The Performance-based Research Fund, gender and a cultural cringe

Abstract

This article explores ways the Performance-based Research Fund (PBRF) produces gendered results and expresses a cultural cringe. It is argued that the research evaluation is fixated with being ‘world-class’ at the expense of academic practice that focuses on New Zealand. In this context, disadvantage faced by female academics under the PBRF can be re-imagined as an exemplar of a broader experience faced by all New Zealand-trained and focused academics. At the same time, the PBRF has produced some embarrassing results for neoliberal policy-makers and somewhat empowers academics as arbiters of excellence by reifying elements of peer review.

Keywords:

• Performance-based Research Fund
• gender
• cultural cringe
• neoliberalism
• neocolonialism
• New Zealand

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the University of Auckland, School of Social Sciences PBRF Fund and the Waikato-Tainui College for Research and Development for their support in revising this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Geof Pearce’s (1986) analysis of national accounts provided a fascinating operationalisation of Mandel’s thesis about late capitalism and the ending of the long boom in New Zealand.

2. This is a global and local concern. Indeed, Robertson describes an echo of the cultural cringe in the UK’s RAE, if not in terms of a ‘cultural hegemony’ (Hume 1991) as in the white-settler societies, then in terms of methodology: ‘with the RAE privileging the ‘international’ in what counts as quality research’ (Robertson 2010, 194).

3. A wananga is a publicly owned tertiary institution that provides education in a Māori cultural context.