Cover not available

Article published In: Manufacturing Knowledge
Edited by Alfonso Del Percio and Cécile B. Vigouroux
[Language, Culture and Society 5:2] 2023
► pp. 167–181

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

(Im)possible change

Criticality and constraints in the infrastructures of the academic knowledge economy

 | Stockholm University
 | Dublin City University
 | Prince of Songkla University
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Stockholm University.

Published online: 22 January 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.00040.sol
Abstract
This article examines three sets of infrastructures that give shape to the academic knowledge economy, namely: institutional infrastructures (universities and conferences); gate-keeping infrastructures (journals and publishers); and validation infrastructures (competitive assessments of individuals and institutions). We analyse the tensed interplay between critical perspectives in applied linguistics and the influence of academic neoliberalism. We develop our argument in three parts: (1) Academic critique and its emancipatory epistemologies are intertwined with established systems and coexist with mechanisms that perpetuate inequalities. (2) Inequalities in knowledge production reverberate in knowledge dissemination, where the hegemonic role of English as the language of academic publishing reinforces the unequal position of different actors in their academic fields. (3) These inequalities (that originate in institutional and gate-keeping infrastructures) extend to the validation of knowledge, which is entrenched in the audit culture that pervades academia and further reinforces neoliberal competitive dynamics. We conclude by reflecting on the possibilities for change at these three levels.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Institutional infrastructures of knowledge production and academic critique
  • 3.Gate-keeping infrastructures in knowledge production and dissemination
  • 4.Validation infrastructures, precarity and morality in neoliberal academia
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • References
References (46)
References
Albuquerque, A. D. (2021). The institutional basis of anglophone western centrality. Media, Culture & Society, 43(1), 180–188. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Amano, T., Ramírez-Castañeda, V., Berdejo-Espinola, V., Borokini, I., Chowdhury, S. & Golivets, M. et al. (2023). The manifold costs of being a non-native English speaker in science. PLoS Biology, 21(7), e3002184. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bacevic, J. (2019). Knowing neoliberalism. Social Epistemology, 33(4), 380–392. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Besnier, N. (2019). From the editor: What I have learned in the last four years. American Ethnologist, 46(4), 381–386. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (2021). Forms of capital: General sociology, volume 3: Lectures at the Collège de France 1983–84. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brankovic, J. (2022). Why rankings appear natural (but aren’t). Business & Society, 61(4), 801–806. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Canagarajah, S. (2022). Language diversity in academic writing: Toward decolonizing academic publishing. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 17(2), 107–128. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2002). A geopolitics of academic writing. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Curcic, D. (2023, June 1). Number of academic papers published per year. Wordsrated. [URL]
De Costa, P. I., Park, J., & Wee, L. (2019). Linguistic entrepreneurship as affective regime: Organizations, audit culture, and second/foreign language education policy. Language Policy, 181, 387–406. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Figueiredo, E. H. D., & Martinez, J. (2021). The locus of enunciation as a way to confront epistemological racism and decolonize scholarly knowledge. Applied Linguistics, 42(2), 355–359. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Del Percio, A., Baquedano-López, P., Pérez-Milans, M. & Vigouroux, C. (Eds.) (2021). Language, epistemology, and the politics of knowledge production. Language, Culture and Society, 3(2), 1–5. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deumert, A., & Makoni, S. (Eds.) (2023). From Southern theory to decolonising sociolinguistics: Voices, questions and alternatives. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Duchêne, A., Ellece, S. E., Tupas, R., Sabaté-Dalmau, M., Unamuno, V. & Urla, J. (Eds.) (2021). Prefiguring knowledge production in the sociology of language. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 267–2681, 1–282. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Flowerdew, J. (2019). The linguistic disadvantage of scholars who write in English as an additional language: Myth or reality? Language Teaching, 53(2), 249–260. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heng Hartse, J., & Kubota, R. (2014). Pluralizing English? Variation in high-stakes academic texts and challenges of copyediting. Journal of Second Language Writing, 241, 71–82. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holborow, M. (2013). Applied linguistics in the neoliberal university: Ideological keywords and social agency. Applied Linguistics Review, 4(2), 229–257. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hyland, K. (2016). Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing, 311, 58–69. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2023). Academic publishing and the attention economy. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 641, 101253. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hynninen, N., & Kuteeva, M. (2017). “Good” and “acceptable” English in L2 research writing: Ideals and realities in history and computer science. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 301, 53–65. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kerfoot, C., & Hyltenstam, K. (Eds.) (2017). Entangled discourses. South-North orders of visibility. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kramsch, C. (2015). Applied linguistics: A theory of the practice. Applied linguistics, 36(4), 454–465. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kubota, R. (2016). The multi/plural turn, postcolonial theory, and neoliberal multiculturalism: Complicities and implications for applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 37(4), 474–494. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2020). Confronting epistemological racism, decolonizing scholarly knowledge: Race and gender in applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 41(5), 712–732. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2023). Linking research to transforming the real world: Critical language studies for the next 20 years. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 20(1), 4–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kubota, R., & Miller, E. R. (2017). Re-examining and re-envisioning criticality in language studies: Theories and praxis. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 14(2–3), 129–157. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kulczycki, E. (2023). The evaluation game: How publication metrics shape scholarly communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martín Rojo, L. (2021). Hegemonies and inequalities in academia, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, (267–268), 169–192. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matsuda, P. K., & Tardy, C. (2007). Voice in academic writing: The rhetorical construction of author identity in blind manuscript review. English for Specific Purposes, 261, 235–249. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCulloch, S. (2021). Establishing a track record in an age of precarity. In P. Habibie & S. Burgess (Eds.), scholarly publication trajectories of early-career scholars: Insider perspectives (pp. 263–279). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCulloch, S., & Leonard, J. (2023). Hidden impacts of precarity on teaching: Effects on student support and feedback on academic writing. Teaching in Higher Education, Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meghji, A. (2021). Decolonizing sociology: An introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pardo-Guerra, J. P. (2022). The quantified scholar: How research evaluations transformed the British social sciences. New York: Columbia University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pennycook, A. (2022). Critical educational linguistics. Educational Linguistics, 1(2), 219–237. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2021, 27 October). Critical applied linguistics. Oxford Bibliographies. [URL].
Phelan, S. (2022). What’s in a name? Political antagonism and critiquing ‘neoliberalism’. Journal of Political Ideologies, 27(2), 148–167. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Piller, I. (2022). What exactly does an editor do? Multilingua, 41(6), 629–637. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schmenk, B., Breidbach, S., & Küster, L. (Eds.). (2018). Sloganization in language education discourse: Conceptual thinking in the age of academic marketization. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Souto-Otero, M., & Enders, J. (2017). International students’ and employers’ use of rankings: A cross-national analysis. Studies in Higher Education, 42(4), 783–810.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spooner, M. (2020). Technologies of governance in context: Four global windows into neoliberalism and audit culture in higher education. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(7), 743–747. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Strathern, M. (Ed.). (2000). Audit cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics, and the academy. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walsh, P. W., & Lehmann, D. (2021). Academic celebrity. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 341, 21–46. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Willinsky, J. (2006). The access principle. The case for Open Access to research and scholarship. Boston, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Chtena, Natascha, Juan Pablo Alperin, Esteban Morales, Alice Fleerackers, Isabelle Dorsch, Stephen Pinfield & Marc-André Simard
2025. Towards an inclusive Open Science: examining EDI and public participation in policy documents across Europe and the Americas. Royal Society Open Science 12:4 DOI logo
Prabjandee, Denchai & Kristof Savski
2025. Mediating across the sustainable ecology: Researchers and practitioners as collaborating epistemic arbiters in developing a Global Englishes-informed coursebook. System 131 ► pp. 103639 ff. DOI logo
Bjarnadóttir, Valgerður S., Guðrún Geirsdóttir & Anna Ólafsdóttir
2024. Academics’ dilemmas in addressing challenging societal issues in today’s higher education landscape. Globalisation, Societies and Education ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Guinto, Nicanor L.
2024. Strengthening local academic publishing in the age of academic fast fashion [TILAMSIK]. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2024:289-290 ► pp. 167 ff. DOI logo
Heleta, Savo & Pedro Mzileni
2024. Bibliometric Coloniality in South Africa: Critical Review of the Indexes of Accredited Journals. Education as Change 28 DOI logo
Vigouroux, Cécile B. & Alfonso Del Percio
2024. Reading or writing is not the question: politicizing the politics of scholarly production and reception [Language, Culture and Society]. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2024:289-290 ► pp. 105 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue