Academic writing has undergone some profound changes since I first became an author at the start of the 1970s. Some of these, but not all, are of concern. If I was ever asked for advice from younger colleagues – and one surely always should wait to be asked – I would usually include the following:
- Most important of all, make sure that you negotiate or win sufficient space to write what you want or need to, nothwithstanding managerial and institutional pressures on you and your time. Of course as a fortunate babyboomer I had to take out less insurance to keep managers and institutions off my back and at bay than is required as a matter of course these days; and I enjoyed more security and a realistic sense of career progression. BUT if you can’t commit reasonable time to what you want/must do, then you – and your discipline if you are a social or political scientist – are likely to pay a price: you and your discipline increasingly run the risk of being tamed.
- The focus and function of the academic CV is shifting. When I started out the criteria for security and promotion were relatively simple: a national-to-international reputation as a scholar. The criteria are now complex and multiple, as I discovered on entering the UCL tribe of professors, with its system of tiers or bands. Scholarship must now be complimented not only by institutional contributions and funding prerequisites but by the likes of public engagement, all of which were foreign to me at the time. Moreover, CVs have to be adjusted job by job. Worse, as Richard Sennett noted somewhere or other, academics now have to be proactive when refashioning their CVs: they have to second-guess the future in a time of accelerating but unpredictable institutional change.
- Extensive funding and multiple publications in high-impact international journals might well be preconditions for promotion to senior posts. BUT the correlation between extensive funding/publishing (plus seniority and income) and worthwhile and/or lasting scholarship may well prove disappointing.
I still get requests to assess the CVs of senior as well as junior colleagues and I’m often astonished at the comprehensiveness and length of their CVs. They certainly make mine look one dimensional and parsimonious (though I no longer update my CV – except for publications via my website – after retiring in 2013). I am generally impressed at their sheer productivity, which I imagine is in part a function of the unremitting pressure they now endure.
But I also can’t resist scanning their publications (in particular) and asking myself what – as it were, in real terms – they amount to. What is there buried in these – sometimes hundreds of – publications that might survive their owners’ retirements. And sometimes I’m doubtful how much will stand the test of time. There are two qualifications to make here. First, I’m not for a moment suggesting that those of us with more parsimonious records have written more lasting pieces. And second, I have in a previous blog referred to what I called the ‘compression of the past’. There is a discernible tendency – and sometimes an explicit policy on the part of editors of journals – to demand ‘up-to-date’ references. It’s almost as if nothing published more than a decade ago ‘counts’. The result of this manifest absurdity is that wheels are constantly reinvented. Maybe authors factor this in, but I doubt it.
I find I now have an ambiguous relationship with what remains of – updated bits of my – CV. My CV no longer matters, as I’ve mentioned in several previous fragments of this meandering ‘sociological autobiography’, but it’s not always easy to acknowledge, appreciate and reconcile oneself to that. After all, I do actually list my publications on my website! There are at least two temptations to resist I think. First, I shouldn’t be seduced by the ‘number’ of items. I hope I’m not. The second is a temptation that I think many old-timers face, which is to repeat themselves by revisiting areas of acquired expertise (ad infinitum). I do think, however, that it should be recognised that a certain amount of repetition in publications is okay, even necessary, and should not be unthinkingly castigated as self-plagiarism. For example, in an article that builds on previous work it seems presumptuous to imagine that readers are familiar with prior publications, so a degree of scene-setting repetition seems necessary.
I have no idea, nor can or should I, which if any of my own publications might survive my demise. That’s for generative mechanisms, contingency and successors! Any judgement I offer at this point might well prove mistaken. But I have a view of what I think comprises useful/thoughtful work. I’ve therefore set myself the – I hope not narcissistic – task of selecting a ‘top six’. They are a compromise between what I hope will last and what I think likely to outlast me. In chronological rather than rank order they are:
- (1986) ‘Being epileptic’: coming to terms with stigma. Sociology of Health and Illness 8 26-43 (with Anthony Hopkins).
- (1987) Habermas and the power of medical expertise. In Ed Scambler,G: Sociological Theory and Medical Sociology. London; Tavistock.
- (1996) The ‘project of modernity’ and the parameters for a critical sociology: and argument with illustrations from medical sociology. Sociology 30 567-581.
- (2018) Sociology, Health and the Fractured Society: A Critical Realist Account. London; Routledge.
- (2019) Heaping blame on shame: ‘weaponising stigma’ for neoliberal times. Sociological Review 66 766-782.
- (2020) Communal Forms: A Sociological Exploration of the Concept of Community. London; Routledge (with Aksel Tjora).
Having set myself this task I confess to being a bit disappointed at the results! Maybe I had a barren period between 1996 and 2018, but in my defense I think my work then was summarised, clarified and refined later! I still hope to displace some of these items in the near future.
At the time of writing I’m hoping for a contract to write a second book on the sociology of sport. Maybe that will cement a legacy of sorts!