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Academic Wellbeing Under Rampant Managerialism: From Neoliberal to Critical Resilience

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Resisting Neoliberalism in Higher Education Volume I

Part of the book series: Palgrave Critical University Studies ((PCU))

Abstract

In this chapter we explore university and academic discourses on resilience and wellbeing. University policies texts acknowledge the importance of workplace culture and management and espouse commitments to collegial processes but are mainly compliance-focused and articulate a business case for improved employee productivity and institutional performance. Academic discourses of resilience during processes of ‘transformation’ in one university capture the actualities of punitive managerialism, including removal of communication platforms necessary for collegial decision-making, protection of resilient staff from harmful voices of dissent and public displays of managerial disrespect for discarded and continuing staff. We argue for a critical resilience that resists a nihilistic appropriation and maintains commitment to emancipatory projects through collective and political support and action.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Wendy Larner and Simon Moreton, “Creating Resilient Subjects: The Coexist Project,” in Governing Practices. Neoliberalism, Governmentality and the Ethnographic Imaginary, ed. Michelle Brady and Randy K. Lippert (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 35; 37.

  2. 2.

    Lawrence H. Ganong and Marilyn Coleman, “Introduction to the Special Section: Family Resilience in Multiple Contexts,” Journal of Marriage and Family 64 (2002) 346; 346.

  3. 3.

    Katrina Brown, “Global Environmental Change I: A Social turn for Resilience?,” Progress in Human Geography 38 (2014) 107.

  4. 4.

    Dorothy Bottrell, “Responsibilised Resilience? Reworking Neoliberal Social Policy Texts,” M/C Journal of Media and Culture 16 (2013).

  5. 5.

    Mark Neocleous, “Resisting Resilience,” Radical Philosophy 178 (2013) 2; 4.

  6. 6.

    Bottrell, “Responsibilised Resilience?”; Paul Garrett, “Questioning Tales of ‘Ordinary Magic’: ‘Resilience’ and Neo-Liberal Reasoning,” British Journal of Social Work 46 (2016) 1909.

  7. 7.

    Antonia Darder, “Decolonizing Interpretive Research: A Critical Bicultural Methodology for Social Change.” The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives 14 (2015) 63; 68.

  8. 8.

    Dorothy E. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987).

  9. 9.

    Dorothy E. Smith, The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990; Dorothy E. Smith, “Incorporating Texts into Ethnographic Practice.” Institutional Ethnography as Practice, edited by Dorothy E. Smith. (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 65.

  10. 10.

    Dorothy Spiller, “Language and Academic Leadership: Exploring and Evaluating the Narratives,” Higher Education Research & Development 29 (2010) 679; 681.

  11. 11.

    Norman Garmezy and Michael Rutter, Stress, Coping, and Development in Children (New York: McGraw-Hill), 1983; Ann S. Masten, “Ordinary Magic: Resilience Processes in Development,” American Psychologist 56 (2001) 227.

  12. 12.

    Ann S. Masten, “Global Perspectives on Resilience in Children and Youth,” Child Development 85 (2014) 6.

  13. 13.

    Michael Ungar, “Resilience Across Cultures,” British Journal of Social Work 38 (2008) 218.

  14. 14.

    Michael Ungar ed., The Social Ecology of Resilience: A Handbook of Theory and Practice (New York: Springer, 2012).

  15. 15.

    Brad Evans and Julian Reid, “Dangerously Exposed: The Life and Death of The Resilient Subject,” Resilience 1 (2013) 83; Bridie McGreavy, “Resilience as Discourse,” Environmental Communication 10 (2016) 104; Jeremy Walker and Melinda Cooper, “Genealogies of Resilience: From Systems Ecology to the Political Economy of Crisis Adaptation,” Security Dialogue 42 (2011) 143.

  16. 16.

    Norman Garmezy, “Competence and Adaptation in Adult Schizophrenic Patients and Children at Risk,” in Schizophrenia: The First Ten Dean Award Lectures ed. Stanley R. Dean (New York: MSS Information, 1973), 163; Michael Rutter, “Protective Factors in Children’s Responses to Stress and Disadvantage,” in Primary Prevention in Psychopathology: Social Competence in Children ed. Martha W. Kent and Jon E. Rolf (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1979), 49; Emmy E. Werner and Ruth S. Smith, Vulnerable but Not Invincible: A Longitudinal Study of Resilient Children and Youth (New York: R. R. Donnelley and Sons, Inc., 1982).

  17. 17.

    Wade E. Pickren, “What Is Resilience and How Does It Relate to the Refugee Experience? Historical and Theoretical Perspectives,” in Refuge and Resilience, Promoting Resilience and Mental Health among Resettled Refugees and Forced Migrants ed. Laura Simich and Lisa Andermann (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 7.

  18. 18.

    Wade E. Pickren, “What Is Resilience”.

  19. 19.

    Fritz Redl, “Crisis in the Children’s Field,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 32 (1962) 759; 778, original italics.

  20. 20.

    Mark Neocleous, “Resisting Resilience”.

  21. 21.

    Bridie McGreavy, “Resilience as Discourse”, 104.

  22. 22.

    Bottrell, “Responsibilised Resilience?”; Pat O’Malley, “Resilient Subjects. Liberalism, Warfare and Liberalism,” Economy and Society 39 (2010) 488.

  23. 23.

    Antonia Darder, “Radio and the Art of Resistance: A public Pedagogy of the Airwaves,” Policy Futures in Education 9 (2011) 696; 698.

  24. 24.

    Neocleous, “Resisting Resilience”, 5.

  25. 25.

    Sue Saltmarsh and Holly Randell-Moon, “Work, Life, and Im/balance: Policies, Practices and Performativities of Academic Well-being,” Somatechnics 4 (2014) 236.

  26. 26.

    Saltmarsh and Randell-Moon, “Work, Life, and Im/balance”, 239.

  27. 27.

    Henry A. Giroux, “Authoritarianism, Class Warfare, and the Advance of Neoliberal Austerity Policies,” Knowledge Cultures 5 (2017) 13; 16.

  28. 28.

    Brad Evans and Julian Reid, “Dangerously Exposed”, 93.

  29. 29.

    Evans and Reid, 85.

  30. 30.

    Evans and Reid, 85.

  31. 31.

    McGreavy, 105.

  32. 32.

    “Australian Universities Make Health and Wellbeing a Priority,” University of Sydney, accessed September 9, 2017, http://sydney.edu.au/newsopinion/news/2016/03/15/australian-universities-make-health-and-wellbeing-a-priority.html

  33. 33.

    As background to a research project on academic resilience, the first author conducted a scan of policies and related programs, reports and practical guides covering all Victorian universities and a national (Australia) sample, 23 in total.

  34. 34.

    Dorothy E. Smith, “Schooling For Inequality,” Signs: Journal of Women In Culture and Society 25 (2000) 1147; 1147–8.

  35. 35.

    “Health and Wellbeing at Monash Policy,” Monash University, accessed March 1, 2017. https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/825578/Health-and-Wellbeing-Policy.pdf

  36. 36.

    “Australian Universities Make Health and Wellbeing a Priority,” University of Sydney.

  37. 37.

    “Australian Universities Make Health and Wellbeing a Priority,” University of Sydney.

  38. 38.

    Mark Dooris, “Holistic and Sustainable Health Improvement: The Contribution of the Settings-based Approach to Health Promotion,” Perspectives in Public Health 129 (2009) 29.

  39. 39.

    “Managers Role in the Risk Management of Workplace Stress,” Deakin University, accessed March 1, 2017. http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/health-and-wellbeing/occupational-health-and-safety/health-and-wellbeing/work-related-stress/managers-role-in-the-risk-management-of-workplace-stress

  40. 40.

    Australian industrial relations tribunal since 2009.

  41. 41.

    John Smyth, The Toxic University: Zombie Leadership, Academic Rock Stars and Neoliberal Ideology (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

  42. 42.

    Dorothy E. Smith, The Conceptual Practices of Power.

  43. 43.

    Dorothy E. Smith, “Schooling for Inequality,” 1150.

  44. 44.

    Dorothy E. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic, 4.

  45. 45.

    Zautra et al., “Resilience: A New Integrative Approach to Health and Mental Health Research,” Health Psychology Review 2 (2008) 41; 42.

  46. 46.

    Zautra et al.

  47. 47.

    Antonia Darder, “Radio and the Art of Resistance,” 61.

  48. 48.

    Bronwyn Davies and Peter Bansel, “Governmentality and Academic Work. Shaping the Hearts and Minds of Academic Workers,” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 26 (2010) 5.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Dorothy Bottrell

  2. Swinburne University, Hawthorn, VIC, Australia

    Maree Keating

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  1. Dorothy Bottrell
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  2. Maree Keating
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Correspondence to Dorothy Bottrell .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Dorothy Bottrell

  2. School of Education, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, QLD, Australia

    Catherine Manathunga

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Bottrell, D., Keating, M. (2019). Academic Wellbeing Under Rampant Managerialism: From Neoliberal to Critical Resilience. In: Bottrell, D., Manathunga, C. (eds) Resisting Neoliberalism in Higher Education Volume I. Palgrave Critical University Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95942-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95942-9_8

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