LECTURE - Beyond Competitiveness? Academic Gift Culture and Its Discontents

ABSTRACT:
In this paper, we explore various forms that giving and receiving may take in academia, as well as ambiguous motivations, intentions, and outcomes of gifting. Drawing on written empirical responses elicited from fellow academics and analyzed through thematic coding, we examine academic gifts along two axes: vertical (research grants) and horizontal (citation practices and epistemic sharing). Our findings attest to the existence of what may be called “academic gift culture” that presents an alternative to “competitive struggle” (Bourdieu) in the academia, where competitiveness, in view of scarce research funding and teaching positions, is especially pressing. However, we show that this culture is not entirely separate from or opposed to competition. Neither does it only convey noble feelings of devotion to science and academic collegiality but also enhances dishonesty, leads to tension among peers, encourages partiality, or makes research dependent on uneven and whimsical donations.

SPEAKERS:
Alexandra Urakova is Researcher at Södertörn University, Sweden and Researcher and Co-Investigator of the KONE-funded research project (Un)making Knowledge: Student's Relationship with Knowledge from Modernity to AI, Tampere University, Finland. She holds a title of docent at the Department of Cultures, University of Helsinki, Finland. Her interdisciplinary research spans literary and cultural history, queer and gender studies, cultural anthropology, and comparative studies. She is the author of Dangerous Giving in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and has co-edited five volumes, including The Dangers of Gifts from Antiquity to the Digital Age (Routledge, 2022). She is a SCAS alumna (2020–2021), and previously contributed to the KONE-funded research project "The Meanings and the Workings of the Gifts"(2021–2024, PI Olli Pyyhtinen).

Olli Pyyhtinen is Professor of Sociology at Tampere University, Finland, and the founder of Relational Studies Hub. His research intersects social theory, philosophically inclined fieldwork, science and technology studies, economic sociology, and the study of art. He is the author of More-than-Human Sociology (2015), The Gift and Its Paradoxes (2014), The Simmelian Legacy: A Science of Relations (2018) and Simmel and the Social (2010); co-author of Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests (2014) and Tervetuloa jäteyhteiskuntaan! (2019; ‘Welcome to the Society of Waste!’). Currently, Pyyhtinen is leading two projects on waste and the circular economy, WastMatters (ERC Consolidator Grant, 2022-2027) and DECAY (Finnish Research Council, 2022–2026). He was PI of the Kone-Foundation supported project The Meanings and the Workings of the Gifts (2021–2024).

This event is part of A Week on Academic Freedom.