Overseas returnee academics’ reflexive responses to the ‘Publish or Perish’ system: challenging evaluation in the cultural process

• In Event: Global Perspectives on Education and Culture: Digital Strategies, Social Media, and Tianxia in Shaping Future Citizens

Proposal

Higher education globally has been profoundly shaped and transformed by neoliberalism and associated policy technologies such as student choices, market competitions, managerialism, global rankings, evaluations, and performativity (Archer, 2008; Ball, 2003, 2017; Olssen & Peters, 2005). Neoliberal structures and discourses not only change ‘what we do’ but also ‘what we are’ (Ball, 2015: 306). A large body of literature has addressed the detrimental effects of neoliberalism on the academic profession and academic culture, shifting higher education from a place of professional autonomy and community to a place of calculation and differentiation (e.g., Archer, 2008; Clegg, 2008). Early career academics (ECAs) suffer most from the disciplines and consequences of neoliberalism, and their vulnerable positions are expected to be intensified by the dire future of academic job markets (Archer, 2008; Yin & Mu, 2022). Therefore, ECAs are sometimes dubbed as the academic ‘precariat’ (Standing, 2011).

However, instead of picturing neoliberalism as inexorable domination, some authors turn to ECAs’ reflexivity, resilience, and refusals to neoliberal technologies and doxas. For example, Archer (2008) indicates five reflexive strategies (ranging from ‘self-protection’ to ‘trying to be otherwise’) British ECAs take to deal with neoliberal discourses, and Yin and Mu (2022) shed light on Chinese ECAs’ sociological resilience to the ‘publish or perish’ system. Among these studies, we note a significant role of contexts in shaping neoliberal power relations and ECAs’ possibilities for resistances and refusals. For example, some authors (e.g., Poole & Xu, 2023; Yin & Mu, 2023) draw attention to a complex relationship between neoliberalism, seniority, and indigenous social networks in constructing Chinese ECAs’ opportunities and struggles.

Furthermore, current studies indicate different experiences of ECAs with overseas degrees and local degrees (e.g., Jia-Ni, 2017; Takayama, 2016) dealing with struggles at work. Overseas returnee ECAs seem to occupy a position of ‘trans-positionality’ (Sen, 2002; Yang, 2023) or experience a dilemma of being ‘inside-outsider’ or ‘halfie’ (Abu-Lughod, 1992; Takayama, 2016). That is, overseas returnee ECAs who received academic training abroad and returned to China for academic career, may experience two cultures in the two fields and embody the ‘doubleness of knowing’ (Hall & Sakai, 1996), which potentially could enable them to more reflexively engage with the two sets of doxas (Takayama, 2016) and introduce changes to the two fields. Our study, by focusing on overseas returnee ECAs’ reflexive responses to the ‘publish or perish’ system in China, aims to further explore their liberating and transformative potentials and to rethink the strategies to change and challenge neoliberal dominations and discourses in higher education.

Based on qualitative interviews with 20 overseas returnee ECAs at Chinese universities, we address academics’ reflexive strategies and resources to negotiate with a neoliberal policy at Chinese universities – the so-called ‘up or out’ system (‘feisheng jizou’ in Chinese). We define ‘overseas returnee ECAs’ as those who obtained their PhD degrees outside Mainland China and now are employed in Chinese universities with fixed-term contracts and in their first five working years. According to the ‘up or out’ system, these ECAs need to complete a list of things (normally publication of articles indexed in officially approved databases, completion of a high-level research fund, and mandates of teaching hours) to secure a tenured position; otherwise, they will be dismissed. We interviewed seven overseas returnee ECAs in September of 2024 and plan to interview around 12 more ECAs in October. They were sampled through our personal networks (we have friends in different positions varying between leaving academia, struggling with the system, and successfully completing performance requirements) and snowball strategies. We will analyse the data from a cultural sociology perspective, which views evaluation as a social and cultural process (Lamont, 2012). Under this perspective, evaluation as cultural practices and experiences, shapes people’s identities, subjectivities, struggles, constraints, and also their cultural repertoires and resources (Camic et al. 2011; Lamont, 2012). Using the cultural sociology perspective, we want to unpack the different sets of 'value' constructed by overseas returnee ECAs to academic work and academic identities. Based on these discussions, we want to demonstrate the structures of inequalities in which ECAs at Chinese universities are embedded and explore the cultural recourses they can draw on to achieve resistance and challenges. Through this study, we also aim to contribute to the wider sociological debate on the complexity of resistance (e.g., Ball & Olmedo, 2013) and explore ways of living with and beyond neoliberalism.

Authors

• Chenwei Peng, East China Normal University

• Jin Jin, East China Normal University