Feminization of Resistance: Reclaiming the Affective and the Indefinite as Counter-Strategy in Academic Labor Activism

‘Feminization’ is used either quantitatively to indicate an increased female labor market participation or qualitatively to refer to labor devaluation and to types of work that supposedly require “feminine” skillsets. This article cautiously hews to the qualitative interpretations but suggests an affirmative reconstruction of the concept in the context of collective action. It argues that contemporary grassroots academic labor movements rely more explicitly on collective emotions and aim at building long-term bases of solidarity, instead of performative activism and mass mobilizations. This ‘affective turn’ in academic labor activism is argued to signal a “feminization of resistance”, characterized by a pronounced propensity for affective and relational groundwork. This argument is substantiated in view of the Network for Decent Work in Academia (NGAWiss), a nation-wide precarious researchers’ network in Germany, and the New Faculty Majority (NFM), an adjunct advocacy group in the US. The aim is twofold: first, the article contributes to a better understanding of contemporary labor activism by elucidating the precarious collective’s incremental achievements, often ignored by the outcome-oriented labor movement literature. Second, by reframing it as a mode of affective resistance, the article extends the analytical scope of the term “feminization”.

Informal Academic Entrepreneurship: Current State and Development Trends

The concept of academic capitalism appeared in the international sociological discourse in the 1990s. However, Russian academic capitalism has taken unconventional forms as it develops in the shadow informal environment of the academic labor market. It covers a wide range of academic activities, e.g. tutorship, extra classes, ghost-writing of essays, theses and graduation papers, etc. Quite often, federal universities and research centers order grant reports, state assignments papers, and manuscripts for top peer-reviewed journals from provincial academics. The Russian market of shadow academic entrepreneurship is closed, secretive, tough, and highly competitive. The COVID-19 pandemic gave it a new rise: it increased three times in 2020–2021. New forms of digital employment and shadow academic capitalism lead to new social trends, e.g. new priorities appear in the subject of scientific research as academic institutions lose their profile in favor of their shadow academic employers. New flexible informal academic structures demonstrate faceted over-connectivity, non-market mechanisms of academic competition, and new forms of digital and traditional academic exploitation. Other trends include shadow branding of universities, proletarization and feudalization of academic labor, conflict of interests in science and education, formation of demand for low-quality higher education, monopolization in the academic market, etc. As a result, the academic community in Russia is transforming into a closed estate with its digital academic elite, middle class of academic entrepreneurs, and digital academic proletarians.

Professional Doctorates: International Experience and Russian Context

The diversification of forms and types of doctoral programs is currently a global trend. Universities across the globe offer programs that differ in the modes of training, characteristics of the target audience, and possible labor markets after graduation. In Russia, doctoral education exists in a unified format, focusing primarily on the academic labor market. Recently, there have been discussions about the need to expand the range of programs and the types of academic degrees in Russia. In this article, we present the analysis of professional doctoral programs: in response to what challenges and needs they appeared, how they are implemented, in what forms they exist. In addition, we consider the Russian experience of implementing professional doctoral programs; analyze the existing opportunities and barriers for their development. Based on the analysis, we came to a conclusion about the relevance of the professional doctoral programs’ development in Russia, the expediency of simplifying the conditions for their implementation and legitimizing special requirements for the design of dissertations with an applied orientation.

Foucault and fugitive study

Michel Foucault was one of the 20th century’s great practitioners of study. Time in the archives and library, teaching, reading, thinking, and writing were all integrated aspects of his tireless labor to find lines of escape out of the confines of Western humanism and totalizing approaches to power and history. Drawing on Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France and the work of James Bernauer, this article discusses Foucault’s mode of study as a practice of freedom. It then mobilizes Foucault’s analyses of biopolitics and neoliberal reason to address new enclosures of academic labor that push against study within the university. The article argues that Foucault was not able to anticipate how the biopolitical horizon would become ever-more dependent on extraction, including from the value generated by academic labor. It then draws on ideas of fugitivity and undercommons to supplement Foucault’s study as a mode of resistance.

A University in Zion: Max Weber and Gershom Scholem on Jewish Eschatology and Academic Labor

In his “Science as Vocation,” Weber equates rational academic conduct with Jewish ethics. For Weber, the Jewish tradition, which separates moral conduct from messianism, is emblematic of scientists’ strenuous distinction of empiricism from metaphysics. The emergence of a Zionist university in Jerusalem, an institute that was positioned as a part of a Jewish nation-building project, complicated this parallel. This article examines Gershom Scholem's activist approach to Jewish studies as a fundamental revision of the Weberian model of scholarship with the significant role that this model destines to the Jewish tradition. Scholem's vision of scholarship at the Zionist university constitutes Jewish eschatology as a pillar of a scholastic national tradition. Scholem's portrayal of Jewish messianism as an insular tradition overturns Weber's portrayal of Jewish ethics as a lesson for Western academia. Reading Scholem with Weber shows that the enterprise of founding a university in Jerusalem ran counter to European liberal conceptions of Judaism. Moreover, reading them together shows Scholem's notion of academic labor to reinstitute a separatist theological ethos as a formative model for scholarship.

Gender and Globalization of Academic Labor Markets: Research and Teaching Staff at Nordic Universities

In this article, we investigate how the globalized academic labor market has changed the composition of teaching and research staff at Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish universities. We use national statistical data on the gender and country‐origin of universities’ teaching and research staff between 2012 and 2018 to study how the globalized academic labor market has influenced the proportion of women across career stages, with a special focus on STEM fields. We pay special attention to how gender and country‐origin are interrelated in universities’ academic career hierarchies. The findings show that the proportion of foreign‐born teaching and research staff rose substantially at the lower career level (grade C positions) in the 2010s. The increase was more modest among the most prestigious grade A positions, such as professorships. The findings show significant national differences in how gender and country‐origin of staff intersect in Nordic universities. The study contributes to research on the gendered patterns of global academic labor markets and social stratification in Nordic universities.

Construcción teórica de la asesoría psicopedagógica

La formación del Licenciado en Educación. Pedagogía-Psicología como asesor psicopedagógico demanda la apropiación teórica de la asesoría psicopedagógica a directivos y docentes como modo de actuación profesional, en correspondencia con el objeto de la profesión y las esferas de actuación. En la comprensión del rol de asesor psicopedagógico se manifiestan insuficiencias que limitan la configuración teórico-metodológica de este proceso profesional. En esta dirección y como respuesta a esta problemática se propone, desde un enfoque interdisciplinar, la lógica de la construcción de la asesoría psicopedagógica en pos de favorecer el dominio del modo de actuación a partir de la relación académica, laboral e investigativo. Este trabajo es resultado de investigaciones doctorales de los autores. Se emplea desde una perspectiva sistémica métodos teóricos: analítico-sintético, histórico-lógico y empíricos: observación, encuesta, entrevista y análisis documental. Los resultados expresan la dialéctica integradora del proceso de formación para la asesoría psicopedagógica y su aplicación contextualizada en situaciones educativas. PALABRAS CLAVE: construcción; asesoría psicopedagógica; modo de actuación profesional. THEORETICAL CONSTRUCTION OF PSYCHOPEDAGOGICAL ADVICE ABSTRACT The formation of the Bachelor of Education. Pedagogy-Psychology as a psychopedagogical advisor demands the theoretical appropriation of psychopedagogical advice to managers and teachers as a mode of professional action, in correspondence with the object of the profession and the spheres of action. In the understanding of the role of psychopedagogical advisor, there are inadequacies that limit the theoretical-methodological configuration of this professional process. In this direction and in response to this problem, from an interdisciplinary approach, the logic of the construction of psycho-pedagogical advice is proposed in order to favor the mastery of the mode of action based on the academic, labor and research relationship. This work is been of the authors' doctoral investigations. Theoretical methods are used from a systemic perspective: analytical-synthetic, historical-logical and empirical: observation, survey, interview and documentary analysis. The results express the integrative dialectic of the training process for psychopedagogical advice and its contextualized application in educational situations. KEYWORDS: construction; psychopedagogical advice service; way of professional behavior.

BOOK REVIEW -TEOLOGIE ȘI MISIUNE CREȘTINĂ [CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND MISSION] Bibliotheca Publishing House, Târgoviște, 2019, 536 pages, Author: His Eminence Prof. Dr. NIFON Mihăiță, Archbishop and Metropolitan

The volume Teologie și misiune creștină [Christian Theology and Mission] (2019, 536 p.), edited by Bibliotheca Publishing House/Valahia University Press (Târgoviște), is the result of the academic labor and effort of His Eminence Metropolitan Dr. Nifon, Archbishop of Târgoviște, in his quality of university professor at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology and Educational Sciences, Valahia University of Târgoviște, but also in his quality of Patriarchal Exarch for the relations of the Romanian Patriarchate with international Christian institutions and European institutions