Resistance against material artefacts: university spaces, administrative online systems and emotions

Abstract

This article traces some of the attempts that have been made to analyse time and emotions in order to gain a broader understanding of how power and resistance entangle in online administrative systems in university spaces. Rising levels of Internet usage in the university sector, and society in general, imply a new era for public administration. Online administrative systems have moved into the university sector, creating different reactions, new practices, temporalities and emotions. The administrative online systems, which govern through, as our respondents understand it, various time-consuming scripts (for example, the travel expenses programmes or programmes regulating working hours or duty periods) or through online communication systems (for example, emailing), give rise to a rich and varied resistance against the different systems, which informs the employees’ temporalities and spent time (clock time). Among other things, people reacted emotionally with avoidance, time-travel, manipulations, ignorance and by exact rule following.

Keywords:

• Resistance
• time
• temporality
• emotions
• university spaces
• administrative online systems

Notes

1. The respondents will remain anonymous in the article.