Planning Lives in the Life Sciences?! Young researchers' construction of past and future biographies as a governmentality project

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Planning Lives in the Life Sciences?! Young
researchers' construction of past and future
biographies as a governmentality project

• Ulrike Felt, Maximilian Fochler, Ruth Müller
• Department of Social Studies of Science
• University of Vienna
• www.univie.ac.at/sciencestudies
• Ulrike.felt_at_univie.ac.at
• Conference, The Politics of Knowing, Prague, 28.
  11.2008

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Background Too few or too many scientists?
Different perspectives on a system in change
Policy perspective (e.g. EU)More knowledge
workers neededgt Advertise science as a career
choicegt Prevent brain drain
Reflections within scienceAre we training too
many scientists?Feeling of growing competition
of more candidates for less positions
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Planning vs. Simply being good

• Increasing needs and offers to young researchers
  to plan their careers and organise their lives
  accordingly creates the idea that if one does
  planning well then it will work out

• Upholding the myth of in the end the good
  scientists win this is reinforced by excellence
  programs/awards and the accompanying rhetoric
  (see e.g. ESOF session by Nobel Prize Winners)

Biography as more holisitic sense-making practice
both on an epistemic and social level
Career as a technical structure of norms to
follow to stay/succeed in science
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The Project Living Changes in the Life Sciences

• Aim Trace how ethical and societal
  considerations gradually reshape the culture and
  practice of research in the life sciences
• Field Life Science Research (Green, Red, White)
  in academic contexts in Austria
• Core research dimensionsWork Cultures,
  Socialisation, Epistemic Practices, Institutional
  Framings, Life Sciences Society
• Biographical approach aims at understanding their
  sense-making practices, reconstructing
  historical timelines (perceptions of important
  changes and ruptures) grasping generational
  differences
• For this presentation Focus on PhD PostDocs
  17 interviews

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Research questions and approach

• How do young researchers narrate their lives in
  the Life Sciences linking past and future?
• Investigate the relation between career and
  biographical accounts
• Identify where and when frictions occur
• Question what this means in terms of relations
  between researchers and institutions
• We will distinguish in our analysis two moments
  in their narration
• the narratives on transitions between phases as
  they reveal important ways researchers implicitly
  perceived differences between the phases
• what it means to be in such a phase (PhD Post
  Doc)
• Prospective retrospective dimensions

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Narratives on Transition (1) by PhDs and Post Docs

• PhDs narratives
• Selection is marginal as a narrative
• Assessment criteria motivation, inherent skills
  less prior formal achievements
• plenty of positions with no obvious
  hierarchical differences made between them
• Post Doc narratives
• The above mentioned is reconstructed as naive

Lableader
Master
PhD
Post Doc
1
3
2
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Narratives on Transition (2) by PhDs and Post Docs
Master
PhD
Post Doc
Lableader
2

• Strong discourse on strategic choice between Post
  Doc Positions of different quality
• Mobility as an obligation
• Selection
• Best case produce formal output in the PhD phase
• Second best if too little formal prerequisites,
  then moving along the social networks of the PhD
  supervisor
• Moment of crucial choice in terms of research
  topic
• Talking about leaving

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Narratives on Transition (3)

• Imagining Transition
• Highly selective on two levels, however the
  relation between them remains opaque
• Formal output criteria (frontstage)
• Informal social resources (backstage)
• Talking about coming back home/leaving the
  field
• Partly ambivalent narrative about new
  possibilities and restrictions

Master
PhD
Post Doc
Lableader
3
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Narratives on being a PhD

• Little explicit prospective elements beyond the
  PhD phase
• Epistemic components
• Thick narratives on phase of learning
• Tinkering trying things out the practice
  itself is seen as central
• Social components
• Everything is ok now narrative both private
  life and work do not have all too fixed schemes ?
  flexibility is possible in both

Master
PhD Phase
Post Doc
Lableader
1
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Current and prospective narratives on being a
PostDoc
Master
PhD Phase
Post Doc Phase
Lableader
2

• Stronger reflection about prospective
  consequences of current actions actions taken
  are assessed with regard to the competitive
  situation one is in
• Epistemic components
• Formally validated output is at the centre and
  epistemic choices are oriented towards it
• Institutional affiliation becomes a central
  ressource and is assessed by its quality as a
  productivity context (renommé of lab/university
  and colleagues there visibility in the
  community)
• Central moment with regard to epistemic choice
  Innovation vs. Risk
• Social components
• Compulsory mobility leaving the PhD lab and the
  social networks
• Questioning the relation between the social and
  the epistemic (sacrifice vs. investment)
  relation between the social and the epistemic is
  strongly framed through the idea of career

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Prospective narratives on being a lableader

• Biographical aspects become important strong
  account on potential deception
• Epistemic components
• Boundary work create something of your own
• wish that the mere career considerations move to
  the backstage and epistemic social biography
  building becomes central
• Social components
• Being able to come back desire for stability
• Sustainable relation between the social and the
  epistemic

Master
PhD
Post Doc
Lableader
3
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Retrospective reconstructions

• Reassessment of the PhD phase in the light of
  current experience generally seen as naïve
• Past choices havent considered the requirements
  of career sufficiently
• Epistemic components
• Epistemic choices are re-framed in terms of risk
  (instead of learning)
• PostDocs narrate very little continuity in their
  epistemic work especially if they have been
  rather mobile
• Social components
• Marginal if at all romaticising the relation
  between the social and the epistemic in the PhD

Master
PhD
Post Doc
Lableader
1
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Narratives of change

• Running through all these accounts is a rather
  clear narrative on change in the research system
  implications are individually felt from the late
  PhD phase on.
• While the PhD is imagined by most interviewees
  still as a more local phase, globalisation of
  research and competition sets in at the Post Doc
  level
• Strong narrative of growth of the research
  system, which is also mediated through new
  technologies (e.g. access to the flood of
  papers on ones own topic)
• Account of a strong ideology of mobility, with
  growing ambivalent feelings about what it means
• Young scientists perception of change,
  internationalisation and growth underpins a
  strong sense of competition along standardised
  international rules.

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Imagining competition

• Two levels
• Epistemic competition
• small number of known competitors
• Who is able to publish ahead? Only being first is
  a central value
• Career competition the metaphor of the marathon
• Many anonymous competitors
• Unclear who the relevant competitors are, and
  what performance is needed to outpace them
• Only few competitors in ones own social
  network are visible
• ? Tendency to rely on simply fulfilling the
  norms importance to be prepared and not to miss
  out a window of opportunity

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Talking about leaving

• Transitions lead to ponder the expected match
  between their prospective visions of a life in
  science and their own biographical expectations.
• Especially in transition to the Post-Doc-Phase, a
  considerable number talk about leaving, because
  ...
• Attractive and sustainable careers in science are
  only perceived as likely for the truly
  excellent
• Doing a career is irreconcilable with building
  a family and social networks
• Work culture is seen as highly competitive and
  individualised, not as a collective endeavour
• Scientific careers are seen as leading away from
  actual bench work
• Women perceive themselves / are perceived as more
  affected by these issues gt strong gender
  dimension in talking about leaving ...

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Tensions between individual and institutional
perspectives

• (Austrian) Institutional contexts are seen as
  changing
• ambivalence towards the wish of having a stable
  position
• Increasing importance of academic performance
  audits, job security tied to success in these
  assessments
• However, local institutional practices and
  networks remain important uneasy relation to the
  transparency invoked officially
• Institutions are seen as demanding and monitoring
  the production of auditable output, as
  sanctioning the failure to do so, but as less
  likely to offer rewards in case of good
  performance.
• Hence, current institutions are perceived with
  ambivalence ? relation between individuals and
  institutions is constructed as mutually
  instrumental

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Tensions which matter When biographical ideals
meet career practices

• The norms and logics of career are the primary
  touchstone for evaluating past, present and
  future epistemic and social choices. Implicitly
  or explicitly, all expect that playing the
  career game is the best strategy to stay in
  science.
• Staying in the game and being ahead of the
  competition seem to be the prime values
  institutionalised in the norms. In correlation
  with career progress, we find less and less
  references to other value orientations, neither
  on a personal biographical (e.g. solving certain
  epistemic puzzles), nor on a systemic level (e.g.
  science as a collective effort to tackle societal
  problems ).
• Biographical ideals are deferred to a later stage
  mostly to the group leader phase which is
  normatively expected to provide room for this.
• However given the institutional context - ,
  group leader positions are realistically expected
  to continue the rules and frameworks of career,
  with little to no margin for more biographical
  projects. This leads to cynicism, because
  institutional structures are seen as violating a
  central implicit agreement of the career game.

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Concluding observations Beyond single narratives

• What are implications of our observations on the
  dynamics of careers/biographies in times of
  change on a more systemic level?
• While career as a set of guiding norms may
  maximise formal auditable output, this does not
  equal to a sustainable increase of innovative
  knowledge production. Rather, epistemic risk is
  discouraged and paths beyond the mainstream are
  less travelled.
• In the ever longer phase of strong career
  competition, very little value-structure beyond
  being first may be discerned. This may explain
  the growing incidence of deviant behaviour, such
  as in cases of the fraudulent use of data.
• Current career paths are perceived as not
  sustainable on both an epistemic and social level
  in the long term. This may render science as
  workplace unattractive to many, and may hardly be
  countered by a policy lip-service on the
  importance of more scientists.
• Our material shows that this is especially true
  for young women scientists, as the values and
  rules of career on average seem to have a better
  fit with biographical expectations commonly
  gendered as male.

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Thanks for the attention