Academic freedom and the eye of power: the politics and poetics of open enclosures

Abstract

Transparency is both a powerful idea and a technology of power associated with accountability, justice and democracy, which opposes the secretive and shadowy power of surveillance wielded by states and corporations. This article examines surveillance and transparency not as a dichotomy but as a constitutive relation in the field of academia, focusing specifically on ranking and rivalry in the context of competitive performance. Transparency-as-openness (open access platforms) is enmeshed in enclosures assembled from (self-) surveillance, personal data, public institutions and private enterprise. The analysis pays particular attention to how altmetrics and credibility metrics – used to enhance personal prestige and professional standing – reinforce the neo-liberalisation of higher education. The article concludes by engaging critically with the politics and poetics of open enclosures with a view to re-imagining the practice of academic freedom.

Keywords:

• academic freedom
• altmetrics
• credibility metrics
• panopticism
• transparency

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank participants at the RC36 Interim Meeting in 2016 for their comments and suggestions, and in particular Nanna Mik-Meyer, Phil Cerny, Mark Haugaard and Louwrens Pretorius and also the reviewers for the Journal of Political Power for providing insightful and constructive criticism. In writing this article, my thinking has undergone continual revision through ongoing conversations with Liam Farrell, a doctoral researcher in my home university, and collaborative artist Fiona Whelan, who lives and works in Dublin. This interaction is an invaluable part of the research process and an intrinsic feature of what is framed in this article (from Sawyer 2004) as ‘collaborative emergence’.

Notes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at IPSA Research Committee 36 (Political Power) Interim Meeting held at the University of Helsinki during October 2015.

1. ‘Loitering theatre’ is available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK4LtWyqFS4. Accessed 25 August 2015. The Science Gallery was established in 2008 as a ‘living experiment’ where ‘science and art collide’ and is affiliated to Trinity College Dublin: https://dublin.sciencegallery.com/about. Accessed 25 August 2015.

2. At the time of writing, Facebook and Google are both represented on the Board of the Science Gallery.

3. The issue of ‘doping’ erodes the credibility not just of individual athletes, but sport itself, including organisations such as sports governing bodies and anti-doping agencies.

4. Transparency International’s Mission Statement, for example, equates transparency with accountability, integrity, solidarity, courage, justice and democracy (TI 2011).

5. I am here extending Connolly’s argument that ‘every interpretation of political events … contains an ontopolitical dimension … its fundamental presumptions fix possibilities, distribute explanatory elements, generate parameters within which an ethic is elaborated, and centre (or decentre) assessments of identity, legitimacy, and responsibility’ (1995, p. 2).

6. Presently, there are 47 countries participating in the Bologna Process, which commenced with the Sorbonne Joint Declaration in 1998 followed by the Bologna Declaration 1999. See: http://www.ehea.info/article-details.aspx?ArticleId=3. Accessed 2 November 2015.

7. ENQA: http://www.enqa.eu/. Accessed 2 November 2015.

8. Doping in the sport of cycling is currently shifting from chemistry to electricity, or ‘mechanical doping’ as it is called – miniature battery-powered motors concealed within the frame of the bicycle (Cycling News 2016).

9. In fact, one commentator goes even further by advocating cognitive enhancement as a ‘moral duty’ in the light of the university’s mission to strive for excellence (Quigley 2008).

10. ‘RG Score: A new way to measure scientific reputation’, available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publicprofile.RGScoreFAQ.html. Accessed 12 September 2015.

11. Altmetric.com, for example, markets its product to publishers, institutions and researchers. See: http://www.altmetric.com/. Accessed 16 September 2015.

12. Google Scholar’s i10-index captures publications with 10+ citations.

13. By way of example, consider the recent ‘guest-post’ by Cat Chimes, Head of Marketing at Altmetrics.com (see endnote 11 above), on the Taylor & Francis Group’s Editor Resources webpage. The piece offers advice to journal editors on ‘putting altmetric data to use’, and reads very much like a life coaching session: ‘Do you have content you’d like to make more visible? Take a look at the altmetrics for competitor titles and see what’s working for them – a great starting point for building your own outreach strategy!’ The post also offers guidance on how to boost impact: ‘You might find that Tweeting at a particular time of day produces more retweets, or that being featured by a particular blogger draws a lot of attention that an article wouldn’t otherwise get. Figure out what success looks like, and focus your activities on building relationships with those channels’.

14. As the imbrication of politics and aesthetics, Rancière’s rendering of ‘the sensible’ can be understood as a process of inclusion and exclusion, division and partitioning between who/what counts and who/what is discounted.

15. I am writing from experience having spent a combined total of sixteen years working in both fields.

16. On ‘scripted instruction’ and ‘teaching as improvisational performance’ in the classroom setting, see Sawyer 2004.

17. It could be argued that Clayton Christensen’s theory of ‘disruptive innovation’ complicates my portrayal. In the field of higher education, for example, innovations in online technology could reverse the trend in escalating tuition fees (see Ondi Timoner interviewing Andrew Rossi about his documentary ‘Ivory Tower’ – available on TheLip.TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofuhlR4LAgQ. Accessed 23 November 2015). This posits innovative disruption as a revolutionary process in the normative sense of change for the better. It does not, however, alter the fact that disruptive innovation remains a zero-sum game among competitors. Christensen’s website describes disruptive innovation as ‘a process by which a product or service takes root … at the bottom of the market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors’ (http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/. Accessed 23 November 2015).