Politics of Happiness

Pain

2012-01-15T20:45:00.000+13:00

The way in which pain has come to be seen predominantly as a medical concern, in our understanding of both what pain is and what to do about it, has reached the status of an almost unquestioned assumption. So, even when a social scientist or cultural theorist writes about pain, their analysis will almost always revolve around medical definitions, theories and practices. The social or cultural theorist may be attempting to ‘reclaim’ this territory from the ‘hegemony’ of medical-scientific discourse, or she/he may (even simultaneously) be seeking to convince the reader that, by accepting wider social and cultural meanings or effects of pain, medical practice could somehow be enhanced and its objectives met holistically and hence more effectively.

To understand the shift, we need to rehearse what is meant by ‘discursive practice’.

Despite what many secondary authors actually write, Foucault’s ‘archaeology’ is not primarily aimed at elucidating the contested meanings of what was said and done in the political heat of the times. What he meant by ‘discourse’ was not ‘a mere intersection of things and words… [but rather] practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’ (Foucault, Archaeology of knowledge, 2002: 53-54).

Rather than watch the game as a critic, Foucault chose to ask on what grounds the crowd and the contestants and their critics could get together, adopt their roles, and unquestioningly know what was going on.

What has formed the ‘pain’ of which one today speaks such that it cannot be separated from the figure of the physician in the space of the clinic?

Before answering that, it may be best to illustrate that it need not be so. Just read the Book of Genesis or the Iliad and notice that what is inflicted on and suffered by the subject of pain is much at the whim of God, or the gods, and its meaning is moral, not clinico-pathological (as, after all, the latter form of perception was not to arise for centuries to come anyway). Sure, Hippocrates was interested in pain too, as a symptom that could help the physician to diagnose. But the morally meaningful nature of pain in the classic texts of our civilization is foremost, and it is not connected at all with the physician. God punishes Adam with the pain of hard toil, and Eve with the pain of labour as a punishment. (Keep in mind that pain and punish derive from the Latin poena, meaning penalty.) Similarly, the Greek and Trojan heroes die gruesomely, but surprisingly painlessly. It is only the nasty suitors (whom Odysseus slaughters once he gets home) who die ignominiously and painfully. Pain matters morally, not medically.

If you read Nietzshe’s Genealogy of Morals or Foucault’s Disipline and Punish you can also find discussion of the moral force that pain has wielded in societies. The infliction of pain is perhaps the most direct way of imprinting a memory of the moral code of the sovereign or of the priesthood. Pain gives terrible effect to power.

But today we imprison rather than torture (admitting exceptions!), and so pain retreats backstage in the drama of public morality, and the great industry of medicine takes up its cause, but in quite a different direction. For medicine, the affect of pain is presented beside a promise of painlessness; whereas morality and punishment used the realizable threat of pain as its affective principle.

The fact that today authors from any discipline outside of medicine, when writing of pain, seem to be tethered to the medical terminology and practice is suggestive of a transformation at the level of discursive practice. This is not to be dissociated, of course, from the wider complex of productive industries that address pain while using medical objectives and systems. I am referring in particular, of course, to the pharmaceutical industry that seeks (sometimes fraudulently) to extend the ‘promise of painlessness’ via analgesics and antidepressants.

The happiness tour

2011-06-30T07:08:00.000+12:00

Below is the abstract of a talk to be given on 30 June 2011. I can forward a pdf of the paper to anyone interested in it.

Title: Is happiness-maximization the new imperative for public policy?

Paper delivered to
Universität Regensburg
30.06.2011

Abstract

European leaders and agencies (including the OECD) are seeking to develop measures of social well-being and progress that go ‘beyond GDP’. Social research on subjective well-being (happiness and life-satisfaction) has supported this shift in political thinking. But, beyond the normative requirement to provide relevant public services, can the maximization of happiness become an obligation of governments, and can law and public policy be designed on such grounds? Happiness as a socio-political goal has yet to address problems associated with utilitarianism and to establish its place in relation to other values such as freedom or justice. While it is undoubtedly true that GDP fails to give us all the information we need about the state of a society, it is argued that governments ought not to be in the business of happiness.

Es ist zunehmend anerkannt, dass das Bruttosozialprodukt als Maßstab kollektiver Wohlfahrt nicht ausreicht. Sozialwissenschaftliche Studien zu individueller Zufriedenheit und Glück fördern diesen Perspektivenwechsel. Aber taugt “Glück” (happiness) als Maßstab staatlichen Handelns? Und können rechtliche und politische Steuerung an diesem Ziel ausgerichtet werden? Der Vortrag wird diese Fragen aus staatstheoretischem Blickwinkel kritisch beleuchten und letztlich verneinen.

Another paper on happiness

2011-03-13T19:51:00.000+13:00

Should Happiness-Maximization be the Goal of Government?: A public lecture for the NZ Society for Legal and Social Philosophy

Time: 6.00pm, Tuesday 29th March, 2011.

Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Ground Floor, Bldg 803, Law School, Eden Crescent, Auckland.

Abstract

Recent social surveys of happiness (subjective well-being) have given a new stimulus to utilitarian political theory by providing a statistically reliable measure of the ‘happiness’ of individuals that can then be correlated with other variables. One general finding is that greater happiness does not correlate strongly with increased wealth, beyond modest levels, and this has led to calls for governments to shift priorities away from economic growth and towards other social values. This paper notes how the conclusions of this research help to address some of the traditional objections to utilitarianism. But whether happiness research findings can be used to set happiness-maximization goals for public policy needs careful examination. The translation from research to policy is not always straightforward. Some empirical and ethical objections to this ‘new utilitarianism’ are raised. Additionally, questions regarding the proper role of government are considered.See More

The full paper will be available from me, or from the NZSLSP website.

Should happiness-maximization be a goal of government?

2010-11-18T11:12:00.000+13:00

This question has recently become a popular one in the UK, France etc. My answer to this question is 'no'. Find out why...

Below is the abstract for a paper I'm to give at the NZ Political Studies Conference in December. I can send a pdf of the paper to anyone interested. Just leave a comment with your email address, or email me directly.

Abstract: JS Mill saw the principle of utility also as a principle of justice, with implications for the actions undertaken collectively by societies. Mill’s case for the principle of utility is illogical, but nevertheless, a ‘new utilitarianism’ has arisen recently in the wake of research findings of economists and other social scientists, and this revised utilitarianism – ‘Bentham armed with data’ – seeks to draw implications for governmental actions. The so-called ‘Easterlin paradox’ finds that post-War economic growth was not accompanied by rising subjective well-being, or happiness, as found in surveys of affluent nations. The conclusion that is often drawn from this ‘paradox’ is that public policy reforms should take up the cause of happiness where markets appear to have failed. The case for happiness as a goal of government, in spite of its superficial appeal, however, is fraught with contradictions and is not made out.

GNH = Gross National Happiness?

2010-07-11T15:51:00.000+12:00

When I mention to people that I write about happiness, they often get starry-eyed and mention Bhutan's policy of Gross National Happiness. Well, the Kingdom of Bhutan, in 1991, rescinded citizenship from, and then expelled, its Nepalese-Hindi minority – about 100,000 people – who went on (unhappily) to languish in refugee camps. Bhutan refused to negotiate with UNHCR about their repatriation. Can the forced expulsion of an unwanted minority be justified by the happiness of the majority? And, don't we call that 'ethnic cleansing', rather than the path to happiness? Wasn't Hitler famous for rescinding citizenship from certain minorities and then disposing of them?

Does GNH stand for Gross National Happiness, or Gross National Hypocrisy?

Part of Bhutan's evaluation of the happiness of citizens is based on how frequently they follow Bhuddhist guidelines about daily prayer (which is not very often, if my reading of the results proved to be correct). Why should compliance with one official religion's practices be a part of a nation's supposed happiness?

I admire Buddhism as a philosophy, but maybe someone can comment.

See also my article: Duncan, G. (2010). Should happiness-maximization be the goal of government? Journal of Happiness Studies, 11(2): 163–178.

And this link is interesting too.

Possibly my last word on this matter.

2010-04-30T21:07:00.000+12:00

Whether it be our own or our students' research, we know from experience that the best results always emerge from intrinsic motives, which we may sometimes describe in terms such as curiosity, desire to 'make a difference', intuition, passion, or just the sheer enjoyment of the matter 'for itself'. (Of course, there may also be egotism, competitiveness or reputational self-regard involved too.)

The researcher defines the research question, authors his/her own writing, and hangs his/her personal reputation (and not the university's) on the written products.

Now, if the VCs and the government want to play the game of extrinsic, economic/fiscal, carrot-and-stick incentives around funding formulae, then let them do that.

But, for the sake of the quality of research, and the culture or environment in which research is proposed and performed, it is best that they (VCs and government) do not include us (academics) in that game.

Tasks (such as research) that require autonomy and creativity, and that are complex and non-routine in nature are well known (thanks to relevant research*) to be performed better when extrinsic incentives are avoided. An eye for short-term financial gain, for instance, will tend to undermine the intrinsic incentives upon which such complex activities rely. So long as a researcher is paid a reasonable salary, the results will flow, if the researcher has the autonomy and freedom to produce them.

So, for example, I would not find it at all motivating as a writer (I'm not a researcher!) to be part of an organization that tells me that my incentives to write and publish are: 1. To make more money for the institution, and 2. To avoid the sack. And I say this in all seriousness, as that is exactly what is happening at VUW and Canterbury. It would not satisfy me to be told that I don't have to worry because I have plenty of publications. I simply do not respond, as a writer, to such carrot-and-stick incentives. In fact, it is demotivating! And it would sicken me to think that this 'for itself' thing that I do (if I failed to do it) could become a source of surveillance and disciplinary actions.

So, let us reassert our 'reason' for doing research. After all, we do already own it.

* A rather cheesy and populist, but nonetheless easily digested, summary of this research can be found in Daniel Pink's Drive (2009).

To be is to be ruled

2010-04-11T19:36:00.000+12:00

"To be is to be ruled: Identity and sovereignty as
mutually constitutive images"

Dr Grant Duncan

Paper presented to the School of Social and Cultural Studies
Massey University Albany
New Zealand
31 March 2010

Abstract

This paper dwells on the following propositions: Being someone – being a recognised person or subject – is an effect of being ruled. But also, the constituting of the Sovereign is an effect of imagining a ‘people’ – a collectivity of non-identical identities, or subjects – to be ruled over, and, as necessary, to be ‘ruled out’. Agamben’s theory of the state of exception will support this discussion, along with several exceptional examples.

For a pdf copy of the full paper, either email me or leave your email address in the comments box. (Comments are moderated, so I won't leave your details on this blog).

Re-Reading Oedipus

2010-02-17T21:23:00.000+13:00

Paper for the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy
Melbourne, 30 November 2009

Abstract

Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex has, through Freud, exerted a huge influence on contemporary theory – and yet the play’s status and meaning, for the purposes of understanding the psyche and human relations, remain controversial. This paper considers Freud’s interpretation, and Foucault’s alternative reading (in ‘Truth and Juridical Forms’) of this play. Does Freud’s interpretation express an anxiety to contain the desire of the child in the structure of the bourgeois family? And why did Freud overlook the attempted infanticide and the infant’s abandonment? Why did he not consider the violence performed by Laius and Jocasta, the sovereign-parents? With some theoretical assistance from Agamben, a focus on the actions of the parents brings to light a dimension of Oedipus that allows us to reflect upon sovereignty and the law. Specifically, the paper considers the ineluctable effect of transgression, and the circularity, that found the law – as suggested by the tragedy. But, should the art of tragedy – let alone one, admittedly great, example thereof – hold a privileged place in forming our understandings of the psychology of civil life? Why Oedipus, and not some other love-story?

Email me for the full paper, or leave your email address as a comment...

"On the Subject of Governing"

2009-12-02T15:58:00.000+13:00

Chapter-by-chapter descriptions from my latest book:

This book is based on themes that are posed in terms of verbs rather than abstract nouns. There are two basic reasons for this. I have chosen to speak of ‘governing’ rather than ‘government’, for instance, in order to overcome the tendency to reduce a complex, historically evolving process to something that sounds like a static entity or, worse still, like something abstracted from human action and experience. The second, closely related, reason is that the sometimes remote and obscure theoretical writing from which I have drawn my inspiration for this text can – and ought to be – translated into a different style for a wider readership and thus linked to practical examples and events that readers can easily recall or imagine. As a writer, beginning with a verb at the top of the page, instead of an abstract noun like ‘identity’ or ‘well-being’, has been a useful reminder to me to keep things in the realm of actions and processes that people perform in ‘real life’. Hence, we can be saved from getting lost in a tangled web of abstraction.

Having said that, we cannot avoid some theoretical writing in order to understand and to draw conclusions from the material the book covers. While I hope to have made such theoretical passages as clear as possible, I cannot gloss over the subtle, often paradoxical, nature of the ideas in play here.

So, Chapter Two delves straight into political theory, ancient and modern. The word theory derives from the Greek verb theasthai, to look on, to view, or to contemplate – and hence the title of this chapter is ‘To Look’. We look especially into the ideas of Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben that form the basic inspiration for the book. The reader may wish to dip into Chapters Three to Eight first, and return to Chapter Two later, if unfamiliar with these ideas, so as to gain some grounding in some of the examples used in those later, more ‘substantive’ chapters. Those later chapters do refer back to the ideas of those theorists, as required, to illuminate the meaning or implications of the examples and ideas in use. Chapter Two begins with reflections about the significance of psychological or subjective states and aptitudes (such as guilt and responsibility) in political debates that occur in everyday life (such as those about crime and punishment). It notes how the connections or analogies between the psyche and the city go back as far as Plato. Then the ideas introduced by Aristotle about the ethical ends of human life and our participation in a civil political order – the state or polis – are explained. Such connections between human ‘nature’ and just and unjust political orders are revised by the social-contract theorists of the modern era (notably Locke and Rousseau). But the present text seeks to expand upon and problematize that connection by dwelling on the intersections between subjectivity and power-relations as seen through the Lacanian and Foucauldian lenses. The psychoanalytic theories of desire and of the subject are then outlined. This leads to reflections on how this kind of theory has been applied to late capitalism and to political ideologies by authors such as Slavoj Zizek.

This theory chapter ends with some thoughts derived from Agamben’s analysis of the exception and its relation to the norm ¬– or the rule – and the power to rule, or sovereignty. His work has added an important dimension to Foucault’s concept of bio-power, but it also illuminates the method used in this text, which is very much based upon the ‘exemplary exception’ that highlights modes of micro-political rule.

Chapter Three, To Be, is about the pragmatics of becoming a recognised and credible person in a society – and so some of our common-sense notions of personal and group identities are unscrambled in the process. This permits us to explore the theoretical problem of the subject and how it has become ‘ex-centric’ in the wake of psychoanalytic theory. We consider examples of – and exceptions to – the normative means by which ‘identities’ are documented and established, as well as how they can be manipulated. The problems of collective ‘identities’ are explored in terms of relations of difference, and the movement known as ‘identity politics’ is critically examined. The political rule of persons must also be considered in its exceptional form of the exclusion from belonging, banishment, or ‘disappearing’ as a person. This then gives us the opportunity to consider Agamben’s theory of the state of exception, and to ponder the relation between sovereign powers and the subject. In this chapter, then, both the subject and the sovereign are ‘de-centered’, but also their being or recognition is characterized as a mutual ‘authorization’.

One of the basic counter-claims of slave against master, or subject against sovereign, concerns harm to body or soul. Trauma, suffering, pain and indignation are thus the topics of Chapter Four. We may thus explore the ways in which aversive forms of subjectivity become defined and their boundaries renegotiated, with an interest in tilting balances of power and justice towards various kinds of political programmes and forms of compensation. Pain and its infliction and/or relief are not merely forms of punishment and treatment, but also methods for the production of forms of truth. The recent attempts to authorize torture as part of a ‘war on terror’ are examined, and the roles of torturer and physician are compared in terms of the powers to cease pain and to produce truth. Then we consider governmental actions directed towards defining, screening and treating depression, and the shifting boundary between ‘normal’ sadness and ‘abnormal’ depression is highlighted. Thus an alleviation of suffering becomes a public obligation, but the field of actionable suffering also changes according to new forms of medical perception. Modern industrial societies have also institutionalised means for spreading the risks of work-accidents and addressing their consequences, as a technique of justice-as-compensation. This has led to developments in occupational medicine and rehabilitation that over-ride what the worker ‘knows’ about his or her capacity for work, and seek thus to ensure an attachment to the labour-process. Another contemporary means for publicly addressing suffering is the political apology to victims of past policies that are now deemed to have been wrong. A reading of Kevin Rudd’s apology to Australia’s indigenous peoples is undertaken to illuminate its rhetoric and strategic purpose. This chapter raises then the question of a politically significant subjectivity of victimhood, and considers some of its effects on the shifting balance of power-relations.

Chapter Five is mainly about the modern concern with happiness and its place as a principle for governing people’s aims and expectations. The popular and utilitarian conceptions of happiness are examined and then problematized in light of the more pessimistic or sceptical psychoanalytic theory that perceives a closer and more ambiguous relationship between pleasure and pain. Happiness is thus positioned as a regulated residue of jouissance, and is also viewed in the context of the consumer culture of late capitalism. The supposedly ‘self-evident’ place of happiness in political discourse is questioned for its circularity and emptiness, and the political programmes aimed at the maximization of happiness or well-being are examined more closely. So, we consider some of the rationality and aims entailed in the positioning of happiness and subjective well-being as objects of political action, as well as the obverse point of view – that is, the misery and melancholy that accompany the desire and the misrecognition of lack that underpin western views of happiness.

Chapter Six considers how our capacity to trust is significant in the public realm and how trust as a quality of close interpersonal relationships may be generalized to complex social systems. This picks up the traditional theory of social capital, from Jacobs to Fukuyama, but then problematizes that strand of theory as we look more deeply at the recent efforts to reify and instrumentalize trust as an economic resource. The institution of money as a social relation of trust is then used to crystallize and expand upon these problems. The chapter considers some of the theories of the origins and nature of money. Questioning Marx’s theory of money as a universal equivalent, I propose that money be seen as capitalism’s empty signifier and as the exceptional commodity; and hence its relations to other symbolic systems, especially language, and to sovereign power are clarified. Trust and reciprocity are performed within, and they reproduce, complex systems of signification, involving the tying and untying of obligations between people.

Chapter Seven places the desire to know and the processes of ‘getting to knowing’ in the context of power-relations and conflict, as distinct from the related empirical, scientific problem of knowing about the nature of things in themselves. Knowing the enemy, or the loved one, is the paradigmatic problem here, then, rather than knowing about objects or laws of nature; and the chapter begins with the example of what Colin Powell said the US ‘knew’ about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in February 2003. Some general comments on epistemology follow, drawing especially on the ideas of Nietzsche and Foucault, and using the example of the opinion poll as a political tool for knowing a population. We then explore some of the political reshaping of how and why we know in the context of the commodity logic of ‘knowledge economy’ discourse and the effects that the new era of ‘performativity’ has had on the medical profession. In the following section, we also explore the converse, or the politics of hiding what one knows and deceiving others, especially in the practice of counter-espionage, such as in the double-cross system in World War II. The chapter ends with a consideration of the knowledge that we don’t know, or the unconscious – ‘the censored chapter’, as Lacan puts it.

Chapter Eight is about how we love, and hence about how the boundaries between permissible and impermissible forms of love-relations are governed. How do you know if your lover is cheating on you? How do you know if the woman accompanying a man is a lover or a prostitute, or something else? To what kind of rule is incest the exception, and how do we know when it’s been broken? The chapter begins with the theme of sexual jealousy, and considers the ways and means of producing truth about the other’s desire when troubled by such uncertainty. This theme causes us to consider, and then to reinterpret, the story of Oedipus, partly to free our understanding from what I consider to be an intellectual strangle-hold that begins with Freud. The Oedipal theory is thus de-naturalized. Nonetheless, the links between the power to rule and the permission to love, and their unconscious enactment, are acknowledged. Exceptional familial relations that arise from unforeseen circumstances and that create ambiguities for basic forms of sexual taboos are explored through narration of non-fictional stories. And the ‘conduct of conducts’ in the field of intimate relationships is exemplified by the myriad ways in which cultural and legal principles about economic transactions, gift exchanges and recognition of relationships are played out. This leads to discussion of the role of the superego and the problem of ‘repression’, a now widely known Freudian concept that has been reframed by Lacan and challenged by Foucault. I finish the chapter with a further reinterpretation of the Oedipal drama by focusing on the parental abandonment and banishment of the infant – as an exception – at the outset of the story, and the way in which his fate unfolds not just in spite of, but because of the efforts that the protagonists take to evade it. This leads to reflections about the unconscious as law, sovereignty as the ‘zone of indistinction’ between law and violence (as Agamben would put it), and its confrontation with and regulation of desire.

As a concluding chapter, I pick up on a now rare usage of the verb to conclude that can be found in Locke’s Second Treatise and that has a legal-political meaning. This leads to reflections about the nature of the authorial voice and the position of the reader, and reflects upon writing, or concluding the reader, as a political act.

The currency of knowledge: or, the PBRF in ruins. Part 1

2009-10-16T11:51:00.000+13:00

I’ll begin with a story of practical details. The micro-politics of the PBRF reached a new level in mid-2009. After the completion of an internal mock-PBRF assessment at one of our esteemed universities, academic staff whose research output over the previous three years was considered to be well below a level likely to gain a B rating received a letter from the Dean raising concerns about their individual research productivity. The matter was framed in terms of the employee’s contractual obligations and the criteria for the PBRF. Recipients of this letter were summoned to a meeting with their Head of School, at which a member of the Human Resources staff would be present. At this meeting, research objectives would be reviewed and performance targets would be set. If satisfactory progress were not made within three months of that meeting, the letter warned, a performance management process would be initiated. Essentially, this was a written warning about poor performance, following which disciplinary proceedings could eventually be implemented. Under such conditions, dismissal is always a possible outcome if performance does not improve as required, although this was not explicitly alluded to in the letter itself.

Now, one could argue about the lawfulness of this action by the employer. But that is not my business today. In any case, mediation between the employer and the union over the letter has been undertaken and that seems to have produced some change. As if intending to make the PBRF look even worse, however, another, equally-esteemed university shortly afterwards announced that it would ‘fine’ colleges, to the tune of $40,000 per year, if their projections under-estimate the numbers of R-rated staff in the 2012 assessment. Heads of departments were, I believe, asked not only to estimate numbers, but also to provide lists of names.

But let’s suppose now that every university in New Zealand had written a warning letter to every PBRF-eligible staff member who had scored an R in 2006. Let’s omit those with an R(NE) who had the excuse of being ‘new and emerging’ researchers at that time. If we include the colleges of education, which either had already merged, or were about to merge, with universities in 2006, the total number of staff under the gun would be about 1,000 (Tertiary Education Commission 2007). That’s about 16 per cent of the academic workforce of universities, who were eligible for PBRF assessment, at that time. And that’s not allowing for the possibility that some who scored C or R(NE) could also come under scrutiny at some stage.

Imagine issuing poor-performance warnings to 16 per cent of the academic workforce, telling them to produce research within three months or face further disciplinary actions. Dismissal is not ruled out.

Taking the letter I have just cited to its logical conclusion, that’s what could have happened. But if all academics were expected to get a B rating, as the letter suggests, then the proportion of us under such managerial disciplinary surveillance and control would rise to over one half. That’s conceivably more than half of the universities’ academic staff at risk of disciplinary proceedings, and even dismissal, for the alleged failure to produce enough research at a presupposed level of quality.

Now, perhaps this is taking the matter to Orwellian, and hence fictional, levels. And so, before I am (again) accused of indulging in a supposed ‘myth of the despotic regime of production’ (Curtis 2007), let me make a few observations about the complex relationship between members of the Academy and the PBRF. First, the PBRF has been designed, developed and applied, if not misapplied, by academics – by us and by our own colleagues. If we think of the PBRF as a virtual intellectual Panopticon, as a set of constraints and a method of surveillance that produce the internalisation of a moral code, then it is a Panopticon that was designed, built and even guarded by its own inmates.

And let’s not overlook the indignant and the swollen egos, the anxiety and the sheer vanity, produced by those A-to-R grades. While some have argued that the PBRF gave them recognition and validation as researchers that their own managers could never find it in themselves to give, others have railed against unfair assessments, bias among panels, or a failure to recognise the activities that they happen to cherish the most.

Did we really have to take it so seriously? After all, the PBRF is basically a mechanism for allocating some public funds around the tertiary education sector. It’s not the gaze of the Master – though sometimes one would think it were, given the importance that some attribute to its results. The desire for a kind of validation given by such an external judgement – even though it has limited validity – allows it to eclipse, for many of us, the intrinsic estimation of our own work. The exaggerated meanings attaching to PBRF results, and how they are thought to reflect upon the reputations and performance of individuals and academic units, are the product, I suggest, of an excess of signification. And so to strip the PBRF of some of this excess, we need to look again at its intended effects.

Now, as the aforementioned letter does quite correctly point out, the PBRF income to the university is intended to recognise and support the allocation of time to research, and also to research-based teaching, especially at post-graduate level. The freedom that we enjoy as academics to devote ourselves to inquiry and experimentation in fields of our own choosing – and to support advanced students in the same – is reflected in this fund. The PBRF designers intended it to respect institutional autonomy and not to interfere with academic freedom. But no-one ever cogently argued, in the conception of the PBRF, just why an external instrument of fiscal policy should be permitted to influence the priorities and the allocation of time and resources within the universities. Nonetheless, we let the Clark government get away with it. While it is widely thought that New Zealand does not invest enough resources in research, no-one had come up with any analysis, to my knowledge, that showed that universities were doing less than they ought. And certainly no-one has stated what the optimal level of research output – at any specified level of ‘quality’ – should be for any particular university. The PBRF has never come with a clear set of goalposts, to put it simply. Taken to its logical conclusion, the optimal arrangement for PBRF purposes would be an academic staff contingent every member of which gets an A. Not only would this be practically impossible, but any attempt to achieve it would jeopardise the development of the future generation of researchers and scholars – not to mention devotion to teaching.

The message of the PBRF seems simply to be that more – or at least the appearance of more – ‘high-quality’ research is desirable. Growth is good. The sky could be the limit, were it not for the fact that another effect of the PBRF is that the universities are now competing madly with one another to retain much the same real level of funding that they got in previous years. As Adams pointed out, in his independent evaluation, the PBRF is creating a Red Queen race – where the contestants madly scramble to stay in the same place – due to little real increment in the overall fund. But compete they must, so as not to lose their share of the money (Adams 2008: 77).

Hence the pressure reaches down to the individual staff members, who are the ‘units of assessment’ and whose individual scores are aggregated, using a published formula, to create the final figure awarded to each institution.

Now, the statutory basis of our freedom to undertake research and critical inquiry is to be found in Section 161 of the Education Act 1989. There are three features of the wording of that section that deserve to be highlighted.

First, the Act provides clearly for the freedom of academic staff and students of the university, as an autonomous institution, ‘to engage in research’. But, secondly, this is a freedom neither to do nothing nor to evade accountability. Subsection 3 speaks clearly of ‘the highest ethical standards’, of ‘public scrutiny’, and of the need to maintain accountability for the use of resources. That is perfectly reasonable, and we do expect one another to maintain such standards. Indeed, thirdly, subsection 4 requires that, among others, the Councils and Vice-Chancellors ‘shall act in all respects so as to give effect to the intention of Parliament as expressed in this section’. That is, academic freedom is described in the Act as a freedom to undertake research and critical inquiry, provided certain standards are met; and the governors and managers of the university are bound by this, and must (at least) respect this freedom at all times.

So, there is a dilemma here in the expression of our values as academics. On one hand, especially in the humanities, we ideally came to this institution in order to pursue the highest goals as researchers and scholars, and this informs and supports our teaching as well. And so those goals are intrinsic to our careers. Some, especially those from former colleges of education that have been taken over by universities, may feel they have not had such a choice, I admit. But the freedom to engage in research and the quality of the university as ‘critic and conscience’ are clearly defined in the Education Act, as well as in long-standing traditions of the university. And we largely accept those conditions willingly. I cannot defend those who may accept the privilege of academic freedom but who will not use it productively. There have always been such individuals, and there have always been lawful processes for dealing with poor performance by an employee.

What I find troubling about managerial interventions such as that referred to at the beginning of this talk, on the other hand, is that the PBRF creates an environment wherein an external governmental fiscal instrument becomes the rationale for an application of managerial authority, including a disciplinary threat, imposed upon academic staff in order to produce more research, so as to produce more income for the university. This appears to contravene the Education Act’s requirement that the governance and management of the university should give effect at all times to the intent of the academic freedom provisions. Managerial coercion does not give effect to academic freedom, in short. So, how did we get to this? Have the government and the universities been taken in by Rousseau’s idea that some people must be forced to be free? Or is it the exercise of sheer power that satisfies them?

In spite of some critics, I would not put this down simply to some kind of insidious force that one might conveniently label ‘managerialism’ or ‘economic rationalism’ or anything vague like that. The zealous (if not over-zealous) application of the PBRF, and its extension into many aspects of the life of the university and the consciousness of academics, are effects for which we ought to accept some ownership, if we are to be honest with ourselves, and not to project them onto some ill-defined ‘other’.

The PBRF was designed by academics, the TEC consults academics about any redesign issues, and the implementation processes within universities are managed largely by senior academics. These are our colleagues, and, if we are serious about maintaining at least a semblance of an academic community and of collegiality, then we need to accept that the PBRF belongs to us, and that we produce its effects. Furthermore, of those among us who have actually been assessed by the PBRF, how many have not felt some kind of keen anticipation, or apprehension, about the results? Did you feel like a student waiting for final grades? I’m sure there were some – a few – who were completely and sublimely unconcerned. But my point is that, for better or worse, the PBRF and its results clearly mean a lot to most academics – not just intellectually, but emotionally too. It got under our skin. And we need to take ownership of it now that it’s there.

The PBRF has become a source of division and aggravation within the academic community. It has divided opinion between members of different universities and different disciplines, between those who gain and those who don’t, and between academic leaders and their more junior staff; and it has had the unfortunate effect of becoming the source of employment relations problems. It may not be long before the PBRF is the cause of litigation.

Further, the PBRF has encouraged the inversion of the very values that have supported our culture of research and scholarship. In 2003, I was quite well disposed towards the PBRF, but my views rapidly began to change when I heard colleagues say things like: ‘If I publish this there, it will look good on my PBRF portfolio.’ A fairly innocuous statement, but, to me, it implied that the funding of universities had become the reason, rather than the support, for what we do. This thinking becomes an institutionalised constraint when universities coerce staff into doing more research on the rationale that the university must maximize its income. Research has thus become a way of augmenting the institution’s income, more than income being deployed to promote research. Research ought to be valued for its advancement of human knowledge and its social and economic benefits, but the cart has been placed before the horse, I fear.

I also know that there are bright people who are early in their careers and considering a permanent role in the university, and older academics at the point of considering retirement, for whom the PBRF has become one of the main disincentives for remaining in the Academy. That potentially translates into real losses of talent, but this will never be quantifiable.

For many academics, including many very talented researchers and scholars, the PBRF is the most detested aspect of the new ‘university in ruins’ (Readings 1996), this university shaped by auditing and by performativity. For others, the PBRF may, simply and brutally, be the reason why they get the sack.

While the universities need the funding, the assessment system that is used to allocate that funding has become, in my opinion, part of the problem. The present assessment system is fundamentally flawed and I’ll briefly list what I believe those flaws are:

• Undue pressure to produce results assessable in the PBRF discourages the next generation of researchers and scholars who are currently contemplating academic careers. People busy doing doctoral or post-doctoral research are told by their seniors that they are ‘research-inactive’. That can be very demoralizing.

• The PBRF discourages the application of existing knowledge to social and economic problems, including knowledge dissemination in the classroom and beyond. Who, for example, is keen to write a textbook now that the PBRF is in force?

• There has been manipulation by institutions of eligibility criteria, resulting in interference in employment agreements.

• The assessment process is costly in terms of people’s time, and it creates a lot of administrative costs for institutions and for the TEC.

Imagine, furthermore, if I were to plan a research project that would involve evaluating an organization by collecting evidence from all of its employees about their personal performance. That evidence is then to be evaluated and each employee given a rating, and the score for every employee is then to be passed on to the employer to use for internal purposes, including performance management, and also to be passed on to the individual employee. The latter party will have no right to challenge the personal score, even if there is good reason to believe it does not accurately reflect performance. And if any employee refuses to take part in the evaluation, he or she may face disciplinary proceedings, so full participation is guaranteed. Such a research proposal would be treated as an outrage and immediately thrown out by any research ethics committee. And yet, the TEC and university managers consider that they have the right and the need to ride roughshod over those very ethical standards that we, as researchers, are strictly required, for good reason, to abide by. The freedom to engage in research has a statutory basis in the Education Act, and the Act also requires the academic community to abide by ‘the highest ethical standards’ at all times while exercising that freedom. When we, the researchers, are evaluated personally for the quality of our research, why is it that the TEC and our own academic leaders regard themselves as free to abandon such ethical standards? I struggle to find any justification for this. Confronted with this ethical problem, the only reply I have heard from university managers is to resort to the imperative of ‘employment obligations’ – again, an appeal to sheer coercion, as distinct from ethical, consensual conduct.

I am afraid, though, that the likely alternative assessment model – using bibliometric data – could be a whole lot worse, depending on how it is designed. People are already cross-validating PBRF results with publications and citations data from Thomson Reuters (Smart and Weusten 2007; Smart 2009) and even from Google Scholar (Smith 2008). I do not recommend that we condone any such research-quality assessment, as the shortcomings of these methods are well documented (Evidence Ltd 2007). All such governmental assessments are likely to be corrosive of academic freedom, and we should comment critically upon them, as we see fit. If I sensed that there were sufficient disaffection and courage among academics to do so, I would welcome direct resistance to leave the PBRF in ruins. After all, the whole system stands or falls because of us. If we really wanted to end it, we would have by now. But I do notice that many of my colleagues are committed strongly to the PBRF; and even many of those who complain about it are, I suspect, paradoxically in thrall to it.

The really critical issue currently in the redesign of the PBRF for 2012 concerns the reporting of individuals’ scores to the employers. In my opinion, this is in breach of the Privacy Act, as, given the past practice, the employer makes no effort to ensure that each researcher has given informed consent to the disclosure of personal information; and this is the issue that could leave the PBRF in ruins, if it’s not resolved. It is the reporting of individual results directly to universities that makes the system useful, as a management tool, from the universities’ point of view – but it is also the means by which the assessment system can be abused by the universities as employers.

The reporting of individual results, without informed consent and without effective rights of review and appeal, has brought the PBRF into disrepute with the very researchers upon whom the assessment depends. A way of resolving this problem for 2012 will hopefully be reached soon. If it were not for the mismatch between the unit of assessment (the individual) and the unit rewarded (the university), however, the system might not be in such disrepute as it is now.

The currency of knowledge: or, the PBRF in ruins. Part 2

2009-10-16T11:48:00.000+13:00

So that was the pragmatist’s tale. Now let me stand back from that for a moment. The metaphor of ‘the currency of knowledge’ in my title today stands for two things: for the demand to be ‘up to date’ – to know what is ‘current’ – and also for the monetary unit of value. To call money ‘currency’ is in itself a metaphor. The currency that flows from the sovereign’s decree can be seen as both cause and effect of knowledge, and the PBRF partakes of this. The PBRF is a fiscal instrument that produces incomes for institutions, and it also uses the commodity logic of knowledge that sees knowing new things as a means to producing wealth and augmenting power. Research and the researcher come to be measurable in monetary terms (Duncan 2008). Some of us enjoy that; others don’t. Out of that situation, there appear to emerge two kinds of discourse within the academic community. One of these seeks to accept the power of this system, and indeed calls upon it to complete its project. Within this discourse, if there are criticisms of the PBRF, it is likely to be of a kind that says that there are loopholes that should be closed, normally involving even more paper-work, or that the assessment should include and hence validate something that presently may appear not to be included, like practice-based or commercially applied uses of research. The PBRF is the gaze of the master, and so we want more of it, we want its recognition, and we want it to be distributed fairly. Some of my comments about design-flaws within the PBRF may fit this type if those flaws are taken as matters to be addressed and corrected.

The alternative discourse places the PBRF in a prominent role within a history of the university that is typified by a corruption of values and an undermining of the traditions of learning and scholarship, within which the future of the humanities, as a traditional foundation of the university, appears to be in jeopardy. Rather than see the PBRF as a productive project that must be progressed and completed, the PBRF is examined and found wanting. It is seen to create a partial or incomplete representation of knowledge. My own comments about academic freedom and the PBRF perhaps fit into this second type of discourse. The danger with such talk is that it may depend upon a nostalgic view of a university that never really was.

Whether one demands more or less of the PBRF – or some alternative method – one may remain stuck within its horizons. Instead of talking about research, academics talk about the PBRF; or, they discuss the purpose and value of their research and publications in terms of the demands of the PBRF. Even if we tried, we cannot be completely innocent or ignorant of it. It does not merely count and evaluate researchers, leaving the field of research in academic disciplines untouched. It does actually change the perception of and motivation for academic activities. Some think that’s a good thing. I don’t.

I think academics need to stop asking for more recognition from this external assessment, and start asking why it has managed to insinuate itself so deeply into the universities.

Is this irritation that I’m expressing a symptom of something? The PBRF is certainly not the only bureaucratic policy structure to be created lately in the universities under the banners of accountability, incentives, performance, and the like. If anything, we can expect the funding, and hence the management, of universities to be increasingly performance-based in future. This represents a dramatic shift in the nature of the university as a bureaucracy: that is, to view the university as a hierarchical organization of offices whose activities are based upon the routine administration of policies and procedures.

Maybe not all of us would like to see the university in that Weberian light, but the university is a bureaucratic organization, and a particular model of bureaucratisation, closely linked to governmental policy instruments, is developing and can be seen quite clearly through the example set by the PBRF. It is worth considering, then, just what bureaucracy represents to us, psychologically. A proposition in psychoanalytic organizational theory, which could work as a premise, has it that participation in organisations generally, and bureaucratisation in particular, serve as a defence against anxiety (de Board 1973; Diamond 1993). At the obsessional extreme this can lead to a lifeless rigidity of behaviour and a narrowing of the field of perception. In academic terms, that would breed the kind of learning that is highly specialized and devoid of much reference to the complexities and pleasures of everyday life. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

Let’s add to that, though, this new form of anxiety that is controlled, if not produced, by the new emphasis on performativity – on the questions of what can our learning do or produce, how it competes, and how much can it earn – as distinguishable from the question of what our learning may tell us about the world and the mind that apprehends it. The PBRF and the concern for external funding and commercialisation of research all participate in that kind of anxiety of performativity, as does the herding and corralling of students when counted as EFTS. Should I suggest, therefore, that the new university is a university of performance anxiety? Were I to do so, I would not deny the implications of an anticipated failure to ‘measure up’ or to achieve pleasure and generativity that the idea of performance anxiety evokes. The only thing I would want to correct there arises from the fact that performance anxiety tends to be a masculine anxiety, and so perhaps the metaphor is too partial.

After all, the university is still referred to as Alma Mater by its alumni. Checking the OED, I learned that Alma Mater translates as ‘bounteous mother’ and was a title given by the Romans to goddesses, such as Cybele, who represented fertility and growth. For some, surely psychologically significant, reason, Englishmen adopted the term in the nineteenth century to refer to the schools and universities that had nurtured them in their youth. Is the notion of the university as an embracing and nurturing maternal institution that encourages ethical-intellectual growth still possible?

If things like the PBRF are symptomatic, they may be products of the anxiety and the excitement that we feel about knowing and not knowing – and this is frequently a matter of who knows, or who uses what they know, before others do, in the pursuit of some strategic purpose. And since we no longer consider knowledge as the thinking of an isolated Cartesian subject – in favour of relational, or even conflictual, understandings and utterances – the idea of competitiveness as productive of knowledge is not alien to us as theorists. So, is the notion of the university as an institution shaped by performance anxiety really a reflection of the dominant present-day ‘discourse of the university’? The performativity and the utilitarian ethics of the disciplines of economics and management do seem to dominate decision-making. If we try to re-establish a voice for the humanities in the university, is that voice doomed to be speaking in a space defined by managers, economists and the like? And, if one were to rebel against that idea, would this only be a form of nostalgia, based upon the old Newmanesque notion of a university of impartial, but perfectly useless, knowledge? Though I hasten to add that I too am proudly capable of producing work of no apparent utility, and I would defend any academic’s right to do so.

Derrida (2001) insisted on even more than what we know of as academic freedom, and said that the university should be granted an unconditional freedom to assert and to question, and to profess whatever may be considered to be the truth. Certainly, the statutory academic freedom that we are permitted in New Zealand is not unconditional. But, can we even profess, truthfully, the notion of an unconditional freedom? Is not the ‘free’ subject, including the scholar, always somehow under the permissive gaze of the Sovereign? Can we support an image of a university as a Platonic Academy, suspended in a pure abstract form of freedom, and not contingent upon the world around it and the norms within it? I don’t think we can. Academic freedom is a product of sovereign and strategic relations of power and cultural norms, and it exists always in a relation of tension and compromise with the world around it. By one means or another, it must be paid for and granted; and it sits alongside similar liberties and privileges, such as parliamentary privilege, freedom of the press and judicial independence. Academics are largely timid people who are afraid to speak out, and thus afraid to exercise the conditional freedom that they do have; and they thus allow others to lead the renegotiation and struggle over the administrative practices, such as the PBRF, that impinge upon, if not undermine, academic freedom. If academic freedom really is being eroded, then the academics themselves are partly responsible for that, due to their own anxiety.

What, then, is a University? Constitutionally, it is a creature of statute, but this fact will not satisfy the motives for that question. For most of my life, I have been occupied within the university, and yet I am reluctant to make a general statement to characterise what it is. Obviously, whatever it is, it is changing, due to new requirements and imperatives. Different people in different disciplines occupy themselves in the university for different reasons and with different understandings about their surroundings. I suppose, then, that there will be different kinds of universities for different kinds of scholars. That’s one of the good things about a university.

What I am sure the university ought not to be is a mere corporation whose business is to maximise its income through the production of skilled professionals and economically useful inventions. Universities may always have achieved such aims, but they also must do much more than that. I work within a University – thought of as a global institution with no walls – that has an intellectual heritage of more than two millennia and that began to appear as a recognised autonomous institution in the middle ages. I have a very tiny part to play in that long tradition, and the worth of what I do – in the sense of a worth that sustains my own work – is based in a number of qualities. That worth begins with my own curiosity and sense of intrinsic interest, but it’s also sustained by a striving to do justice to the authors who have come before me, to use my native language to the best possible effect, to use both my intuition and my capacity for logical argument, to rely upon the best evidence when I can find it, and to acknowledge the merits of a good argument, regardless of whether it pleases me. That includes engaging with the world in a range of different registers, sometimes practical, sometimes scholarly, sometimes poetic, but always examining what has enduring value in what we can know and what we can say. These are some of the intellectual and ethical qualities of learning that I try to use and to display, and to develop in my students. These qualities are needed well beyond the privileged space of the university and will stand our students in good stead as they become informed readers, theatre audiences, parents, barristers, journalists, scientists, politicians, physicians, and leaders in their various fields.

We work here for the intrinsic worth and the self-discipline of our careful reading and writing. The qualities of thought and action that such disciplines can develop are crucial for our ability as a society to conduct our affairs civilly, creatively and progressively. The University is not the only place where people can learn such ethical and intellectual lessons, but it does play a vital and enduring part in that. A life in the University enriches the capacity to speak and to act mindfully.

References

Adams, J. (2008). Strategic Review of the Performance-Based Research Fund: The Assessment Process. Leeds: Evidence Ltd.

Curtis, B. (2007). Academic life: Commodification, continuity, collegiality, confusion and the Performance Based Research Fund. New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 32(2): 1–16.

de Board, R. (1978). The Psychoanalysis of Organizations. London: Tavistock.

Derrida, J. (2001). The future of the profession or the university without condition (thanks to the “Humanities,” what could take place tomorrow). In T. Cohen (ed.), Jacques Derrida and the Humanities: A critical reader (pp. 24-57). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Diamond, M. (1993). Bureaucracy as externalized self-system: A view from the psychological interior. In L. Hirschhorn and C.K. Barnett (eds), The Psychodynamics of Organizations, Philadelphia: Temple University, 219–236.

Duncan, G. (2008). Counting the currency of knowledge: New Zealand’s Performance-Based Research Fund. In I. Morley and M. Crouch (eds) Knowledge as value: Illumination through critical prisms. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi (pp. 23–42).

Evidence Ltd (2007). The Use of Bibliometrics to Measure Research Quality in UK Higher Education Institutions. London: Universities UK.

Readings, B. (1996). The University in Ruins. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Smart, W. (2009). Making an Impact. Wellington: Ministry of Education.

Smart, W. and Weusten, M. (2007). (ex)Citing Research: A Bibliometric Analysis of New Zealand University Research 1981–2005. Wellington: Ministry of Education.

Smith, A.G. (2008). Benchmarking Google Scholar with the New Zealand PBRF research assessment exercise. Scientometrics, 74 (2): 309–316.

Taggart, M. (no date). Some Impacts of the PBRF on legal education. Unpublished conference paper.

Tertiary Education Commission (2007). Performance-Based Research Fund: Evaluating Research Excellence. The 2006 Assessment. Wellington: Tertiary Education Commission.

The Academic as Hero?

2008-02-10T22:37:00.000+13:00

A one-sided popular portrayal of the figure of the Hero would have the qualities of physical action and bravery, and these seem to be the antithesis of the (equally one-sided) popular image of the Academic – the latter being a person bent studiously over a microscope or book, discovering things mentally, rather than transforming lives practically. But this is to underestimate the breadth of what the Hero may potentially represent. The Hero narrative – be it in epic, tragic, romantic, or comic idiom – has only a few basic elements: a journey, leading to transformation, motivated by the discovery of inner resources that the protagonist has never before realized. In this wider sense, then, heroes do not necessarily ‘win’, they are not always liked or applauded, and they are not always in control of their own destinies. The hero may simply be making the best of an adverse or constraining situation – but it is integral to the very creative principle of the Hero that he or she does indeed make some kind of advance under such circumstances.

The Academy certainly creates a series of journeys for the student and the teacher, marked by a hierarchy of graduations and promotions. And it has its own systems of contests, hurdles and constraints – and prizes. Along the way, the scholar ideally discovers intellectual resources – inwardly, as well as within the great stream of intellectual tradition – that he or she greets with awe and delight. Higher education changes people, and the trained Academic should ideally serve as an example of a person who has undertaken such a journey. This journey begins from premises that are as old as Homer and Heraclitus, and then extends forward in advance of one’s own students and readers. So, even the bookish Scholar may have a narrative as Hero.

But the heroic legend most often begins with a depiction of a world that is disenchanted or oppressed, and we don’t have to reach into academic mythology to find the elements of this. The present will do – provided we do not fall into the trap of nostalgia for an idealized past. It is not hard to find personal stories of disenchantment among academics who lament that their world is ruled by a hierarchy of Dark Princes, each of whom chills the life of the mind with his dead hand. Normally, they are in the pay of some higher Master whose interests lie solely in money and power.

So, from what better quarter for there to emerge the Academic as Hero than from under the influence of such Lords of Darkness? The intrepid scholar fights against entrenched orthodoxies and cynicism to win the right to proclaim his new Science. Or, the brave young teacher inspires the younger generation, in spite of being refused promotion by her seniors. Or, the outspoken intellectual upholds radical ideas, against the opposition of the forces of ignorance and bigotry, eventually to be vindicated by Events.

Or rather, to keep things closer to the world we know, the academic may perform those little tasks of her devotion to a disciplined way of reasoning, and to the liberation of young people’s minds from the limitations that their upbringings have inadvertently imposed. And indeed, such things happen. I wonder, though, if the idea of the Academic as Hero only comes up at this stage in our History as a School because we feel so many causes not to act boldly and in the light of true Reason. If the exercise of genuine academic freedom, which includes the practice in the classroom, as well as in learned journals and in the public arena of debate, were more in evidence, we would not stop to write upon this theme. The matter would be taken for granted, and not so romanticized as a reformed identity that only appears in retrospect, as a product of nostalgia for a Golden Age that never happened.

If we did not baulk at heroism, we would not write about it. Conversely, if the Dark Princes actually existed, then the mythology would be as sharp as worn-out pencils. We have to dredge up the rusty figures of this fairy-tale theme from among the sediment of our oldest memories because the depressing truth is that the darkening of our little kingdoms has begun from within ourselves.

The moment I hear someone say that he will not speak up for fear of losing his job, then I say that he has indeed already lost that job. He has forfeited his vocation as an academic. The moment I hear someone say that her scholarly work will help to make her look good when she bows her head and pays tribute to the King, then I say that she may as well have taken a job at the coal mines. I don’t see enough of the bravery and integrity that one would wish to attribute to the figure of the Hero; but instead I do hear a myriad of excuses, including the pursuit of money, for the avoidance of principled heroism.

What's wrong with the PBRF?

2007-08-17T14:52:00.000+12:00

The PBRF has had the beneficial effect of shifting public funding into research-active institutions to acknowledge their contributions to scientific and scholarly inquiry. Many individual academics have found it beneficial also because it has meant that their department and faculty heads now take a more active interest in developing their research careers. Nonetheless, the present posting proceeds to outline some specific detrimental effects of this assessment and funding method.
First, the PBRF is used to make claims about research productivity that do not meet the normative standards of research methodology. Even before the results of the 2006 assessment had been released, the Ministry of Education confidently stated that the PBRF has “helped focus the effort of tertiary research on achieving excellence” (Office of the Minister of Tertiary Education 2006 p. 25). This is in spite of the fact that, on further inquiry by the author, the Ministry was unable to produce any evidence of this at that time, nor to operationally define “excellence.”
Naturally, it is tempting to make comparisons between the results of the 2003 and 2006 assessments to look for improvements in the quality-ratings of institutions and disciplines. But, because of the confounding effects of “window-dressing,” improved form-filling skills devoted to evidence portfolios, and more careful selection of “eligible” academic staff into the census, it is not valid to make before-and-after claims about “research quality” - that is, not if such claims are to withstand normative scientific scrutiny. Nevertheless, it is apparent from the above quote that the Ministry of Education was already anticipating improvements, even before the 2006 results were released. Upon the actual release of the results, however, the Tertiary Education Commission and the Minister for Tertiary Education were quick to make confident claims in their media statements. The former stated, to accompany the release of the results, that the Quality Evaluation “shows early signs of having a positive impact on tertiary education-base research (Tertiary Education Commission, 2007a). On the same day, the Minister for Tertiary Education glowingly claimed: “The results . . . demonstrate that New Zealand is continuing to improve the quality of research” (Cullen 2007).
These claims (which have the tone of Maoist propaganda about a “bumper harvest”) were based on comparisons between the 2003 and 2006 surveys which found, for example, that the number of staff who received “A” and “B” ratings had increased, and that all universities’ aggregate quality scores had risen. A closer reading of the summary of the actual results, however, showed that the Tertiary Education Commission was aware of the confounding effects that prevent us from making any credible claims about “improved research quality” - even though they were confident that there had been a quantitative increase.

"The measured improvement in research quality cannot be solely attributed to improvements in actual research quality as there are [sic] likely to be a number of factors influencing the results of the 2006 Quality Evaluation. Nevertheless, the increase in average quality scores, and the marked increase in the number of staff whose EPs were assigned a funded Quality Category between 2003 and 2006 suggests that there has been some increase in the actual level of research quality" (Tertiary Education Commission 2007b p. 10, italics added).

They noted that recruitment activities by institutions had contributed to the measured “improvements”:

". . . the major increase in “A”s in some subject areas could be traced to senior appointments from overseas - of the 218 staff whose EPs [evidence portfolios] were assigned an “A” in the 2006 Quality Evaluation, it was estimated that at least 48 were appointments from overseas" (ibid. p. 72).

The TEC also noted that the assessment panels had generally commented upon an improvement in the presentation of evidence portfolios - although it claimed that this meant that the 2006 round more accurately reflected actual research efforts and quality. Nonetheless, much of the improvement in scores can clearly be attributed to improved skills among academics and their administrative assistants in filling out the on-line forms with suitably impressive details.
Furthermore, the universities themselves openly acknowledged that they had made more careful efforts in 2006 to exclude from eligibility for the survey those staff who were not research-active and who could be classed as “teaching-only, under strict supervision.” The more research-inactive teachers whom one could thus exclude, the greater the aggregate quality score for the university. Universities had renegotiated the employment contracts of some staff in order to use the PBRF eligibility criteria to their advantage, resulting in accusations of manipulation of the system. A TEC audit found that about ten per cent of the sample of those who were eligible and provided evidence portfolios in 2003 were still employed in the sector in 2006, but had become “ineligible” for the 2006 assessment as they no longer met the criteria.
Hence, if one were to apply the normative standards of scientific inquiry to these results, one would have to say that there are numerous confounding factors that make it impossible to conclude to what extent “research quality” in New Zealand’s universities had actually improved between 2003 and 2006, if at all. Indeed, the sample being surveyed between the two assessments had changed considerably, and not in a random way, due to the funding incentives created by the assessment itself, making comparisons invalid without careful statistical controls - which have not been undertaken. In short, the measurement system, and the manipulation thereof, created their own effects, giving the appearance of improvements in research quality in 2006. Even the TEC was prepared only to say that the results “suggest” some level of improvement in research quality, and they would not speculate about how much improvement has occurred. In short, the PBRF’s results produced no conclusive evidence about its effectiveness in encouraging “excellent research.” Because the PBRF is both a measurement tool and an intervention that attempts to alter that which it is measuring, its validity as a measurement tool is strictly limited.
No such evaluation could ever reach the standards of precision of the natural sciences, and the validity of any assessment of research quality is, of course, dependent on the a priori definitions of “research” and “quality,” and on what specific criteria for measurement are chosen. But, in order to gain the confidence of the very researchers who contribute to the assessment, it would be important for politicians, officials and university managers not to use the results in ways that are not justifiable by the standards required for research reporting in reputable journals.
The PBRF does at least successfully distinguish the research productivity of universities from that of polytechnics. The final quality scores of the eight universities ranged from 1.86 to 4.22, while the highest-scoring polytechnic scored 0.96. This confirmed the institutional distinction, based on research, between these two types of tertiary-education organisations. Given, though, that there is no objective criterion against which to measure research quality (or, what one is measuring is a construct invented by those doing the measurement) it would, on the other hand, be of little statistical validity to draw fine distinctions between scores that are very close to one another. The TEC’s results are not reported with a confidence interval of “plus or minus x points” - partly because of the lack of any underlying objective criterion. But the PBRF results do, of course, create a “league table” of universities that is of dubious validity, but is nevertheless seized upon by reporters for public consumption as news. Such league tables are a common feature of the global university environment today, and, while they are known to be of limited validity, they do become an end in themselves with real effects that begin to reshape “in their own image” the institutions that they purport to describe (Marginson, forthcoming).
So, the relative rankings of the universities became an object of intense competitiveness between Vice-Chancellors, because of their reputational effects. In 2003, the University of Auckland was ranked first; but, in 2006, first place was taken by the University of Otago, leaving Auckland second. But the differences in scores between the top three scoring universities in 2006 was very narrow: 4.22, 4.19, 4.10. Nonetheless, Otago’s Vice-Chancellor was quick to capitalise on his university’s score by claiming that it is “New Zealand’s top university.” The University of Auckland had previously been running an advertising campaign, calling itself “New Zealand’s number one university,” and it did not desist in doing so, using its ranking on the Times Higher Education Supplement’s survey as alternative “evidence.” An unseemly war of words ensued between the two.
The fact that the PBRF, which is really only a governmental audit designed for funding purposes, gets misused for political and public-relations purposes does little to raise its reputation among the very researchers upon whom it depends and whom it is supposed to “encourage.” This is especially so if some of the claims made about the assessment’s results have no underlying validity, as understood by the kinds of research practices required of university researchers. But, such systems of performance management contain within themselves the potential to become instruments of power, exercised in ways that go well beyond their original stated objectives.

This leads me to an examination of the PBRF’s effects on academic freedom. Although academics in New Zealand are free to criticise government policies and to question received ideas, the PBRF nonetheless breaches the Education Act’s requirement of government and of university councils to respect academic freedom. Section 161 of the Education Act 1989 defines academic freedom, and this includes “the freedom of academic staff and students, within the law, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas and to state controversial or unpopular opinions . . . [and] to engage in research.” This is mediated by the requirements to abide by high ethical standards and permit public scrutiny and by “the need for accountability by institutions and the proper use by institutions of resources allocated to them.” The following section of the Act includes the requirement that universities “accept a role as critic and conscience of society.” Section 161 states that the universities, the Minister and all agencies of government “shall act in all respects so as to give effect to the intention of Parliament as expressed in this section.”
Now, it would be an unfair exaggeration to claim that the PBRF represents a gross or blatant violation of Section 161, as New Zealand’s academics are still free to criticise policies and to challenge orthodox ideas. Moreover, academic freedom does not exist in an ideal form, but is always shaped by, and contested within, local, historical contexts. Hence, peer-group norms, academic-disciplinary standards, competitive career objectives, etc. do shape intellectual expression and, from time to time, limit scientific progress. Nor is academic freedom a unique or distinctive liberty, as it sits alongside other democratic principles, such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press and parliamentary privilege. So, while there may never be an ideal institutional space, protected by the Academy’s walls, that preserves an unconditional freedom of thought, the principle of academic freedom does at least provide a check against deliberate interference or manipulation.
Given, then, that the PBRF is, by political design, an attempt to shape the priorities of university researchers, it breaches the spirit of the Act concerning academic freedom. In the TES, the government explicitly states its intent to shape the teaching and research activities of universities in line with its own policy objectives, as a condition of securing public funding. The PBRF in particular seeks to shape research priorities and productivity - and hence the choices of individual scholars and scientists - in line with those national goals. Although I am not at all sure how this present “research output” may be contributing to the government’s goals, the Minister states that it should contribute to his government’s priorities. Governmental and institutional documents are completely transparent about that. So, while not grossly interfering with my freedom as a scholar, this nevertheless represents a direct policy (indeed, political) intervention into my work. The level of monitoring and reporting of individuals’ research productivity has consequently increased, and it should not be forgotten that surveillance in itself does alter behaviour. Activities that were once considered “free,” in the sense of unconstrained by any fear of political disfavour, become required in order to avoid a new form of disfavour. If one is not seen to produce research, one’s position creates a financial risk to the university, and managerial disfavour will quickly follow.
Now, there is an obligation on a person who accepts the privileges of an academic post to exercise one’s academic freedom actively by way of scholarly inquiry and scientific investigation. Many people in academic positions do not actively engage in research - a fact which was always known, but which has been highlighted and quantified by the PBRF itself. And this is, in the author’s opinion, an unjustifiable misuse of the privileges of academic freedom. But the academic freedom that these individuals may have undermined is, in turn, undermined in so far as a system of controls is put in place to “encourage and reward” research - which may be read as, in effect, to make the exercise of one’s “freedom” compulsory and regulated, to goad the inactive into activity, and to “reward” others who are active researchers for doing what they formerly were called to do because of its intrinsic rewards and intellectual value. This paradox expresses itself daily among academics for whom the PBRF becomes the reason for doing research, rather than remaining merely a funding mechanism that supports research that was supposedly already worth doing for its own sake or for its social and economic benefits. Individuals now make choices about their research priorities based on the effect it could have on their quality scores. So, for example, writing text-books, which do not rate highly in the PBRF definition of “research,” is now likely to be neglected in favour of articles for international journals. In effect, the autonomy of the academic community to determine for itself the balance between different forms of scholarship has thus been deliberately re-shaped by political means.
The very purpose and spirit of academic freedom is subtly undermined when the academic community begins to perform research for the sake of a governmental funding mechanism and their university’s share thereof. Academic freedom becomes an academic treadmill. What was once a source of intellectual curiosity, or a matter of professorial judgement, comes to be driven by performance anxiety and fiscal incentives.
Politicians and managers have claimed that the PBRF does not interfere with academic freedom - partially justifiable by the fact that the PBRF assessment makes no critical judgement about the content of one’s publications. Hence, one may still act as “critic and conscience” and yet get a good quality score. This is a fair point, but a superficial one, as it neglects the more pervasive effects that the PBRF is having on academic customs and on the culture of scholarship. When each paper becomes a coin in the university’s slot machine, the pressure comes on from above to shape the scholar’s production of “the currency of knowledge,” and academic freedom is quietly forgotten.
These politically and managerially organised efforts to control (“encourage and reward”) the supposedly “free” pursuit of scholarly inquiry and scientific investigation by means of a system of extrinsic incentives (in the form of extra public funding) directly interfere with the very foundations of academic freedom. This is especially so in New Zealand’s system wherein the individual scholar or scientist is the unit of assessment, and his or her score is known to managers. Hence, the New Zealand Government, its agencies and the universities themselves are failing to perform their duty to give effect to the academic freedom requirements of the Education Act when implementing the PBRF.
So, furthermore, the paradox of “compulsory academic freedom” becomes more starkly evident when we observe PBRF-related performance criteria being linked to employment and disciplinary procedures. Although the PBRF and its individual quality scores were officially intended only for the purposes of a governmental funding mechanism, they are now being misused by university managers for performance-management and disciplinary purposes. In short, the PBRF framework supplies a tool for bullying academic staff and for exerting greater managerial control over their jobs. In the case of Massey University, for example, there is the usual ineffectual “privacy” statement - which purports to ensure that information in evidence portfolios will only be used for the PBRF assessment, and for no other purposes - while, in fact, there is also a “research capability” policy, based on PBRF grades, which threatens academics with relegation to teaching-only posts if they fail to meet the PBRF’s criteria of “research-active,” and advises that employment selection procedures should be based on candidates’ abilities to meet those criteria. Given that managers know the quality scores of individuals anyway, this threat to individual academic employment conditions turns research away from an expression of academic freedom, and creates a “perform or else” imperative. Privacy of personal information is completely compromised.
Hence, one can also observe the commodifying effect of the PBRF. The PBRF inadvertently promotes the perverse perception that the purpose of research is to make money (commodifying research and researchers), rather than institutional income being deployed to produce research for its own value. Each research “output” now acts like a promissory note in a marketplace, creating the confident expectation of augmented institutional income. The active researcher - especially if rated “A” - becomes “hot property” in a competitive employment market; and university research policies are framed in terms of the competitive pursuit of money and the maintenance of financial viability, rather than the pursuit of knowledge and the maintenance of academic freedom. Academic freedom is no longer treated as the premise of the university’s research activities, but instead becomes an obstacle to be navigated in the course of managing “financial risk.” Furthermore, many researchers themselves buy into this commodification by stating that research activities are needed for, or will “look good” within, the PBRF assessment. Many who achieve favorable scores have actively used them to advance their own ambitions. One should not assume that individual academics are merely the “victims” of the new system, as there is a range of individual responses to it, depending, one could argue, on the advantage to be gained from it.

Due to complaints after the 2003 assessment about the costs of complying with the PBRF, the TEC decided that the 2006 assessment was “voluntary” for academics who had previously completed it and been rated in 2003, and for whom no changes were expected. In practice, some universities decided to make it compulsory for all eligible staff to complete an evidence portfolio, for reasons that were not made very clear.
This illustrates two further interesting features of this system: the possibility that the cost of assessment exceeds the value of any improvement in research quality, and the arrogation of the government’s funding audit for internal managerial agendas. On the former point, there is evidence that, once one factors in the costs of producing each PBRF point, the extra funds that the PBRF has so far supplied to the universities may be offset by the cost of performing and complying with the assessment itself. Hazeldine and Kurniawan calculated that the funding reallocation effected by the PBRF over the period 2003 to 2006 “would increase research output by no more than the transaction costs of implementing the new system” (2006, p. 278). This casts further doubt on the political claims about how the PBRF led to improved research quality. In so far as the measured improvements might have represented any real underlying improvement in research quality, one needs to account for the costs of producing such an improvement. Satisfactory results may have been achievable by simply giving the universities extra funding for research, without forcing them through a costly assessment at all. Anecdotally, at an individual level, staff were aware that the time they spent on complying with PBRF requirements could have been time spent in the production of more research. Universities that unnecessarily made the 2006 round “compulsory” were raising their internal compliance costs to a level not even required by the government. This does seem like a senseless waste of time, unless one allows for the hypothesis that the universities’ top management have come to see the PBRF as their own instrument of internal control, and no longer as simply the government’s audit for research funding purposes. When the TEC questioned the Vice-Chancellors about making its “voluntary” assessment compulsory, they were advised by the Vice-Chancellors that the matter was an internal “employment relations” matter in which the TEC had no right to interfere. It must therefore be asked who “owns” the PBRF: the government or the universities? The enthusiasm of the latter for the PBRF comes about because it represents a bigger slice of the public funding pie, as well as an opportunity to extend the reach and the effectiveness of managerial control.

New Zealand’s PBRF system may be viewed as an attempt to “count the currency of knowledge”: to increase the production of “leading-edge” or “world-class” knowledge, and to convert knowledge production into an auditable, money-like form. By making each publication a token convertible into a portion of the sovereign’s budget - and indeed by making the research-active academic a source of a measurable sum of university income - this system partakes of and advances the commodification of knowledge that is typical of the politics of the so-called “knowledge economy.” In doing so, academic freedom is forgotten and undermined, and new managerial capabilities for the control of academic staff are discovered and put into effect. The main objective now is that something reporting on research should appear and that it should appear to be “excellent.” The interest in research itself is superficial, if one takes the PBRF too seriously, as the importance and intrinsic value of knowledge is reduced to its mere appearance and its ability to generate cash. But, there is no firm evidence that the PBRF is achieving its avowed goals. To use the PBRF’s results as evidence for its own success, as politicians and officials have done, is invalid, as the incentives it creates and the consequent behaviours confound those results. Furthermore, the costs of compliance may actually cancel out any benefits produced.
University staff have been slow to assimilate and react to the effects of this new system, but this author’s impression is that sentiment among the academic community is turning against the PBRF, viewing it as a costly, time-consuming scheme with limited benefit for real research, and yet with many disadvantages, such as the rise in invidious competition and managerial control. The PBRF has succeeded in undermining much of what was left of the traditional “vocation” of scholarly and scientific endeavour, as embodied within the university community.

Cullen, M. (2007), ‘Promoting research excellence in New Zealand’. New Zealand Government, 4 May 2007, viewed on 22 May 2007.

Hazeldine, T. and Kurniawan, J. (2006), ‘Impact and Implications of the Performance-based Research Fund Research Quality Assessment Exercise’. In Evaluating the Performance-based Research Fund: Framing the Debate, L. Bakker, J. Boston, L. Campbell & R. Smyth (eds), Institute of Policy Studies, Wellington, pp. 249–284.

Marginson, S. (forthcoming), ‘Global University Rankings’. In Prospects of Higher Education: Globalization, Market Competition, Public Goods and the Future of the University, S. Marginson (ed.), Sense Publishers, Rotterdam.

Office of the Minister for Tertiary Education (2006), Tertiary Education Strategy 2007–2012. Ministry of Education, Wellington.

Tertiary Education Commission (2007a), PBRF Quality Evaluation 2006 Release Summary. Tertiary Education Commission, Wellington, 2007.

Tertiary Education Commission (2007b), ‘Performance-based Research Fund Results’. Tertiary Education Commission, 4 May 2007, viewed on 22 May 2007.

Academic Freedom and the right not to publish

2006-05-30T13:51:00.000+12:00

Against the background of a wider institutional-epistemic shift in universities away from knowledge as ‘end in itself’, and towards a demand for the ‘value-adding’ utility of knowledge as a product or commodity, public policy in New Zealand has adopted a set of ‘national goals’ intended to shape the future of tertiary education and research. These new ideas were revealed in the government’s Tertiary Education Strategy (2002–7) (see my earlier article on this), and are now visible in the working lives of university faculty members through the application of the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) – a system that links a portion of state funding to an assessment of ‘research quality’ derived from an aggregation of assessments of all eligible faculty. Noting a trend toward ‘performativity’ (as described by Lyotard), the PBRF has begun actively to shape the behaviours of university managers and individual researchers. Although there have been repeated assurances that the PBRF does not interfere with academic freedom, the values and practices of free scholarly inquiry and scientific investigation have been challenged by this system. There is less attention to the content of one’s actual scholarly work, in favour of the appearance of ‘excellence’ and ‘quality’ as indicated by, for example, the status of journal publications and the ability to demonstrate ‘peer esteem’. The new significance of research is not only its ability to ‘drive’ the knowledge economy, but also its ability to assist the universities in ‘improving their share of scarce research resources [i.e. money]’, to quote an internal Massey University policy. Research is performed in order to earn the university money, rather than funds being provided in order to support research that emerges from intellectual curiosity and debate. Staff who fail to ‘perform’ research thus represent a ‘financial risk’ to the university, and disciplinary efforts are proposed to marginalize them. So, have research and publication become the expression of academic freedom, or the output of an academic treadmill? If research activity comes to perform the role of making money for the university, and if the lack of research on the part of an academic may then lead to disciplinary action, is the principle of academic freedom thereby undermined at its very foundations? If cash-strapped university departments find it sometimes difficult to reciprocate by appropriately supporting staff in the ordinary course of their scholarly activities, should information about any resulting ‘research outputs’ be withheld from university records, thus depriving the university of fiscal and reputational credits for work it has not supported? The very purpose of scholarly integrity is undermined when, instead of telling oneself ‘publish or perish’, one’s host institution now says ‘publish or be fired’. Rhetorically, one must now ask: ‘Does academic freedom include the freedom not to publish?’ – assuming that is not the result of mere laziness or incompetence. The new ethics of the knowledge economy, as they are evolving in New Zealand’s universities, can be understood as a redistribution of power relations in these institutions, effecting the disciplining of faculty, accompanied by changes in intellectual norms and organizational customs. Lyotard’s original analysis of knowledge and performativity takes on a prophetic tone when re-read today.

The Hapless Victim

2006-05-08T10:31:00.000+12:00

Why is the fantasy of victimhood now being claimed by the Right?

The word ‘hapless’ suggests unfortunate, and so a ‘hapless victim’ is a person to whom some bad thing has happened, without his choosing or deserving it. But, with a bit of a twist, the word ‘hapless’ also suggests the lack of any hap-pening. The hapless victim could thus be a victim to whom nothing actually happened. It is politically dangerous, it seems, to suggest today that the self-appointed victim has not had anything bad happen to him. The victim has a morally self-validating subjectivity that is rarely questioned, and he is supposed to excite our sympathy. But the more we elaborate scientifically and technically the sources of risk – and the more we insist on the adoption of protections from the multitude of risks – the more, in effect, we are turning the status of actual or potential victimhood into a form of masochistic enjoyment.

But, just as we know that the relationship between pain and injury is not a simple, linear one, ‘what happens’ in a person’s life is not clearly, in a simple or direct way, related to the experience of trauma, the essence of being a victim.

The hapless victim must fantasize a sadistic subject who is supposed to know – one who has deliberately singled out the victim for special persecution and who knew in advance what would hurt the most. The hapless victim only becomes a victim retroactively, following the elaboration in fantasy of a sadistic subject. The fantasized sadistic perpetrator becomes a focus for putting the question ‘Why did this happen to me (and not to someone else)?’ There needs to be some Other to whose desire this question is being addressed. ‘This happened to me because it gave you enjoyment’. The bad thing that happened is thus the perverted outcome of a sadistic urge, intended personally for the victim, and the knowingly sadistic subject who initiated the traumatic event can thus be identified and blamed.

This takes us to the extreme hypothesis that ‘nothing happened to me’ could in itself become traumatic.

People who are involved in a ‘near miss’ in a tragic accident or disaster where some other persons have been harmed will often report a ‘bystander’ trauma of a kind that arises from the question ‘Why was I spared while another person was so seriously harmed?’ The fact that no harm happened to me (it happened to someone else instead) may result in a sense of disbelief, unworthiness and guilt that could persist and be considered a kind of trauma in its own right. One was sadistically singled out in being spared – or so this ‘victim’ may imagine.

But, taking the above hypothesis even further, could those who experience the greatest good fortune and privilege in life (those to whom nothing extraordinarily bad has happened) validly claim a new form of victimhood? Is there an intriguing contemporary form of victimhood which says that society’s ‘oppressed’ have come to victimize the victors? In other words, can the political Right – who represent the more privileged sectors of society – legitimately claim a kind of victimhood arising from the various social movements that have attacked their various powers and privileges?

Certainly, the desire to disempower or emasculate the Master that is evident in supposedly emancipatory social movements has some effect on the social balance of power. One of the catch-phrases of the Left used to be ‘Blame the System, not the Victim’. But, it seems now that those who have benefited most from ‘the [capitalist] System’ want to co-opt the figure of the Victim for their own purposes. Hence, men are now the victims of a feminist conspiracy to deny them access to their children, with the backing of recent laws; decent white folks are now the victims of affirmative action and ‘special privileges’ enjoyed by ethnic minority groups; the rights of criminals and prisoners are said to cause a neglect of the victims of crime. In short, the Right now sees itself as upholding the rights of a new subject-position of Victim, one which has been created by a Leftist conspiracy (often captured by the phrase ‘political correctness’). The Victor now identifies with the Victim, and seeks, supposedly, to foreclose any further strategic victories for the Left. Those to whom nothing really bad ever happened can now also enjoy the masochistic privileges of victimhood.

Desire and Happiness

2006-05-04T15:36:00.000+12:00

Freud’s pessimism about happiness may be viewed in the context of a tradition, especially among Continental thinkers, that expresses reservations about, and even hostility towards, the concept of happiness. Zizek argues that happiness in political discourse is ‘inherently hypocritical’. The demand to fulfil numerous social rights is not only an impossible one, but those who demand them do not really wish them to be realized. The power to make such demands assuages the social conscience of those who make them and exposes the impotence of ‘the Master’; whereas, the meeting of such political demands would confront privileged intellectuals and critics with the threat of genuine popular liberty and equality, and thus undermine their positions of privilege. But his analysis of ‘happiness’ seems inconsistent, as he also says: ‘[in countries] like Czechoslovakia in the late 1970s and 1980s, people actually were in a way happy’, in part because they were dreaming of things they could not have (1) – revealing perhaps a nostalgia for the period prior to the transformation to capitalism.

Zizek’s thoughts derive from the psychoanalytical tradition of Freud and Lacan, and hence this introduces the theory of desire, which is pertinent to understanding happiness. As Lacan (2) described it, desire emerges with our entry into the symbolic order. While all organisms have unconditional needs for various objects as a matter of survival and reproduction, humans acquire the necessary skill of asking for what is needed. Speech thus creates an unbridgeable gap between a pre-existing network of signifiers (by means of which we negotiate the terms of our relations with others) and inner drives and needs. In humans, then, satiable need re-presents itself as open-ended desire.

In thinking, then, of relations between people and commodities, happiness as ‘good feelings’ that arise from the ‘satisfaction of needs and wants’ is insufficient in the light of a theory of desire. The goal of marketing, for instance, is to make of the mundane ‘need-satisfying’ commodity an object-cause of desire, a condition of access to enjoyment (sex, status, etc.). It must have that X-factor, ‘the Real Thing’ that constitutes ‘something in it more than itself’. Production and consumption under advanced capitalism are premised upon the ceaseless and unbalanced search for growth, innovation and ever-new objects of desire that serve to incite Desire per se. Capitalism’s reigning discourse, in Lacanian terms, is that of the hysteric: ‘this vicious circle of a desire, whose apparent satisfaction widens the gap of dissatisfaction . . . [or] as in capitalism, where a growth of production to fill out the lack, only increases the lack’. (3)

Capitalism, rather than providing for happiness and satisfaction, manufactures an ever-widening field of desire, and innovative ways in which commodities create invidious distinctions, and hence ever-widening gulfs of resentment, dissatisfaction and anxiety. While happiness blandly evokes the pleasure principle, the ‘organization of enjoyment’ (jouissance) underlying the injunction ‘consume!’ (or ‘desire more!’) cannot be equated with unalloyed pleasure. Instead, it is predicated upon envy and upon the anxiety that accompanies not having something. The fantasy of happiness may help to sustain our desire in a capitalist economy, but it is in the very nature of the desiring subject not to satisfy desire. (As Proust puts it: ‘every paradise is a paradise lost’.)

A Lacanian psychoanalytical account of the politics of happiness would base itself on the notion of the constitutive role of ‘lack’: the idea that existence and identity are founded upon a negativity that cannot be represented symbolically, and that must be repressed in the interests of the coherence of the symbolic order and of the imaginary constructs of self and community. Symbolic systems of identity formation, including broader social institutions such as political ideologies, seek to construct an illusion of completeness or universality, focused upon a ‘master-signifier’, such as Liberty or Equality, that acts like a ‘quilting-point’ in the field of discourse. This serves to exclude elements that may erupt to disturb the impression of universality – but this exclusion is violent in origin and must be disavowed or repressed. From this kind of theory, Happiness would simply be viewed as another master-signifier, necessarily masking the foundational violent act. It would not be hard to identify retrospectively what was excluded through a political discourse of Happiness in an affluent society, by pointing to phenomena like depression and addiction, or by balancing the wealth of the North against the poverty of the South. For social critics who argue that the affluent society has failed to maximize human happiness, the most disturbing revelation would be that there is really no ‘obstacle’ to a happier society – because there is no such thing to aim for. The enjoyment of these critics is thus invested in their identification of these very ‘obstacles’ (materialism, competitiveness, SUV owners, etc.) because these are the images that sustain the fantasy of a happiness-to-come.

1. Zizek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real (London: Verso, 2002), pp. 58–60.

2. J. Lacan, Écrits: A Selection (London: Routledge, 2001).

3. S. Zizek, ‘Eastern Europe’s Republics of Gilead’, New Left Review, 1/183 (1990), pp. 50–62, p. 60.

Recent Publications

2006-05-03T13:41:00.000+12:00

Here are my publications for the years 2003-5, inclusive:

Duncan, G. (2003). Workers’ compensation and the governance of pain. Economy and Society, 32(3), pp. 449-477.

Duncan, G. (2003). Moral hazard and medical assessment. Victoria University of Wellington Law Review, 34(2), pp. 433-441.

Duncan, G. (2004). Avoiding tick-box compliance. New Zealand Education Review, 9(5; 28 April–4 May), pp. 14–15.

Duncan, G. (2004). Advancing in employment: The way forward for vocational rehabilitation. Victoria University of Wellington Law Review, 35(4), pp. 801–809.

Duncan, G. (2004). Society and Politics: New Zealand social policy. Auckland: Pearson Education.

Duncan, G. (2004). Pouvoir et savoir: The Tertiary Education Strategy and the will to know. New Zealand Journal of Tertiary Education Policy, 1, 1–9 [e-journal at URL: http://www.aus.ac.nz].

Duncan, G. (2005). What do we mean by “happiness”? The relevance of subjective wellbeing to social policy. Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, no. 25, pp. 16–31.

Browning, J. and Duncan, G. (2005). Family Membership in Post-Reunion Adoption Narratives. Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, no. 26, pp. 156–172.

Duncan, G. (2005). Child poverty and family assistance in New Zealand. Zeitschrift für ausländisches und internationales Arbeits- und Sozialrecht, 19(4).

To act in the absence of law 1

2005-12-16T06:49:00.000+13:00

The phrase 'in the absence of' has a peculiar effect. It is not quite the opposite of 'in the presence of', and it is this latter phrase that I will examine first. To be in the presence of something implies being located in a space in which something or someone else is also located. And this usually signifies being in the presence of something powerful or significant. One might be ‘in the presence of the King’, whereas it would sound unusual to say ‘in the presence of the clock tower’. This ‘presence’ to which we refer has some outward-reaching effect that imposes a power, and hence to be ‘in the presence of someone’ does not necessarily mean to be simply physically close to him or her, but it does mean to be within the reach of that person’s authority or awareness.

To stand, then, ‘in the presence of the law’, while not a very common turn of phrase, does at least conjure up the image of being, for example, in a court of law where the figures of judge and prosecutor exercise their powers.

What does it mean, on the other hand, ‘to be in the absence of something’? The two phrases are not simple antonyms. Whereas the preposition 'in' has a spatial connotation in the phrase 'in the presence of', the same cannot be said concerning 'in the absence of'. How can one stand physically in an absence, a complete lack? There is a different usage of the preposition 'in' in this case, the sense being ‘in the condition or state of’, as in, for example, a building that stands ‘in ruins’. To be in the absence of something is thus to be in a state in which that ‘something’ is altogether lacking.

‘To act in the absence of the law’ would thus not be the same as that other interesting phrase outside the law. The outlaw is defined by acts that nonetheless imply the presence (somewhere) of a law that can be broken, with agents that could pursue the law-breaker. The outlaw may not be directly in the presence of the law, he or she may be successfully evading ‘the law’ (meaning the agents of the state), but the outlaw can only be known as such by the presence of a law that can be broken and which claims jurisdiction over that subject.

If, on the other hand, law is absent altogether, if one can act with no law implied or in force at all, what would it mean? Is such an act possible? Does the fact that the law is ‘silent’ (as they say) on one’s more trivial daily acts mean that these acts happen ‘in the absence of the law’? Or is the law somehow ‘present’ even then, implicitly watching, just in case one were to transgress it? Just because some act is neither forbidden nor required by the law may not necessarily mean that the law is ‘absent’ in that moment.

So, ‘to act in the absence of the law’ implies neither that one is an outlaw nor that one is innocently law-abiding. It implies something more radical than that – and perhaps we would be talking about a state of nature, if that were not a theoretical fiction constructed largely for the sake of justifying the sometimes intrusive presence of the law in everyday life. Even if there were once a state of nature somewhere on Earth, the idea is not descriptive of anyone’s life today. And, if we are to follow John Locke’s theory about the state of nature, all that is absent from it is the codified law of civil political society. The inhabitants of a Lockean state of nature are guided by their own reason, and hence able to apply a ‘natural law’. Law, by this account, is originally ‘natural’ (hence accessible by reason) and ‘God-given’ (being revealed in Scripture), and so can never be completely ‘absent’.

So, let us ask again what it could possibly mean ‘to act in the absence of the law’. Even if one is not breaking the law, the citizen-subject is of constant interest to the law, at least in the sense that one has an abiding legal identity, and that records of one’s daily life, any moment of which could possibly be used as evidence in a court of law, are constantly accruing (just in case) on electronic records, in people’s memories, etc. in a multitude of forms. The subject is therefore constantly in the presence of the law, at least in as much as being always potentially within its reach, or under its gaze, should there be cause to notice. One constantly leaves a trail of evidence.

We should also distinguish this (so far) very puzzling notion of acting in the absence of law from that of a ‘state of exception’, a stage in a nation’s history or a regime that suspends the rule of law and takes emergency powers or assumes an arbitrary dictatorial force. Perhaps ‘suspension’ of the law is not the best metaphor to describe the state of exception, but rather one should say that the force that enacts its own ‘law’ under such circumstances has simply revealed the excess of violence that under-girds any rule of law, even the most benign and democratic. The ruler’s actions in a state of exception are thus not exactly ‘in the absence of law’, but perhaps they emerge more directly from the very kernel of the law itself.

To act in the absence of law 2

2005-12-16T06:48:00.000+13:00

To be in the absence of something does not imply a spatial relation, since such an absence is not locatable anywhere. It is rather a condition of being without something – in this case, of acting in a way that lacks the grasp or gaze of the law. It is neither law-abiding nor law-breaking; neither forbidden nor compulsory, nor even permitted by the law. To act in the absence of law is thus neither to act against the law, nor to position oneself outside the law, nor to act ‘innocently’ within the law, nor to use dictatorial fiat to suspend the law. Is there then a kind of act that happens in the absence of law, about which the law cannot speak, at which the King cannot even nod approvingly (let alone disapprovingly)? If so, what would such an act be like? Can we think of an example?

Zizek’s ‘plea for Leninist intolerance’ is perhaps a useful clue here. Under a liberal-democratic rule of law, the citizen-consumer is constantly invited to invent and reinvent an ‘identity’ and a ‘lifestyle’ based on an expanding scope of ‘choices’, but this ‘formal freedom’ is only permitted provided that it does not challenge or disturb – and preferably that it should ‘happily’ support – the social and ideological balance. Freedom must be ‘within’ the law that permits such choices. In contrast, ‘actual freedom designates the site of an intervention that undermines these very coordinates [of the existing power relations]’ (Zizek, 2002). Acting in the absence of law could imply such an ‘actual freedom’. This hypothesis can act like a bookmark for the time being.

Let us begin again from the other end of the problem, and risk contradicting some of the meanings assumed so far above.

Before we trouble ourselves too much over the apparent paradox of acting in the absence of law, one might also ask again what it means to be in the presence of the law. It may be that the notion of the presence of the law is the really problematic one. Kafka’s famous parable ‘Before the Law’ depicts the supplicant from the countryside at the Gate, waiting interminably to be admitted into the presence of the Law, presumably to experience Justice in being judged or vindicated. The Gate is open, but the time is never right for him to be admitted through it. When finally he is about to die he asks why no-one else has come to the Gate, and he is told by the gatekeeper that the Gate was only ever intended for him. As the supplicant dies, the Gate closes. The Gate existed only for him, as if the sole gesture of the Law’s ‘presence’ in his life were to keep his attention to the ‘presence’ of a misrecognised absence. Is that Law – the Law into the presence of which we eternally hope to be admitted to receive its healing balm of ‘justice’ – only ever an imaginary or reified ‘presence’? Are laws already being made around us while we wait eternally for admission to the Law itself? Is the supplicant’s act of waiting (to be admitted into a presence that’s really an absence, a lack) somehow central to the imaginary ‘game’ by which we enact the laws of everyday life? In short, are we always already ‘in the absence of Law’, while imagining it to be present somewhere?

The effect of laws is to reify a Law that is thus believed to be eternally and consistently present in everyday life. If a law is basically a performative utterance creating its own norm, its force depends in part on the consensual ‘suspension of disbelief’ in this reified Law. But, a law, in enunciating a norm, also creates the opportunity – and indeed the desire – for its own transgression. And the Law always permits itself the exceptions to its own laws. The infliction of death, imprisonment, and the seizure of property are sanctions, ‘by rights’ reserved for the Sovereign, against those who violate a citizen’s ‘life, liberty and property’.

But, more generally, the supposed existence of Law is imagined by means of imagining its absence. Hence, the fiction of a state of nature, wherein one stands ‘in the absence of any civil law’, helps retrospectively to explain and justify the supposed presence of Law. The Law, in order to found itself somewhere beyond mere tautology (‘the law is the law’) or brute force (‘might is right’), must posit an exception to itself, an absence of itself, existing in another time or another place (‘Thus in the beginning all the world was America…’, as Locke put it) – a time or place where human-made Law was absent.

Hence, a supposed absence of Law (in an imaginary dystopic past or anarchistic future) is often used to justify the Law’s very presence.

But, further than that, let us return to the proposition that there may be a kind of act, of the type that Zizek has called an act of ‘actual freedom’, that challenges the very co-ordinates of the law and of the present power relations, and hence that is performed in a space in which that law can be thought to be genuinely absent.

On tsunamis etc.

2005-01-28T12:18:00.000+13:00

The person who sets an ideal of human happiness and freedom up against the brutalities of human evil and natural disasters and the pain and suffering they cause is often motivated to ask: ‘If a benevolent and omnipotent God really did exist, why is there so much suffering on the world?’ Such an inquiry does less to alleviate any actual suffering than it does to reveal a desire to expose God’s impotence, if not non-existence. Such skepticism depends on a one-sided image of God for its consistency. That is, it must not concede that there may actually be an horrific and painful aspect to divine creation, nor that these terrible qualities may be integral to the sublime itself. The general desire of the sceptic is merely to deflate the image of paternal or divine powers.

The unattainability of happiness and the frequency of human misery are not to be taken as signs of failure or as a frustration of human desire – let alone as a violation of our rights as humans or as a betrayal of some divine covenant. On the contrary, this constantly failed, but somehow necessary, attempt to symbolize and attain a positive, limited form of enjoyment is what constitutes and identifies happiness, psychologically and politically.

Money money money

2005-01-28T12:16:00.000+13:00

If you take a $20 note to a shop, you can get goods and services in return. If you deposit it at a trading bank, they’ll pay you interest. But, if you take that note to the Reserve Bank, they will only give you another one in exchange. This says something about money as a signifier and its relationship with the figure of the sovereign. The irrational, brute force assumed by sovereign power is ultimately what backs the Reserve Bank (the bankers’ bank) and its power to issue notes that are ‘legal tender’. This guarantees the note’s command over goods and services – and hence over other people’s labour. On the one hand, the note is pure signifier, the signifier that stands for all other economic signifiers, the commodity of commodities (so to speak) that stands outside of the market for economic goods and services, and yet that forms the unity (the very unit of measurement) and liquidity of the market. This fact is even more obvious as money digitizes and becomes only virtual data. On the other hand, the note is pure object, a worthless excrement (no mistake that Freud saw money as symbolic of excrement), society’s most notorious objet petit a. It stands as a desired remainder and Master Signifier, symbolically outside and yet formative of the marketplace, and it operates not just as a ‘signifier of value’ but also as an object of (im)pure desire itself.

Ahmed Zaoui

2004-11-05T07:11:00.000+13:00

Ciano’s Café, Boston Rd, Mt Eden
2.50 pm, 29 October 2004

I’ve just driven away from the Auckland Remand Centre carpark – a free man. I’ve ordered coffee and cake and embarked on writing my memo to myself about my first conversation with Ahmed Zaoui.

The most poignant memory of the visit involves the last moments in the visitors’ room, after Ahmed had disappeared behind the doors leading to the cells. Most of the other inmates, though visiting-time was over, lingered to kiss and hug their wives or girlfriends, their sons and daughters. They were mostly young men, and the guard waited patiently to shepherd them back inside. The inmates quietly said goodbye, while we – the visitors who were about to be released to the world again – mustered by the locked, electronically-controlled door. Only after all the inmates were safely returned to their concrete pen could we, their beloved visitors, make our way out.

On the outside, I enjoy one of the common pleasures of urban life. It’s a grey, humid Spring day. There are pink blossoms on a nearby tree. But the sweetest thing is my freedom to get up and go when I please. The intermittent rain that bothers us so much at this time of year would be like something from heaven for Ahmed if he could stand in it right now and feel it moistening his face.

It is upon the very nature of such liberty that our political culture and our law base their self-esteem and their sense of justice. Those who are deprived of it are held only with good reason, in humane conditions, and the reasons for their detention must be tested in court.

And yet, in Ahmed Zaoui’s case, this reasonableness and scrutiny seem to be absent.

But, what were my first impressions of Ahmed Zaoui as a man? Clive and I were waiting at table number 18 when he came in. He approached me, offering his hand to me, with a warm smile and with the pleasure of greeting beaming in his eyes. Here was a man of warmth and humanity. I could see that straight away. He said he expected me to be older than I am. Ahmed and I were born in the same year.

Clive inquired how he was feeling. It was Ramadan, he had been fasting during the day, and he was looking quite lean beneath his graying beard and his cotton prison clothes. He refused an offer of chocolate from one of the vending machines. He said he was well, though admitted to some ups and downs.

Web links to happiness research sites

2004-10-20T07:04:00.000+13:00

Ed Diener at the University of Illinois
http://www.psych.uiuc.edu/~ediener/

World Database of Happiness
http://www.eur.nl/fsw/research/happiness/

Martin Seligman, Positive psychology
http://psych.upenn.edu/seligman/pospsy.htm

David G Meyers
http://www.davidmyers.org/happiness/

Social policy

2004-10-18T09:15:00.000+13:00

Social policy, by its own definition, implies both 'action' and 'reflection' - intervention and research, knowledge and authority. But society is not a passive object of interest, to be studied and improved. The act of producing and disseminating knowledge of 'the social' actively shapes the social. This is not just by shaping our perceptions thereof, but in fact by altering and challenging attitudes, reinforcing preconceptions, initiating debates, and also in changing behaviours and attitudes in marginal but meaningful ways. Simultaneouosly, 'society', 'nationhood', 'identity', 'risk' and 'problems' all come into view in new ways. In addressing social problems, social policy also creates and recreates them - by altering our understandings and by shaping the real effects of political power and economic distribution and by shifting attitudes and influencing choices. By addressing one perceived inequity, policy creates new ones.

Social Policy thus assists in the production, the reproduction and the very history (or evolution) of the social and all its attendant problems or obstacles to people's happiness.

The production of statistics for social indicators and correlates that may be described as 'factors' (producers) of risk or resilience of subjects is a political technique for bringing the social into view, and for problematizing and forming it as a legitimate object of governmental authority.

After Happiness

2004-10-14T04:35:00.000+13:00

Welcome to this new blog site. Its topic is the 'political uses of happiness', and it will function as an information and discussion site surrounding the writing of a book, the title of which is 'After Happiness'. This book will examine the social, economic and political discourses that employ the term happiness, and it will investigate the fate of this key term in modern thought. If you are interested in this topic, please come back.
Grant Duncan