The enactment of policy inside an academic profession: Following impact into philosophy

ABSTRACT

With some of the propositions from the literature on ‘policy enactments’ as a backdrop, this paper addresses the circulation of a research policy innovation and its effects on the knowledge territory of an unlikely profession. Specifically, I show how the Research Excellence Frameworks’ impact policy in the UK was an object first managed by policymakers but later released as an object of concern for professional academics, including philosophers. I follow ‘impact’ through texts, events and testimonies about its doings with a special interest in its creation, its polemical encounter with philosophers, its management and issues about its definition and the assessment criteria used and experienced by philosophers. I conclude with some remarks on the effects that the circulation and writing of impact case studies had on producing a social valorisation and attachment to impact, even amongst philosophers.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy enactments
• ref
• impact
• philosophy
• circulation

Note on the Author

Francisco J. Salinas is a Postdoctoral researcher in Escuela de Gobierno, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez. He holds a PhD in Sociology of Knowledge from UCL’s Institute of Education.

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Daniel Chernilo, John Vorhaus, Judith Suissa, Michel Bastian, Rodrigo González, Stephen Ball and four anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments to previous versions of this paper. Fieldwork for this research was approved by the UCL’s Institute of Education Research Committee in 2017.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. For instance, many of the contributions to the Oxford Handbook of Public Policy can be considered to respond to traditional, abstract and top-down rational-choice policy perspectives (see Moran, Rein, and Goodin 2006).

2. The interviewees include twenty-one, young and senior, philosophers working as staff members in universities all around the UK. Out of them, three held relevant positions in professional bodies and five participated of the REF philosophy assessment panel. I also interviewed two university administrative staff specialised in REF issues, three philosophy students and four philosophy graduates working outside philosophy. These conversations explored biographical experiences in the field of philosophy, as well as insights in relation to philosophy departments, professional societies, and the REF.

3. Founded in 1989 by Liverpool’s emeritus Professor Stephen Clark, the PHILOS-L or ‘Liverpool List’ is the biggest Philosophy email list in the world. At present it has over 13,000 members from more than 60 countries. It is considered to be ‘mostly a place for philosophers worldwide to share information and ask questions’ (Department of Philosophy n.d.). All the communications in this platform are publicly available.

4. See https://www.ref.ac.uk/2014/about/background/secondconsultation/

5. Letters publicly available online in the following links: http://bpa.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/bpa-ba-letter-1610.pdf and http://bpa.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/bpa-willetts-12710.pdf

6. Letter publicly available here: http://bpa.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/bpa-willetts-reply-910.pdf

7. In this scoring system, 4* (the top score) stands for ‘quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour’; 3* for ‘quality that is internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour but which falls short of the highest standards of excellence’; 2* for ‘quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour’; and 1* (the lower tier) refers to ‘quality that is recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour’ (REF 2012, 43–44). Only research awarded with 4’s and 3’s receives REF funding money.

8. Indeed, results show that philosophy departments in the UK have more 4* impact than the Units of Assessment of ‘Civil and Construction Engineering’, ‘Geography, Environmental Studies and Archaeology’, ‘Communication, Cultural and Media Studies’, ‘Library and Information Management’ and ‘Area Studies’.

9. Contrary to this trend, I am aware some philosophers are enthusiastic about the idea of seeing their colleagues travel outside of academic philosophy. For instance, ‘Field Philosophers’ see in impact a source to ‘imagine a more balanced world of academic humanities where every department self-consciously establishes a certain ratio of disciplinary and non-disciplinary research as part of their identity’ (Frodeman and Briggle 2016, 150). In theory, this looks positive and healthy – the involvement of philosophers with their environment is not a bad thing in itself. However, in the context of an all-pervading neoliberal order, this has the practical effect of encouraging philosophers to behave as ‘entrepreneurs’ focused in marketing themselves and others (see Solomon 1995). Perhaps, future generations of impact-driven philosophers will be less likely to be critical and reflexive about the world (or its fragments) and willingly seeing themselves as tools or resources helping in the multiplication of markets. Framed in the logics of impact, the latent problem is that of the economic colonization of philosophical practice.

Additional information

Funding

Universidad Adolfo Ibañez [UAI Postdoctoral Project 2021];