Producing anxiety in the neoliberal university [L’anxiété suscitée par l’université néolibérale]

Canadian GeographerVolume 60, Issue 2, 1 June 2016, Pages 168-180

• Berg, L.D.^aEmail Author,
 
• Huijbens, E.H.^b,
 
• Larsen, H.G.^c
 
• View Correspondence (jump link)

• ^aInstitute for Community Engaged Research, University of British Columbia, Canada
• ^bIcelandic Tourism Research Centre, University of Akureyri, Iceland
• ^cDepartment of Human Geography, Lund University, Sweden

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Abstract View references (69)

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the neoliberal production of anxiety in academic faculty members in universities in Northern Europe. The paper focuses on neoliberalization as it is instantiated through audit and ranking systems designed to produce academia as a space of economic efficiency and intensifying competition. We suggest that powerful forms of competition and ranking of academic performance have been developed in Northern Europe. These systems are differentiated and differentiating, and they serve to both index and facilitate the neoliberalization of the academy. Moreover, these audit and ranking systems produce an ongoing sense of anxiety among academic workers. We argue that neoliberalism in the academy is part of a wider system of anxiety production arising as part of the so-called “soft governance” of everything, including life itself, in contemporary late liberalism. © 2016 Canadian Association of Geographers / L’Association canadienne des géographes

Author keywords

• academic audit systems
 
• anxiety and mental health
 
• higher education
 
• human capital
 
• neoliberalism

• ISSN: 00083658
• Source Type: Journal
• Original language: English

• DOI: 10.1111/cag.12261
• Document Type: Article
• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Inc.

• References (69)

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  Berg, L.D.; Institute for Community Engaged Research, University of British Columbia, Canada; email:Lawrence.berg@ubc.ca 
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