Abstract
Abstract
Sociology of individual resistance presents a research perspective that examines power through resistance by acting individuals. To this end, paradigms of governmentality studies and subjectivation research are combined and enriched by perspectives of the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) and an analysis of social patterns of interpretation. The analysis of social patterns of interpretation and SKAD are used in this article to shed light on processes of academic (de)subjectivation in the German university landscape as a result of the individual resistance of scientists. In a first step, entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation are reconstructed from a New Public Management (NPM) discourse. Subsequently, 25 scientists are confronted with the forms of subjectivation of the management discourse in a guided interview at a German university, and modes of subjectivation are derived from social patterns of interpretation. Finally, the modes of subjectivation of the interviewed scientists are contrasted with forms of subjectivation of the NPM discourse, whereby ruptures and a practice of de-subjectivation become visible.
Introduction
The idea – to explore power resulting from the resistance of acting people – is simple because “where there is power, there is resistance” (Foucault, 1978: 95). With this understanding, power is always dependent on resistance otherwise, there is no point in exercising power. At the same time forms of subjectivation do not seamlessly merge into modes of subjectivation and the ruptures in processes of subjectivation are taken into account (Foucault, 1996: 27; Waldenfels, 1991: 116). In this article, these theoretical assumptions of governmentality studies and subjectivation analysis are critically reflected by analyzing the transformation process from traditional to entrepreneurial universities under New Public Management (NPM) in Germany.
The introduction of NPM in German higher education at the end of the 20th century created incentives for third-party funding allowing scientists to realize their own ideas. Therefore, neoliberal technologies of domination were increasingly shifting into university (Wissenschaftsrat, 1996: 10). Through this, the associated economic concept of freedom of neoliberal technologies of domination lead to tension with traditional scientific technologies of domination via norms (Weber, 2004[1919]: 19–27). Compared to traditional technologies of domination, the neoliberal approaches are characterized by the exercise of power without direct force since there is no disciplining by the academic community via norms (Weber, 2004[1919]: 19–27). No one is forced to take part in the competition for third-party funding. However, because of lacking resources, not taking part results in difficulties to realize own ideas. This creates a situation of scarce resources that drives competition for third-party funding and ultimately academic freedom in the German higher education landscape (Wissenschaftsrat, 2018a: 29).
With the introduction of NPM in German higher education, not only a fundamental transformation of academic norms takes place: there is also resistance from scientists to the invocations of an NPM discourse to competition for third-party funding, high impact publications and jobs. The following approaches are chosen to explore knowledge, power and resistance in the NPM discourse:
Books, articles, science policy letters of recommendation, position papers and theses published by ruling subjects of the NPM discourse in Germany in the period from 1993 to 2019. This period was chosen because the NPM discourse was constituted from 1993 to 2000, problematizations, measures, and objectives further developed from 2000 to 2010, and entrepreneurial and managerial practices became institutionalized in the German higher education landscape from 2010 to 2019 (Lenk, 2023: 105–171).The most relevant ruling subjects of the NPM discourse include political institutions such as the Wissenschaftsrat [German Council of Science and Humanities] or the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz [German Rectors’ Conference], because the transformation of the German higher education landscape under NPM is massively driven by politics and less by universities (Huber, 2012: 247). Academic forms of subjectivation are reconstructed from the NPM literature with the help of Sociological of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) (Keller, 2011: 57–59). Guided problem-centered interviews with 25 scientists from different disciplines and status groups at a German university about their everyday working lives and arrangements with invocations of the NPM discourse. The interviewees include PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, junior professors as well as full professors. In Germany, unlike in many other Western higher education systems (e.g., France, UK), there are fewer permanent positions between postdoctoral researchers and professor; many mid-career roles are based on fixed-term contracts and are externally funded. This affects access to resources, dependence on third-party funding, and the scope for individual action. In 2022, 90% of the full-time academic and artistic staff at German higher education institutions (under the age of 45, excluding professors) were employed on fixed-term contracts (Konsortium BuWiK, 2025: 121). For sampling, the highest possible heterogeneity of interviewees is advantageous because a variance of features in the data material increases the number of individual justifications of ways of thinking and acting. From these, social patterns of interpretation and academic modes of subjectivation are reconstructed (Ullrich, 2022: 70). In the case study, the characteristics of status group (6 PhD Student, 13 Postdoc, 6 Professor), discipline (5 Economics, 5 Humanities, 2 Law, 8 Natural Sciences, 5 Social Sciences), gender (10 female, 15 male), children (13 with children), year of PhD degree (2 before 2000, 5 between 2000 and 2010, 11 after 2010), contractual and actual working time (from 0 to 20 hours extra work per week), job funding (7 entirely through third-party funding, 4 partly through third-party funding, partly through university basic funding, 14 through university basic funding), employment relationship (16 with fixed-term employment contract, 9 with permanent employment contract), and the duration of the employment contract (1 1/2 to 6 years) in particular show a high variance in the data material.
With this variance of features in the data material and the help of the interviewees’ practices of adaptation and resistance in their everyday work, a practice of academic (de)subjectivation can be outlined (Ullrich, 2022: 73). Against this background, the limits of power are explored by contrasting academic forms and modes of subjectivation. To this end, subversive behaviors of undermining and escaping forms of subjectivation are reconstructed from interviews, for example, when the interviewees resist calls for third-party funding and interpret them “as a waste of resources” (Postdoc Natural Sciences 1, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). At the same time, the case study can be used to show that scientists adapt to the invocations of the NPM discourse, for example by looking at “third-party funding as freedom” (Postdoc Natural Sciences 3, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). Based on these opposing social patterns of interpretation via third-party funding, the analysis of academic subjectivation provides insights into the following questions: (1) How is the interaction between power, resistance, and subjectivation in the German university constituted? (2) How can a fruitful heuristic for the analysis of power and processes of academic (de)subjectivation be developed from individual resistance of scientists?
In order to shed light on the practice of academic (de)subjectivation, in the following section, I discuss the basic concepts of power, subjectivation and resistance in German university landscape in the context of central approaches of governmentality studies and subjectivation analyses. Subsequently, in the next section, SKAD and the Discursive Interview are enriched with approaches of grounded theory methodology and social science hermeneutics to explore power through individual resistance of scientists (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Keller, 2007; Ullrich, 2022; Soeffner, 2015[1989]). Then, the theoretical-methodological approaches of the sociology of individual resistance are tested in processes of academic (de)subjectivation. For this purpose, academic forms of subjectivation will be reconstructed from an NPM discourse. Academic modes of subjectivation will be analyzed comparatively from guided interviews with scientists. Finally, I discuss the scope of the sociology of individual resistance against the background of academic (de)subjectivation and other fields of application.
Approaches of the sociology of individual resistance: Governmentality studies and subjectivation analysis
Governmentality is understood as “the way in which one conducts the conduct of men” (Foucault, 2010[1979]: 186). This provides a theoretical foundation for the sociology of individual resistance, since the practice of governing is always associated with the practice of resistance (Foucault, 1978: 95). Through this understanding of the interplay of resistance and power, the analysis of programs of governing people is inextricably linked to a practice of resistance and practice of governing. This can be seen in terms of how people rule over themselves and others and how actors escape from an ensemble of practices of governing, forms of subjectivation and institutions in self-willed actions (Deleuze 1992: 161). In this respect, neither a “totality of government” (Geimer and Amling, 2019: 22) nor “that human individuals are able to interpret [and create] symbolic orders [freely, is assumed]” (Bosančić, 2019: 92).
The sociology of individual resistance sheds light on the tension between modes and forms of subjectivation in the German university landscape. The forms of subjectivation relate to invocations of the NPM discourse, while the modes of subjectivation are derived from scientists’ social patterns of interpretation. For example, the tension between academic modes and forms of subjectivation comes out when scientists are confronted with technologies of the self of the NPM discourse. Fundamentally, subjects with technologies of the self act on their behaviors in such a way that they “transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality” (Foucault, 1988: 18). In German higher education technologies of the self are generated by entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation of the NPM discourse: academics are provided with a set of skills, such as marketing their knowledge, raising third-party funds and leading other academic subjects by incentives of the academic (quasi-)market, to succeed in entrepreneurial universities (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2010[1997]). Against this backdrop, at the end of the 1990s, traditional academic management models, a lack of performance and competitiveness of the German higher education landscape as well as a wide-spread distribution of resources were declared a problem for governmental practice within universities by the ruling subjects of the NPM discourse (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz, 2004).
Within power relations, a distinction can be made between ruling and dominated subjects. To exercise power, ruling subjects use their exclusive position as speakers, which at the same time gives them (indirect) power over objects and other subjects. In this way, however, subjects do not rule over a discourse but through and in an order of knowledge (Link, 2007: 221). Within this process, a struggle for validity and interpretative sovereignty is taking place between the ruling subjects of the management discourse and traditional academics who have internalized academic norms (Wissenschaftsrat, 1996: 32–33, 2018a: 55–56). In order to discuss this tension between modes and forms of subjectivation in the identity formation of scientists, I will choose an approach of the subjectivation analysis (Bührmann, 2012: 153). With this approach, the social reality at universities is constructed via forms of subjectivation of the NPM discourse and traditional academic discourse. At the same time the social reality is shaped by modes of subjectivation and resistance of scientists against invocations of discourses. Within immediate struggles, the following questions are raised: Who are we supposed to be? And, who are we? Or put differently: To which normative frame of reference do scientists orient themselves in their daily actions and identity formation? In German higher education, significant poles are becoming apparent in the identity formation of scientists. On one hand, it is a scientific discourse with academic forms of subjectivation based on traditional norms. On the other hand, entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation of the NPM discourse create a tense relationship with the former. In this tense relationship, scientists swing back and forth like a pendulum and generate individual resistance because forms of subjectivation do not merge seamlessly into modes of subjectivation (Lenk, 2023: 283–285). The subjective part of social reality in German higher education is generated by the interpretations and the (resistant) arrangement of academics with the forms of subjectivation of the NPM discourse and a traditional academic discourse. In this way, I will analyze the NPM discourse based on the differences between academic modes and forms of subjectivation because “although the studies oriented toward governmentality theory often provide decidedly differentiated and sometimes very detailed information about how people are supposed to be, they do not ask whether they are, that is, want to be, what they are supposed to be” (Bührmann, 2012: 153).
This addresses the problematic anthropologies of governmentality studies and the reduction of subjectivation to power, which obscures the differences between forms and modes of subjectivation (Lessenich, 2003: 91). Moreover, this fatalistic totality of life suggests an immutability of social structure apart from domination via forms of subjectivation.
To overcome the dualism between modes and forms of subjectivation, a double perspective on subjectivation is proposed. This is because a subject-actor perspective takes into account both discourses that guide action and the creative engagement of actors who change orders of knowledge and forms of subjectivation in processes of appropriation, reinterpretation, and transformation (Lessenich, 2003: 92–95). However, this does not mean that forms of subjectivation completely determine personal ways of thinking and acting, and that actors cannot escape normative self-images. The case study has shown that scientists do not simply adapt to forms of subjectivation, but that resistance emerges, which sometimes leads to a practice of de-subjectivation and changing structures at universities. For example, interviewees influence assessment practices in teaching with a personal reinterpretation of managerial evaluations as alternative, personal evaluations, thereby undermining invocations of the NPM discourse (Professor of Humanities, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021).
Consequently, individual resistance arises in processes of subjectivation during the transition from forms to modes of subjectivation. Individual resistance becomes visible when actors are confronted with normative self-images, resulting in ambivalences of thought and action, self-doubt, as well as identity crises. For this reason, the sociology of individual resistance also distances itself from the classical understanding of resistance, where resistance is reduced to a political protest and a visible uprising against the government (Hobbes, 1904[1651]: 243–244). Especially since the resistance of individuals does not necessarily have to lead to a political protest but can result in a collective adaptive behavior of those affected, in that they approach, step by step, forms of subjectivation with their ways of thinking and acting (Lenk, 2022: 150). To this end, resistance does not necessarily results in an erosion of knowledge and power. In this context, power is understood as the relationship of forces between knowledge regimes and subjects (Foucault, 2010[1979]: 188–189). Thus, resistance is directed against those regimes of knowledge that transform people into subjects and bind them to an identity. Against this background, individual resistance opens up a perspective of scientists on their personal (de)subjectivation. Therefore, an interplay of the adaptation of academic subjects and the escape from forms of subjectivation by scientists is examined.
Escaping from forms of subjectivation is connected with a theory of self-liberation or de-subjectivation (Foucault, 1996: 27). Yet it is not about unleashing the self but emancipating oneself from forms of subjectivation. De-subjectivation thus aims at critically reflecting on normative self-images and freeing the personality from these forms of subjectivation by not allowing normative self-images to take over the personality in such a way that they determine one’s actions (Foucault, 1996: 27). Elsewhere, escaping from a normative order is discussed as a (critical-emancipative) educational process (Geimer, 2020: 261). However, it can be questioned: Does becoming different and being different lead to emancipation from forms of subjectivation or to another form of subjectivation that subjugates in a different way? At the same time, power is dependent on these counter forces since it makes no sense to exercise power without resistance. After all, why should power be exercised when everyone acts as they should? For this reason, ruling subjects of the NPM discourse use the resistance of traditional scientists to give the criticisms of the traditional higher education system and its technologies of domination a claim to validity. For example, traditional distribution mechanisms of research resources based on demand are rejected and blamed for the supposed inefficiency of the German higher education landscape. Against this background, there is a demand for a withdrawal of the state and a competitive distribution of resources (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz, 2004; Wissenschaftsrat, 1996: 10). Accordingly, ruling subjects of the NPM discourse on traditional structures generate power, which makes it possible to rule over managerial practices and produces the desired increase in efficiency and performance in German higher education (Lenk, 2023: 106–108).
Methodological basis and methods
For the exploration of individual resistance in a regime of subjectivation in the German higher education landscape a recourse is taken to the methodological approach of SKAD (Keller, 2007). The decision to adopt the SKAD was driven by the need for analysis to account for both structural configurations of power and the practices through which actors exercise and negotiate their agency. Alternative theoretical frameworks, such as organizational sociology or system theory, were considered but dismissed, as they offer less conceptual granularity for examining the processes of subjectivation. System theory, particularly in the Luhmannian tradition, conceptualizes individuals as part of the environment of social systems and thus brackets subjectivity from the analysis (Luhmann, 1984). As a result, subjects can only be addressed indirectly as communicative attributions rather than as outcomes of power-laden processes of self-formation (Lemke, 2008). Classical organizational-sociological approaches, in turn, primarily focus on formal structures, decision-making processes, and organizational rationalities, often conceptualizing actors as role-bearers or functional incumbents (March and Simon 1958). This perspective tends to under-theorize the implicit norms, self-relations, and interpretive practices through which subjectivation unfolds. By contrast, a SKAD allows to conceptualize subjectivation as a productive process in which subjects are constituted through the internalization, negotiation, and enactment of discourses, as well as through the ways in which actors resist invocations and transform discourses (Keller, 2011). This framework therefore provides the analytical tools necessary to link invocations of the NPM discourse with scientists’ modes of subjectivation. Methodologically, the SKAD differs from many other approaches to discourse analysis in that it conceptualizes discourses as social knowledge orders that are enacted in practices, institutions, and interpretive schemes. Rather than focusing primarily on linguistic structures or statements, SKAD adopts a reconstructive perspective that links discursive formations with actors’ interpretive practices and subject positions. This allows for an empirically grounded analysis of subjectivation as a process in which discursive offers are taken up, negotiated, or transformed in concrete contexts. In contrast to text-centered or purely poststructuralist approaches, SKAD thus provides a systematic methodological framework for analyzing both discourses and their enactment in social practice (Keller, 2007).
The SKAD conceptualizes discourse as a socially structured process through which knowledge, meaning, and legitimate ways of acting are produced and stabilized (Keller, 2007). It integrates Foucault’s (2009[1978]) discourse theory with the sociology of knowledge, emphasizing both power/knowledge relations and the socially embedded actors who reproduce or transform discursive orders. Methodologically, SKAD focuses on analyzing discourse production, circulation and reception to understand how subject positions, interpretive schemes and practices emerge. It employs qualitative, reconstructive methods to trace how discourses shape social realities across institutional and everyday contexts. SKAD thus offers an analytical framework well suited to examine how knowledge regimes govern conduct, structure fields of action and enable forms of subjectivation (Keller, 2011). With an SKAD, the critique of governmentality studies – reducing truth and meaning to power – is considered, as this research perspective can be used to shed light on the erosion of the power of ruling subjects of the NPM discourse through the tension between modes and forms of subjectivation in the German university landscape (Waldenfels, 1991: 116).
Since a SKAD is a research perspective and not a method, approaches of social science hermeneutics and grounded theory method are used to analyze the empirical material (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Soeffner, 2015[1989]). The combination of social science hermeneutics and grounded theory method is appropriate for the two-stage coding procedure chosen here, consisting of an initial open coding and a subsequent theory-guided coding (Glaser and Holton 2004; Soeffner, 2015[1989]: 67). For the reconstruction of modes of subjectivation, an analysis of social patterns of interpretation is conducted (Ullrich, 2022). The material for reconstructing patterns of interpretation and modes of subjectivation is generated from interviews. Interview participants are selected using theoretical and selective sampling (Dimbath et al., 2018; Schatzman and Strauss, 1973: 38–40). Selective sampling of interviewees allows for methodologically controlled field access and linkage with sampling of discourse analysis. In the case study of academic (de)subjectivation, it was fruitful to select the characteristics of status group, discipline, children, year of PhD degree, contractual and actual working time, job funding, employment relationship, and the duration of the employment contract, because these characteristics influenced patterns of interpretation and modes of subjectivation of the interviewees. Within these selected characteristics, further interviewees were chosen for the case study with a minimum and maximum contrast (Glaser and Strauss, 1967: 55). The coding process of the interview material is similar to that of the analysis of the NPM discourse. Overall, three phases are distinguished in the analysis of individual resistance in a regime of subjectivation in the German higher education landscape, which can be derived from the previously outlined approaches of governmentality studies and subjectivation analysis. In the first step, forms of governing and subjectivation are reconstructed with the help of SKAD.
Phase 1 – Reconstruction of forms of governing and subjectivation
For the reconstruction of forms of governing and subjectivation in discourses, a complete SKAD with all dimensions is not necessary (Lenk, 2023: 76–77). Instead, selective dimensions used for the analysis of the phenomenal structure of orders of knowledge can be adapted along the present research questions (Keller, 2011: 57–59). In this respect, the dimensions of other- and self-positioning of ruling subjects in discourses as well as their (political) rationality are of particular interest. These dimensions belong to the phenomenal structure of orders of knowledge and can therefore be explored with the following questions: (1) How is a discourse positioned towards other knowledge orders by ruling subjects? (2) Which forms of subjectivation does a discourse disseminate for potential addressees? (3) Which practical instructions for subjectivation does an order of knowledge provide for subjects? Subsequently, the following questions arise for the dimension of other-positioning: (4) How is a discourse positioned by ruling subjects towards those actors who are addressed but evade forms of subjectivation? (5) Finally, is it important to clarify which political rationality (re-)produces an order of knowledge? The forms of political rationality are the basis of governmental practice because it is through this governmental knowledge that a frame of reference and the legitimation for exercising power is produced (Foucault, 2009[1978]: 323).
Programmatic literature – as in the case of guidebooks or political statements and recommendations – is suitable as empirical material for the reconstruction of forms of governing and subjectivation from discourses, because here forms of governing and subjectivation is produced. As an access to forms of subjectivation, textual data of ruling subjects of the NPM discourse are considered that were generated in the period from 1993 to 2019 on the entrepreneurial and managerial transformation processes in the German higher education landscape (Keller, 2007). In order to narrow down the corpus of the discourse analysis in a place- and time-bound manner, the most frequently cited texts are used.
In the first step of data analysis, the material is openly coded according to content and thematic units using MAXQDA1 in order to reconstruct recurring political rationalities and forms of subjectivation from discourses (Strübing, 2019: 535–536). For this purpose, grounded theory method is applied, which is why it is important to ignore (prior) knowledge about certain forms of governing and subjectivation when first coding the material. This is because this approach defuses traditional analytical grids of governmentality studies and ensures an open epistemological interest. Subsequently, hypotheses on self- and other-positioning as well as on political rationality of discourses are formulated. These are taken up in a detailed analysis and used to reconstruct forms of governing and subjectivation through a targeted coding of relevant sequences (Soeffner, 2015[1989]: 67). At this point, approaches of grounded theory methodology are combined with those of a social science hermeneutics because different hypotheses are generated from sequences (Glaser and Holton, 2004; Soeffner, 2015[1989]: 67). Thus, a sentence or section of text is interpreted with different readings. My familiarity with the German higher education system helped with interpretation but risks blind spots. For example, familiarity with performance indicators in the German higher education system initially facilitated the interpretation of interview passages referring to metrics such as third-party funding or publication output. At the same time, this familiarity risked obscuring forms of irony, distancing, or strategic compliance. This was addressed through reflexive memo writing and by systematically testing initial interpretations against counterevidence in the data. For this purpose, the preliminary assumptions are recursively corrected to the material, discarded, and refined. Finally, forms of governing and subjectivation are reconstructed. In addition to this reality of discourses, social patterns of interpretation and modes of subjectivation are the focus of the analysis. The combination of social science hermeneutics and grounded theory method is particularly useful for the coding method chosen here, in which the material is first openly coded and then hypotheses are formed with the help of text memos (Glaser and Holton, 2004).
Phase 2 – Reconstruction of social patterns of interpretation and modes of subjectivation
For the reconstruction of social patterns of interpretation and modes of subjectivation, an analysis of social patterns of interpretation is conducted (Ullrich, 2022). Social patterns of interpretation are understood as social, reliable stocks of knowledge through which the ability to act as well as identities are generated (Brinkmann, 2021). Therefore, social patterns of interpretation have to prove themselves in actions and are used by actors to justify their self-understanding (Ullrich, 2022: 4-6). In such a manner, collective knowledge stocks influence how subjects experience, perceive, and interpret themselves and others. For this reason, social patterns of interpretation can also be used to reconstruct modes of subjectivation and individual resistance because collective knowledge stocks reveal ruptures in forms of governing and subjectivation. The social patterns of interpretation are obtained from the personal justifications of actors for their ways of thinking and acting (Ullrich, 2022: 65). Therefore, guided interviews are a suitable way to operationalize social patterns of interpretation. For this purpose, the guide must be designed in such a way that the interview participants are encouraged to talk about their ways of thinking and acting and to justify themselves. The elicitation of personal justifications succeeds with narrative prompts, suggestive questions, summaries, informed insinuations as well as polarizations, confrontational questions and hypothetical situations (Ullrich, 2022: 93). In particular, hypothetical, confrontational, and polarizing questions proved fruitful in a case study at a German university for reconstructing the personal justifications of academic patterns of interpretation with regard to problems of reference such as publications, third-party funding and academic identity. A problem of reference arises from the ambiguity of social reality, whereby actors are called upon to adopt, modify or transform social patterns of interpretation in order to remain capable of acting in an ambiguous, problematic situation. (Ullrich, 2022: 8-9).
With the help of confrontational questions, interviewees are pointed to inconsistencies and contradictions in their statements (internal confrontation) and confronted with alternative perspectives (external confrontation) (Ullrich, 2022: 88; Witzel, 2000). For example, study participants were asked: Are you a good scientist? This question makes it possible to identify which values and norms the interviewees have appropriated and to assess how these correspond to or contradict those of the NPM discourse. On the other hand, polarizing questions asked the interviewees to comment on contrary views of an issue. In this context, the interviewees commented on their personal (in-)dependence on third-party funding. In the case of dependence on third-party funding, the interviewees were confronted with a hypothetical situation: Imagine you were no longer dependent on third-party funding, would you then conduct research differently than you do now? In the case of independence from third-party funding, however, interviewees were asked: Imagine you were dependent on third-party funding, would you do research differently than you do now? Finally, further hypothetical questions asked the study participants to put themselves in a different personal situation and encouraged them to make decisions in this situation and to justify them (Ullrich, 2022: 90–91): Imagine that you can influence the developments in the German higher education landscape. Would you change anything about the current state of higher education institutions? As with the SKAD, grounded theory method and social science hermeneutics approaches were also combined to analyze the interview transcripts. Aligning interviews with discourse analysis raises a classic dilemma: how is it possible to situate individual accounts within discursive formations without overextending claims? I addressed this by keeping levels of subjectivation (forms vs. modes of subjectivation) distinct and restricting causal language to well-supported contrasts. I used double coding with analytic memos and negative case analysis to control confirmation bias. For example, statements on third-party funding were first analyzed as invocations of NPM-related forms of subjectivation. By analytically separating these from interviewees’ modes of subjectivation – ranging from adaptation to distancing and resistance – and by incorporating negative cases, individual accounts could be situated within discursive formations without overextending causal claims.
The interpretation of the interview material is characterized by a double coding procedure in three steps. In the first step, coding is done as openly as possible according to content and thematic units of meaning. When coding the interview sequences, each statement should be assigned at least one code if possible (Ullrich, 2022: 123–124). Thus, the open coding of the interview passages is used to prepare a final analysis of individual resistance between forms and modes of subjectivation. At the same time, coding according to grounded theory method serves to generate empirically grounded theories of (de)subjectivation (Ullrich, 2022: 125). In the second step, all interview passages coded in the same way are enriched with theory-based codes and compared. In this context, double coding resorts to the “cut and paste” principle, in which text passages are detached from the original interview context for interpretation (Ullrich, 2022: 119). This marks the beginning of the third step – the contrasting interpretation of individual perceptions and justification of problems of reference. On the one hand, the problems of reference arise from the topics and questions of the interview guide (Ullrich, 2022: 133). On the other hand, narrative questions open up the possibility for the interviewees to address other areas of their life and work world as well as to provide them with an individual interpretation. At the center of the comparison is – besides personal reasons – individual resistance, which arises through the confrontation of actors with forms of subjectivation. In this respect, the sociology of individual resistance makes use of the “waste products” of an analysis of social patterns of interpretation because personal reinterpretations, modifications and transformations of collective knowledge stocks are taken into account. Finally, individual resistance and (de)subjectivation are analyzed comparatively with this approach.
Phase 3: Contrasting forms and modes of subjectivation
For this purpose, the forms of governing and subjectivation of discourses is compared with the social patterns of interpretation and modes of subjectivation of the interviewees. No further coding procedure is necessary for this comparative analysis. Only the results of the two previous research phases are compared on the basis of jointly processed problems of reference and forms and modes of subjectivation in order to reconstruct individual resistance and processes of (de)subjectivation. Thus, the aim is not to distinguish different orders of knowledge as in a classical comparative discourse analysis, but to bring into focus ruptures between the NPM discourse and scientists in the form of individual resistance and limits of power through de-subjectivation (Traue et al., 2014: 574–576). Here, a comparison of prominent forms of subjectivation such as the “entrepreneurial self” (Bröckling, 2015) and the “weariness of the self” (Ehrenberg, 2016[1998]) with the actual ways of thinking and acting of actors can contribute to new insights. Anthropologies of governmentality studies can be tested for their claim to validity in social reality. This approach reduces the amount of work involved in reconstructing forms of governing and subjectivation in the first phase of research. Finally, both approaches can be combined by using already studied forms of governing and subjectivation as a frame of reference for the reconstruction of an social reality of discourses and acting people.
To discuss the conditions under which academic subjectivation takes place in the German higher education landscape, dimensions of subjectivation are derived from the empirical material. These dimensions are systematically related to one another in a cross-referencing presentation of dimensions of subjectivation. This approach enables the construction of ideal types in the Weberian sense (Weber, 1988[1922]: 191). Ideal types constitute analytically accentuated constructs that distill and juxtapose contrasting forms and modes of subjectivation, while not corresponding directly to any empirically observable actors (Weber, 1988[1922]: 191). In order to test the theoretical and methodological assumptions, the three phases of the analysis of individual resistance are enriched with empirical findings from a SKAD of NPM and a case study at a German university.
Field of application: Academic (de)subjectivation in the German higher education landscape
The sociology of individual resistance was empirically tested for the first time in entrepreneurial and managerial transformation processes in the German higher education landscape. For this purpose, in a first step, the NPM discourse in the period from 1993 to 2019 in the German higher education system was examined with the help of a SKAD for its forms of governing and subjectivation. The SKAD was structured by the following questions on the self-positioning of the NPM discourse: (1) How is the management discourse positioned by ruling subjects in the German higher education landscape and outside the field of higher education? (2) What practical instructions for subjectivation does the management discourse provide for academic subjects? For the other-positioning of the NPM discourse, the questions needed to be clarified: (3) How is the NPM discourse positioned by ruling subjects towards the “others” who are addressed by a managerial knowledge order but resist invocations and forms of subjectivation? Finally, (4) do ruling subjects of the management discourse (re-)produce a political rationality?
Phase 1: Reconstruction of forms of governing and subjectivation of the NPM discourse
As an example, the first research phase of the SKAD of NPM is explained using a section of text from a statement of the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz “On the Current Higher Education Policy Discussion”. In the statement, the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (2004) wrote: “An important prerequisite for competition adequate to science is a clear withdrawal of the state from detailed control in favor of the decision-making scope of management bodies of the universities. Obstacles to competition that urgently need to be removed include the requirements of service and collective bargaining law, the lack of budgetary sovereignty, the authority to build and the authority to serve all personnel, capacity law, and the lack of a right of selection by the universities for their students.”
In this quote, the topics of competition, autonomy, governance, relationship between state and universities, law, funding and personnel can be assigned as open codes. It is striking that right at the beginning of the statement the autonomy of universities is linked to “decision-making scope of management bodies of the universities” (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz 2004). In this context, detailed state control, as in service and collective bargaining law or over finances, is constructed as a problem. The “problematic” relationship between the state and university management results in the demand for the “withdrawal of the state” in order to create “conditions for competition adequate to science” and to remove “obstacles to competition” (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz 2004). It remains open as to what is understood by “competition adequate to science” and between which actors or organizations “obstacles to competition” (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz 2004) exist. Furthermore, it is questionable for whom or what universities and their members are competing? In this context, the following hypotheses will be formulated in the second step of the double coding procedure:
Hypothesis 1: Autonomy of higher education leadership and management towards the state eliminates competitive disadvantages between higher education institutions and scientists. Hypothesis 2: The autonomy of university management creates the conditions for competition between universities and other actors in science. Hypothesis 3: A “competition adequate to science” (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz 2004) is a competition for knowledge that leads to an increase in scientific knowledge. Hypothesis 4: In a “competition adequate to science” (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz 2004), scientists, universities and non-university research institutions compete for resources, jobs and status advancement. Hypothesis 5: Equal opportunities in competition lead to a performance-based distribution of resources.
In order to test the hypotheses with different readings, they are compared in the next step with other fragments from different actors around NPM. In the case of recurring interpretations in further documents, individual hypotheses can be verified and social patterns of interpretation can be formed. Hypotheses 1 and 2 are supported by a critique of state intervention in the detailed control of higher education institutions by the Wissenschaftsrat (2018a), since “state planning, control and bureaucracy, perceived as sprawling and inefficient […] was seen as a central obstacle to economic and social development. The guiding principle was based on the fundamental assumption that the public sector's monopoly on services led to inefficiencies and a waste of resources due to a lack of competitive incentives to perform” (Wissenschaftsrat 2018a: 29).
Accordingly, “competition for third-party funding [is] considered the most important way for performance-based allocation of research resources” (Wissenschaftsrat, 1996: 10).
If, on the other hand, the hypotheses deviate (entirely) from the interpretations in other documents on the same topics, the assumptions are modified or rejected (Kurt and Herbrik, 2019: 557). For example, also on the topic of competition, third-party funding, and autonomy, the Wissenschaftsrat (2018a: 91) stated that “the strong focus on competitions as well as the high share of third-party funding […] have unintended effects on the autonomy of universities. Competitive funding components should therefore, in the view of the Council of Science and Humanities, be used in a well-considered and moderate manner, especially since the orientation towards competitive bidding can also hinder the strategic development of universities.”
In this respect, hypothesis 2 can be refined because the autonomy of university leadership and management is endangered by state-orchestrated competition between universities and other actors in science when a conflict of interest arises between the strategic orientation of universities and funding organizations. To further document the exemplary first step of analysis, memos are created for each analyzed text sequence. Analytical comments are used to link different codes and various text passages. Thus, memos organize and condense the corpus of the discourse analysis (Diaz-Bone and Schneider, 2004: 487; Glaser and Holton, 2004).
In the next step of the data analysis, the analytically annotated sections of text are linked to the theory-based codes of self- and other-positioning as well as the political rationality of the NPM discourse. Subsequently, the codes are enriched and compared with empirical findings from previously conducted discourse and subjectivation analysis. This approach helps to situate the material in the current state of research and to fill possible gaps. Due to the ideological proximity of the NPM discourse to a neoliberal discourse, the comparison with a neoliberal governmentality and the “entrepreneurial self” (Bröckling, 2015) is obvious (Foucault, 2010[1979]: 91). Furthermore, I also consider forms of subjectivation such as academic entrepreneurs that have emerged through a transfer of the “entrepreneurial self” to academia (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2010[1997]). Surprisingly, the management discourse in the German higher education landscape is not at all as neoliberal as Briken (2014: 80) and Münch (2014: 38-66) suggest. Fundamentally, I agree with the definition of neoliberalism as a governmental rationality through which society and subjects are shaped and regulated by market, competition, and efficiency logics. However, the discourse analysis shows that NPM is more strongly state-regulated than depicted by Briken (2014) and Münch (2014), and therefore less market-radical.
A central difference arises from the meaning of competition because a social competitive order is not a primary goal for ruling subjects of the management discourse. It is merely used as a strategic means to enforce domination (Wissenschaftsrat, 2018a: 39). Another arena of conflict is formed by the translating function of ruling subjects of the NPM discourse (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz, 2013: 8–9; Wissenschaftsrat, 2018a: 65–67). Through the mediator role between science, policy and society, a pastoral form of governing inscribes itself into managerial practices (Foucault, 2009[1978]: 345; Wissenschaftsrat, 2018a: 65). In the context of science policy, a pastoral form of governing can be understood as a caring form of governance, which is oriented towards the well-being of all higher education institutions. The pastoral form of governing becomes visible in the management of performance contracts between politics and higher education institutions because performance contracts are “intended to guarantee reliability and continuity for the design of study programs” (Wissenschaftsrat, 2018b: 5). At this point, setting graduate numbers to secure teaching staff at schools is reminiscent of planned economy practices with the benevolent intention of ensuring the “salvation of the flock” (Foucault, 2009[1978]: 126) (see also Land Berlin, 2014: 7). At the same time, the political rationality of the NPM discourse manifests the rationality of a European neoliberalism because competitive incentives are meant to channel the interests of scientists (Wissenschaftsrat, 2010: 83). In this respect, the political rationality of ruling subjects of the management discourse is also influenced by a neoliberal discourse since selection is sought through market-conforming behavior (Hayek, 2011[1960]: 475; Wissenschaftsrat, 2011: 7–8). Here, personal interests are linked to adequate incentive systems by promoting individual concerns of academic subjects (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz, 2004).
In summary, the rationality of ruling subjects of the NPM discourse in the German higher education landscape does not fully correspond to either a neoliberal or a pastoral form of governing. Rather, the governance practice of ruling subjects of the management discourse leads to an inter-governmentality. Inter-governmentality describes how ruling subjects of the NPM discourse connect a neoliberal and a pastoral form of governing at the same time and mediates between them. In other words, the NPM discourse does not rely on only one governmental rationality (e.g., market, state, science) but interweaves different rationalities with one another.
However, unlike for science policy actors, the NPM discourse holds stronger neoliberal scripts of action and offers of identity for scientists. Thus, scientists are called upon by the management discourse as academic science managers and entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation were reconstructed from the self- and other-positioning of the management discourse.
The academic entrepreneur invokes scientists to act in a flexible, self-responsible, risk-conscious, and above all entrepreneurial way (Peter, 2017: 111). In this form of academic subjectivation, the instructions for action of the “entrepreneurial self” (Bröckling, 2015) inscribe themselves in invocations of the management discourse. Accordingly, academic subjects are supposed to think and act in an entrepreneurial manner by marketing their knowledge, raising third-party funds, and passing on these entrepreneurial skills to students via university teaching (Freie Universität Berlin, 2019a, 2019c). In this context, academics are asked to behave like project employees in companies because they are expected to acquire (research) projects and to react flexibly to demands of the (quasi-)market and (academic) precariousness (Peter, 2017). Considering this entrepreneurial form of subjectivation, it can be assumed that academics should be good at dealing with uncertainty and risk in order to constantly produce new knowledge and lead their enterprise to success (Peter, 2017: 111). The maxim of the academic entrepreneurial culture is: “Ideas from the research sector for the market” (Freie Universität Berlin, 2018b). The forms of subjectivation of the management discourse are complemented by academic managers.
Academic managers are primarily supposed to develop managerial skills for leading other academic subjects. With this script for action and offer of identity, primarily professors and other academic top performers such as research group leaders are called upon (Wissenschaftsrat, 2006: 82). Accordingly, ruling academic subjects should acquire competencies of leadership, which include delegation, communication, conflict resolution as well as time management and staff meetings (Freie Universität Berlin, 2018a: 88). These principles of leadership are associated with the call to open up options for action within knowledge production. They are addressed to controlled academic subjects, such as scientific staff members. Their purpose is to generate goal conformity and promote autonomous action (Freie Universität Berlin, 2019b). The goal of leadership at universities is to dominate academic subjects through incentives for personal responsibility and the unconstrained compulsion of a win-win situation.
At times, this managerial style of leadership generates parallels to the private sector, as academic science managers are supposed to coach their staff in the same way as leaders in companies, exploit all the abilities of their staff, and create the prospect of an individual gain in freedom by encouraging personal initiative (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007: 112–117; Freie Universität Berlin, 2019b). With these skills, academic managers advance to become the nodes of academic entrepreneurs, as they generate entrepreneurial personalities via incentive structures and orchestrate entrepreneurship in the German higher education landscape (Wissenschaftsrat, 2014: 53). In this way, academic managers transform traditional academic forms of subjectivation (Münch, 2014). With the invocations of the NPM discourse, the value-rational scientist is transformed into a strategically acting academic subject who is busy mobilizing other subjects and organizing third-party funded projects. It is obvious that academic subjects with the experience of a traditional self-concept use their identity as a resource of individual resistance (Lust et al., 2018).
In order to critically reflect on entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation in the German higher education landscape and to explore the power of the management discourse from their individual resistance, academic patterns of interpretation and modes of subjectivation are reconstructed in the following from 25 guided interviews with academics of different status groups and disciplines at a German university.
Phase 2: Reconstruction of academic patterns of interpretation and modes of subjectivation
First, the interviewees were encouraged to justify their ways of thinking and acting in order to reconstruct collective knowledge of academics across status groups and disciplines. In order to generate suitable data, the study participants were asked the question: What is a good scientist for you? The answers varied greatly in some cases – one Professor of Law (Freie Universität Berlin, 2021) answered: “For me, what makes a good scientist is that he or she brings the results of research […] into teaching.” Another interviewee replied: “You have to be able to network, you have to be able to sell yourself well, you have to be able to present yourself, and you can’t longer be a loner. Fifty years ago, professors used to be able to be total nerds and do whatever they wanted in their back room, wonderful. So you have to sell yourself well, especially when it comes to climate change and things like that, it's very political in some ways, you have to be careful how you present things. And yes, these all-round skills, where you are a kind of manager. You have to manage your project, you have to manage third-party funds, you have to manage time, and you have to manage your personal life” (PhD Student Natural Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021).
Using the open coding procedure according to grounded theory method, the statements of the two interviewees were coded as follows: Unity of teaching and research, economization of science, traditional scientists, research trends, political desirability, academic managers, project work, and entrepreneurial/managerial skills (Glaser and Strauss, 2004).
The next step was to enrich the codes with further statements from other interviewees, to condense the meaning of statements and to reconstruct collective knowledge from recurring ways of thinking and acting. This approach generates analytical depth and reduces the distortion effects caused by individual statements when reconstructing academic patterns of interpretation and modes of subjectivation. Another interviewee also talked about academic managers, project work and traditional scientists. Her statement on these topics supports the interpretation of academic subjects as science managers: “professors [are] basically third-party funding managers […]. [If] we then have employees, we don't have the time to really work on the projects, which also results in a strange asymmetry. Yes, one cannot work on three or four projects, actually not even two” (Professor of Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021).
At the same time, it is important to take counteracting statements into account in order to obtain social patterns of interpretation that are as clear-cut as possible. In this regard, one interviewee was critical of the issue of political desirability in third-party funding, clarifying that “one should not unreflectively take any money and simply do research for it that one cannot personally support” (Postdoc Humanities 1, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). Accordingly, “a good scientist […] has to ask self-critical questions […] in order to be able to research certain things in principle. What attracts me to science is that there has to be a gain in knowledge” (Postdoc Natural Sciences 1, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021).
The statements of the interviewees reflect both the invocations of entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation and traditional academic forms of subjectivation. In particular, openness to results, critical self-reflection, and the unity of teaching and research correspond to a traditional self-image of academic subjects in the German higher education landscape (Weber, 2004[1919]: 19–27). Nonetheless, the ambiguity of teaching and research, as well as personal self-concept, creates problems of reference for interviewees and generates individual resistance to the knowledge and identity politics of the management discourse. This is because teaching activities are marginalized by managerial performance evaluation and therefore have a low status for academic entrepreneurs and managers. This becomes visible in appointment procedures because in this context “it is not about who does well in teaching. It is also not necessarily about who does good research. It is about […] who has the highest […] monetary value. So who can attract the most third-party funding” (Postdoc Natural Sciences 2, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). Also in other disciplines such as the humanities, “research […] is the measure of all things. Yes, so for the students, I would say […], those are rather the losers in this equation” (Postdoc Humanities 3, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). On the other hand, the interviewee stated that v “teaching […] is a lot of fun, at least for me. I have a lot of fun with teaching, but if you are almost only occupied with teaching, then it can be very overwhelming, then you […] hardly have time for other things. And doing research on Saturday afternoon is stupid” (Postdoc Humanities 3, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021).
The dilemma of being personally responsible for structural risks such as a high teaching load and invisible teaching activities is reflected in the social patterns of interpretation – “teaching as a burden.” For “what is basically expected of a German professor […] is relatively much teaching. In this respect, I would be lying now if I did not also perceive this as a burden at times” (Professor of Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). Other interviewees described similar ambivalences of action when reflecting on the problem of teaching and their personal identity. Ambivalences of action and ambiguity in academic work at universities are indicators of erosions between a social of the management discourse and a subjective reality of the interviewees. Hereby, individual resistance becomes empirically tangible because entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation do not seamlessly merge into the modes of subjectivation of the interviewees. These ruptures are articulated by the interviewees through an ambivalent way of thinking and acting about themselves and others. This is why it is not surprising that interviewees view teaching as both a burden and a source of motivation as they swing back and forth between invocations of traditional and entrepreneurial/managerial forms of subjectivation.
The interviewees have a similarly ambivalent relationship to third-party funding. Here, too, individual resistance to the knowledge and identity politics of the NPM discourse can be observed by means of the appropriation of traditional academic forms of subjectivation. For example, a Professor of Law (Freie Universität Berlin, 2021) complained that “if someone acquires third-party funding and has a lot of third-party funding, then it is someone who turns science into a whore. Science should be independent […].” Furthermore, the interviewee stated, “if I want to do everything I want to do, then I have to acquire third-party funding” (Professor of Law, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). Another interviewee explained: “Without third-party funding, nothing works at all […] because my position is university financed and you cannot make trips or finance laboratory analyses with them. So this position is just good for teaching and for administration, but not to do really interesting research, not conceivable without third-party funding” (Postdoc Natural Sciences 3, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021).
From these statements on the acquisition of third-party funding, the social pattern of interpretation “third-party funding as freedom” can be reconstructed. At the same time, acquiring and managing third-party funding projects are interpreted by the interviewees as a waste of personal resources, because “you [are] a manager and […] less of a researcher” (Postdoc Natural Sciences 1, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). Consequently, “[obtaining third-party funding] already takes up more and more time […] and on top of that, one expects that one collects less data oneself and does more management of people who collect data. And that is annoying” (Junior Professor of Economics, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). Against this backdrop, the social pattern of interpretation “third-party funding as a waste of resources” can be identified.
(Non-)discursive practices result from the tension between the interviewees’ modes of subjectivation and the management discourse's forms of subjectivation (Keller, 2011: 60). In classical discourse research, the term “discursive” usually refers to ways of thinking, while “non-discursive” refers to ways of acting. In this article, the terms are defined through the power relations of actors to discourses. In this context, non-discursive practices are understood as ways of thinking and acting that do not correspond to the invocations of a discourse and enable actors to escape forms of subjectivation (Bührmann and Schneider, 2012: 47). In contrast, discursive practices are „typical realized communication patterns, provided they are embedded in a discourse context […], whose execution as concrete action […] requires the interpretative competence of actors and is actively shaped by them“ (Keller, 2011: 228).
Discursive practices are seen as the practical execution of invocations of the NPM discourse, whereby scientists appropriate entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation. Accordingly, the discursive practice of writing third-party funding proposals is linked to an entrepreneurial mode of subjectivation “because one sells oneself through […] the projects” (Postdoc Humanities 1, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). With the help of discursive practices, the interviewees adapt to the knowledge and identity politics of the management discourse. Nevertheless, individual resistance to the forms of subjectivation of the NPM discourse emerges through traditional academic forms of subjectivation and personal interests of the interviewees. This individual form of resistance becomes visible not through an across-the-board political protest in the German higher education system but through non-discursive practices (Keller, 2011: 60).
Non-discursive practices are used to subvert entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation of the NPM discourse, sometimes allowing interviewees to escape the knowledge and identity politics of the management discourse. Non-discursive practices include alternative teaching evaluations, in which interviewees seek personal feedback from students and boycott evaluation procedures of the university management. In this regard, one interviewed Professor of Humanities (Freie Universität Berlin, 2021) participates in “teaching evaluations […] only sporadically […]. So I often do it verbally in smaller groups and […] you do it as long as you apply, then when you have a permanent position, at some point it is no longer so important.” Non-discursive practices can also be observed in the field of research, when it is expected of scientists by the management discourse to publish in English-language journals with a high impact factor (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 2013: 73–74). In this context, one interviewee noted that “depending on the status passage, the pressure [is] massive, because basically the whole career depends on this publishing. […] And you have to refuse this to a certain extent […], so I don't have to write the umpteenth English-language essay […]. I am now writing, that is completely dysfunctional, a book, not even in a scientific publishing house” (Professor of Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021).
Another interviewee completely evades publication constraints conveyed via managerial invocations because that “reduces the freedom […] [if] you have to publish at least two peer reviewed articles per year. But one can also take the liberty of simply not doing that. In this respect, I see a certain freedom in the fact that you can also escape this framework if you simply don't do that” (Postdoc Natural Sciences 3, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021).
However, the ability of evading the pressure to publish is available only to a small number of established scientists – namely those who hold a permanent employment contract and enjoy a relatively high degree of independence from third-party funding. Against this background, non-discursive practices amalgamate in subversive behaviors of undermining and escaping forms of subjectivation. Sometimes these subversive behaviors of the interviewees lead to a practice of de-subjectivation. The practice of de-subjectivation in the German higher education landscape is reconstructed by contrasting entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation and academic modes of subjectivation.
Phase 3: Contrasting entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation and academic modes of subjectivation
The last phase of analysis is exemplified by the problem of reference of third-party funding. This is because acquired third-party funding is among the most visible metrics in the NPM discourse, which makes it a frame of reference for entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation (Keller, 2011: 56; Wissenschaftsrat, 2010: 25–26). In this context, some study participants evaluate their personal and other academic subjects’ achievements via acquired third-party funding from prestigious funders such as the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) [German Research Foundation] (2021: 21) because third-party funding is linked to scientific quality criteria. At the same time, discursive practices of third-party funding raise individual resistance, as interviewees are critical of the influence of third-party funders and political trending topics, like climate change, artificial intelligence or geopolitical competition on the process of scientific discovery. For this reason, “a lot of how third-party funding is awarded […] has to do with politics […] [and] with which reviewer you end up with. There is nothing that is objectively evaluated. If you are unlucky, you end up with a reviewer who just doesn't like you or who knows that you are researching something that's a bit contrary to what he or she wants to represent, he or she definitely won't give you a positive review” (PhD Student Natural Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021).
This position toward third-party funders and political actors is articulated by critical interviewees. Although moderately dependent on third-party funding, those critical interviewees have adopted traditional academic values such as openness to results and individual scientific interests. This critical position toward third-party funders and political actors is also articulated by established scientists, such as professors, who hold permanent employment contracts and are therefore relatively independent of third-party funding. An interviewed Professor of Law (Freie Universität Berlin, 2021) also remarked regarding third-party funding that “science should be independent and if science depends on money, then it can lean in any direction.” The individual resistance between the interviewees’ modes of subjectivation and the forms of subjectivation of the management discourse results from appropriated traditional academic values such as openness to results and individual interests. As a consequence, individual resistance leads to a practice of de-subjectivation insofar as the particular interests of third-party funders are wholly incompatible with interviewees’ ways of thinking and acting.
This process of de-subjectivation begins with the questioning of entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation because discursive practices of acquiring third-party funding are considered a “loss, [since] professors are basically third-party funding managers” (Professor of Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). As a result of critical reflection, some interviewees undermine the forms of subjectivation of the NPM discourse with the social pattern of interpretation “third-party funding as a waste of resources.” The postdocs and professors interviewed in particular fall back on this collective stock of knowledge because “acquiring third-party funding takes up more and more time […] and that is annoying” (Junior Professor of Economics, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). In this way, “a great deal of intellectual lifetime achievement [is lost]” (Professor of Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021) and there are “weird proposal cycles that take up a lot of resources” (Postdoc Humanities 1, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021).
Finally, processes of de-subjectivation are reserved for those scientists who have an exclusive position as speaker and permanent employment contracts and are relatively independent of third-party funding. In this regard, a Professor of Social Sciences (Freie Universität Berlin, 2021) noted that “our status group […] is not really personally dependent on it and […] no longer has to go along with every nonsense.” In addition, a Postdoc Humanities 2 (Freie Universität Berlin, 2021) with a permanent employment contract stated that he “has no new research projects at all, which means that I actually have a bit of freedom to do what I want, so if I find something exciting, then I just do it.”
On the other hand, scientists with fixed-term contracts and a high dependency on third-party funding have very few options for escaping from the forms of subjectivation of the management discourse. In this respect, one interviewee stated that he is “completely dependent on [having] third-party-funded positions” (Postdoc Natural Sciences 3, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021). Another Postdoc (Humanities 1, Freie Universität Berlin, 2021) also admitted that he is “one hundred percent dependent on third-party funding, because I have a third-party-funded position. So if I didn't have that, I wouldn't have any, and I'm actually already beyond the Science Temporary Contract Act [Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz]. So I actually could not have a position without third-party funding at the moment according to the current legal situation. From that point of view, I am quite happy that there is third-party funding.”
For a practice of (de)subjectivation in the German university landscape, the following applies: The lower the personal securities of academics, the easier it is to dominate their behavior with forms of subjectivation of the management discourse. At the same time, processes of academic (de)subjectivation are associated with moments of discrimination and privilege. By escaping from entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation, academics create space for the realization of traditional academic values and research interests. Less autonomous interviewees, on the other hand, are bound to an identity through the appropriation of forms of subjectivation of the NPM discourse. This prevents them from thinking and acting independent of forms of subjectivation of the management discourse.
Based on the empirical material, a typology can be constructed. This is done by systematically cross-referencing the two central dimensions of academic subjectivation – project-based research and position in the academic field.
Type 1 – “Established traditional scientist": The “established traditional scientist” possesses a high degree of autonomy derived from a permanent employment contract, an exclusive speaker position and low dependency on third-party funding. This structural security enables them to adopt a critical and resistant position toward the NPM discourse. Type 1 frame project-based research as a waste of resources and distance themselves from managerial and entrepreneurial forms of subjectivation.
Type 2 – “Ambivalent scientist": The “ambivalent scientist” occupies a moderate position of autonomy derived from permanent or long-term employment stability while remaining moderately dependent on third-party funding. For scientists of this type, project-based research is construed as instrumental for safeguarding their participation in the higher education system. At the same time, the “ambivalent scientist” is intermittently able to escape from managerial and entrepreneurial forms of subjectivation to preserve traditional academic values. Consequently, Type 2 maintains a pragmatic and ambivalent position toward project-based research.
Type 3 – “Managerial/entrepreneurial scientist": The “managerial/entrepreneurial scientist” is employed on a fixed-term contract and exhibits a high degree of dependency on third-party funding Owing to this low autonomy, scientists of Type 3 are unable to evade the invocations of the NPM discourse. Consequently, they tend to adopt managerial and entrepreneurial forms of subjectivation.
Conclusion
The present study aims to reconstruct processes of academic (de)subjectivation under NPM and to make power, knowledge and individual resistance within universities visible. Methodologically, the contribution is based on the combination of SKAD, social science hermeneutics, and grounded theory methodology (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Keller, 2007; Soeffner, 2015[1989]). This combination proves to be particularly suitable for capturing both the forms of subjectivation of the management discourse and the modes of subjectivation of scientists (Ullrich, 2022).
The central methodological objective was to systematically distinguish forms and modes of subjectivation and to make their points of rupture visible. The reconstruction of forms of subjectivation was carried out through a SKAD of programmatic texts produced by the ruling subjects of the NPM discourse in Germany between 1993 and 2019 (Keller, 2007). In doing so, other- and self-positioning as well as the underlying political rationalities were identified. This perspective makes it possible to abstract the scripts of action and offers of identity for scientists within NPM – particularly those of the academic entrepreneur and the academic manager – without too hastily assuming them to reflect social reality.
The second methodological phase – the reconstruction of modes of subjectivation – revealed how scientists adopt, transform or reject these forms of subjectivation within their individual patterns of interpretation. The 25 guided interviews were analyzed using a two-stage coding procedure consisting of social science hermeneutics and grounded theory method. Tensions emerged between traditional academic self-images and the invocations of the NPM discourse. Confrontational and hypothetical questions proved particularly fruitful as they revealed ruptures between the invocations of the NPM discourse and individual statements.
The third phase consisted of systematically contrasting forms and modes of subjectivation. By juxtaposing the reconstructed forms of subjectivation of the NPM discourse with the modes of subjectivation of the interviewees, processes of adaptation, modification, subversion and de-subjectivation became visible. The analysis demonstrates that resistance does not appear primarily as visible protest but rather as everyday inconsistencies, reinterpretations and subversions of entrepreneurial and managerial forms of subjectivation. Methodologically, it became evident that individual resistance can be reliably reconstructed through the two-stage linkage of discourse and action levels.
At the same time, several methodological challenges became evident. First, the dual perspective of discourse and interview analysis required a clear analytical separation of levels in order to avoid premature causal attributions between discourse and subjectivity. Second, my position in the field – particularly due to familiarity with the German higher education system – posed a permanent challenge regarding reflexivity and potential blind spots. These were mitigated through explicit memos, counter-readings and negative case analyses (Glaser and Holton, 2004). Third, the case study character of the investigation implies that the transferability of the findings to other universities and higher education systems is only possible to a limited extent. The generation of ideal types (“established traditional scientist”, “ambivalent scientist” and “managerial/entrepreneurial scientist”) provides a methodological and analytical approach for a broader discussion of academic (de)subjectivation at other universities and higher education systems.
Overall, the case study shows that the combination of SKAD, grounded theory and social science hermeneutics provides a robust methodological foundation for making individual resistance by scientists within the nexus of power and subjectivation empirically visible and interpretable. At the same time, the methodological process highlights inherent limitations – such as the asymmetrical distribution of agency and position in the academic field, which themselves constitute part of the reconstructed processes of subjectivation. This article thus offers a reflexive and empirically approach to analyze the mechanisms of academic (de)subjectivation while also revealing the conditions under which scientists may expand, restrict, or regain their capacity to act.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.