BOOK REVIEW: "Academic Freedom", edited by Jennifer Lackey (Oxford University Press, 2018)

by Rick Anderson, The Scholarly Kitchen:  https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/03/12/book-review-academic-freedom-edited-by-jennifer-lackey-oxford-university-press-2018/

This book is an entry in the series Engaging Philosophy, and like previous volumes in the series it consists of essays by a variety of contributors.

As the series title indicates, the various authors are approaching the issues around academic freedom specifically from a philosophical standpoint, addressing foundational questions such as the differences between the norms of free speech generally and those of academic freedom specifically, the interactions of the right to protest and the right to speak, complexities of academic speech in the classroom, and the appropriateness of “no-platforming” and other forms of silencing within academia. 

The book is divided into five sections (including the editor’s introduction), each featuring two or three essays for a total of eleven; the sections are titled “The Rationale for Academic Freedom,” “The Parameters of Academic Freedom,” “Silencing and Beyond: Microaggressions, Content Warnings, and Political Correctness,” and “Protests, Civil Disobedience, and No Platforming.”

In the first major section, editor Jennifer Lackey walks the reader through an overview of current and historical issues around academic freedom, discussing parameters of that freedom including the protection of faculty from political pressure external to their institutions and the insulation of faculty from institutional pressure on the part of administrators. She addresses questions about whether protection from such institutional and state pressure is sufficient in light of recent changes in society — notably the advent of the Internet — and also whether and how expectations of “civility” interact with questions of academic freedom. She concludes that while “academic freedom plays an indispensable role in fulfilling the mission of the university,” recent social and technological developments have created new questions about the nature and application of academic freedom and leave contemporary academics in “uncharted territory.” Hence the essays that then follow.

Those essays range from the philosophically fundamental Michael P. Lynch’s “Academic Freedom and the Politics of Truth,” which draws on the legacies of Richard Rorty and John Dewey to interrogate the instrumental utility of academic freedom in light of different views of what “truth” is, to the highly practical and timely Martha Nussbaum’s contribution being a strong example of that approach.

Often, the essays address both the philosophically fundamental and the mundane and practical, as is the case with Michele Moody-Adams’ careful and nuanced navigation of the “safe space” concept in contemporary academia, and Jennifer Saul’s thorough interrogation of the concept (and academic applications, both appropriate and inappropriate) of “silencing” and her call for an “enriched” vocabulary and conceptual arsenal in discussion of it. From the more theoretical end of the spectrum, Philip Pettit dives deeply into the difference between speech that is “free” by virtue of its being unhindered and speech that is “free” by virtue of its being “suitably protected.” Focusing more on the “realpolitik of academic freedom,” John Protevi examines the academic-freedom implications of the Steven Salaita case (here it might have been interesting to also provide a viewpoint from someone who had not been actively involved in Salaita’s public defense; Protevi’s involvement extended to organizing a boycott against the university that Salaita sued, leading the reader perhaps to wonder how dispassionate the author’s analysis is).

Other authors discuss issues surrounding the freedom to choose topics of research, civil disobedience, and the vexing complexities of political correctness and microaggressions. On this last topic Mary Kate McGowan is particularly insightful, drawing important distinctions between the concepts of “offense” and “harm,” and closely analyzing the various ways in which students may be silenced by others either directly or (through the choice to remain silent in the face of anticipated reaction) indirectly. 

David Estlund is similarly persuasive in his essay on “When Protest and Speech Collide,” noting that “when speech interferes with speech, the set of values gathered under the deceptively simple phrase ‘free speech’ are multiple and intricately related,” and drawing careful distinctions between the legal and moral imperatives of speech freedom. Martha Nussbaum provides an exceptionally useful and clearly-argued essay on the ways in which free speech and civil disobedience both differ and can overlap, comparing the ways they do so in the university setting with the ways they interact in the larger world. Robert Mark Simpson and Amia Srinivasan’s (partial) defense of “no platforming,” by contrast, is somewhat less compelling — particularly to the degree that it relies on the argument that “there are graver threats to academic freedom than anything arising out of progressive student activism” (indeed there are, but what does that have to do with what is meant to be a rigorous philosophical examination of this particular issue?).

The book is very well edited, and very poorly printed. I was, in fact, frankly shocked by the poor production quality of this book; the text looks like it was produced by a cheap inkjet printer.

Overall, Academic Freedom offers a highly useful and insightful overview of an issue that is — or should be — of deep and abiding concern to anyone committed to education, scholarship, and civil rights.

(Disclosure: My most recent book, Scholarly Communication: What Everyone Needs to Know, was also published by Oxford University Press).

Book Review - "Accelerating Academia: The Changing Structure of Academic Time" by Filip Vostal

In Accelerating Academia: The Changing Structure of Academic Time, Filip Vostal examines how speed has become a key pressure within higher education through interviews with twenty academics based in the UK. While the empirical research could be broader, Luke Martell highly recommends the book for offering considered, inquiring reflections on the structures that are contributing to the acceleration of academic life.

This review originally appeared on LSE Review of Books and is published under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 UK license.

Accelerating Academia: The Changing Structure of Academic Time. Filip Vostal. Palgrave. 2016.

Find this book: 

Academics are reeling under authoritarian management, marketisation and audits. A rewarding occupation is situated in an institutional context that’s not so benign. Speed is a key pressure in a profession where deliberation and a measured pace are especially important. Filip Vostal asks questions about this scenario. His Accelerating Academia: The Changing Structure of Academic Time is an opportune intervention on a pressing issue, assessing the literature and making his own empirical contribution.

The field of Accelerating University studies is lively and progressing, and Vostal is a key participant. His book sorts through perspectives on speed in academia well, concisely and with a balanced and critical approach. Vostal interrogates the case that universities are “fast”, and questions whether, if so, this is problematic. His focus is on the UK, but the literature covered is cross-national and the book’s themes and relevance are wide. One chapter focuses on sociology, but the book is not limited to the social sciences as his interviews are undertaken with academics across disciplines.

The book starts by introducing acceleration and its theorisations, and goes on to detail how capitalism encourages speed. It outlines the role of the knowledge economy as an idea in acceleration using the concept of vehicularity, and also utilises the notion of performativity to explain how rhetorics of competiveness and excellence play their part. Vostal then proceeds to his interviews with academics and looks at “fast sites” in academia through which speed is pushed, like business incubation units. It finishes by assessing the extent to which big data, digitalisation and the growth of audits escalate acceleration in sociology.

Unlike analyses that focus on neoliberalism or ICT as being behind it all, Vostal situates acceleration in the academy within the longer-running and broader context of modernity and capitalism. He takes on board much of the case for academia being under pressure to accelerate, with negative consequences. But he doesn’t see speed as all-encompassing or completely structurally determined. Instead, Vostal argues that speed is usually presumed to be negative and, consequently, slowness to be positive. But fast isn’t always bad and slow is not always good. This questioning and even-handed approach is one of the strengths of the book and Vostal makes a good, discriminating case for his interpretation.

Image credit: Full Speed by Kate Russell. This work is licensed under a CC BY 2.0 license.

Vostal’s interviews with 20 academics delve down to the level of agency. Accelerationist pressures and their damaging effects are accepted by those Vostal spoke to. But some report finding space to go slow and enjoy, embrace, juggle and wrestle with speed as well as resent it. Vostal himself writes that it is a fundamental limitation that most of the interviews were with senior academics at a high-status university. A wider span to take in less elite universities and a broader range of types of staff, including more of the many precarious academics on exploitative contracts, would lead to a different picture.

You can’t cover everything but gender, ethnicity, sexuality and class, and how they affect academics’ experience of speed, don’t come up much or the situation at universities in the Global South. The book is about academia so it’s reasonable that Vostal didn’t go beyond academics, but further research could. Student mental health is a major problem at universities; pressures at the root of acceleration are part of it. Employees who support staff and students, clean, cater and take care of university estates could also be taken into account. Beyond higher education, workers such as delivery drivers will have a word or two to say to academics about speed. But Vostal is clear about the greater security, status and power that allow some academics to resist the pervasiveness and damaging aspects of speed. It would be further useful to interview managers and incubation leaders to test the claimed centrality of speed to them, as Vostal did for academics. My hunch is they’re more concerned with money and conformity than acceleration.

I’m not sure that marketisers say that much that universities used to be too slow, as Vostal suggests. Their preoccupations have been more about issues of efficiency, savings, consumer satisfaction, competition and economic impact, the last two of which are given significant space by Vostal. In general, Vostal may read speed too much into the priorities of “fast sites” at universities (though on occasion he does question this himself, 160). They are about commerce, which may need speed sometimes but often careful and systematic planning (of a sort that Vostal outlines, 153-54) that takes time. In the literature on acceleration, speed is sometimes substituted for other things. Vostal isn’t alone in generally interpreting pace into advocacies of competition when the core thing being promoted is mainly just the competition (as he does on occasion suggest, 157). Speed is often a symptom of something else: competition, for example, being the key thing, a cause of acceleration rather than synonymous with it, and not always requiring speed for success.

The underlying issue may not be speed but a quantity of tasks that can only be done by rushing. Many academics point the finger at the audit culture, when equally behind acceleration is the older problem of the sheer amounts of teaching and marking, and limited time to do research properly rather than in haste (picked up in the literature and interviews Vostal discusses). It may be hours worked or the variety of tasks to be juggled as much as speed that is the heart of the problem. These are more long-running than neoliberalism. So marketisation, metrics and managerialism at universities may have institutionalised and piled on the pressure to do something we already did, as Vostal notes, adding insecurity and fear. At the same time, university managements avoid responsibility for stress at work. Their response is to individualise, displace and therapeutise it, offering time-management advice to staff rather than addressing their managerial role in excessive workloads.

Speed isn’t primarily an individual choice; it’s about structures. But academics can be ambitious and competitive which drives their speed, and these can be self-adopted as well as externally driven, something that also crops up in Vostal’s interviews. Collective organisation could solve a lot of our problems, but some staff treat unions as “them” when they are “us”. Academics are better at criticising the marketisation of society than resisting the marketisation of higher education; more radical in print than in university meetings and the everyday practice of their job. At worst, they are complicit in the processes they condemn, for instance, the REF.

I think that on balance we need less fast and more slow, but Vostal is right to argue that the issue is less about speed and more about autonomy from structures of power that force speed. Picking up where he leaves off: if autonomy is the issue, then how do we regain control? One way is through greater collective power. The proportion of staff and students on university governing bodies has shrunk, while managerial and business representation has grown, consultation has become a sham and the questioning of top-down management is dismissed. University governing bodies need to be made up more by the citizens of universities, and we need stronger unions, which means more member involvement. An alternative is autonomy gained through co-operative universities, like free universities run by tutors and students. Another approach is leaving the university for self-employment.

I recommend Vostal’s book highly. He gives us considered, inquiring reflections across a broad literature on neoliberalism and speed at universities, and is critical, fair and constructive. The empirical research is limited by the range of interviewees, but provides revealing information that brings a fuller picture and is the foundation for further research that is more inclusive. Vostal’s work is a basis for pursuing solutions and alternatives. These require collective action tackling power.

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Luke Martell is Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Sussex.

Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Impact Blog, or of the London School of Economics.

BOOK REVIEW: "How We Write: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blank Page" Edited by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Forthcoming from Punctum

by Stuart Elden, Progressive Geographies: http://progressivegeographies.com/2015/07/16/how-we-write-thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-blank-page-edited-by-suzanne-conklin-akbari-forthcoming-from-punctum/

This little book arose spontaneously, in the late spring of 2015, when a series of conversations emerged - first in a university roundtable on graduate student dissertation-writing, and then in a rapidly proliferating series of blog posts - on the topic of how we write.

One commentary generated another, each one characterized by enormous speed, eloquence, and emotional forthrightness.

This collection is not about how TO write, but how WE write: unlike a prescriptive manual that promises to unlock the secret to efficient productivity, the contributors talk about their own writing processes, in all their messy, frustrated, exuberant, and awkward dis/order.

The contributors range from graduate students and recent PhDs to senior scholars working in the fields of medieval studies, art history, English literature, poetics, early modern studies, musicology, and geography.

All are engaged in academic writing, but some of the contributors also publish in other genres, includes poetry and fiction. Several contributors maintain a very active online presence, including blogs and websites; all are committed to strengthening the bonds of community, both in person and online, which helps to explain the effervescent sense of collegiality that pervades the volume, creating linkages across essays and extending outward into the wide world of writers and readers.

Contributors include: Michael Collins, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Alexandra Gillespie, Alice Hutton Sharp, Asa Simon Mittman, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Maura Nolan, Rick Godden, Bruce Holsinger, Stuart Elden, Derek Gregory, Steve Mentz, and Dan Kline.

I’m delighted to have a piece in this collection, entitled ‘Writing by Accumulation’, and to have friends in there too - Derek, Steve, Jeffrey and Suzanne herself.

The book will be out in the autumn, will be open access and print-on-demand, but please do make a donation to Punctum to keep this press working. If you can’t wait, Steve Mentz has posted some of his piece here; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen has a draft here; and a couple of blog posts that sparked the whole thing are here.

BOOK REVIEW: "Writing Groups for Doctoral Education and Beyond"

by Thesis Whisperer: http://thesiswhisperer.com/2015/06/17/book-review-writing-groups-for-doctoral-education-and-beyond/

 

I know you all have a lot of reading to do, so p art of our mission here at the Whisperer is to do some of the reading for you and bring you book reviews which might be of interest. 

 

This book represented a conflict of interest for me as I have a chapter in it with my colleagues Lindy Osborne and Glenda Caldwell about ‘Shut up and Write!’. Luckily I was able to pass this one on.

Paul Farrelly is a PhD candidate in the Australian Centre on China in the World. In addition to researching the cultural history of New Age religion in Taiwan, he is also a contributing editor at The China Story. Paul is on Twitter at @paul_farrelly.

Book review: Writing Groups for Doctoral Education and Beyond: Innovations in practice and theory

Most PhD students enter their candidature having been praised throughout their education as “smart” and, perhaps, “a good writer”. Left unsupported these qualities cannot be relied on to produce the type of extended, coherent and innovative research necessary to satisfy doctoral supervisory panels and examination committees.

Writing a thesis will almost certainly be more intellectually demanding than any prior work and not having written anything as long or complex can be intimidating.

In recent decades the act of writing has been increasingly recognised as an important academic skill. It has direct implications for employment and departmental income streams. Writing is a practice that needs to be fostered.

In light of such pressures, writing groups are one way that PhD students have been encouraged to develop a sustainable and productive writing habit. Writing Groups for Doctoral Education and Beyond: Innovations in practice and theory (Routledge, 2014) offers a range of theoretical insights and practical reflections on writing groups for doctoral candidates.

As Anthony Paré noted in his context-setting chapter on theoretical and historical perspectives on writing groups, “Almost 50 years of arguments support a collaborative approach to learning, and still students compose alone” (p.24). Writing groups are one such collaborative approach and something that probably requires more consideration from the wider academic community.

I am reviewing this book not as an expert in the field, but rather as an enthusiastic participant in PhD writing groups. Like Glenda Caldwell (pp.227-228), I too enjoyed team sports in my youth and found the supportive dynamic of teams to reappear at times in the three writing groups I have participated in while at ANU:

1. A centrally organised group of three. Set up after a university-wide writing group workshop in mid-2011, we sustained this group for about six months until fieldwork intervened and we lost momentum. It comprised one member from the humanities (me) and two from the social sciences.
2. A group selected by a post-doctoral researcher. All members were focussed on East Asia and were primarily historians, with one anthropologist. Once again, this group also lost momentum (again primarily due to fieldwork absences) and folded in late 2013 after about 9 months.
3. The ‘thesis boot camp’ organised by the research skills and training team headed by Inger Mewburn. I went to the first boot camp in January 2014 and since then have attended nearly all the monthly ‘veterans’ days’. Members are mainly later-year PhD candidates from across the campus. Like a flab-busting boot camp, I think the benefits of this method are most apparent over the long term when sustained practice follows the initial intense burst of training.

With this brief but varied experience, I was able to relate to many of the situations discussed in Writing Groups. In reading the various chapters I explored the text in two ways:

1. As a critical investigation and theoretically informed appraisal of the pedagogy of PhD writing groups; and
2. As an evidence-based assessment of a wide range of writing groups where knowledge is produced in an institutionalised environment.

It was in the second point where I found great value in this book.

Writing Groups is divided into 15 chapters, each of which is less than 20 pages long. As you would expect from professional writing instructors, the text is uniformly clear and pleasant to read. While two authors introduce theory that almost overwhelms their empirical material, the intention of the book - reflections and analysis on the pedagogy of PhD writing groups - remains present throughout.

There is a significant body of work about PhD writing groups freely available online which begs the question - why buy and read this book? The authors in Writing Groups offer a deeper and more considered critique than what is often found online and the extensive bibliographies provide the engaged reader with many departure points for further research.

Most importantly, Writing Groups is built around observations grounded in years of practice and experimentation. Reading such considered accounts of doctoral writing groups was fascinating.

About two thirds of the chapters drew extensively on the voices of workshop participants, as gathered through surveys and other data collection. While there is a risk that promoting participant voices can distract the reader (particularly with block quotations), I found such quotations to be one the book’s strengths.

In directly inserting the (selected) voices of writers into the text, the authors made their workshops and the subsequent analysis both real and relevant.

Defining a writing group very broadly (“more than two people come together to work on their writing in a sustained way, over repeated gatherings, for doing, discussing or sharing their writing for agreed purposes” p.7), the authors explored the topic from a range of perspectives.

While the examples all drew upon experiences in Western universities (admittedly from many different countries), the different formats (shut up and write, marathon, weekend retreat, student and supervisor together) and different cohorts (women, multilingual, design/practice-led) lent Writing Groups a solid and distinct foundation upon which authors could build their analysis.

There is a recurring theme that writing groups are safe places where students can experiment and develop. Yet Writing Groups is not a complete love-in (despite all writers supporting the concept). Doreen Starke-Meyerring, in her chapter ‘Writing Groups as Critical Spaces’ offered some critical reflection on the limits and risks of writing groups.

In her conclusion, Starke-Meyerring posed the poignant question “Created under pressure to make doctoral writing happen in institutional cultures that marginalize writing, do writing groups run the risk of research becoming ad hoc, add-on spaces where doctoral writing is kept apart from the research cultures doctoral students are entering?” (p.79). This is an important consideration.

In my school two thirds of PhD candidates are non-native speakers of English. Having shared many conversations about the challenges of churning out a thesis, I feel the general anxiety about dissertation writing is slightly more present in this cohort.

Linda Li’s chapter ‘Scaffolding the thesis writing process: An ongoing writing group for international research students’ emphasised the importance of recognising the diverse experiences and needs of non-native speakers of English. For me this chapter was particularly useful, and would be relevant to anyone in Australia considering PhD writing groups.

As a dedicated writing group participant, I found Writing Groups to be informative and affirming. For better or for worse, writing is the act upon which academic success is gauged and this book appears as part of the growing interest in group work and how writing habits can be fostered among graduate students. It enabled me to self-reflexively reconsider my writing habits when in a group and when on my own.

Importantly, readers will be left with no doubt that just as there is no perfect way to write a thesis, there is also no perfect way to conduct a writing group. The social and collaborative nature of writing groups lends them a malleability that needs to be considered for each situation. That said, feedback and support are important dimensions of any successful group.

Not surprisingly, I recommend Writing Groups for those who are involved in a writing group, or who are considering starting one. If you are trying to convince a sceptical administrator or professor of the value of a writing group, then referring to such a theoretically-informed and well-referenced book will be helpful.

I hope that application of the findings in Writing Groups will see the proliferation of successful writing groups, and that the act of writing a doctoral dissertation ultimately become smoother for all involved.

Thanks Paul! What about you? Are you a regular member of a writing group? What value do you see in participating in one?

Buy this book from this link and your purchase will benefit The Thesis Whisperer.

BOOK REVIEW: Umberto Eco's "How to Write a Thesis": Reviewed in Times Higher Education

by Stuart Elden, Progressive Geographies: http://progressivegeographies.com/2015/03/23/umberto-eco-how-to-write-a-thesis-reviewed-in-times-higher-education/

As previously mentioned, Umberto Eco’s 1977 book How to Write a Thesis now out in translation from MIT Press - is reviewed in The Times Higher Education by Robert Eaglestone – thanks to Dean Bond for the link. Here’s the concluding part. 

How to Write a Thesis is really: how to be an academic.

This is part of the answer to those who think that focusing on research makes us bad teachers: at their very deepest roots, both research and teaching in universities rely not only on subject knowledge but on the virtues of sincerity and accuracy, taught through research.

But there’s more: the paradox - brought into sharp focus by How to Write a Thesis - that even with a PhD, you never properly qualify. Even eminent professors remain, in a way, students forever, with more to research, more to explore just over there.

And the surprising fact is that the people who remember daily the experience of doing research, who know that despite their degrees, titles and fancy hats, they, too, are really only students: these are the best people to teach other students.

Whisper it - it’s not politic to say it aloud - but that’s what makes universities special places. Our graduate students intuit this, so help them scale the tower’s walls (so as to toil in the incongruously situated groves) by giving them this book.

BOOK REVIEW: "Feminism, Gender, and Universities: Politics, Passion and Pedagogies" by Miriam E. David

by Katherine Williams, Impact of Social Sciences: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/02/22/book-review-feminism-gender-and-universities-politics-passion-and-pedagogies-by-miriam-e-david/

Feminism, Gender, and Universities celebrates the way in which feminism has forever changed the terrain of higher education whilst examining the impact that the movement has had on the lives of women engaged in teaching others, writes Katherine Williams. 

This review originally appeared on LSE Review of Books.

Feminism, Gender, and Universities: Politics, Passion and Pedagogies. Miriam E. David. Ashgate. 2014.

With Feminism, Gender, and Universities, Miriam E. David, of the Institute of Education at the University of London, aims to demonstrate the positive impact that feminism has had on higher education.

This is deftly illustrated through the testimonies of women who engaged with feminist theory throughout their own university experiences. The book is the result of the political project of feminism, and how feminism became a worldwide social movement in the twentieth-century - now culturally embedded in academia, and society at large.

The book comprises eight principle chapters which span the emergence of academic feminism chronologically. Women are grouped according to their decade of birth in ‘cohorts’.

The study itself, according to the author, tries to be as inclusive as possible in terms of the global range of women invited to participate in the surveys that make up the vast wealth of the primary material used to collect the written testimonies of female academics.

However, the study includes women mainly from the ‘global north’, i.e., the USA, UK, Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. Despite the lack of insight from women from the developing countries, David hopes that the study will have implications for and impact upon the ‘global south’ (xii), contributing to the fight against gender-based violence in all its requisite forms.

David does not include any oral or written testimony by feminist men in academia in the text, but then, the project does not claim to speak for the feminist movement as a whole; it is but a contribution to the ever-changing landscape that is feminism, and feminist academia.

David’s involvement in grassroots projects designed to celebrate International Women’s Day, amongst many others, illustrates that her desire to capture women’s voices is not limited to the relative privilege of the ivory tower.

The basis of the collective biography, as described in ‘Second Wave Feminism Break on the Shore of Academe’ (pp. 95-123), is that participants in the project replied to questions designed to help them pinpoint when they became feminists.

In the case of the aforementioned chapter, this would also include details of how the emergence of second wave feminism influenced their learning, and life (p. 95).

The responses in this case are, of course, diverse. Some women ‘became feminists’ after leaving university; some felt early ripples of feminism before, and during, their university experiences; some women, simply put, did not want to end up stifled and unfulfilled, like their mothers: ‘I was born a feminist! I did NOT want to ‘end up like my mother’ - frustrated by being bright and unable to complete her schooling …’ (p. 110).

 

Credit: Carlos Lowry CC BY-NC 2.0

Wider political projects became extremely influential to the women featured in the chapter; rising feminist ‘stars’ such as Germaine Greer, Kate Millett, and Sheila Rowbotham, and the emerging Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM), became pivotal to individuals’ feminist awakenings.

Participants’ personal and educational journeys were also marked by their readings of feminist, or women’s literature: ‘I became a feminist when I was about twelve when I read novels by a Punjabi writer called Nanak Singh. I was also influenced by Amrita Pritam, a Punjabi poet and novelist, and Waris Shah … they all critiqued women’s positions in Punjabi society’ (p. 97).

Ultimately, the women of this particular group didn’t come to feminism solely through their engagement with popular feminist texts, or their involvement with the WLM; it was the political mood of the time and each woman’s own personal circumstances that led them to ‘create feminist knowledge with a passion’ (p. 111).

It becomes obvious throughout the text that feminist values transcend generations. David discovered that despite the differences in ages, location, educational experiences, or socio-economic backgrounds, the women involved in the project all shared a strong commitment to social and gender justice (p. 173).

In ‘Academic Feminism Today: Towards a Feminized Future in Global Academe’ (p. 173-193), David discusses how the feminist mobilisation instigated in academia over the last fifty years can continue into the future. Whilst women have made many gains in academia, David contends that it is still a largely male-dominated environment; despite claims of gender equality within the academy, David claims that ‘gender equality in terms of numbers is indeed misogyny masquerading as metric’(p. 174).

Feminism in the academy, according to the author, has been ‘seduced’ by neo-liberal corporate models that are increasing competition between universities, making for tense environments for the teaching of feminist, or women’s studies.

‘Marilyn’ states ‘the neo-liberal and increasingly illiberal university is fundamentally anti-pathetical to feminism, and I think women’s studies as an academic discipline is in an increasingly uncomfortable tension between the ideals of feminism … and the demands of a neo-liberal institution’ (p. 175).

Whilst women scholars are arguably better represented in academia today than the past, women’s responsibility for the care of their children still makes a detrimental impact on career chances and promotion opportunities; academia seems geared towards androcentrism.

The cure for this ‘feminist melancholia’ (p. 179) is for the next generation of feminist academics to utilise the tools at their disposal to promote the feminist cause, namely, through social media outlets such as Twitter or Facebook, and good old fashioned awareness-raising.

Education trailblazers such as Malala Yousafzai, says David, perfectly illustrate the importance of narrative-building in education settings; the obvious goal being not only upward social mobility for women, but also addressing gender-based violence.

Feminism, Gender, and Universities celebrates the way in which feminism has forever changed the terrain of higher education whilst examining the impact that the movement has had on the lives of women engaged in teaching others.

The text is not only a celebration of women academics and their feminist ‘coming-of-age’, but offers the reader a critical dissection of what the author considers the corporatisation of the university landscape. The oral and written testimonies collected by Miriam E. David nod to the feminist tradition of listening to women’s voices, and giving their experiences a forum in which they can be heard.

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Katherine Williams graduated from Swansea University in 2011 with a BA in German and Politics, and is currently studying for a MA in International Security and Development. Her academic interests include the de/construction of gender in IR, conflict-driven sexual violence, and memory and reconciliation politics. You can follow her on Twitter @polygluttony. Read more reviews by Katherine.

The Best Two Books on Doing a Thesis

by Thesis Whisperer: http://thesiswhisperer.com/2014/11/26/the-best-two-books-on-doing-a-thesis/

I started my PhD at the University of Melbourne in early 2006 and finished in 2009.

I did well, collecting the John Grice Award for best thesis in my faculty and coming second for the university medal (dammit!). 

I attribute this success to two ‘how to’ books in particular: Evans and Gruba’s “How to write a better thesis” and Kamler and Thomson’s “Helping doctoral students write”, both of which recently went into their second edition.

I use both of these books in my teaching practice and refer to them often in my blog posts.

My old copies had been photocopied so often they had nearly fallen apart, so I was glad to get a brand new copy of each. Both of them have been substantially refreshed, so it seems like a good time to finally give them a proper review.

I picked up “How to write a better thesis” from the RMIT campus bookstore in June, 2004. I met this book at a particularly dark time in my first thesis journey. I did my masters by creative practice at RMIT, which meant I made a heap of stuff and then had to write about it. The making bit was fun, but the writing was agony.

My poor supervisors did their best to help me revise draft after draft, but I was terrible at it. Nothing in my previous study in architecture had prepared me for writing a proper essay, let alone a long thesis.

I had no idea what one should even look like. What sections should I have? What does each one do? In desperation, I visited the bookstore and “How to write a better thesis” jumped off the rack and into my arms.

I’ll admit, my choice was largely informed by its student friendly price point: at the time it was $21.95, it’s now gone up to around $36. In my opinion that’s a bit steep, given that the average student budget is still as constrained as it was a decade ago, but you do get a lot for your money.

David Evans sadly died some years ago, but Justin Zobel has ably stepped into his shoes for the revision. What I’ve always liked best about this book is the way it breaks the ‘standard thesis’ down into its various components: introduction, literature review, method etc, then treats the problems of each separately. This enables you to use it tactically to ‘spot check’ for problem areas in your thesis.

The new edition of the book has remained essentially the same, but with some useful additions that, I think, better reflect the complexity of the contemporary thesis landscape. It acknowledges a broader spread of difficulties with writing the thesis and includes worked examples which illustrate the various traps students can fall into.

A couple of weeks ago I was sent a review copy of Zobel and Gruba’s new collaboration: “How to write a better Minor Thesis”. This is a stripped down version of the original book, with some minor additions, but designed specifically for masters by course work and honours students who have to write a thesis between 15,000 and 30,000 in length.

It’s a brilliant idea as, to my knowledge, there hasn’t been much on the market for these students before. The majority of the book is relevant to the PhD and since it’s only $9.95 on Kindle you might want to start with this instead and upgrade to the more expensive paperback if you think you want more.

My introduction to Barbara Kamler and Pat Thomson’s “Helping doctoral students to write: pedagogies for supervision” was quite different. My colleague at the time, Dr Robyn Barnacle, handed me this book when I was in the first year of my PhD. By that time I was a much more confident writer and I was ready for the more complex writing journey this book offered.

And “Helping doctoral students to write” does tackle complicated issues - nominalisation, modality, theme/rheme analysis and so on - but not in a complicated way. This is largely because it’s full of practical exercises and suggestions, many of which I use in my workshops (for an example, see this slide deck on treating the zombie thesis).

Although “Helping doctoral students write” has more of a humanities bent than ‘how to write a thesis’, it steps through a broad range of thesis writing issues with a light touch that never makes you feel bored or frustrated. It argues that the thesis is a genre proposition - an amazingly powerful insight - and the chapter on grammar is simply a work of brilliance.

I’ve given this book to engineers, architects, biologists and musicologists, all of whom have told me it was useful - but I find total beginners react with fear to sub-headings like ‘modality: the goldilocks dilemma’. For that reason I usually save it for students near their final year, especially when they tell me their supervisor doesn’t like their writing, but can’t explain why.

“Helping doctoral students to write” is not explicitly written for PhD students (the authors are in the process of doing one). The new edition is an improvement on the old in many ways and well worth buying again if you happen to own it already.

The new edition is around $42, which is ok but I think the Kindle edition is over priced (why do publishers keep doing this when many people like to own both for convenience?). It’s a great book for the advanced student who is prepared to roll up their sleeves and do some serious work.

Not only will this work pay dividends, as my award attests, it will stand you in good stead for being a supervisor yourself later on as you will be able to diagnose and treat some of the most common - yet difficult to describe - writing problems.

Pat Thomson, is, of course, the author of the popular ‘Patter’ blog, so you can access her wisdom, for free, on a weekly basis. I should own up to the fact that Pat and I met on Twitter, as many bloggers do, and started to collaborate. I’m still in awe of Pat’s knowledge, experience and good humour.

I sometimes pinch myself that we have become friends (in fact, she gave me my new copy of the book when I last visited the UK), but I hope this isn’t the only reason the new edition mentions the Whisperer in one of the chapters (squee!).

If I hadn’t already had deep familiarity with this book before I met Pat I would definitely have to say I have a conflict of interest, but I can hand on my heart tell you I would recommend it anyway. Pat and Barbara have written another, truly fantastic, book “Writing for peer review journals: strategies for getting published” but that’s a review for another time :-)

Have you read these books? Or any others that you think have significantly helped you on your PhD journey? Love to hear about them in the comments.

Other book reviews on the Whisperer

How to write a lot
BITE: recipes for remarkable research
Study skills for international postgraduates
Doing your dissertation with Microsoft Word
How to fail your Viva
Mapping your thesis
Demystifying dissertation writing

BOOK REVIEW: "Reshaping the University: The Rise of the Regulated Market in Higher Education" by David Palfreyman and Ted Tapper

by Ron Johnston, Impact of Social Sciences: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/11/23/book-review-reshaping-the-university-the-rise-of-the-regulated-market-in-higher-education/ 

This book focuses on the policy of removing almost entirely public support for the payment of student fees. 

Although it goes into great detail regarding the emergence of the regulated market as a way of delivering higher education to growing numbers, it does so with little apparent appreciation for what that emergence has required within the universities and in the daily lives of their academics and administrators, finds Ron Johnston.

This review originally appeared on LSE Review of Books.

I applied to three universities in autumn 1958 (having already obtained three A-levels); I got a handwritten offer from the head of the relevant department at one of them within a week - and accepted it.

The education I received over the next three years was competently-delivered but rarely inspiring (much like the previous eight years at one of my home town’s two grammar schools), and certainly not demanding.

We had only five timetabled contact hours in the final year and, literally, read for our degrees (or probably, in some cases, didn’t: of the 48 students in the first year of the honours degree 12 were relegated to the pass degree after the year-end examinations, as were a further 9 a year later!); two of the seven papers in the final exams could not be revised for.

It is all so different now: in one university, departments have recently been told that staff should not recommend that students buy books and that ‘Reading and Skills Weeks’ should not be termed ‘Enrichment Weeks’.

But such aspects of how university life has been restructured - along with many others, such as the nature of an academic career - are, at best, only hinted at in Palfreyman and Tapper’s detailed, occasionally repetitive and in places tedious, discussion of their chosen subject matter - The Rise of the Regulated Market in Higher Education.

Even within that restricted canvass their focus is almost entirely on England - given the separate funding systems that have been introduced in Scotland and Wales post-devolution (Northern Ireland is ignored) - although US experience is drawn upon in some of the discussions, notably of for-profit degree providers.

The book’s key message - you can’t miss it, so often is it stressed - is that English higher education (which extends well beyond the institutions with the title university, although they get the bulk of the coverage) has been changed, by a combination of government decree, pressure and ‘nudge’.

Fifty years ago the university sector was a small-scale operation to which the Treasury allocated funds through what would now be termed a quango (the UGC), which had advised the government how much was needed and what for; it then distributed the money - on a quinquennial cycle - to the autonomous institutions to spend more or less as they wished (with some constraints).

Over the last three decades, a regulated market has been created, with an increasing portion of the money, covering the universities’ major activity - teaching - coming from the students, most of whom now (eventually; possibly?) pay the full cost of their undergraduate education through income-contingent government loans.

Or at least some of the students: Palfreyman and Tapper concentrate almost entirely on undergraduates, very largely ignoring the substantial numbers (many from overseas) on taught postgraduate courses and undertaking research degrees (currently some 22% of the total enrolment) for which the market is very largely unregulated.

 

Auckland student protest 16.10.97. Credit: SocialistWorkerNZ CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The book’s core theme is pursued through four main sections - ‘British Higher Education as a System: Shifting Perceptions, Changing Realities’ (three chapters); ‘The Pressures for Change: Internal and External’ (five chapters); ‘Responding to Change: Organizational Fragmentation’ (three chapters); and ‘Towards the Free Market: English Higher Education 2020’ (one chapter, more of which is about the past than the future).

It recounts the pressures for change (almost entirely financial plus the desire for universities to make a greater contribution to the country’s ‘economic development’), various government proposals and actions (including major commissioned reports, such as those chaired by Sir Ron Dearing and Lord Browne), and the universities’ responses - collective more than individual.

The coverage, within the book’s own parameters, is not comprehensive, however, although parts are very detailed and Reshaping the University will be a standard reference for that material (there is no discussion, for example, of the UFC’s attempt to introduce a market in 1990 when universities were required to bid for expansion in student numbers against ‘guide prices’).

Palfreyman and Tapper provide many useful insights into a complex, complicated story - there has never been an overall strategy for UK higher education, merely a continuing sequence of pragmatic responses to events and financial pressures. For those interested in likely future changes, some parts, such as the chapter on ‘the entry of the non-profits’, are particularly illuminating.

But this is not a disinterested history; the authors’ own value judgments are frequently paraded, sometimes in considerable (as in their dissection of the positions recently taken up by the Committee for the Defence of British Universities).

In general, they appear to approve of the move to the regulated market, with students as consumers, but when one university (Bristol) responded to the 2012 market changes (take as many students as you wish if they have grades AAB or better at A-level) they accuse it of ‘gorging’ on the additional income!

Similarly, universities are criticised for the ‘scandal’ that some still give staff sabbaticals although it is ‘difficult to show [they] are research-productive’ (no, it isn’t!), as well as for pursuing global rankings ‘based almost entirely on research output’ (again, not the case with many of those - admittedly flawed - league tables based at least partly on indicators that focus on the student experience).

They claim that it is ‘pretty nigh impossible for any university to demonstrate that the academic labour content in the delivery of the teaching for most undergraduate degree courses exceeds, say, half of the average fee’ and of that fee ‘so little at almost all HEIs is actually spent on the direct provision of undergraduate teaching’ - when their own university (Oxford) currently claims that the average cost of providing an undergraduate education is £16,000 but the maximum fee is only £9,000, requiring subsidies in the opposite direction to Palfreyman and Tapper’s claims that undergraduates are subsidising research!

These attacks on what the authors clearly identify as inefficient institutions take no account of the changes that have happened within them over recent decades. The average quality and quantity of the undergraduate teaching is much improved from that of students who experienced ‘take it or leave it’ offerings (albeit for free) as little as two-three decades ago, alongside which there has been an exponential growth in research productivity.

The student experience has changed markedly and so has the life of the academics who structure and deliver it - for relatively low pay in most cases and now threatened with a very significant reduction in their pensions.

The nature of the regulated market puts added pressure on them as administrators, involved in interminable form-filling and monitoring – in which they have been joined by armies of professional form-filling administrators (deteriorating student: (academic)staff ratios are frequently discussed, but has anybody every shown a trend line for student: (administrative) staff ratios?).

An increasing proportion of the universities’ income goes on such people and activity, and less on the roles for which they exist - storing, disseminating and advancing knowledge. To cater for such shifts in expenditure, many universities have undertaken frequent - time-consuming and academically hard-to-justify - internal restructurings.

Reshaping the University is thus a partial book - in every sense of that term. Although it goes into great detail regarding the emergence of the regulated market as a way of delivering higher education to growing numbers, it does so with little apparent appreciation for what that emergence has required within the universities and in the daily lives of their academics and administrators.

Those involved in universities’ higher managerial ranks might recognise much of the material as a picture of the emerging world they have to deal with; the vast majority of their academic staff will not since Palfreyman and Tapper seem dissociated from what they do, under increasing pressure and for declining relative rewards.

---

Ron Johnston is a professor in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol; he was formerly a Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sheffield and Vice-Chancellor at the University of Essex.

BOOK REVIEW - "Mendeley" (Referencing Software)

by Thesis Whisperer: http://thesiswhisperer.com/2014/08/06/book-review-mendeley/

Part of our mission here at the Whisperer is to do some of the reading for you - at least as much as we can! 

 

Some time ago I did a review of “Doing your dissertation with Microsoft Word”, a self published book by South African academic Jacques Raubenheimer. 

 

I was impressed by the throughness and nerdy detail of this original book and was happy when Jacques sent me a follow up book on Mendeley (he has created a 20% discount coupon for Whisperer readers for a limited time).

Mendeley is a cloud based reference storage service - like an itunes version of Endnote that works on all kinds of devices and platforms. 

Even though I think the software is great, I am not a Mendeley user anymore so it sat on my desk for ages. It might still have been there if ANU PhD student and Thesis Bootcamp veteran Paul Farrelly had not visited a couple of weeks later. Paul showed great interest in it, so I gave it to him on the understanding that he would write a review for the Whisperer.

Paul is a later-year PhD candidate in the Australian Centre on China in the World. In addition to researching the cultural history of New Age religion in Taiwan, he is also a contributing editor at The China Story. Paul is on Twitter at @paul_farrelly.

Upon starting my PhD in March 2011 I asked a recent doctoral graduate about his ideal referencing software. Despite not having used any and manually inserting all his citations and bibliography, he suggested Mendeley.

Open to any suggestions, I downloaded a free copy and started using it. Mine was not a completely uninformed choice. I had recently completed a short course on how to use Endnote, having frustratingly fumbled my way through an MA thesis with it.

In the three years of my PhD candidature I have also heard many extol the virtues of Zotero but have maintained my loyalty to Mendeley. More out of a reluctance to explore than anything else.

I am already very happy with Mendeley as a tool for compiling and viewing the vast number of PDF files I have accumulated.

But according to Jacques Raubenheimer, author of Mendeley: Crowd-sourced reference and citation management in the information era (True Insight Publishing, 2014), I am only just glimpsing the potential of Mendeley. Thus when given the chance to review this book I leaped at the opportunity. I wanted to know how to make thesis writing simpler with Mendeley.

At just over 300 pages, Mendeley (Mendeley the book will be italicised in this review, Mendeley the software will not) is pleasingly thorough. Raubenheimer has included more than 360 images and over 30 tables, lending the book a strong visual component that will aid readers in following his instructions.

Mendeley begins with an introduction to key terms and concepts before proceeding to walk users through the many steps required to develop proficiency, and with a little practice, expertise.

From registering with Mendeley and downloading the software, to creating a research profile and deconstructing Mendeley’s structure, Raubenheimer is nothing but methodical [1].

Casual users like me have much to learn from his approach, especially in illuminating hitherto hidden features of Mendeley.

For instance, I now know how to use the “Save to Mendeley” button to import web pages into my library and the utility of Mendeley’s online search function (to find articles in other Mendeley users’ libraries; resembling a refined version of Google Scholar).

The various ways to add and organise material are outlined in detail. Raubenheimer also offers solid advice on how to utilise the collaborative features built into Mendeley. While I am yet to collaborate with colleagues via Mendeley, it could be useful for those of you involved with joint research projects or reading groups, especially when your group is spread around the world.

Somewhat embarrassingly, I had never bothered to learn how to insert citations into a Word document with Mendeley [2]. Raubenheimer devotes a whole chapter to this topic. Thanks to his guidance I am now more comfortable with inserting citations using Mendeley. I will use this technique for citing English language secondary sources.

However, as all my primary sources are in Chinese and I must adhere to certain disciplinary guidelines in referencing them, I have decided it simpler to just add these citations manually.

If you are using more conventional materials than me, then Raubenheimer’s advice is fantastic and Mendeley will be able to help you insert citations and generate an appropriately formatted bibliography.

Not owning an iPad, I was unable to review “Chapter 7: Using the iOS Mendeley App on the iPad”. Based on Raubenheimer’s instructions, it appears to be a much more satisfactory platform than the iPhone (which I have used), where users are more-or-less limited to just reading documents.

Raubenheimer is a casual and chatty author, adding a welcome sheen of humour to what could otherwise be a bone-dry exercise in jargon. His dry wit is especially evident in the footnotes; read them carefully!

In showing multiple ways to import, organise and export material, Mendeley is intentionally repetitive at times. While this repetition can be a bit boring if you are already comfortable with performing a particular task, Raubenheimer demonstrates the versatility of the program and empowers you to choose the methods most suitable for your research.

As might be expected in a technical manual, the text occasionally suffers from being too dense and paragraphs often unfortunately appear to merge together due to formatting shortcomings.

Mendeley is a reasonably intuitive program and one can become a functional user without much strain. However, if you want to harness the real versatility of Mendeley, then Raubenheimer’s Mendeley will be of utmost assistance to you.

In describing how to do almost anything possible on Mendeley, Raubenheimer has written a book not only useful for Mendeley newbies, but also established users who want to maximise its potential.

[1] Interestingly my barren Mendeley profile ranks very high when I do a Google search of my name and research interests (a similar ranking to academia.edu, but not as high as Twitter or my departmental profile). If you are seeking to spruik your academic wares online, then filling out your Mendeley profile might be a good way to do so.

[2] Partly because my previous experience with Endnote was so farcical, partly because my research materials are all printed documents (analogue!) so I do not catalogue them using Mendeley.

Thanks for the review Paul! You can buy ‘Mendeley’ on Amazon or use the 20% discount voucher Jacques has created to buy it on Creataspace (for a short time only). ave you used Mendeley or another reference manager? What do you recommend new students start with?

BOOK REVIEW: "Introducing Qualitative Research: A Student’s Guide", 2nd Edition, by Rose Barbour

Credit: CIFOR CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

by Christina Dobson, Impact of Social Sciences: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/03/16/introducing-qualitative-research-a-students-guide/

Christina Dobson is a PhD student in the School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Health at Durham University, for which she is looking at the effect of social support on time to presentation among patients with colorectal or respiratory symptoms.

Christina has been involved in a number of studies within the department, prior to commencing her PhD, which have largely focused on the early diagnosis of cancer. Read more reviews by Christina.

In this book, Rose Barbour sets out to provide a clear, user-friendly introduction to the craft of doing qualitative research. 

The author’s writing style and the inclusion of numerous anecdotes from her own research, simultaneously demystify qualitative research whilst reiterating the expertise and skill which researchers must possess, writes Christina Dobson.  

Christina recommends this book to anyone undertaking qualitative research, postgraduate students in particular. This review originally appeared on LSE Review of Books.
 

In this second edition of Introducing Qualitative Research: A Student’s Guide, Rose Barbour guides the reader through the qualitative research journey, in what is arguably one of the most comprehensive guides available. 

 

Barbour is a medical sociologist, whose expertise in qualitative research methods, and, in particular, focus groups, has meant that she is highly regarded both within her field and beyond. 

 

This text draws together her experiences of undertaking, supervising and teaching qualitative research methods to provide an extensive introduction to qualitative research, perfectly pitched for postgraduate students.
The book is well structured, with the chapters divided into four sections: Part I provides an introduction to the field of qualitative research; Part II discusses data generation; Part III considers complex research designs in practice; and finally, Part IV explores data analysis, theorising, and presentation.

The first section of the book introduces the qualitative research tradition, exploring its emergence within the disciplines of anthropology and sociology, and discussing its development and adoption in other disciplines.

Barbour outlines the paradigmatic position of qualitative research and the philosophical suppositions of different qualitative traditions, whilst acknowledging that the similarities and overlap between different traditions can often cause confusion.

Barbour suggests that adopting a hybrid approach can enable the researcher to explore multiple aspects of an issue, such as the micro and the macro, which individual traditions can constrain the researcher in achieving.

One of the most interesting points of discussion, for me, was about personal motivation and research strategy.

The issue of researcher bias - that is, how you may affect your research through your own inherent qualities and experiences - is a long-established section in most qualitative research texts, which encourages the researcher to be reflexive about how they may have shaped participant’s responses and data analysis.

Barbour progresses this discussion by considering how individual dispositions not only affect fieldwork and analysis, but also the selection of research questions and approaches.

This is illustrated beautifully by a story told by the renowned anthropologist Cecil Helman, wherein two children are watching the leaves falling from a tree: one child is drawn to counting and calculating leaf loss, whereas the other is drawn to pondering the context in which this particular tree is losing its leaves.

This natural disposition to examine phenomenon through particular lenses highlights how some individuals are naturally drawn to qualitative research, and others to quantitative research, a fact which Barbour argues has often been overlooked.

The chapter on research design offers detailed and thoughtful advice, from the more obvious points about methodology and sampling strategies, to highly practical advice about ensuring you have the right research team and the timetabling of qualitative research.

The chapter on ethics is refreshingly realistic about the processes and obstacles of obtaining ethical approval, particularly when conducting research in areas for which multiple committees must be approached for approval, such as the NHS.

Barbour manages to make the sometimes dry subject of ethics engaging and fresh, by avoiding the frequently cited examples of unethical research and instead drawing upon less commonly used studies.

The book offers a lot of practical support in relation to undertaking research, and the inclusion of personal stories and numerous sections of transcripts help to make the qualitative process more tangible.

In particular, examples when things didn’t go quite to plan are particularly helpful - for instance when the author details how she unintentionally asked a leading question in an interview.

By including such an example, the author provides significant reassurance for the novice qualitative researcher, as knowing that even some of the most experienced researchers make mistakes and that they recover from these will provide comfort when the researcher will invariably make some small mistakes during their first tentative steps into fieldwork.

The need for qualitative researchers to justify the robustness of their research and validity of their findings has long been an issue and, is arguably the main reason for the development of grounded theory.

In order to address the criticisms directed at qualitative research, many researchers have attempted to deconstruct the method when presenting their findings in academic papers.

However, Barbour argues that, in doing so, such work undermines and belies the skill of the qualitative researcher.

It is reassuring to see a criticism of the over simplified presentation of qualitative methods, however, it highlights the progress which remains to be made in the acceptance of qualitative methodology by the wider scientific body.

Another interesting discussion point is about interviewing ‘elites’ such as politicians or CEOs and some of the potential problems this may pose.

This is an important and timely subject for consideration, as much existing social science research has tended to focus on ‘the underdog’ and the vulnerable within society.

Maybe one of the best ways to support the enactment of change for the groups we may have traditionally studied is to go on to study the groups who hold the power to enact such changes, and explore some of the potential barriers to change which exist.

There are so many fascinating discussions within this book that it is difficult to do the text justice in this brief review. Barbour’s writing style and inclusion of numerous anecdotes from her own and her students’ research help to bring the topic of qualitative research to life for the reader.

She simultaneously demystifies qualitative research whilst reiterating the expertise and skill which qualitative researchers must possess.

For anyone who undertakes qualitative research - postgraduate students in particular - this book would be an indispensable addition to the bookshelf.

BOOK REVIEW: "The Question of Conscience: Higher Education and Personal Responsibility" by David Watson

by Ignas Kalpokas, Impact of Social Sciences: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/02/23/book-review-the-question-of-conscience/

Does a university education hold any value? 

How do universities determine what skills are relevant in today’s ever-changing world when information could become outdated even before students graduate? 

These are some of the questions and problems that David Watson sets out to explore in this book.

Ignas Kalpokas finds this a timely work that clearly dissects the current condition of HE and provides a rewarding read for those actively involved in the sector.

This piece originally appeared on LSE Review of Books and is reposted with permission.

Few people would disagree that the Higher Education (HE) sector is at a crossroads. Among the many challenges facing it are those posed by technology, the labour market, funding models, and sometimes even the lack of a clearly defined purpose.

David Watson’s The Question of Conscience is an ambitious albeit very concise study of the challenges and the possible ways to address them.

It is also a study of the university from within, written by a person who has spent many years in the trade of running a university - something that primarily historical, sociological or other accounts of HE cannot offer.

And yet, despite the author being an insider, this is also a very self-conscious and often even self-critical account of the university.

Thus, besides being a treasure trove of information about how the HE sector works and what its moral, social, and political underpinnings are, the book can also be read from a methodological perspective: as an example of thinking which is both inside and outside, both very intimate and simultaneously conveyed as if through an outsider’s gaze.

The book runs to seven chapters, and opens with a historical overview of the university’s development as an institution but also as a phenomenon because the university was never just an educational institution - it has always had an added value and aspiration.

How these additional connotations changed throughout the years is an interesting topic in itself but it also has an additional purpose: it shows the adaptability of the university.

Whenever this institution has been at a crossroads, it has found a way to keep its presence and relevance. This should, the argument goes, serve as an inspiration for the modern HE sector: whatever the challenges, there is always a way of overcoming them.

Even more significantly, the book also deals with the various theories of HE, each of which prescribes its own purposes to the university, and analyses them against the current trends in the HE sector. The picture that emerges is a very paradoxical one indeed.

The university has long been seen as an institution which moulds good individuals. The model of a ‘good’ individual used to be known in advance and usually defined in religious (although sometimes also in civic) terms and universities were to uphold such uniformity.

However, this practice is difficult to imagine in an increasingly multicultural and multi-religious HE, which appears to be devoid of ultimate ideals of the good.

Also, what about preparation for public life? This could be one of the functions of the university but it also opens a Pandora’s Box of problems, especially those regarding the relation with power, both political and economic.

Indeed, the question of who sets the norms and how autonomous the university can be become topical once HE immerses itself in deliberate moulding of any kind.

Alternatively, the university could be an institution which fosters certain personal qualities and attributes that are necessary for future life and career.

Studying at a university is then seen as a rite of passage, a final stepping stone on the path to adulthood, offering a mixture of essential knowledge, independent life, and socialisation. And yet, ample empirical evidence calls such views into question.

In a similar vein, university has been, and still is, seen as a means to acquire skills and knowledge thus serving as a gateway to a chosen profession.

This view could have been easily applicable when HE institutions could initiate young people into a stable canon of knowledge and values of a certain professional practice.

Conversely, the modern university struggles with the questions of how to determine what skills are relevant in today’s ever-changing world, how to keep up when information could become outdated even before the students graduate, and how to balance market demands, student demands, and the demands of professional bodies or employers.

Questions about the value of university education also cannot be avoided. Therefore, the author sets out to enquire whether a degree is really an advantage and how such advantage could be quantifiable or established with certainty.

A closely related dilemma relates to the university’s role in social mobility in the age of mass higher education: is the university at the forefront of levelling opportunities and allowing people to strive for more than could otherwise be possible or is it really entrenching the present divisions and inhibiting mobility, keeping in mind that graduates of some universities are seen as more equal than others.

As always, the picture is unequivocal.

The above is just a few of the problems and dilemmas that are skilfully dealt with in the book. And yet, The Question of Conscience is not only a descriptive but also a normative endeavour; it is not only an analysis but also a manifesto. This becomes evident in the last two chapters of the book.

The penultimate chapter deals with the ‘terms and conditions’ of membership in modern HE, aiming to establish the rules of conduct for all who partake in universities, from students to staff, and addressing many of the uncertainties facing the sector.

The last chapter, meanwhile, aims to construct the author’s own theory of HE as shared responsibility but does so by way of a conceptual pick and mix takeaway combining bits of Arendt with bits of Rawls and many things in-between.

It is this kaleidoscope of ideas and approaches that leaves the reader dazzled and slightly unconvinced by the entire argument, rendering the analytical part of the book significantly more impacting than the normative one.

All in all, The Question of Conscience is a timely work that clearly dissects the current condition of HE and provides a rewarding read for both those actively involved in the sector and those with only a general interest (although novices may not always find the style extremely accessible). As such, it is a highly recommended work. 

Ignas Kalpokas is a PhD student in Politics at the University of Nottingham, working on a dissertation on Baruch Spinoza, Jacques Lacan, and Carl Schmitt. 

He holds his Masters degree in Social and Political Critical Theory and Bachelors degree in Politics from Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania). He has also worked on various educational projects and initiatives.

Ignas’ research interests lie in the investigation of interrelated concepts of sovereignty, the state, and the political as well as the formation and maintenance of (national) identities. In addition, his research also involves history, literature, and international relations theory. 

His preferred theoretical framework is mostly Continental philosophy. Read more reviews by Ignas.