Our restive selves: a collaborative autoethnography on confronting complicity in neoliberal doctoral socialization

Abstract

As institutions of higher education continue to evolve and adopt neoliberal ideologies, doctoral student socialization is increasingly shaped by logic and exacerbated for students of color. In this paper, we use the five tenets, privatized consumerism, precarity, competitive individualism, surveillance, and declining morality, offered by Museus and LePeau derived from a postsecondary education context. To understand this experience, we as three Asian American women in an education doctoral program utilize Kimoto’s theorization of restiveness and collaborative autoethnography to examine and untangle our complicities in contributing to neoliberal doctoral socialization. By employing a restive orientation, we acknowledge and discuss our complicities as a pathway towards continual collective consciousness-raising, self-reflexivity, and collective care.

Keywords:

• Doctoral student socialization
• Asian American
• women of color
• collaborative autoethnography
• restiveness
• higher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vanessa S. Na

Vanessa S. Na is a doctoral student in education studies at the University of California, San Diego, and a research associate for the National Institute for Transformation and Equity. Her research examines equity and justice in higher education, with a focus on solidarity and coalition efforts of racially minoritized populations.

Amy C. Wang

Amy C. Wang is a doctoral student in Education Studies at the University of California, San

Hannah Hyun White

Diego. Hannah Hyun White is a doctoral student in Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her research centers truth telling, collectivism, reciprocity, and care in working to dismantle systemic racism and violence in the academy.