Professional Precarity, Ethics, and Social Justice
By Netta Avineri and Steven P. Black
“As long as we participate in social systems we don’t get to choose whether to be involved in the consequences they produce. We’re involved simply through the fact that we’re here. As such, we can only choose how to be involved, whether to be just part of the problem or also to be part of the solution. That’s where our power lies, and also our responsibility.”
–Johnson (2005) Privilege, Power, and Difference, p. 89
There is a labor crisis in academia. Scholars throughout the country now recognize that a system of privilege and marginalization is permeating our classrooms, faculty meetings, and institutional cultures, placing many academics in precarious professional positions (see http://www.aaup.org/issues/contingency/background-facts). As a discipline, anthropology presents unique perspectives on this professional precarity. Recently, the Committee on Labor Relations, the Committee for Human Rights Task Group/ Society for Linguistic Anthropology Committee on Language & Social Justice (Avineri), the Committee on Ethics (Black), and the presidents of the various AAA sections independently recognized the importance of this issue and are now beginning to take collective action. We are collaborating to craft a statement on adjuncting and precarity to present to the AAA Executive Committee (through liaison Rayna Rapp). We encourage you to use the comments section of the blog to share thoughts and experiences with us that might be helpful in shaping our perspective and constructing a statement.
The Ethics of Professional Practice
Professional precarity is an ethics issue. Principle seven of the Principles of Ethical Responsibility, “Maintain Respectful and Ethical Professional Relationships,” is impractical or even impossible in the face of the current situation. The supporting information for this principle states, “Anthropologists should at all times work to ensure that no exclusionary practices be perpetrated on the basis of any nonacademic attributes.” While once there may have been a legitimate distinction between adjuncts and tenure-track faculty in terms of academic attributes, that distinction (if ever there was one) is no longer present. This principle also states that anthropologists, “must not exploit individuals, groups, animals, or cultural or biological materials.” The promotion of a small number of tenured anthropologists while the majority remain untenured/in non-tenure-track positions is a form of exploitation, even if not directly initiated by the actions of particular anthropologists. The research productivity of tenure-track faculty is in many ways dependent upon this existing structure.
The Language of Marginalized Identities
While propelled by institutional policies, unethical practices are also constituted in professional activities and spaces, especially through the unreflexive discourse that occurs within them. The ways that people talk about academic and non-academic positions are rooted in conceptualizations of temporality and spatiality. The labels “tenure-track/tenure-stream” indicate a sense of directionality and future-oriented possibilities. On the other hand, “contingent”/”part-time”/”adjunct”/”visiting” point toward the now, to positions that are dependent on more important things, a temporary placement outside of the system, and finding oneself elsewhere and not truly present. Professional introductions, as a system of person reference, are one example of exclusionary and marginalizing language. At conferences, introducing oneself or others using titles (e.g., associate professor, visiting lecturer) become sites for positioning and identity maintenance. Seemingly less direct questions like, “What’s your teaching load?” index particular identities, priorities, and possibilities. Even the evaluation of affiliations can become problematic–are you in an academic position? Is your university a teaching institution? R2? R1?
Such ranking systems are invalid in the contemporary professional market. The incredible scarcity of available tenure-track positions means that one’s ability to land an academic job at an R1 institution is less a commentary on one’s worth as a scholar or anthropologist and more an indication of one’s professional connections (and in some cases, luck). Our continued use of these terms, and the underlying ideologies they evidence, constitutes a conceptual and linguistic inertia that hampers our ability to be more inclusive, ethical, and just.
Safe Spaces, Leveling Policies, and Creating Communities of Practice
Our goal is to reevaluate professional discourse and AAA policy to promote a more inclusive space that fosters academic freedom, growth, and productivity in the face of the current crisis. In doing so, we hope to contest precarity at an institutional level while simultaneously shifting our practices and policies to change the scholarly landscape from the ground up. Our suggestions are meant to complement collective action that would rectify the current reliance on contingent labor in academic institutions (eg. higher wages, a higher proportion of stable positions in departments, or changes to the tenure system itself):
Below are three proposals for actions that individuals, groups and the AAA might take in this direction:
1) End the use of rank and/or affiliation for gatekeeping. Currently, one’s rank and affiliation may determine one’s ability to serve on particular editorial boards, gain access to funding (e.g., NSF), or write pieces for venues such as Annual Review of Anthropology. These positive and negative feedback loops become a vicious cycle. Rather than the arbitrary metrics of rank/ affiliation, utilize the evaluation of expertise, knowledge, and quality scholarship.
2) Stop using the AAA Annual Meeting as a venue for interviews. Those in “contingent” positions frequently do not receive funding to attend conferences and are therefore automatically in a less desirable position than those who have the money to make face-to-face contact with potential employers. Once difficult and confusing, digital interviews (eg. through Skype) are now easy and cost-effective for initial candidate screening.
3) Create safe spaces in which academics in a variety of positions are able to share ideas freely and experiment with their pedagogy without fear of being fired because their positions are less-than-secure. The field of anthropology can then move forward through enacting many of its basic tenets of perspective-taking and depth of understanding through experience over the long-term. Adjuncts’ teaching positions are highly dependent on student evaluations but don’t generally have the support they need to do their best in their teaching. For example, as a field we should support one another through anonymous online spaces for support and advice, online writing groups and retreats, teaching resources websites, “non-academic” advisors, and scholarships — where hierarchies can be flattened and various knowledges can be valued to allow for a variety of mentorship models.
Our sincere aspiration is that these and other policies will help to alleviate the current labor crisis in conjunction with direct action, while allowing for more flexible career trajectories and a level playing field. In doing so, we hope to encourage those in a range of jobs to feel confident and proud of what they are doing, to have the support they need to move them in the directions they would like at this point, and/or stay right where they are. Please share with us your thoughts on these proposals, or suggest alternatives, in the comments section of the blog.
LINKS:
http://precaritytales.tumblr.com/
http://ccdigitalpress.org/conjob/
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/184-a-congressman-asks-for-adjuncts-stories-and-responses-pour-in
http://stevendkrause.com/2014/04/03/thoughts-on-con-job-stories-of-adjunct-contingent-labor/
http://www.newfacultymajority.info/adjunct-stories/
Filed under: activism, professional precarity, professional relationships
Excellent remarks. Netta and Steven, you overlook a “third way” that some universities are adopting, and that is full time lecturer with a multi-year contract and an avenue for promotion. Not that this third way obviates anything that you have written, in some circumstances it substantiates it. For example, when the dean of your college, in conference with a department chair who is seeking new lines for a department says, “We can’t afford $60K for a new assistant professor, but we CAN pay $50K for a lecturer,” you know there’s a problem. Especially when the ass’t professor will be teaching 2 classes per semester, and the lecturer will be teaching 4. In public schools where state funding (what little there is) is based on semester credit hour production, it’s a straightforward calculation to determine which of these positions is “worth more” to the department.
With regard to your specific proposals, yes, yes, and YES!
I think this is a lovely piece. As a labor historian, the only think I missing here is something about wages and compensation. Yes, we should support contingent academic workers in all the ways you describe, but we should also fight for more equal compensation. The rates vary so wildly by school, but generally are fair below what would be the minimum wage if it was an hourly wage. Respect and inclusion is one thing, but the right to a fair wage is another. I would consider adding something about how anthropologists can support adjunct unions in their organizing efforts, but I’m a labor guy. Instead, maybe consider including a statement about being an ally for contingent workers vis a vis departments and campus administration in negotiating more fair and equal rates of compensation. Just a thought.
I support the notion of ensuring that job interview sites are financially accessible to all AAA members. As the organizer of a recent section meeting, I know that one reason AAA and section meetings are so expensive is that in 2004, we passed a resolution requiring meeting planners to choose a unionized hotel. This was a well-intentioned attempt to show solidarity with hotel workers, precarious workers who had low wages and no job security. Unfortunately, it has meant that we have to raise both hotel rates (since unionized hotels are most often more expensive than non-union venues) and registration fees (since AAA has to guarantee the purchase of a certain amount of food and beverage from the hotel, totaling in the tens of thousands of dollars). Does it make sense to support precarious hotel workers at the expense of our precarious adjunct colleagues? Should we make it harder for adjunct anthropologists to get jobs in order to protect hotel workers’ jobs? This is an incredibly difficult calculus, one nobody wants to make. But I believe we need to protect our undermployed colleagues first—-and repeal the resolution directing AAA staff to only book conferences at unionized venues.
Thank you so much, Netta and Steven, for drafting this excellent statement. I think that focusing on three areas, such as what you have proposed, has potential to make this something more actionable. I generally agree with the points raised by the three previous comments. I don’t know if I’m (yet) for repealing the AAA’s stance on unionized hotels, but I think that it’s worth revisiting the topic if a possible side effect has been identified.
I would like to make the first comments in support of your first proposal for action. If members of the AAA are recognizing the challenging situation for recent PhDs in regards to not only the academic labor market, I would add that there may be a different distribution of personal reasons that today’s academically-minded PhDs face than the faculty of 20-30 years ago. This second trend is encouraging some anthropologists to consider other applications of their degrees, even while they look to maintain scholarly profiles. I write as an anthropologist who has recently been split across two institutions, one of primary employment (in administration) and the other of primary academic affiliation. I have published more than many tenured faculty at my institution of primary employment, and my administrative work there has given me unquestionably broader international experience than if I had stuck to previous solely academic plans. I can accept the value of rank for gatekeeping in some cases. However, I would encourage more journals, funding agencies, and boards currently relying on rank to consider diversifying their measures of expertise to reflect both the reality of the tenure-track market and a diversification of professional paths that can yield new yet still academically relevant expertise.
Thank you both for inviting a discussion about this issue. I appreciate these proposals and agree strongly with your discussion about the “vicious cycle” that takes place for adjuncts in particular. It is clear on the many search committees that I’ve been on that there is a bias against candidates who have worked primarily in adjunct teaching for more than a year; the bias is compounded by the fact that this type of teaching complicates efforts to maintain a research agenda. My spouse and I both have Ph.D.s in anthropology. We alternate between a one-income household and one that is supplemented with adjunct teaching. I was fortunate (and I agree that luck is definitely a part of it) to be hired on the tenure-track, but my husband, as an occasional PTI (part-time instructor) has no job security and of course no retirement or insurance benefits. One year he may be asked to teach two or three classes, and we become accustomed to the supplemental income, and then a few years go by with no opportunities. Our institution’s approach to the inequities of adjuncting is to require adjuncts to have independent health insurance and additional part-time work, but these requirements can also be exclusionary. We also have permanent Instructor positions, but their pay is substandard; though they don’t have the same expectations for professional development, they are expected to teach many more classes and should have access to the same salary as tenure-track professors. My main suggestion for change would be for a more equitable salary distribution across universities, which would free up money for many more full-time teaching positions with fair pay. I would be willing to forgo any salary increases for several years to this end, though equity should be considered at all levels–there are administrators and professors at my institution that make nearly 10 times the salary that I make as a tenured professor in anthropology.
Netta and Steve, thanks for iniciating a very important conversation. Being in a somewhat