ACADEMIC FIELD REFLEXIVITY
ACADEMIC FIELD REFLEXIVITY

“INSTITUTIONAL LITERACY” AS CONDITION FOR ACADEMIC SUCCESS

Summary/Abstract: In “Academic Field Reflexivity,” Susanne Maria Weber addresses the university as an institutionalized and cultural setting. Following a sociological view on social and cultural inequalities in educational fields of power, University and Higher Education is being analyzed regarding the “hidden agendas” and rules of the game. Academia comes into view as a process of institutional socialization of “becoming an academic.” Following the French philosopher, ethnographer and sociologist Bourdieu, in a relational perspective, social inequalities and institutional reproduction and transformation in Higher Education and University is analyzed as relational social practice unfolding between “habitus” and “field.” In the social power relations of departmental cultures, cultural capital of doctoral candidates – and supervisors – is a relevant dimension for academic access and success. To acquire a “sense for the game” becomes crucial. The contribution offers a methodology to analyze the “rules of the game” and to see the blind spots and symbolic orders of the academic field and its subfields in different departmental cultures. The chapter suggests transformational strategies, methods and designs for epistemological ruptures, the “conversion of thought” and “the revolution of the gaze” of doctoral students, supervisors and academic institutions as such.

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