Abstract
Sociology has a long-standing interest in analyzing the seemingly inconsequential, mundane acts of everyday life, in order to explore the ways in which the everyday can illuminate wider social and political dynamics and relations (see, e.g., Goffman, The presentation of self in everyday life. London: Penguin, 1959; and more recently Scott, Making sense of everyday life. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009). In this chapter we continue this tradition by exploring instances of waiting in everyday academic life, the ways these instances are discursively constructed and experienced, and the emotions they generate. In doing so we will be using experimental autoethnographies (Bradley, In and of an urban time: (Re)imagining the (im)possible limits of time, knowledge and the city. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015) to explore our own experiences of waiting in our ‘academic’ lives over the course of a single week. The methods we will be using will be the photographing of images over a course of a week which will be intended to construct ‘talking points’ relating to our experiences of waiting, which we will then discuss with each other in a ‘co-interview’, loosely structured around the images. Our experience of academia is of course subjectively related both to our own social positionings—for example, in terms of gender, class, ethnicity, age—and also to our material positionings, for example, the ‘reality’ of our occupational and contract status and wider caring/family responsibilities. We will thus be reflecting on the complex ways in which such positionings shape our experiences of ‘waiting’ and the ways in particular conceptions of time and the temporal influence the ways in which we perform the ‘academic’ in our everyday working lives.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Acker, S., & Armenti, C. (2004). Sleepless in academia. Gender and Education, 16(1), 3–24.
Acker, S., & Webber, M. (2006). Women working in academe: Approach with care. In C. Skelton, B. Francis, & L. Smulyan (Eds.), The Sage handbook of gender and education. London: SAGE.
Adam, B. (1990). Time and social theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Adam, B. (1995). Timewatch: The social analysis of time. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35, 373–395.
Birth, K. (2007). Time and the biological consequences of globalization. Current Anthropology, 48(2), 215–236.
Bourdieu, P. (1987). What makes a social class? On the theoretical and practical existence of groups. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 32, 1–17.
Bourdieu, P. (2000). Pascalian meditations. Oxford: Polity Press.
Bradley, L. (2015). In and of a urban time: (Re)imagining the (im)possible limits of time, knowledge and the city. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.
Burnett, A. K., Gorsline, D., Semlak, J., & Tyma, A. (2007). Earning the badge of honor: The social construction of time and pace of life. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the NCA 93rd Annual Convention, Chicago, November 14, 2007.
Clegg, S. (2010). Time future—The dominant discourse of higher education. Time and Society, 19(3), 345–364.
David, M. E. (2008). Research quality assessment and the metrication of the social sciences. European Political Science, 7, 52–63.
Davies, B., & Bansel, B. (2005). The time of their lives? Academic workers in neoliberal time (s). Health Sociology Review, 14(1), 47–58.
Davies, K. (1994). The tensions between process time and clock time in care-work: The example of day nurseries. Time & Society, 3(3), 277–303.
Deem, R. (1998). ‘New managerialism’ and higher education: The management of performances and cultures in universities in the United Kingdom. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 8(1), 47–70.
Dossey, L. (1982). Space, time, & medicine. ReVision, 5(2), 50–62.
Elias, N. (1993). Time. An essay. Oxford: Blackwell.
Garey, A. I., Hertz, R., & Nelson, M. K. (Eds.). (2014). Open to disruption: Time and craft in the practice of slow sociology. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. London: Penguin.
Gornall, L., & Salisbury, J. (2012). Compulsive working, ‘hyperprofessionality’ and the unseen pleasures of academic work. Higher Education Quarterly, 66(2), 135–154.
Harley, S. (2001). Research selectivity and female academics in UK universities: From gentleman’s club and barrack yard to smart macho? Gender & Education, 15(4), 377–392.
Harley, S., & Lowe, P. (1998). Academics divided: The research assessment exercise and the academic labour process. Leicester: Leicester Business School.
Harris, S. (2005). Rethinking academic identities in neo-liberal times. Teaching in Higher Education, 10(4), 421–433.
Hayano, D. M. (1979). Auto-ethnography: Paradigms, problems, and prospects. Human Organizations, 38, 113–120.
Hemmingson, M. (2008). Here come the naval gazers: Definitions and defenses for auto/ethnography. Social Science Research Network. Retrieved May 5, 2017, from http://ssrn.com/abstract=1099750
Henkel, M. (1997). Shifting boundaries and the academic profession. In M. Kogan & U. Teichler (Eds.), Key challenges to the academic profession (pp. 191–204). Paris and Kassel: UNESCO Forum on Higher Education Research and Knowledge and the International Centre for Higher Education Research Kassel.
Henkel, M. (1999). The modernisation of research evaluation: The case of the UK. Higher Education, 38, 105–122.
Hey, V. (2004). Perverse pleasures—Identity work and the paradoxes of greedy institutions. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 5(3), 33–43.
Highwood, E. (2013, June 13). Workload overload. Times Higher Education. Retrieved May 5, 2017, from http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/letters/workload-overload/2004738.article
Lahad, K. (2012). Singlehood, waiting, and the sociology of time. Sociological Forum, 27(1), 163–186.
Lahad, K. (2016, April 12). Stop waiting! Hegemonic and alternative scripts of single women’s subjectivity. Time & Society, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X16639324.
Leach, E. (1971). Rethinking anthropology. London: Athlone Press.
Leathwood, C., & Hey, V. (2009). Gender/ed discourses and emotional sub-texts: Theorising emotion in UK higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 14(4), 429–440.
Leathwood, C., & Read, B. (2009). Gender and the changing face of higher education: A feminised future? London: SRHE & Open University Press.
Leathwood, C., & Read, B. (2013). Research policy and academic performativity: Compliance, contestation and complicity. Studies in Higher Education, 38(8), 1162–1174.
Levine, R. (2006). A geography of time: The temporal misadventures of a social psychologist, or how every culture keeps time just a little bit differently. Oxford: Oneworld.
Lynch, K. (2006). Neo-liberalism and marketisation: The implications for higher education. European Educational Research Journal, 5(1), 1–17.
Mahony, P., & Zmroczek, C. (Eds.). (1997). Class matters: ‘Working-class’ women’s perspectives on social class. London: Taylor and Francis.
Martell, L. (2014). The slow university: Inequality, power and alternatives. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 15(3). Retrieved May 5, 2017, from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/2223/3692
Mendick, H. (2014). Social class, gender and the pace of academic life: What kind of solution is slow? Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 15(3). Retrieved May 5, 2017, from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/2224
Mirza, H. S. (2006). Transcendence over diversity: Black women in the academy. Policy Futures in Education, 4(2), 101–113.
Morley, L. (2003). Quality and power in higher education. Maidenhead: SRHE & Open University Press.
Mountz, A., Bonds, A., Mansfield, B., Loyd, J., Hyndman, J., Walton-Roberts, M., et al. (2015). For slow scholarship: A feminist politics of resistance through collective action in the neoliberal university. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 14(4), 1235–1259.
Odih, P. (1999). Gendered time in the age of deconstruction. Time & Society, 8(1), 9–38.
Read, B., & Leathwood, C. (2017, under review). Tomorrow’s a mystery: Constructions of the future and ‘un/becoming’ amongst ‘early’ and ‘late’ career academics, under review at International Studies in Sociology of Education.
Reay, D. (2004). Cultural capitalists and academic habitus: Classed and gendered labour in UK higher education. Women’s Studies International Forum, 27(1), 31–49.
Schwartz, B. (1974). Waiting, exchange, and power: The distribution of time in social systems. American Journal of Sociology, 79(4), 841–870.
Scott, S. (2009). Making sense of everyday life. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Slaughter, S., & Leslie, L. (1997). Academic capitalism: Politics, policies and the entrepreneurial university. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Southerton, D. (2003). Squeezing time: Allocating practices, co-ordinating networks and scheduling society. Time and Society, 12(1), 12–25.
Thompson, E. P. (1967). Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism. Past and Present, 38, 56–97.
Vostal, F. (2015). Academic life in the fast lane: The experience of time and speed in British academia. Time & Society, 24(1), 71–95.
Zeruvabel, E. (1981). Hidden rhythms: Schedules and calendars in social life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank the editors for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Read, B., Bradley, L. (2018). Gender, Time, and ‘Waiting’ in Everyday Academic Life. In: Taylor, Y., Lahad, K. (eds) Feeling Academic in the Neoliberal University. Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64224-6_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64224-6_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64223-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64224-6
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)