for personal photographs as child and as adult


http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/




ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (2)This presentation is a further reflection on the following past presentations and (hopefully) adds nuances and meanings as I try to make sense and find meaning in the dystopia of neoliberal higher education:

Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin: researcher identity and performance – University of South Africa, Inaugural 22 October 2014

Networked literacies and agency - an exploration – University of Cape Town, 9 April

The researcher as quantified self: Confessions and contestations – University of Johannesburg, 14 May 2015

http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul_Prinsloo/publication/267395307_Mene_mene_tekel_upharsin_researcher_identity_and_performance/links/544f2f200cf29473161bf642.pdf


http://www.slideshare.net/prinsp/networked-literacies-and-angency-an-exploration



http://www.slideshare.net/prinsp/the-researcher-as-quantified-self-confessions-and-contestations-48129803

OVERVIEW OF THE PRESENTATION

1. Welcome as member of Faculty2. Understanding being a scholar – what and who shaped us, shapes us

and will shape us…3. Mapping becoming and becoming a (digital) scholar4. My own story of becoming and being a scholar…5. The higher education context: Broader context, the move to digital &

networked identities & the changing rules of being a scholar6. The notion & praxis of being & becoming a quantified self 7. Five modes of self-tracking (Lupton, 2014c)8. The quantified (digital) self: some considerations9. Deviants or heroes: The net effect of being quantified & classified10.(In)conclusions



Welcome as a member of Faculty

Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismemberment


A balancing act…

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_tightrope_walker_above_a_clown._Engraving._Wellcome_V0007470.jpg


On academic labor and performance anxiety

Source: http://www.richard-hall.org/2014/03/05/on-academic-labour-and-performance-anxiety/

http://www.richard-hall.org/2014/03/05/on-academic-labour-and-performance-anxiety/



So who are you as a scholar?

Who/what determines what are you are as scholar on a daily basis?

How is our scholarship and being a scholar evaluated, by whom and for what purpose?

Who do you say you are as a scholar?


So who/what determines who I am as scholar?

My disciplinary backgroundMy age

My race

My location – type of institution

My geopolitical location – African, Southern African

My gender

My marital status

My students’ evaluations of my lectures/performance

My performance contract/appraisal

The number of Twitter followers

My Facebook profile – number of friends, who are my friends…

My publication & citation record My ‘worth’ in monetary terms?

Do I have tenure?My political affiliation – where was I during the ‘struggle’?

My colleagues

My line manager


I am all of them as scholar…• At different stages of the day• In different forums and platforms• In different disciplinary and institutional and inter-

institutional forums and meetings

My identity is therefore “robustly plural” and the importance of one identity “need not obliterate the importance of others” (Sen, 2006, p. 19). Not only does my identity consist of many mutually constitutive or even incommensurable layers, it is also dynamic and context-specific (see e.g. Boelstorff, 2005; Brah, 1996; Du Toit, 2014).


Each of our identity ‘tags’ has a meaning, and a penalty and a

responsibility.

(Chinua Achebe in an interview with K.A. Appiah, 1995:103)

Understanding being a scholar – what and who shaped us, shapes us and will shape us…

The higher education context• The broader higher

education context• The move to digital and

networked identities• The (changing) rules of

performing research

The notion and practices of the

quantified/ qualified self

The scholar as

quantified/ qualified

self


How my past shaped/shapes my

scholarship…





performing research



The scholar as


self



scholarship…

My story of becoming and being a scholar*…1948 – eleven years before I was born, the National Pary came

into power

Image credit: http://espressostalinist.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/europeans-only.jpg

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

* Adapted from Prinsloo, O. (2014). Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin : researcher identity and performance. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10500/14415


http://hdl.handle.net/10500/14415

http://hdl.handle.net/10500/14415

15

[(habitus)(capital)]

1956 – the Bantu Education Act of 1955

"There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labor ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it (sic) cannot use it in practice?“ (Hendrik Verwoerd, Minister of Native Affairs)

Three years before I was born…


When I was two years old…

Image credit: http://ificould.co.za/human-rights-day-2013-commemorating-the-sharpeville-massacre/

• 69 Black South Africans murdered

• 187 people wounded• ANC and Pac banned


When was born in 1959 and classified as “white” and “European”

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

In a town with a siren that went of at 9 pm at night after which everyone who was non-White had to be outside of the boundaries of the town.


In 1961 – South Africa became a Republic – with the majority of its population not being citizens

In 1965 – I started school – two years earlier than Black children of the same age. White and Black children had different syllabi – Black children were taught gardening and music…

From 1966-1971 – 3 million South Africans were resettled in reserves


I matriculated in 1976

… with Soweto burning with 575 people killed

Image credit: http://kgothatsomanale.blogspot.com/2013/06/soweto-uprising-16-june-1976.html

1976 was also the year my dad died, and I started to waiter and be a petrol attendant to make ends meet…


In 1977 I enrolled …

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Logo_University_of_Pretoria.PNG

As Afrikaans speaker, I had 19 universities to choose (of which six had Afrikaans as language of tuition) from compared to 2 universities dedicated to colored students, 2 for the exclusive enrollment of Indian students and 6 for the exclusive use of Black students…


21

Acknowledging white privilege and the way it shaped my education and provided me with opportunities is not surrendering to the notion of victimhood and suffering that is prevalent in the much of the current white, Afrikaner discourse. There is a vast difference between recognising the “historic burden of whiteness” and self-abasement or lame apologies (O’Hehir, 2014). Personally, it is impossible and disingenuous to ignore how my race and gender shaped my opportunities, and provided me with social, cultural and economic capital. My race and gender, and the socioeconomic circumstances of my family allowed me to play on a field while many others were excluded from playing. (Also see Bowler, 2014; Crosley-Corcoran, 2014; Gedye, 2014).


Being a scholar – where my past, present and future meets

A proposition to understand being a scholar as an embodied, entangled, relational, networked, amidst a mediated context and mediating context-specific capabilities and choices






performing research



The scholar as


self



scholarship…

Some questions to consider:• How does the dominant auditing and managerialist culture in

higher education, and the current quantification fetish obsessed with measuring outputs & performance, impact on my identity & performance as scholar?

• What do we measure? Who does the measurement & why, based on what criteria?

• What is not measured & how does this impact on my final score? What am I worth? My sense of self?

• How do I (increasingly) track my own performance in an unending obsession & anxiety about whether I do enough/am good enough?

• How does all of this impact on my identity, my self-worth & sense of wellbeing?

(See Prinsloo, 2014)


Higher education should…

• Do more with less• Expect funding to follow performance rather than to precede it• Realise it costs too much, spends carelessly, teaches poorly, plans

myopically, and when questioned, acts defensively(Hartley, 1995, p. 412, 861)

We need to take note of the impact of the dominant models of neoliberalism and its not-so-humble servant – managerialism – on higher education (Deem, 1998; Deem & Brehony, 2005; Diefenbach, 2007; Peters, 2013; Verhaeghe, 2014)

The broader higher education context (1)

Image credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mcdonalds_logo.png




There is talk of “academic capitalism” (Rhoades & Slaughter, 2004) where

academics “sell their expertise to the highest bidder, research

collaboratively, and teaching on/off line, locally and

internationally” (Blackmore 2001, p. 353; emphasis added)

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dollar_symbol.jpg

“The research universities will have three classes of professors, like the airlines. A small first-class cabin of researchers, a business-class section of academics who will teach and do some research, and a large economy cabin of poorly paid teachers” (Altbach & Finkelstein, 2014, par. 16; emphasis added)



Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_seat_map

“… the academic precariat has risen as a reserve army of workers with ever shorter, lower paid, hyper-flexible contracts and ever more temporally fragmented and geographically displaced hyper-mobile lives” (Ivancheva, 2015, p. 39)



Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_food_worker_strikes

In 2012, of the 1.5 million professors in the US, 1 million are adjunct professors appointed on a contract basis (Scott, 2012)

Higher education is therefore in the process of becoming unbundled and unmoored (Watters, 2012)


Image credit: http://pixabay.com/p-485222/?no_redirect


http://pixabay.com/p-485222/?no_redirect

http://pixabay.com/p-485222/?no_redirect





performing research



The scholar as


self



scholarship…

The move to digital & networked scholarly/researcher identities• Porous/disappearing boundaries between

personal/professional/private/public• Changing conventions of definition of

knowledge, ways of knowledge production, dissemination, peer-review & measuring impact

• Alternative metrics• Inhabiting spaces/performing scholarship

Image credit: http://www.philips.nl/e/nederland-blog/blog/de-marketingspecialist-moet-digitaal-zijn.html






performing research



The scholar as


self



scholarship…

Hartzing’s Publish or Perish



The (traditional) rules of performing researchUnisa’s Strategic Plan 2015 clearly states the intention: “To position Unisa in the Top 5 universities in South Africa in terms of research outputs per academic by 2015 (Placed 6th in 2004 in numerical outputs)” (Unisa, 2015, p. 17).

Research criteria: • Publish my own research whether as articles or chapters. To score a 3 out

of 5, I need to have published 7 individual articles in the last 3 years, or 10 individual articles in the last 5 years. If I co-authored the article with another researcher – I only get half the points

• A further 15% weight is allocated if I submitted a grant application to an external funding agency. To score 3 out of 5, my grant should have been successful.

• 10% of the total weighting is allocated to being a rated researcher. A ‘C-rating’ guarantees me a 3 out of 5.


But… the rules of performing research are changing …

Image credit: http://blog-blond.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html











Goodier, S., & Czerniewicz, L. (2012). Academics’ online presence. A four-step guide to taking control of your visibility. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/2279505/Academics_online_presence_A_four-step_guide_to_taking_control_of_your_visibility


http://www.academia.edu/2279505/Academics_online_presence_A_four-step_guide_to_taking_control_of_your_visibility





performing research



The scholar as


self



scholarship…

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cmichel67/9309088371/ http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantified_Self

We monitor ourselves. We monitor each other. We are monitored…


I am my data. I am what I share.

If I did not share it on Facebook, did it happen?

Image credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bot%C3%B3n_Me_gusta.svg


Jennifer Ringely – 1996-2003 – webcam Source: http://onedio.com/haber/tum-zamanlarin-en-etkili-ve-onemli-internet-videolari-36465

“Secrets are lies”“Sharing is caring”“Privacy is theft”

(Eggers, 2013, p. 303)


Five modes of self-tracking (Lupton, 2014c)

1. Private self-tracking: Achieving self-awareness, improving life-quality – what I did, how I did it and what I’ve learned

2. Pushed self-tracking: Voluntarily but encouraged/rewarded3. Communal self-tracking: Sharing your numbers – the

quantified us – “I ran so far…”, “I took so many steps”, “I have so many new Twitter followers”, etc

4. Imposed self-tracking: Compulsory, productivity self-tracking devices

5. Exploited self-tracking: Commercialisation of personal data

(Also see Lupton 2014a, 2014b)


The quantified (digital) self: some considerations• The potential & limitations of “self knowledge through

numbers”• Collecting my data & tracking myself as a way “to talk back”, to

“contest”, to formulate counter-narratives• The dangers of exploitation of my data• The nature, use & misuse of digital, (a)synchronous peer-review• The virtue of forgetting in a digital age…• The bias of algorithms• The secret lives of our data-doubles (Lupton, 2014a)• I am more than what I share, what can be counted – I am more

than my data


Deviants or heroes: The net effect of being quantified & classified

“Academic labor and performance anxiety”: where the “shame [of not performing] becomes a central tenet of everyday academic life” (Richard Hall (2014a, par. 2)

Academics “overwork because the current culture in universities is brutally and deliberately invested in shaming those who don’t compete effectively…” in stark contrast with the heroic few who do, somehow, meet the shifting goalposts (Kate Bowles, 2014, par. 7-8)

Image credits: http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Karloffhttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Superman_S_symbol.svg

We cannot & should not discount the exhilaration, the abundance, the networks, but…


http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Karloff

http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Karloff

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Superman_S_symbol.svg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Superman_S_symbol.svg

(Re)considering scholarship: From quantified selves to qualified selves…

• We cannot & should not ignore our context in the context of the quantification fetish in higher education

• As a scholar, I am much more than my data, my citations, the number of followers on Twitter, the number of hits on my blog

• I can, however, use my networks & online presences to play the field, increase my impact & reach

• “Scholarship is not just about publication, but about interaction, interpretation, exchange, deliberation, discourse, debate, and controversy” (Gray, 2013, par. 5). Scholarship is therefore “not just the production of text” but in its essence about “the way in which constellations of people and objects produce meaning, understanding and insight, through interaction, acts of interpretation” (Gray, 2013, par. 6)


Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactome

I am here…Beginning date: unsureUp to present: 2015

Understanding my being a scholar as embodied, entangled, relational, networked, amidst context as mediated and amidst mediating context-specific capabilities and choices: A personal journey…






performing research



The scholar as


self



scholarship…

(In)conclusions

THANK YOUPaul Prinsloo

Research Professor in Open Distance Learning (ODL)College of Economic and Management Sciences, Office number 3-15, Club 1,

Hazelwood, P O Box 392Unisa, 0003, Republic of South Africa

T: +27 (0) 12 433 4719 (office)T: +27 (0) 82 3954 113 (mobile)

[email protected] Skype: paul.prinsloo59

Personal blog: http://opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com

Twitter profile: @14prinsp


mailto:[email protected]

http://opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com/

References and additional reading

Altbach, P.G., & Finkelstein, M.J. (2014, October 7). Forgetting the faculty. InsideHigherEd. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/10/07/essay-way-many-reformers-higher-education-are-ignoring-faculty-role

Appiah, K.A. (1995). African identities. In L. Nicholson & S. Seidman (eds.). Social postmodernism: beyond identity politics (pp. 103—115). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Blackmore, J. (2001). Universities in crisis? Knowledge economies, emancipatory pedagogies, and the critical intellectual. Educational Theory, 51(3), 353 — 370.

Boellstorff, T. (2005). Between religion and desire: being Muslim and Gay in Indonesia. American Anthropologist 107(4), 575—585.

Bowles, K. (2014, March 5). Walking and learning. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://musicfordeckchairs.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/walking-and-learning/

Brah, A. (1996). Cartographies of diaspora: contesting identities. London, UK: RoutledgeDeem, R., & Brehony, K.J. (2005). Management as ideology: the case of ‘new managerialism’ in higher

education. Oxford Review of Education, 31(2), 217—235. DOI: 10.1080/03054980500117827 Deem, R. (2011). ‘New managerialism’ and higher education: the management of performances and cultures

in universities in the United Kingdom. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 8(1), 47—70. DOI: 10.1080/0962021980020014

Diefenbach, T. (2007). The managerialistic ideology of organisational change management. of Organisational Change Management, 20(1), 126 — 144.

Du Toit, C. (2014, October 8). Perspektiewe op ‘self’ en ‘identiteit’. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.litnet.co.za/Article/perspektiewe-op-self-en-identiteit


https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/10/07/essay-way-many-reformers-higher-education-are-ignoring-faculty-role



http://musicfordeckchairs.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/walking-and-learning/

http://musicfordeckchairs.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/walking-and-learning/

Goodier, S., & Czerniewicz, L. (2012). Academics’ online presence. A four-step guide to taking control of your visibility. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/2279505/Academics_online_presence_A_four-step_guide_to_taking_control_of_your_visibility

Gray, J. (2013, October 25). Recomposing scholarship: the critical ingredients for a more inclusive scholarly communication system. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/10/25/gray-recomposing-scholarship/

Hall, R. (2014a, March 5). On academic labour and performance anxiety. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.richard-hall.org/2014/03/05/on-academic-labour-and-performance-anxiety/

Hall, R. (2014b, August 22). On chronic fatigue and being increasingly anxiety-hardened. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.richard-hall.org/2014/08/22/on-chronic-fatigue-and-being-increasingly-anxiety-hardened/

Hartley, D. (1995). The ‘McDonaldization’of higher education: food for thought?. Oxford Review of Education, 21(4), 409-423.

Ivancheva, M. P. (2015). The age of precarity and the new challenges to the academic profession. Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai-Studia Europaea, (1), 39-48.

Lupton, D. (2014a). Self-tracking cultures: Towards a sociology of personal informatics. Retrieved from http://www.canberra.edu.au/researchrepository/file/89265416-5c81-4d4c-bed3-948c2d9a0734/1/full_text_postprint.pdf

Lupton, D. (2014b). You are your data: Self-tracking practices and concepts of data. Available at SSRN.Lupton, D. (2014c). You are Your Data: Self-Tracking Practices and Concepts of Data. Available at SSRN. Peters, M.A. (2013). Managerialism and the neoliberal university: prospects for new forms of ‘open management’

in higher education. Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice, 5(1), 11—26



http://www.richard-hall.org/2014/08/22/on-chronic-fatigue-and-being-increasingly-anxiety-hardened/

http://www.richard-hall.org/2014/08/22/on-chronic-fatigue-and-being-increasingly-anxiety-hardened/

http://www.canberra.edu.au/researchrepository/file/89265416-5c81-4d4c-bed3-948c2d9a0734/1/full_text_postprint.pdf



Prinsloo, P. (2014). Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin: researcher identity and performance. Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul_Prinsloo/publication/267395307_Mene_mene_tekel_upharsin_researcher_identity_and_performance/links/544f2f200cf29473161bf642.pdf

Rhoades, G., & Slaughter, S. (2004). Academic capitalism in the new economy: markets, state, and higher education. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Scott, D.L. (2012, October 16). How higher education in the US was destroyed in 5 basic steps. AlterNet. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.alternet.org/how-higher-education-us-was-destroyed-5-basic-steps

Sen, A. (2006). Identity and violence. The illusion of destiny. London, UK: Penguin. Spitzer, S. (1975). Toward a Marxian theory of deviance. Social problems, 22(5), 638-651.Verhaeghe, P. (2014, September 29). Neoliberalism has brought out the worst in us. [Web log post]. TheGuardian.

Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/29/neoliberalism-economic-system-ethics-personality-psychopathicsthic

Watters, A. (2012). Unbundling and unmooring: technology and the higher ed tsunami. EDUCAUSEreview, [online]. Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/unbundling-and-unmooring-technology-and-higher-ed-tsunami




http://www.alternet.org/how-higher-education-us-was-destroyed-5-basic-steps

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/29/neoliberalism-economic-system-ethics-personality-psychopathicsthic

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/29/neoliberalism-economic-system-ethics-personality-psychopathicsthic

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