681439

research-article2017
SOR0010.1177/0038026116681439The Sociological ReviewCannizzo

The
Sociological
Article Review
The Sociological Review

‘You’ve got to love what you

2018, Vol. 66(1) 91­–106
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions:
do’: Academic labour in a sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026116681439
DOI: 10.1177/0038026116681439
culture of authenticity journals.sagepub.com/home/sor

Fabian Cannizzo
Monash University, Australia

Abstract
Past research on values change in academia has largely focused on changes perceived to emerge
from managerial organisational cultures. What has received less attention is the degree to
which broader cultural phenomena have contributed to these processes of change. Using data
from a study of academics from across the Australian university sector, this article explores
how academia’s presence within a culture of authenticity influences values change among
academic labourers. Managerial values are contrasted against an idealised past – the Golden
Age of academia – enabling the potential for both critique and compliance with those values.
Discourses of ‘passionate’ labour, self-authenticity and personal freedom are hence central to
academic governance. Moving beyond the dichotomy of managerial/academic values, the data
presented here suggest that the motivations of academic labourers are influenced by the ideal of
an authentic self that may be realised through engaging a range of values and professional norms.
Beyond narratives of ‘compliance’ and ‘resistance’ to organisational change, studies of values
change and motivation in academia need to further contextualise values formation. Situating the
motivations of academic labourers through a culture of authenticity offers insight into the cultural
structures that influence how values are normalised amid higher education reforms.

Keywords
academia, authenticity, managerialism, motivation, nostalgia, values

Introduction
This article explores how academics position their experiences of working in academia
within broader cultural narratives of authenticity and personal freedom. Explanations
that place academic freedom and management in a dichotomous irreconcilability are
inadequate to account for academic values changes. Rather than resisting neoliberal

Corresponding author:
Fabian Cannizzo, School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Wellington Rd & Blackburn Rd, Clayton, VIC
3800, Australia.
Email: fabian.cannizzo@gmail.com
92 The Sociological Review 66(1)

policy initiatives, discourses of personal freedom enact politically charged feelings of

nostalgia that normalise managerial modes of self-government by situating academic
values in an idealised Golden Age. The meaning of authentic academic labour will be
discussed and contextualised within a culture of authenticity and managerial governance.
I argue that universities harbour cultures that encourage the search for experiences of
authenticity between one’s self and labour, but that this norm is also challenged by
changing modes of governance. Through an exploration of interviews with 29 Australian
academics, I explore the normalisation of new values in the Australian context.
Consequently, the utility and limitations of a ‘bottom-up’ approach to explaining values
change in academia and other forms of work requiring high levels of personal discretion
are discussed, emphasising the importance of cultural analysis in investigating how the
government of academic work operates beyond policy and planning.
Studies of values change in academia have, to date, been slow to incorporate analyses
of broader cultural phenomena. We have witnessed an explosion of theorising on the
impact of what Davies and Bansel (2005, p. 48) describe as ‘the neoliberal moment in
history’ for academic practice and practitioners. Perhaps one of the more extensive
accounts of the global production of neoliberal policy in education, Ward (2012, p. 5)
comments that the creation of our present global higher education model began with the
neoliberal economist’s argument that education is ‘a private investment in “human capi-
tal” made by knowledge consumers’ rather than a public right. A number of studies have
explored what is being described, especially in research on younger academics, as a shift
in academic identities and values (Archer, 2008a, 2008b; Henkel, 2000, 2009; Lorenz,
2012; Malcolm & Zukas, 2009; Parker & Jary, 1995). Although these authors do not
agree on precisely which mechanisms are encouraging a values shift, each indicates
towards what are variously described as bureaucratic (Parker & Jary, 1995), managerial
(Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004, p. 10), neoliberal (Ward, 2012) or other forms of social
control (see Burrows, 2012) as marking pivotal shifts in academic governance. There is
a sense that governmental forces have perverted the (so-called) ivory tower and now
seek, through transformed professional norms, to colonise, disenfranchise and pacify
resistance.
Research commenting on academic values has often sought out what challenges are
posed to academic practice and identity by university governance. In their study of
Academic Capitalism and the New Economy in the United States, Slaughter and Rhoades
analyse the ‘encroachment of the profit motive into the academy’ (Slaughter & Leslie, in
Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004, p. 11). Within universities and colleges, ‘academic manag-
ers, professors, and other professionals’ are seen as the initiators of academic capitalism
and not merely reactive agents being ‘corporatized’ (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004, p. 12).
Similarly, in the British context, Mary Henkel (2000) argues that the growth of the com-
plexity of universities paralleled the bureaucratisation of academic work: ‘academics
themselves spent more time on developing and complying with procedures and rules, as
well as on data collection and transfer for institutional purposes’ (Henkel, 2000, p. 63).
The growth of functions within the university (related to organisational learning, aca-
demic development, student support and marketisation) did not result in a strict transfer
of power from academics to administrators, but rather normalised an increase in admin-
istrative duties among academics.
Cannizzo 93

To begin to culturally situate contemporary academic values, this article will examine
the context of both neoliberal policy shifts and ‘the ideal of authenticity’ (Taylor, 1991,
p. 17). Organisations geared towards flexible labour arrangements and management-cen-
tred organisational change may disorient workers’ sense of career progression and self-
worth (Sennett, 1998, 2006). As universities come to take on the characteristics of
flexible organisations, opting for labour that allows ‘the sequence of production’ to be
‘varied at will’ (Sennett, 2006, p. 48), so too do the opportunities for academic staff to
account for their work histories in terms of a career narrative become fickle. It is argued
here that outside of the security of academic tenure, academic labourers’ conceptions of
a ‘career’ in global academia are being framed by perceptions of what constitutes ‘real
work’ – often discussed in terms of ‘finding your passion’ (James, 2015). The notion of
authentic labour is distinguishable from the ideal of ‘academic freedom’, which is taken
here to denote a mode of self-government in which scholarly labour is conducted with a
high degree of professional autonomy. Whereas academic freedom emerges from one’s
role in an intellectual institution, passion and authenticity are read as qualities of self-
hood: ‘The main thing is to be sure one’s preferences actually do express one’s truest
desires’ (Lindholm, 2008, p. 66).

Nostalgia in the managerial university

Neoliberal political rationalities have become rooted in higher education reforms across
the Anglophone states (such as the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand) and the broader
European landscape (Liesner, 2007; Ward, 2012). Legislative and policy changes during
the 1970s ‘set the stage’ for what Ward describes as the ‘neoliberalization of knowledge’
that would develop from that time onwards (2012, p. 91). National Acts, such as the Bayh-
Dole Act in the United States, and international covenants, such as the World Trade
Organisation’s General Agreement on Trade Services, enabled the further definition and
mobilisation of knowledge-as-commodity, cementing its role in the emerging knowledge
economies (Ward, 2012, pp. 93–94). Shifts in the political economy of knowledge have
created ‘a much more private, market-centred, version of knowledge’ (Ward, 2012,
p. 100). The effects of this shift have varied in their institutional designs, but have shared
a trajectory towards governance-by-market (or state-regulated quasi-markets). The insti-
tutional enactment of this shift in university governance has resulted in what Parker and
Jary have described as recourse to ‘hard managerialism’ (1995, p. 325) or what Ball later
described as the ‘terrors of performativity’ (2003): that is, university operations were
increasingly judged against performance criteria, whose success arguably depends more
on the appearance of improvement than substantive developments.
For the academic labourer, the impact of this changing policy and funding environ-
ment, as Davies and Bansel argue, has been ‘a gradual shifting of the terms of survival’
(2005, p. 52), which includes undermining the professional security of academic tenure.
Without such security, seniority has become divorced from bureaucratic authority, as all
must endure ‘a vulnerable measurable life, a life under surveillance’ (Davies & Bansel,
2005, p. 52). The presence of benchmarking, standardisation and evaluation practices
that have repercussions for the career prospects of academics shapes the kinds of free-
dom that academics perceive they can depend upon. Past research shows that academics
94 The Sociological Review 66(1)

often express attachment to idealised aspects of their practice (see Osbaldiston et al.,
2016). The following quote typifies the tendency among the sample group to relate their
idealisations to what might be described as a perceived authentic (or ‘real’) self:

An academic should be doing a bit of research. It’s like a Marxian alienation thing – if you’re
not doing the research, I think you’re alienated from what you’re doing. I’m not experiencing
alienation because I’m doing my research and I love doing my research. (Professor, social
sciences)

For this professor, as for many others, research is not just an essential academic practice,
but crucial for allowing him to experience a personal connection to both his labour and
fellow labourers. Participants expressed a deep-seated attachment to varying aspects of
their work, with research-related activities being the most commonly valorised activity
(over teaching, administrative or leadership-related activities). However, despite expli-
cating an awareness of what they found valuable about their work lives, many academics
were dissatisfied with the degree to which they could effectively engage in work that
they perceived to be valuable:

I think research suffers quite a lot. It’s also partly shaped by the fact that in order to apply for a
research grant [in Australia], it’s ridiculous. The amount of work that goes into an ARC proposal
is moronic. … The amount of redundant detail that’s asked for, stuff they can’t check, they can’t
verify: it’s pathetic.

Higher education institutions were largely perceived by participants as embodying

values consonant with Parker and Jary’s characterisation of McUniversities, with man-
agement ‘at their centre’ (1995, p. 327). While managerialism has invoked criticism
and speculation about its potential impact on scholarly practice, participants in my
study have also vocalised the personal impact of this governance shift upon their self-
perception and values.
A popular narrative applied to explain the personal impact of managerialism is the
disintegration of the Golden Age of scholarship – an era before corporatisation, manage-
rialism, performance benchmarking and assessment and the centring of the ‘instrumen-
talizing aspects of Mode 2 knowledge’ (Delanty, 2001, p. 113). The Golden Age narrative
invokes a sense of lost purpose and a dilution of the values of scholarly/scientific prac-
tice. When asked what the purpose of a university-level education should be, a late-
career academic, Nathan (Professor, social sciences), drew on this sense of loss:

The purpose is actually learning stuff. But not stuff just in terms of the academic: learning ways
of thinking, learning the sort of particular forms of social relations, learning particular ways in
which politics operate within institutions. … But then it all depends on what societies value and
we’re in an era where it’s not especially valued, is it? (my emphases)

Nathan mourns the loss of what he perceives to be the university’s autonomy to shape
society, rather than being shaped by what ‘societies value’. This concerns not only schol-
arly (or scientific) procedure, but also a more personal freedom to conduct scholarly
work in a meaningful manner. What is felt to be lost (or is being lost) is a meaningful
Cannizzo 95

relationship between work and self-conception. In times of social change, such as the
envisaged shift between academia characterised by collegial forms of control and mana-
gerialism, collective nostalgia may emerge to ‘restore, at least temporarily, a sense of
sociohistoric continuity’ where discontinuity threatens (Davis, 1979, p. 104). Nostalgia
for a Golden Age of academia may therefore entail a variety of political implications for
academic labours, depending upon the context of its enactment.
Writing on the social origins and implications of nostalgic sentiments, both Davis
(1979) and Wilson (2014) have contributed to a cultural sociology of nostalgia. While
Davis’s classic essay outlines the symbolic interactionist’s approach to nostalgia-as-
feeling (‘the nostalgic feeling’; Davis, 1979, p. 14), Wilson applies Gubrium and
Holstein’s concept of ‘biographical work’ to argue that even amid postmodern fragmen-
tation, the identities of individuals are ‘locally informed and organized’ through narra-
tive construction (Wilson, 2014, p. 55). In addressing the relationship between identity
and nostalgia, the work of these researchers suggests that shared (collective) nostalgic
discourses can be mobilised to express a group’s values and have implications for val-
ues shifts in times of organisational change. To elaborate on the first point: if viewed as
a kind of social exchange, nostalgic sentiments convey ideals freed from the limitations
of presence. Davis argues that nostalgia’s ‘distinctive rhetorical signature’ is a dichoto-
misation of the ‘bad’ found in the present with a corresponding ‘good’ sought out in the
past (1979, p. 16). However, as Davis points out, it is important to acknowledge that the
nostalgic feeling precedes its referent: ‘nostalgia uses the past – falsely, accurately, or
… in specially reconstructed ways – but it is not the product thereof’ (1979, pp. 10–11).
Rather, the evocation of nostalgia is always made ‘in the context of present fears, dis-
contents, anxieties, or uncertainties, even though they may not be at the forefront of
awareness’ (Davis, 1979, p. 34). A sense of lack may be explicated or memorialised
through reference to an (alleged) past that embodies what is lacking, but the experi-
enced desire emerges in the present. Nostalgia – a kind of ‘home’-sickness – is a long-
ing for an idealisation of what ‘home’ is purported to be. Because nostalgia allows for
the transplantation of values in the present onto narratives about the past, a collective
nostalgia is laden with collective values.
Second, both Davis and Wilson argue that nostalgia has political uses in times of
social change. For Davis, shared nostalgic sentiments bear a pacifying ‘conservative
leaning’, which is qualitatively different from other kinds of conservative political action
(1979, p. 109). Nostalgia ‘diffuses what could be a powerful, panic-prone reactivity to
jarring change and uncertainty by turning it into tender musing and mutually apprecia-
tive self-regard over a shared past’ (Davis, 1979, p. 110). The expression of collective
values that Davis envisages pacifies the collective by privatising the emotional energies
generated therein. By transforming public narratives into a form of mutual valuation
between like-minded parties, the experience of nostalgia becomes more enjoyable, and
perhaps less prone to inspire feelings of alienation and discontent. By contrast, Wilson
characterises nostalgia as a potentially radical activity:

Perhaps we ‘nostalagize’ for those things which symbolize what we wish for. In philosophical
terms, nostalgia may enable one to discover (or think about) one’s sense of the ‘Good’ or the
‘Right.’ … Nostalgia may be an attempt to find some higher meaning in our existence. When
96 The Sociological Review 66(1)

experiencing nostalgia, we might feel that we are getting close to something fundamental,
‘good,’ a foundation, or a purpose. (Wilson, 2014, p. 26)

Wilson’s characterisation of nostalgia imbues the concept with a more radical potential,
particularly if this form of philosophical musing manifests in collective values. Rather
than interpreting these two approaches as contradictory definitions of the same phenom-
enon, it is more useful to describe them as two different kinds of nostalgic activity:
Davis’s pacifying nostalgia and Wilson’s mobilising nostalgia. The first involves being
blissfully lost in the feeling of ‘home’, and the second of being agitated and mobilised by
its absence. Or, as Pickering and Keightley argue, ‘nostalgia can be both melancholic and
utopian’ (2006, p. 921). By dividing the phenomenon of nostalgic sentiments in this way,
Davis and Wilson offer a heuristic scale against which to describe the potential for values
embedded in nostalgia to become politically meaningful.
Analysing how academics express attachment to values through nostalgic sentiments
offers an avenue to investigate the transformation of collective professional values. By
addressing how nostalgia ‘uses the past’ to project values, researchers may access how
academics view the potential to realise their ideals in the present.

A brief qualitative study: Methodology

The narratives presented below emerged during empirical research conducted across
eight Australian universities between March and October in 2014. Three research-
intensive ‘Group of Eight’ universities, two urban Australian Technologies Network-
affiliated universities and three regionally based universities were selected and a total of
29 academics agreed to be interviewed from within the social sciences and biological
sciences. Disciplinary differences between largely monastic social scientists and mostly
team-based biological scientists were valuable for surveying a variety of expectations
about work and careers (Becher & Trowler, 2001). The participants who contributed to
this study are not statistically representative of the broader Australian academic work-
force, and a targeted sampling method was employed to gain contextual breadth, so as to
achieve a broad variety of responses to interview questions. Participants were sampled
for diversity around the following demographic categories: sex (45% female; 55% male),
career stage (27% early-career; 59% mid-career; 14% late-career), disciplinary area
(62% social sciences; 38% biological sciences) and employment level (14% associate
lecturer/research fellow; 31% lecturer/senior research fellow; 24% senior lecturer; 17%
associate professor; 14% professor).
The participants were contacted with permission of their employing institutions and
were invited to take part in a study on academic career development and organisational
change in Australian higher education. Questions posed to participants concerned the
following topics: (1) academic background, including how the participant came to work
in academia; (2) area of specialisation and ambitions within that area; (3) academic roles
and how participants allocate time and resources to different duties; and (4) career con-
ceptualisations and views about career planning. The results suggest a high degree of
validity, evidenced by the saturation of discourses in this study as well as the triangula-
tion of results found here with past research (cf. Archer, 2008a, 2008b; Osbaldiston et al.,
Cannizzo 97

2016; Vannini, 2004). The data presented below primarily concern the first and fourth
sets of questions. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and pseudonyms have been used
to preserve participants’ anonymity.

The passion of Australian academics

When asked about their reasons for entering into academia, and about their aspirations
for what they hope to achieve, most participants described becoming deeply involved in
their academic practices. Many claimed to experience a kind of freedom in feeling that
their academic labour is connected to their core desires. Although many of these accounts
only implicitly addressed the desirability of this freedom through describing emotional
states, some participants, such as Jacinta, reflected explicitly on their attachment to aca-
demia as a workplace. When asked about her employment, Jacinta reflected:

Passion is a word I think of a lot. Passion. You have to have the passion to do it I guess. Passion
around your discipline as well. And that helps you drive through all the crappy bits. And
[academia is] quite flexible. Certainly after working in the real world and coming into here, the
flexibility and independence I have is above and beyond anything that I’ve ever had before and
I find that quite empowering I guess. (Jacinta, Lecturer, social sciences)

For Jacinta, as for many other participants, entry into an academic career wasn’t the ter-
minus of a well-plotted route. Jacinta described working several jobs in the ‘real world’
prior to returning to education. Experience in this ‘real world’ of employment produced,
within Jacinta, a sense of emptiness and longing:

The problem I found was that I wasn’t learning anything. … I was applying my skills from my
first degree and the only thing I ever learnt in that position is that if I was moved to a new
section or a new department and I’d just have to learn how that section works, which doesn’t
take long, and then just apply skills again. So I was just bored shitless to say the least. … In the
job I had after my first degree, there was tokenistic responsibilities as well that don’t really
mean anything. Here, the responsibilities that I have mean something and are important not just
for me, but are important for other people.

Across the social and biological sciences, participants described finding personal mean-
ing in their work. As Ken, a Lecturer and biological scientist, commented, ‘I don’t think
I would see myself in any other profession’. Wanting to contribute to scientific knowl-
edge, to find a cure for diseases, producing great writing and shaping young minds were
common justifications given for wanting to enter into academe. As one biological scien-
tist commented, wanting to make a difference, such as through curing a disease, is ‘not
necessarily a typical academic aspiration. It’s more of a personal aspiration’ (Peter,
Senior Lecturer, biological sciences).
For a handful of participants who explicitly discussed the idea, academia constituted
not just a vocation, but a ‘lifestyle’, as illustrated in Vincent’s interview:

I guess I figured out pretty early that I wanted to do academic work and for me that is as much
research as it is about teaching. I know academics prioritise these things differently, but for me
98 The Sociological Review 66(1)

teaching is a very central part of this kind of lifestyle. And it is a lifestyle. It’s not nine to five
by any stretch. It’s something that can be very hard not to do once you get started. (Vincent,
Lecturer, social sciences)

Academic roles are viewed by many participants as more than work roles. For another
Lecturer, Veronica, the lure of academic work lies in ‘a really active intellectual and
academic life’. The time dedicated to academic labour is difficult to define for some, not
a ‘nine to five job’ (as an Associate Professor, Walter, echoed), and reflects how individu-
als perceive their selves. As in Vannini’s (2004) and James’s (2011) studies, participants
in this study took pleasure in describing their self-meanings in relation to their labour.
However, not all academics interviewed felt that they were able to pursue what they
‘really’ wanted to in their present employment. Managerial changes to university govern-
ance (Ball, 2003; Parker & Jary, 1995; Ward, 2012) were often identified as the source of
frustrations for academics seeking to realise personal aspirations through their academic
practice. Pressures on academic time use are perceived to emerge from both university
bureaucracies and the academic profession itself:

I think the ‘publish or perish’ mentality is very strong [here]. There is a heavy emphasis on
young academics getting research grants, publishing, creating media profiles, getting on
LinkedIn, those sorts of social media things, going to conferences and meeting people and
creating networks. I mean, it’s exhausting! How are young academics supposed to do all of that,
and yet create strong units? You know, become good at curriculum design, become good at
taking lectures that are innovative, and engaging and interesting, and pedagogically sound?
(Belinda, Associate Lecturer, social sciences)

For more senior academics, managerial pressures were strongly associated with a narra-
tive of organisational and sectoral change in universities, tied primarily to the renewed
economic relevance of universities (Ward, 2012). Addressing the use of external reward
systems for driving accountability and ‘excellence’ in the use of resources (see Cannizzo,
2015), one mid-career academic commented:

I’m not interested in that. I’m not interested in being at the top of the pile. But corporate
structures require you to be in that sort of competitive environment. So I’m finding myself
having to compromise some of [my] principles in order just to survive. (Lachlan, Associate
Professor, social sciences)

Lachlan’s narrative emphasised a sense of loss of personal connection to his work, as

being required to perform ‘for’ the university, rather than merely within it. Sustaining his
externally funded work contract, Lachlan claimed, prevented him from becoming too
invested in his labour, much to his dissatisfaction. The issue of resource dependence is
central here. The desire to sustain an academic career for some means compromising the
degree to which one can selectively engage in personally meaningful labour instead of
labour performed for the sake of career development/maintenance (i.e. an extrinsic
reward).
In comparing the late-career with early-career academics’ views of the personal value
of their labour, there is a notable distinction in the degree of freedom that academics
Cannizzo 99

expressed over the control of their work tasks. While more senior academics, and espe-
cially those in ongoing employment, spoke about their career trajectories in terms of how
academics shape careers, earlier-career academics tended to describe how career trajec-
tories shape academics. There is a sense in which career stages intersect with the security
of employment contracts, as this late-career academic reflects:

What are the passions that really drive you? What do you really want to do with your life? And
as you get older, you realise there’s less left than has already gone, so you need to be, or I’ve
become, more and more focused on what I want to do with the time that I’ve got. And that
means really thinking about all the bits of my intellectual and professional life and how they
relate to each other and how they can be used in relationship to each other to achieve the things
that I’m forced to articulate for myself. (Brett, Professor, social sciences)

In contrast to this retrospective self-reflection, ‘younger’ early-career academics (as not

all early-career academics are chronologically ‘younger’) engage in modes of self-
reflection and planning that assume the dominance of managerial governance.
Interestingly, although managerialism is assumed to be a dominant workplace paradigm
for younger early-career academics, it is not uniformly spoken of in negative terms, as
the following quote from an early-career academic illustrates:

This is why I’m a good neoliberal subject: I actually felt that the performance expectations
actually helped create some kind of equivalence. And there was obviously older academics who
were just fluffing around and early-career academics who were busting their balls, getting [a]
PhD, getting published, now trying to get grants and still haven’t got a permanent position.
(Harold, Lecturer, social sciences)

What might be interpreted as a generational difference between younger and older aca-
demics’ values is more parsimoniously accounted for by reference to employment secu-
rity. In contrast to the nostalgic sentiments expressed by Brett, Lachlan and Nathan,
Vincent’s, Harold’s and Belinda’s comments suggest a lack of employment security and
the expectation that early-career academics will dedicate not only large amounts of their
time to career development, but also leverage their passion to motivate them to work
within managerial governance paradigms. While all participants expressed a personal
connection to some aspect of their labour, those who felt they possessed more agency
over their professional futures were more likely to link their identities to nostalgia for a
Golden Age of scholarship. Those without such security were more likely to talk about
how they might adapt themselves to their environments – to become ‘a good neoliberal
subject’, as Harold phrased it. The overriding concern, in both instances, is with the rela-
tionship between academic labour and an authentic sense of self, which is not limited to
academic labour and must be situated within a broader culture of authenticity.

Academic labour and the culture of authenticity

The motivations behind forms of work requiring high levels of personal discretion, such
as academic labour, are often described as being intrinsically driven. Intrinsic motivation
refers to doing something because of the ‘inherent pleasure or satisfaction’ that activity
100 The Sociological Review 66(1)

provides (Lewis, 2013, p. 65). Extrinsic motivation, conversely, refers to any number of
outcomes or rewards that may result from the activity – they are something beyond the
activity itself. Not all forms of labour required of academic staff share the same motiva-
tions. The concept of an ‘inherent’ pleasure is not an essential quality of an activity, as an
activity may be experienced as satisfying for one individual but not another. Rather, an
‘inherent’ pleasure is a quality of how affective experiences are recognised in remember-
ing one’s role in an activity. Any number of positive affects associated with academic
roles may be interpreted by the individual (and also the analyst) as providing an intrinsic
pleasure and motivation for engaging in an activity. An academic teacher, for example,
may revel in the performance of a well-prepared presentation, be humbled by the honesty
of their dialogue with students, or feel rejuvenated by the opportunity to see abstract
ideas find relevance for a new audience, among other experiences.
Intrinsic motivations have taken on a special significance for both managers and
workers in the technologies of government associated with advanced liberalism (Miller
& Rose, 2008; Rose, 1999). Within advanced liberal modes of governance, the ideals of
personal autonomy and self-fulfilment are mobilised within programmes seeking to
reform the world of work. What Miller and Rose term ‘the vocabulary of enterprise’ has
emerged as a flexible discursive tool for visualising the worker in modern organisations:
‘the worker was no longer construed as a social creature seeking satisfaction of his or her
need for security, solidarity and welfare, but as an individual actively seeking to shape
and manage his or her own life in order to maximise its returns in terms of success and
achievement’ (Miller & Rose, 2008, p. 49). The values of university management (or
what Lachlan, above, described as the ‘corporate structures’ of the university) are per-
ceived to be an external force, acting to exert external motivations upon the scientific and
humanitarian values that shape academic communities (see Henkel, 2005, p. 159).
The distinction between the intrinsic (scientific/humanitarian) and the extrinsic
(organisational/managerial) may be viewed as part of a broader cultural movement in
how labour is valued and represented. The deployment of psychotherapy into workplace
management theory, Rose comments, has encouraged;

… a subjectification of work, involving the saturation of the working body with feelings,
emotions, and wishes, the transformation of work, mental and manual, into matters of personal
fulfilment and psychical identity, in which the financial exchange is significant less for the cash
reward it offers than for the identity it confers upon the recipient. (Rose, 1999, p. 248)

The benefit of working is here transposed from economics into a subjective measure-
ment of work’s value for the psyche, expressed by the term identity. Regardless of
whether the psychotherapeutic expertise underlying this attempt to re-map the worker is
valid, a new image of the worker places the worker’s subjective understanding of their
work life at the centre of workplace management practice: ‘individuals produce them-
selves in work; the organizational culture is to be reshaped in the name of a new psycho-
logical image of man [sic]’ (Rose, 1999, pp. 116–117). This image has not found itself
limited to the discipline of organisational psychology, nor to academia, with the origins
of its techniques of self-inspection, directed as self-fulfilment, dating back to the thera-
peutic culture of the 1960s (Rose, 1999, p. 117). The worker seeking self-fulfilment
Cannizzo 101

through self-awareness and an entrepreneurial attitude is not only reflected in university

policy and planning (see Cannizzo, 2015) but also emerges within academics’ own
accounts of their relationship to their labour. In addition to the above comments by aca-
demics, Iain reflects on this connection between his sense of self and academic career
development:

I’ve always got this feedback from people that [my field is] an important area of research.
That’s always kind of kept me moving forward and because it changes all the time, there’s
always something new to be talking about. … I feel like I’ve created a bit of a narrative around
what I do. (Iain, Lecturer, social sciences)

As Archer (2008a, 2008b) notes in her study of academics’ professional identities in the
UK, academic workers often describe the perceived relations between their working hab-
its and their sense of self (identity) in terms of a discourse of ‘authenticity’.
Mirroring the comments from academics presented above, Vannini’s (2004, 2006)
study of professors in an American university probed into the authenticating and inau-
thenticating experiences of academics in relation to their work and the strategic manage-
ment of their university. In recalling their authenticating experiences, Vannini’s
participants described the importance of an idea of ‘freedom’, not only as a condition of
work, but as ‘a feeling or passion that may or may not be directly related to the condi-
tions of one’s work’ (Vannini, 2004, p. 168). The emotional experience of authenticity is
a motivational factor in that it influences what professors may consider worthwhile
behaviours. As Vannini comments, ‘Passion in short, whatever its object, shapes profes-
sors’ self-meanings’ (2004, p. 169). Experiences of inauthenticity similarly play a com-
plementary role in influencing academic motivations. Vannini remarks that the most
common feeling used to describe inauthenticity among his participants was a sense of
‘unfamiliarity with oneself’ (2004, p. 186):

Inauthenticity seemed to mark the life of professors who become ‘burned out’ with their work,
with their youthful idealism, with the ultimate meaning of research, teaching, and knowledge.
(Vannini, 2004, p. 188)

Other inauthenticating experiences reported include the need to manage grade distribu-
tions among students (Vannini, 2006, p. 245), the push towards ‘publish or perish’ and
profiteering (Vannini & Burgess, 2009, p. 113) and the ‘toxic shame’ that Gill (2009)
links to competitive academic labour processes. Both authenticating and inauthenticat-
ing experiences are relevant to understanding how academic motivations and self-
governance operate within our present advanced liberal democracies. The psychosocial
experience of feeling true to oneself – as suggested in both Vannini’s study and the data
presented here – is central to how many academics account for their career paths in aca-
demia, and also for how academics orient their future conduct and plan their lives against
ideals emerging from a culture of authenticity.
Authenticity is a referentially loose category. As Kreber, Klampfleitner, McCune,
Bayne, and Knottenbelt’s (2007) review of the concept of authenticity in teaching indi-
cates, not only might a wide review of this philosophical concept indeed prove ‘more
102 The Sociological Review 66(1)

frustrating than productive given the multiple interpretations and nuances inherent in the
conceptions of authenticity found there’, such an expedition would derail the argument
presented here. ‘Authenticity’ is here treated as a discursive construct and any attempt to
delve into the meta-concept of a ‘real’ authenticity will be substituted with an appeal to
agnosticism. This treatment of authenticity in this article reflects the social construction-
ist’s view, in which:

Authenticity is not so much a state of being as it is the objectification of a process of

representation, that is, it refers to a set of qualities that people in a particular time and place
have come to agree represent an ideal or exemplar. As culture changes – and with it, tastes,
beliefs, values, and practices – so too do definitions of what constitutes the authentic.
Authenticity is thus a ‘moving target’. (Vannini & Williams, 2009, p. 3)

Past reflections on the relationship between academic practice and an authentic sense of
self have converged on some common interpretations of authenticity – namely that the
authentic emerges from a sense of self that does not seek to imitate others, is not driven by
managerial imperatives or performance evaluations, is associated with a sense of onto-
logical security and freedom, and is understood as a moment of connection between the
self and its world (see MacKenzie, McShane, & Wilcox, 2007, p. 47; Ruth, 2008, p. 105;
Vannini & Burgess, 2009, p. 108). As opposed to accepting the assumption that there is a
‘real’ authentic self to experience (see Vannini, 2006, pp. 236–237), this section focuses
on how historically situated modes for knowing thyself intersect with a culture of authen-
ticity in academic workplaces. This is a sense of authenticity that is discursively expressed
through claims that academic work is ‘empowering’, is a ‘lifestyle’, or is experienced as
a ‘passionate’ activity, as described by the interview participants in the previous section.
So what does it mean to investigate a non-essentialist authentic selfhood or, as Ferrera
has termed it, ‘authenticity without a true self’ (2009, p. 27)? Ferrera claims that the impos-
sibility of accurate self-knowledge implies that declarations about oneself are not knowl-
edge claims, but rather promises made about future conduct; for example, to say ‘I love
you’ is not a claim about one’s internal states, but rather a promise to another, ‘to relate to
that person as to someone whom I love’ (Ferrera, 2009, p. 27). What is at stake here is a
nominalist definition of self-authenticity, not a realist one. In other words, what can pass as
if it was self-knowledge (a self-conception) is sufficient for investigating the use of dis-
courses of authenticity among persons seeking to find meaning in their personal milieu. For
the symbolic interactionist G. H. Mead, self-knowledge is fundamentally limited:

… the self is both knower (I) and known (me). That means that, to some extent, we all have
knowledge and awareness of ourselves. The degree of self-knowledge and the ‘accuracy’ of self-
knowledge vary, of course, across individuals, cultures and historical periods and situations. But
to a greater or lesser extent, we all ‘know ourselves.’ Part of that self-knowledge is knowing
when our actions are congruent or contrary to our core self-conceptions, to our core values and
beliefs about what we do and who we are. That kind of knowledge is the basis of the experience
of authenticity; without it there can be no authenticity. (Vannini & Burgess, 2009, pp. 104–105)

Comprised of both self-conceptions and reflection upon the relationship between behav-
iour and the ‘known’ self, self-authenticity is here described in line with Vannini’s social-
psychological definition, as ‘feeling true to one’s self’ (2006, p. 236). The self-conceptions
Cannizzo 103

that stand in for self-knowledge in this nominalist view of self-authenticity are one’s core
values and beliefs about the self, ‘as defined and experienced by the self, regardless of its
objective conditions’ (Vannini & Burgess, 2009, p. 104). In this sense, authenticity is
both situational and pragmatic – it is ‘real in its pragmatic consequences for the self’
(Vannini, 2006, p. 239).
The organisation of labour has a special significance for the analysis of authenticity in
a capitalist economy that is so heavily dependent upon the wage labour norms that exist
in liberal democracies at present. The historical narrative to be told here, that the sale of
labour power on the open market brought with it the loss of meaning assumed in heredi-
tary labour roles (see Lindholm, 2008, p. 5), is less important than the current potential
for some forms of work to become imbued with meaning while others are described as
alienating. This phenomenon is not limited to academic labour. In her doctoral research,
James (2011, 2015) identifies, among her Australian participants, a strong motivation to
find work that reflected their inner selves. ‘Rather than fulfilling an obligation’, James
comments, ‘my interviewees were in search of a vocation to maximise their personal
satisfaction’ (2011, p. 175). Linking identity to a sense of authenticity provides James’s
participants with a ‘meaningful work-narrative’ that helps them maintain a continuous
sense of identity in the face of organisational and employment crises (James, 2015, para.
30). Furthermore, in the human services sector, Gray, Dean, Agllias, Howard, and
Schubert (2015, p. 373) comment that the emergence of a form of managerial govern-
ance (namely, New Public Management) has affected the motivations surrounding front-
line workers, who have become ‘corporate employees rather than professionals with a
commitment to service’, changing ‘the form and function of human services work’. The
development of a sense of authenticity, of being true to oneself, expressed through one’s
relationship to labour is, as Taylor argues, ‘peculiar to our time’:

It’s not just that people sacrifice their love relationships, and the care of their children, to pursue
their careers. Something like this has perhaps always existed. The point is that today many
people feel called to do this, feel they ought to do this, feel their lives would be somehow
wasted or unfulfilled if they didn’t do it. (Taylor, 1991, pp. 16–17)

The consequence of this conception of authenticity is, Taylor contends, ‘a kind of soft
relativism’ in which the tolerance of an individualised image of self-fulfilment discour-
ages claims that ‘some forms of life are indeed higher than others’ (Taylor, 1991, p. 17).
Not only do some forms of labour present individuals opportunities to develop a sense of
‘calling’ (identity) to work as a way of life, but academic modes of labour, supported by
strong collegial and moral cultures (Becher & Trowler, 2001), are enticing lures for those
able to hook their self-conceptions to the moral ideals espoused therein.

Conclusion: The normalisation of passionate labour

Three primary conclusions have emerged from this investigation of academic career nar-
ratives and past research. First, our present culture of authenticity encourages academics
(and, arguably, also students) to seek out a personal connection with their labour, creating
a source of intrinsic motivation for academic labourers. Despite organisational changes
emerging from the neoliberal turn in governmental policy during the 1970s and 1980s,
104 The Sociological Review 66(1)

and subsequent economic rationalisation of universities’ activities, academic cultures that

promote meaningful connections between academics and their labour persist. In line with
Vannini’s findings, what is significant about academics’ sense of connection to their
labour is that it invokes an idea of ‘freedom’ that influences their ‘self-meanings’ (2004,
pp. 168–169). This is significant for theories of motivation in academe and other forms of
work where identity development is strong, as it problematises the distinction between
intrinsic motivations (‘the underlying need for competence and self-determination’ –
Lewis, 2013, p. 65) and extrinsic motivations such as career progression. Rather than
simply adding another dimension to this motivational dichotomy, it would be more fruit-
ful to explore how academic workers make sense and attribute value to their work tasks.
Second, the different modes through which the Australian academics in this study
expressed their values suggest that job security and workplace cultures play a significant
role in how values are (re)produced in academia. Due to the intersection of seniority and
job security in this study, more senior academics tended to express their personal values
by reflecting on the dislocating effects that they perceive managerial, competitive envi-
ronments to have upon their work and the expression of their values. While Golden Age
narratives were reflected in many younger academics’ accounts of their work lives (such
as Belinda’s description of the ‘publish or perish mentality’) it was far more common to
hear them account for their career narratives in terms of ‘survival’ – a future-oriented
discourse that normalises compliance with managerial imperatives as an unavoidable
externality. The distinction here is in how academics produce a sense of self through their
labour. Whereas nostalgic modes of self-reflection constitute a self outside of and nego-
tiating with managerial demands, the ontological anxiety produced through reflecting on
how one may ‘survive’ in a professional sense constitutes one as a subject of regimes for
evaluating and judging the academic-as-performance. These are two distinct ways of
relating to one’s labour. These effects may not be limited to academic labour, but impact
other forms of work undergoing a shift from professional to more managerial modes of
governance (Gray et al., 2015, p. 373).
Third, and following from the previous conclusion, early- and mid-career researchers
in academia appear to have accepted the normalisation of managerial imperatives.
Managerialism, and to a lesser degree neoliberal policies, are spoken of as largely
immovable infrastructure in attempts to build academic careers. As the sample used in
this research project is not representative of the international – or even Australian – aca-
demic workforce, future studies should investigate the routines and techniques through
which academics structure their relationship to their labour. The nostalgic and survival
modes of relating described here are largely centred on self-conceptions as developed in
relation to personal values and managerial governance. Future studies could consider
cases where academics have found collective, non-managerial practices and techniques
to orient their self-conceptions. In this regard, this study has been limited to the meso-
level of analysis – the institution – in which a culture of authenticity is implicated in the
production of a normative ‘passion’ for academic labour and lifestyles. In this way, both
academics’ personal values and managerial norms are able to coexist because they are
now mutually constituted. As Brett commented:

For young starting poor bastards going into the field, you’ve got to love what you do. You’ve
got to have a passion for it.
Cannizzo 105

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

References
Archer, L. (2008a). The new neoliberal subjects? young/er academics’ constructions of profes-
sional identity. Journal of Education Policy, 23, 265–285.
Archer, L. (2008b). Younger academics’ constructions of ‘authenticity’, ‘success’ and profes-
sional identity. Studies in Higher Education, 33, 385–403.
Ball, S. J. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy,
18, 215–228.
Becher, T., & Trowler, P. R. (2001). Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and
the culture of disciplines (2nd ed.). Buckingham, UK: The Society for Research into Higher
Education and Open University Press.
Burrows, R. (2012). Living with the h-index? Metric assemblages in the contemporary academy.
The Sociological Review, 60, 355–372.
Cannizzo, F. (2015). Academic subjectivities: Governmentality and self-development in higher
education. Foucault Studies, 20, 199–217.
Davies, B., & Bansel, P. (2005). The time of their lives? Academic workers in neoliberal time(s).
Health Sociology Review, 14, 47–58.
Davis, F. (1979). Yearning for yesterday: A sociology of nostalgia. New York, NY: The Free Press.
Delanty, G. (2001). Challenging knowledge: The university in the knowledge society. Buckingham,
UK: The Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.
Ferrera, A. (2009). Authenticity without a true self. In P. Vannini & J. P. Williams (Eds.),
Authenticity in culture, self, and society (pp. 21–36). Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
Gill, R. (2009). Breaking the silence: The hidden injuries of neo-liberal academia. In R. Flood & R.
Gill (Eds.), Secrecy and silence in the research process: Feminist reflections (pp. 228–244).
London, UK: Routledge.
Gray, M., Dean, M., Agllias, K., Howard, A., & Schubert, L. (2015). Perspectives on neoliberalism
for human service professionals. Social Service Review, 89, 368–392.
Henkel, M. (2000). Academic identities and policy change in higher education. London, UK:
Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Henkel, M. (2005). Academic identity and autonomy in a changing policy environment. Higher
Education, 49, 155–176.
Henkel, M. (2009). Policy change and the challenge to academic identities. In J. Enders & E. de
Weert (Eds.), The changing face of academic life: Analytical and comparative perspectives
(pp. 78–95). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
James, S. (2011). Making a living, making a life: Contemporary narratives of work, vocation and
meaning (PhD thesis). La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.
James, S. (2015). Finding your passion: Work and the authentic self. M/C Journal: A Journal
of Media and Culture, 18. Retrieved from http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/
mcjournal/article/viewArticle/954
Kreber, C., Klampfleitner, M., McCune, V., Bayne, S., & Knottenbelt, M. (2007). What do you
mean by ‘authentic’? A comparative review of the literature on conceptions of authenticity in
teaching. Adult Education Quarterly, 58, 22–43.
Lewis, J. (2013). Academic governance: Discipline and policy. New York, NY: Routledge.
Liesner, A. (2007). Governmentality, European politics and the neo-liberal reconstruction of
German universities. Policy Futures in Education, 5, 449–459.
Lindholm, C. (2008). Culture and authenticity. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
106 The Sociological Review 66(1)

Lorenz, C. (2012). If you’re so smart, why are you under surveillance? Universities, neoliberalism,
and new public management. Critical Inquiry, 38, 599–629.
Malcolm, J., & Zukas, M. (2009). Making a mess of academic work: Experience, purpose and
identity. Teaching in Higher Education, 14, 495–506.
MacKenzie, H., McShane, K., & Wilcox, S. (2007). Challenging performative fabrication:
Seeking authenticity in academic development practice. International Journal for Academic
Development, 12, 45–54.
Miller, P., & Rose, N. S. (2008). Governing the present: Administering economic, social and per-
sonal life. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Osbaldiston, N., Cannizzo, F., & Mauri, C. (2016). ‘I love my work but I hate my job’ – early
career academic perspectives on academic times in Australia. Time & Society. Epub ahead of
print 21 December. doi:10.1177/0961463X16682516.
Parker, M., & Jary, D. (1995). The McUniversity: Organization, management and academic sub-
jectivity. Organization, 2, 319–338.
Pickering, M., & Keightley, E. (2006). The modalities of nostalgia. Current Sociology, 54, 919–
941.
Rose, N. S. (1999). Governing the soul: The shaping of the private self (2nd ed.). London, UK:
Free Association Books.
Ruth, D. (2008). Being an academic: Authorship, authenticity and authority. London Review of
Education, 6, 99–109.
Sennett, R. (1998). The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new
capitalism. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company.
Sennett, R. (2006). The culture of the new capitalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Slaughter, S., & Rhoades, G. (2004). Academic capitalism and the new economy: Markets, state,
and higher education. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Taylor, C. (1991). The ethics of authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vannini, P. (2004). Authenticity and power in the academic profession (PhD thesis). Washington
State University, USA.
Vannini, P. (2006). Dead poets’ society: Teaching, publish-or-perish and professors’ experiences
of authenticity. Symbolic Interaction, 29, 235–257.
Vannini, P., & Burgess, S. (2009). Authenticity as motivation and aesthetic experience. In P.
Vannini & J. P. Williams (Eds.), Authenticity in culture, self, and society (pp. 103–120).
Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
Vannini, P., & Williams, J. P. (2009). Authenticity in culture, self, and society. In P. Vannini &
J. P. Williams (Eds.), Authenticity in culture, self, and society (pp. 1–18). Farnham, UK:
Ashgate.
Ward, S. C. (2012). Neoliberalism and the global restructuring of knowledge and education. New
York, NY: Routledge.
Wilson, J. L. (2014). Nostalgia: Sanctuary of meaning (2nd ed.). Duluth: University of Minnesota
Duluth Library Press. Retrieved from http://d.umn.edu/lib/d-commons/libpub/monographs/
nostalgia/