Outcasts on the inside: academics reinventing themselves online

Abstract

Recent developments in digital scholarship point out that academic practices supported by technologies may not only be transformed through the obvious process of digitization, but also renovated through distributed knowledge networks that digital technologies enable, and the practices of openness that such networks develop. Yet, this apparent freedom for individuals to re-invent the logic of academic practice comes at a price, as it tends to clash with the conventions of a rather conservative academic world. In other words, it may still take some time until academia and the participatory web can fully identify themselves with one another as spaces of ‘public intellectualism’, scholarly debate and engagement. Through a narrative inquiry approach, this research explores how academic researchers engaged in digital scholarship practices perceive the effects of their activity on their professional identity. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is used as a theoretical construct and method to capture and understand the professional trajectories of the research participants and the significance of their digital practices on their perceived academic identity. The research suggests that academics engaged in digital practices experience a disjointed sense of identity. The findings presented in this article illustrate how experiences with and on the participatory web inform a new habitus which is at odds with a habitus that is traditionally expected in academia.

Keywords:

• habitus
• digital scholarship
• Pierre Bourdieu
• identity

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cristina Costa

Cristina Costa is a lecturer in Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of Strathclyde, School of Education. She is the course leader PgCert/PgDip in Lifelong Learning in the Digital Age and the co-editor of Social Theory Applied (Facebook). Her research interests include digital scholarship, Pierre Bourdieu, digital education, curriculum innovation and professional identities. Her latest publications are: The habitus of digital scholars, Research in Learning Technology (in press); Double gamers: Academics between fields, British Journal of Sociology of Education (in press); Outcasts on the inside: Academics reinventing themselves online, International Journal of Lifelong Education (in press); The art of application: Bourdieu, Habitus and Social Research (Palgrave Macmillan) and Theory as Method in Research: On Bourdieu, education and society (Routledge).