Academic career making in the era of globalizing knowledge and a globalized knowledge enterprise demands on individuals and constraints over individuality

147 Academic Career-Making in the Era of Globalizing Knowledge and a Globalized Knowledge Enterprise: Demands on Individuals and Constraints over Individuality Victor N.. Shaw* Abstr

147

Academic Career-Making in the Era of Globalizing

Knowledge and a Globalized Knowledge Enterprise:

Demands on Individuals and Constraints over Individuality

Victor N Shaw*

Abstract: Academic career-making in the era of globalizing knowledge and a globalized

knowledge enterprise is not only an individual undertaking but also a social process It impacts individual academicians as they meet requirements, secure resources, find opportunities, follow procedures, and build structures to make their careers It has consequences for society as it establishes institutions, opens markets, provides media, creates values, and enforces rules to connect individual academicians and their products to the larger social system This paper explores academic careers, and career-making as knowledge and the knowledge enterprise become globally hegemonic Specifically, it examines how academic career-making makes demands on individuals in the form of brainwashing, emotion rechanneling, life-simplifying, and social isolation It also investigates how academic careers place constraints over individuality by way of socialization, massing, fashion, and lifestyle

Keywords: Academic Careers; Career-making; Individuality; Institutional Demands;

Knowledge Enterprise

Received 16 th October2018; Revised 10 th April 2019; Accepted 20 th April 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33100/jossh5.2.ShawVictorN

1 Introduction

Academic career-making in the era of

globalizing knowledge and a globalized

knowledge enterprise is not only an

individual undertaking but also a social

process It impacts individual academicians

as they meet requirements, secure resources,

find opportunities, follow procedures, and

build structures to make their careers It has

consequences for society as it establishes

institutions, opens markets, provides media,



California State University-Northridge;

email: victor.shaw@csun.edu

creates values, and enforces rules to connect individual academicians and their products

to the larger social system This paper explores academic careers, and career-making as knowledge and the knowledge enterprise become globally hegemonic Specifically, it examines how academic

individuals in the form of brainwashing, emotion rechanneling, life-simplifying, and social isolation It also investigates how academic careers place constraints over individuality by way of socialization, massing, fashion, and lifestyle

2 Demands on Individuals

A successful academic career involves

the attainment of degrees, positions, titles,

publications, awards, honors, and tenure In

secular terms, these attainments symbolize

an assurance of job safety, a realization of

professional goals, a reification of ego, and

an actualization of personal potentials A

career, however, is not a given Even a

mediocre career is often made at the expense

of personal relations and fundamental

interests in life If there exists a personal

domain, career-making may destroy

important segments of it to the detriment of

the individual (Jacoby 1987; Becher 1989;

Bender 1993; Dews and Law 1995; Krenzin

1995; Cyr and Reich 1996; Kolpin and

Singell 1996; Norrell and Norrell 1996; Rice

1996; Rossides 1998; Shaw 2000; Gossett

and Bellas 2002; Schuster and Finkelstein

2006; Shaw 2013; Burge 2015; Shaw 2015;

Kuhn and Vessuri 2016; Shapiro 2016;

Taylor 2017; Zavattaro and Orr 2017; Gray

2018; Shaw 2019)

2.1 Brain Washing and Restuffing

Academic career-seekers need to submit

to the diplomacy, morality, and ideology of

a discipline and the community of

scholarship There are standardized images

and models to internalize and follow They

prescribe what and how one sees, hears, and

thinks like a scholar Early during their

educational preparation, students are taught

how to wash commonsense from their brain

and reconstruct their inner and outer worlds

according to disciplinary theories and

methodologies Prospective academicians

must also change their private domains into

those of disciplinary scholars they aspire to

become, such as physicists, sociologists, and

philosophers Deviations lead to objections from the academic mainstream, and, in

extreme cases, expulsion from a discipline

The process of socialization for career academicians is gradual, lengthy, and constant It is gradual because higher levels build upon lower levels of knowledge and skills It is lengthy because academic beliefs, values, norms, and codes of conduct take root slowly in the mundane world with which every would-be scholar begins It is constant because scientific versions of reality and ways of thinking evolve in contrast to the world of common sense in which most academicians live their lives

academicians may undergo socialization with different frequencies, intensities, and durations But in general, they all need to sharpen their natural and intuitive minds with scientific or rational inputs The bottom line is a basic sense of alertness or a universal level of sensitivity to the distinction of science from commonsense, scientific observation from commonsensical experience, and scientific explanation from commonsensical speculation With it, one maintains a mindset that predisposes one to identify causes, analyze relations, develop explanations, and propose solutions while one‟s nonacademic friends, neighbors, or coworkers might normally panic or suffer in the face of a crisis or stressful situation Specifically, academicians become identified with scientific beliefs in their socialization process Belief is faith in the truth of something that is not immediately susceptible to proof Although it emphasizes evidence, science operates under a fundamental conviction about the reliability

of human senses, accessibility of the world

by human cognition, analyzability of the world, and in the matter of analysis,

determinism, and reductionism The

reliability of human senses is in contrast to

the validity of human senses The latter is

out of question from a scientific viewpoint

because it is just impossible for humans to

ascertain whether the world of their senses is

the same as the real world The former is

meaningful because it is about the

consistency of human senses In science,

since it is assumed that human senses

remain consistent from person to person,

place to place, and time to time, features

discerned and changes detected by the

senses are automatically attributed to the

objects out there in the external world The

accessibility of the world by human

cognition is related to the reliability of

human senses After all, it is the human

sense that buttresses human cognition and

connects it to the outside world The

analyzability of the world builds upon the

reliability of human senses and the

accessibility of the world by human

cognition In addition, it involves an

essentially non-scientific assumption that

the external world operates under the same

logic that governs human thinking In other

words, whatever relationships humans

induce and deduce among things they sense

can be applied to things out there in the real

world Most important, academicians, in

their scientific analysis, follow the

principles of determinism and reductionism

By determinism, things are connected to one

another through a universal causal chain,

that is, for any single event in the world,

there is not only a cause preceding it but

also a consequence resulting from it

According to reductionism, the world is

comprised of elementary objects, each of

which is further composed of ever smaller

elementary units In the spirit of

reductionism, scientists study an object by

breaking it down into elements By

examining elements and their interrelations,

they hope to understand the object in its entirety While it remains doubtful as to how much science learns about the universe, it is

a fact that science has reached the smallest world of the smallest object humans can ever imagine, by way of reductionism Career academicians internalize scientific values in their induction into the community of scholarship Value concerns what is important, beautiful, or respectable and what is insignificant, despicable, or secular Individual scholars may value simplicity or symmetry when they develop a theory or propose a mathematical formula But in general, scientists share basic values

in their quest for knowledge, including empiricism, rationality, analysis, prediction, and control Empiricism emphasizes facts gathered through scientific procedures as both beginning and ending points of scientific explanations Theories are developed with evidence They must also be amenable to empirical validation or invalidation Rationality assumes that human subjects correspond with their research objects in spatial patterning, time sequencing, and other universal laws It requires that scientists follow human reasoning to uncover laws of the external world Analysis acts upon rationality It prompts scholars to move from whole to part, content to form, and phenomenon to essence or from concrete to abstract, particular to universal, and regional to systemic in their search for truth Prediction injects human purposes into the scientific process It connects scientists to the larger crowd of social actors as forecasters, counselors, or just truthtellers Finally, control may even go beyond the realm of science It reflects human wills in using knowledge about nature to conquer nature, about society to manipulate the social

process, and about life to raise the quality of

life

Scholars learn and follow norms as they

interact with each other in the world of

science The norm prescribes what is

appropriate, moral, or legal and what is

immoral, wrong, or law-breaking Violation

of academic norms leads to condemnation,

expulsion, and other penalties For example,

the norms of originality, honesty, and

creativity in academic work stipulate that

scholars turn out creative products by their

efforts Violators who plagiarize existent

contributions, fabricate evidence, or imprint

their name upon a subordinate‟s products

may gain visibility and influence, but in the

end, will be regarded as incompetents and

outcasts Of course, there are also those who

break with norms and who rebel by seeking

new paths within a discipline For instance,

scholars are supposed to follow conventions

and honor established paradigms But there

are always novices or mavericks who build

their success upon criticism of tradition,

rebellion against convention, and defiance

of existing ways of thinking Scientific

products are assumed to appear in required

formats or styles But there is no scarcity of

cases where an unconventionally packaged

work makes a successful debut in

conventional settings, drawing unusual

attention from usual sources

Academicians acquire skills as they

specialize in an area of study Academic

skills can be general and specific General

skills are reflected in reading, writing, and

presenting activities Specific skills may

involve modeling, experimenting, and

operating tasks — for example, one reviews

existing literature about ancient tombs in a

region One sets out to explore the region to

identify specific tombs for excavation In

excavation, one follows a complex

procedure to ensure that digging does not damage a tomb and unearthing does not cause any significant change to the artifacts inside the tomb Following excavation, one uses different technologies to determine the meaning of each item one is interested in investigating about the people who lived in the time when the dead were buried It is obvious that a variety of skills are required

in a typical research project In order to learn skills involved in an area of inquiry, prospective candidates attend school or apprentice with a specialist To sharpen research skills as a proficient scholar, one may practice one‟s disciplinary scholarship for a lifetime It is normal that one fails over one set of skills at the same time when one excels in other skills For example, a philosopher may use his or her brain eloquently in his or her disciplinary specialization, but he or she may end up being a person who “can neither use his or her four limbs nor tell five grains apart.” Scholars accumulate knowledge as they make their academic career Knowledge builds up by layers Foundation knowledge includes basic vocabularies one knows about science, history, and the world System knowledge provides one with a system of theories, methods, and references in a discipline Operation knowledge refers to one‟s command of existing situations, such

as challenging issues, prevailing explanations, and possible solutions, in an area of inquiry Although operation knowledge builds upon foundation and system knowledge, it may override the latter

as if neither of them ever exists in its presence For example, one is so preoccupied with one‟s current research that one may forget all learning in a discipline and one‟s general knowledge about the

compartmentalization of knowledge points

to the irony that a scholar with knowledge in

one field of study may be utterly ignorant

about basic facts in science and human

affairs One may act clumsily in social

arenas as if one were uneducated or

unsophisticated

Academicians take on a scientific frame

commonsensical and religious frames they

begin within their lives In the world of

common sense, people see flat land,

arc-shaped sky, the Sun, the Moon, and

alternation between day and night In a

religious world, believers may perceive

another world in contrast to the world in

which they live The purpose of suffering in

this world where they feel fearful and

helpless is to live securely and enjoy eternal

life in the other world Believers may also

envision this world as sandwiched between

two opposing worlds, heaven to which

virtuous people ascend and hell into which

evil people fall In the world of science,

however, academicians imagine a universe

of infinite space and endless time Humans

live on the Earth, a planet in the Solar

System that belongs to the Milky Way

Galaxy of the Universe We see the Sun

rising and setting because the Earth revolves

around it Organisms grow and die because

they follow the principle of evolution

Objects fall off a cliff because they are

subject to the law of gravity A whole object

breaks into smaller units because objects are

made of substance and substance is made of

elements Woods burn in the air because

carbon reacts with oxygen to form carbon

dioxide Scientists think and act upon the

world of science The logic they use, mode

of analysis they adopt, train of thought they

follow, degree of creativeness they attain,

and level of productivity they demonstrate

all lie in the order of the world that they perceive, explore, and explain Although people who grow up with standard science education in contemporary society may take the world of science for granted, they need

to go much further to identify with science

as their world of thinking and acting should they become career scholars in scientific research

Rechanneling

Career-making academicians need to withhold their personal likes or dislikes in the service of scholarly conventions and etiquettes Papers are written in an abstract language Presentations are made in a solemn tone Transactions with academic authorities are conducted in an atmosphere

of non-solicitation and non-irritation Revelations of nonacademic intentions are

impartiality One puts one‟s career in jeopardy if one lets one‟s emotions govern

in the conduct of scholarly businesses

In conducting research, academicians need to focus on an area for a recognizable period of creative productivity Naturally, when one works on a task, one may become tired or bored, switch back and forth with another task, or come back to it after an interval of inaction To tackle research, however, an academician may have to change, at least for a time, some of his or her habits For example, one may compete with others in the field No matter how stressed one is, one still needs to struggle to

be the first to the finish line An academician may work with a team No matter what urgencies one faces in other arenas of life, one still needs to complete the task to meet the team requirement An

academician may also feel an obligation to

maintain a certain record of creative

productivity in his or her specialization No

matter how exhausted one is in scholarly

talent, one still needs to turn out something

once in a while until one departs from the

scene

In dealing with colleagues, scholars need

to follow the spirit of professionalism

Normally, when people relate to one another

in life, they may borrow things from

neighbors, negotiate on job duty with

workmates, and share feelings with friends

But academic colleagues are not neighbors,

peers, or friends They are not even ordinary

workmates In universities, faculty members

are independent scholars working in their

respective areas of specialty They keep a

distance from each other They judge one

another not so much by what they say but

mainly by what they publish on paper

Personal feelings are either sealed inside

each professor or conjectured from language

on academic records For example, one risks

being looked down upon as lacking an

academic agenda if one asks colleagues to

take one in their research project One may

be considered infringing upon colleagues‟

rights of intellectual freedom when one

suggests that they incorporate certain

contents in their classroom teaching Most

illustratively, one is not supposed to argue

with one‟s senior colleagues when one is

denied promotion or tenure One may

“respectfully disagree” with them and

pursue one‟s cause through institutional

procedures One is discredited as

“unprofessional” should one take the path a

commonsense person might take in the face

of difficulty, complaining, pleading, or

screaming

Analogous to farmers who perform

planting or harvesting rituals, academicians

hold conventions where they interactively meet with each other Usually, when farmers celebrate harvests, they feast, dance, and engage in other activities that serve to vent their feelings Academic gatherings, however, are not getaway vacations or forget-it-all parties Scholars put on suits, instead of dropping their personal fronts They rehearse to present the best of themselves, instead of appearing in their natural outlooks They meet by time slot, instead of just seeing one another for casual interactions They use professional argots, instead of speaking naturally in everyday language They act with all their scholarly skills, without expressing their inner sentiments A few who break from the protocol of an academic meeting risk being labeled as having no manner The attention they gain may offer no compensation for the respect they lose, should they attempt any

“entertaining” behavior at the convention When it is time to publish their research

communicate with editors In an open market, farmers can put their products on display and negotiate directly with buyers Academicians, however, do not have much occasion to reach their readers in a face-to-face way They must impress editors in order to enter their products in the academic media for circulation to the community of scholarship Dealing with editors is no easy job Journal editors are mostly academicians themselves They edit journals as if they were kings within publication kingdoms While the majority of journal editors are conscientious scholars, some are plainly rude or incompetent Ordinary scholars, therefore, must exert caution and patience in dealing with editors They remain silent, even for months, until they hear from editors They follow directions for revision

when they are asked to change by editors

They turn to another journal when they run

into trouble with the editor of an existing

journal It can be quite counterproductive

when one follows one‟s feelings to question

an editor as to why it takes so long to go

through review, challenge an editor that a

recommended revision is unnecessary

because it is irrelevant to the major thrust of

one‟s manuscript, or suggest that the editor

has misread one‟s rather significant paper

In general, academicians need to

withhold most sentiments they normally

have as humans They behave like trained

professionals Primitive desires are

contained or rechanneled to academically

compatible and professionally acceptable

forms of expression If it is natural for

people to show off, academicians can never

brag about their talents or achievements in

front of any counterpart they deal with

regularly Instead, they should remain calm

in every professional setting and turn all

their show-off drives into scholarly

productivity If it is normal for people to

influence one another, academicians may

never persuade any colleagues they work

within an institution Instead, they must be

collegial in every academic dealing and

channel all their innate hunger for power

into a legitimate rise to leadership roles in

organizational settings If it is

disappointed, frustrated, and tired in life,

academicians may never allow their

emotional impulses to run loose in the eyes

of their professional fellows Instead, they

must stay insistent though their academic

career and redirect all their inner inclination

toward comfort to intellectual persistence

for career success

2.3 Life Deferring and Simplifying

Academic career enthusiasts may have to abandon their familial and communal life as they are often unable to reconcile their aspirations for an academic career with their innate inclinations for personal attachment

It is common that students give up their adolescent desire for beauty and love in quest of a somewhat abstinent and Spartan academic career It is also true that new entrants, such as assistant professors and junior research scientists, put off marriage, set aside family life, and commit all their time, energy, and resources to an academic career dream

phenomenon among career scholars Since they are devoted to scholarly pursuits, many academicians reserve little or no time for recreations, health maintenance, and other personal interests Because they do not make much money, many scholars cannot afford

to live in spacious houses, dine in fine restaurants, vacation in luxurious resorts, or hire maids to take care of essential needs in life There is no lack of stories wherein a scholar gnaws bread to crush hunger while delving into a manuscript, sleeps a couple of hours a night on the office or lab floor for a few days while working on a project, does not shave and shower for a week while crafting a proposal, or does not have sex for years after graduate school Simplifying or neglecting life has obvious consequences One may catch colds and other illnesses easily One may gradually develop eating disorders, sleep problems, or other unfavorable conditions There are no systematic health statistics about academics

in comparison to other professionals Nonetheless, scholars often appear absentminded, weary, or bald and exhibit

premature senility in media portrayals as

well as public impressions

Deferring major satisfactions of life

seems to be a natural choice for many

academic aspirants On the one hand, they

know they want to settle down and live a

normal life like everyone else On the other

hand, they realize they need to get on track,

gain momentum, and see a bright prospect

of success before they can think about

anything non-academic The truth is this:

The academic undertaking is an endless

effort No one can ever be ready for or away

from it once he or she enters the arena

Academicians who initially thought they

would land on firm ground in a five-year

time may still find themselves in the middle

of nowhere after ten years of serious

endeavors As they keep postponing

life-related commitments, some academicians

are still alone, long past the golden age for

marriage Some middle-aged female

scientists can hardly look for a life partner

because they spent all their early ages on

research projects, because they long ago fell

in an unrequited love with a charismatic

mentor out of their admiration for scientific

achievements, or because they unfortunately

engaged in a private affair with a

dominating advisor Difficulty in finding

true love makes some women single

throughout life and misleads others into

marriage mismatches Male academicians

after middle ages generally fare better than

their female counterparts They sometimes

can find candidates for marriage or

companionship among their students when

they become established at an institution or

in a field of study But generational gap and

physical imbalance exist, opening doors for

friction, extramarital affairs, and

unhappiness Of course, academicians who

remain single and family-less throughout

their career may have to bear most loneliness or suffering in their lives Imagine that at the age of fifty, one loses one‟s job and has no relatives to turn to for emotional support Imagine that at the age of sixty, a scholar lies on a hospital bed and feels nobody cares about him or her and he or she has nobody to care about in the whole world The person is likely to commit suicide unless he or she can cling to some extraordinary hope, perseverance, and resilience that still exist inside him or her

2.4 Social Isolation

Career academic practitioners need to dedicate their intelligence and life to disciplinary specialization, isolating themselves from the mass media, fashions, and social currents A discipline is a self-sufficient knowledge enterprise, with its own repertoire of theories, techniques, and tools Academic practitioners, under disciplinary self-sufficiency, could develop

a false impression that their disciplinary world is the real world and feel that it is unnecessary to go anywhere beyond the disciplinary boundary in life pursuits But as

a complete human, one needs to reach out to different viewpoints and opportunities across society for one‟s self-actualization Social isolation is a problem facing every profession in the contemporary era A business person may not know anything about health and medicine while profiting from the marketplace An artist may sound naive when he or she talks about politics A diplomat may have difficulty figuring out his or her bank statement while navigating through the world of words and people However, depending upon the distance, it is removed from social currents, depth of specialization it demands of individuals, and

difficulty of content leaning it invokes, one

profession may make its members more

socially isolated or integrated than others

For example, businesspeople, politicians,

media workers, and entertainers may feel

that the more they delve into their field, the

closer they have their fingers on the pulse of

society Career scholars, on the other hand,

may feel exactly the opposite In fact,

science and academic research are the most

substantively demanding and therefore

socially isolating undertakings among all

occupational fields

The consequences of social isolation can

be subtle An organic chemist seldom

watches movies When he or she watches a

movie with a group of people and asks

questions about some characters or episodes

in the movie, he or she may show obvious

ignorance about popular culture He or he

may then become a subject of gossip: “Oh,

my gosh! „X‟ does not even understand why

Julie puts a pie on her boyfriend‟s face in

the movie What an idiot!” A mathematician

hardly puts any effort into social etiquette

He or she goes shopping late in the night,

with hairs looking messy He or she stares at

the monitor when the cashier checks out his

or her items A few minutes after the

transaction, he or she walks back to the

store, asking the cashier to refund a few

cents he or she finds the cashier

over-collected The cashier refunds him or her ten

cents, watching him or her leave the store

with a despising look: “What a lunatic!” A

sociologist drives to an academic

conference On his or her way, he or she

miscalculates an attempt to change lanes,

getting too close to a fast-moving truck The

truck driver yells at him or her: “Damn you,

stupid head!” A nuclear scientist is

embarrassed in the public eye in a crowded

immigration office when he or she has

trouble following the direction of a fast

speaking officer A philosopher walks home lonely from a bar whereas a lawyer or businessman drives with a newly acquainted companion at the same bar to a high-class hotel All these scenarios may look incidental and insignificant But they demonstrate that academicians, due to the nature of their work and specialization, may fare poorly in daily-life knowledge and skills in comparison with people in other walks of life Social interaction is an exchange as well as a creation of value A loser in social interaction is likely to be looked down upon, taken advantage of, or denied important benefits

On more serious fronts, academicians can become likely victims of managerial neglect, social mistreatment, and human manipulation Most academicians are conscientious and stoical They take whatever comes to them, a meager salary, a small office, and other inadequate work conditions or compensations Compared to administrators who occupy spacious office with bounty clerical support and who obtain one pay raise after another upon an already big base salary, academicians are undoubtedly neglected members in colleges and research institutes The majority of scholars are simple and honest They offer their knowledge and skills in free service to mass media and social establishments

In contrast to lawyers and other agents who compile information or sometimes purloin knowledge for profit, scholars are probably most exploited professionals in the labor market Many academicians are unguarded and unpolitical They trust their colleagues and leaders They say what they know They do, oftentimes, what their socially more sophisticated colleagues or friends ask them to do It is not uncommon that trusting faculty members are used by their rather politically motivated

counterparts in voting, protesting, and other

movements on university campuses It

occurs from time to time that scholars are

made to testify in courts, mass media, or

legislatures for causes they themselves have

no control over In a sense, academicians are

more manipulated members than

street-smart people in society Finally,

academicians are usually not so vocal,

organized, and demanding as other

professionals, such as those in legal practice,

administration In an open society, people

gain when they speak up, stand out, or just

make some noises People are ignored when

they remain quiet or inactive Academic

professionals may lose a considerable

amount of what they earn by what they offer

to society Although there is no way to

measure how much academicians lose what

they deserve, there are conspicuous

indicators to compare in areas such as social

attention, political power, and economic

compensation For example, scholars on

average are less featured in the mass media,

less represented in political establishments,

and lower paid in the marketplace than

entertainers, lawyers, administrators, and

other comparable professionals

It is an irony that while science studies

nature, humans, and society, producing

knowledge about the world, mankind, and

universe, individual scholars may still likely

be among those who are most ignorant and

nạve about market forces, social currents,

and human manipulations Academic life, as

it has been characterized as squatting in the

ivory tower, is to a large degree monotonous

and painstaking Living an academic life

through a career pathway, individual

practitioners may have to make sacrifices or

change various qualities in their personal

domain

3 Constraints over Choice and Individuality

An ever-expanding social process deems individuals more and more unimportant An ever-strengthening social dominance makes

insignificant A standard socialization process emerges It imposes standard knowledge upon newborn individuals, turning them into all-alike products in the capitalist mass production line A lifestyle mainstream appears hand in hand with an ideological hegemony, sweeping individuals into a standardized way of thinking, acting, and living As they make most contributions

to modern and postmodern socialization and

academicians in the knowledge enterprise become not only the first but also the last to succumb to the conditions and means they themselves produce to overwhelm and contain individuals and individuality in contemporary society (Schrecker 1986; Jacoby 1987; De George 1997; Walters 1997; Popkewitz and Brennan 1998; Toren and Moore 1998; Torres 1998; Shaw 2000; Burge 2015; Shaw 2015; Kuhn and Vessuri 2016; Shapiro 2016; Taylor 2017; Zavattaro and Orr 2017; Gray 2018; Shaw 2019)

3.1 Socialization: A Standardizing Process

The system of knowledge provided by career-making academicians in the knowledge enterprise makes socialization a standardized process New generations attend classes from elementary school to middle school, high school, college, and further graduate school Career educators take charge of delivering systematic information to students There are foundation subjects, such as language and mathematics There are specialty courses