EMOTIONS AND PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY IN ACADEMIC WORK

Maaret Wager

Faculty of Social Sciences

P.O.Box 54

FIN-00014 UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI

Finland

email:

Paper presented at the Higher Education Close Up Conference 2, Lancaster University, 16-18 July 2001

1. The objectives

What is the connection between our academic work, professional identity, and emotions? This was the question that started to puzzle me when I was interviewing academic women for my earlier research at the turn of the 90's. In that piece of work I was exploring the constructions of femininity in Finnish academic women in terms of the continuity between their private and professional identity (Wager 1994; see also Wager 1998). During the interviews I found myself sharing the women’s joy, their passion and enthusiasm, as well as their fears, pain and anxieties. The process of ‘collecting data’ was stirring up my emotions to the extent that I decided I needed to understand more about the connection of emotions with our professional identity and academic work.

It took a few years before I had a chance to start making plans for the current study. The study eventually started as part of a research project Gender and Academia at the University of Helsinki, and also as part of an interdisciplinary national research programme on Science and Science Policy. The social psychological study that I am working on concentrates on emotions, gender, and professional identity of academic women and men. The paper is based on this research in progress.

My aim in this paper is to construct a particular reasoning dealing with research practices, academic culture, and the identities of academics. I will present some extracts from the large and versatile interview material collected for the study. I have given a lot of space for the data as such in this paper, because the way these academics talk should ‘ring the bell’ - so to say - among us, and inspire us to exchange some thoughts and feelings in relation to the way we perceive ourselves and our work in academia, as well as our relation to the world outside academia. I will also present a few selected dialogues between the interviewees and myself, the interviewer, in order to illustrate the ways in which the relationship between the two may turn the interview situation into a discussion between colleagues, who jointly engage in accomplishing particular identity positions representing instances of the socio-cultural realm of academia.

2. The social construction of emotions

The main question in my current research is:’How are the work-related emotions intertwined with the ways academics construct their professional identity?’ (see Wager 1999). One of my basic assumptions is that we use particular conceptions of emotions in order to give meaning and provide explanation for what we are, and what is our work for, and about (cf. Lupton 1998). As opposed to being instinctive responses in Darwinian terms, or something uncontrollable that just ‘happen’ to us, emotions are understood here in the constructionist framework as learned, rehearsed, and worked upon (Averill 1986; see also Hochschild 1979, 1983). What this means is that emotionality locates us in the world of social interactions: even if we experience emotions as inner feelings, they are generated through interactions with others (Averill 1980; Denzin 1984; Harré 1986; Lutz 1988; Parrot and Harré 1996).

By learning the language of emotion in the given cultural context, we tend to absorb, and then express, the standards and values of that culture (Harré 1986; see also Jaggar 1989). However, emotions are not culturally imposed, but appropriated from and confirmed in the given socio-cultural realm (of, say, academia). Since emotions are closely linked with our values, they can be regarded as one of the central experiences of self-validation from which we claim and establish an (academic) identity (Bedford 1962; Harré 1986; see also McCarthy 1994). ‘Being somebody’ is not only social but also emotional.

When psychodynamic perspective is included in the framework - as I have done - it is possible to shift the emphasis from any kind of ‘discursive determinism’ to the notion of a multiple and contradictory self incorporating also inner conflicts and the potentially disruptive unconscious (Denzin 1984; see also Hollway 1989). Central to the psychoanalytic theory is the idea that people deal with feelings that are potentially threatening to themselves such as anxiety, fear or envy, by mobilizing the unconscious defence mechanisms. For example, the (unconscious) feelings of insecurity and fear (in relation to, say, one’s future options in the academia) may be transformed into a feeling of superiority or resistance to the social norms of academia and its expectations. This is something I will come back to later in the paper.

3. The genderization of research work

The other basic assumption that I hold on to is the notion that people have a gendered self, or subjectivity, through which we interpret our experiences. From the constructionist perspective, gender differentiation is understood as the activity whereby we ‘do’ gender, as opposed to something that we ‘are’, or ‘have’ (e.g. Lorber and Farrell 1991). Consequently, to talk about the subject of science, the researcher, is to talk about one’s gendered self that is not determined or monolithic, but ever changing and constantly moving ‘accomplishment’. And even if there was a ‘core’, or an ‘essence’, to our gendered self, it would be multi-layered and shaped and developed in the course of our personal history through childhood to adulthood (cf. Hollway 1989).

At a general level of meaning, emotionality is culturally coded as feminine, while lack of emotionality is dominantly represented as masculine (e.g. Crawford et al.1992; Lupton 1998; cf. Fisher 1993). The idea that women’s psychological make-up relates to the social and emotional aspects of life, whereas men are more rational, as well as autonomous and achievement-oriented, can be found through the history of Western thought. During the period of the Enlightenment, in particular, the possession of reason and rational processes were equated with men’s sense of masculine identity (Seidler 1987, 1989; see also Edley and Wetherell 1995). Emotions were understood as obstructing the rational thought process - required especially in the scientific pursuit - and perceived as misleading the thinker from the objective, value-free path of inquiry (see Lutz 1988; Jaggar 1989). Against this backdrop, (an emotional) academic woman was almost like a ‘contradiction in terms’ (see Rossiter 1982), and the phrase ‘men of science’ was, up until the twentieth century, almost literally equivalent to the identity tagged ‘scientist’ (Cole 1979).

Evelyn Fox Keller, who combines the philosophy of science with the psychoanalytic theory, maintains that the beginning of the modern science in the seventeenth century Western world not only gave birth to the masculinity of the scientific mind but also to the ’genderization’ of science itself (Keller 1985). This was brought about by dividing the world into the knower and the knowable, where the former denoted the (masculine) mind reaching control over the latter, the (feminine) nature. Science was hence constructed around the naming of the object of research as female and the subject (the researcher) as male. Scientific knowledge was understood as different from other modes of knowledge which were ‘affectively tinged and, hence tainted’ (pg. 142). According to this still existent logic, argues Keller, female academics are faced with a critical problem of identity: either we have to identify with the masculine mastery of the object of research, or we have to redefine the terms. Clearly, also male academics may call for redefinition of the terms of scientific mastery but, by contrast to women, their identity does not require it.

Keller maintains that the dichotomy between the subject and the object of research emphasizes the objectivity of the scientific endeavour and thereby the autonomy and independence of the researcher. A flair of ‘omnipotence’ of the researcher is obtained by the conviction that despite the borderline between the knower and the knowable, the knowledge nevertheless is attainable. Scientific pursuit can therefore be seen as representing a ‘direct communion with nature, or God, for which the scientific mind is uniquely, and unquestionedly equipped’ (Keller 1985, 142). To put it bluntly, within the heritage of the ‘Age of Reason’ the prototype of a scientist is an autonomous and omnipotent man with gigantic mind stuffed with untainted but most complicated thoughts. In common language, he is a bit of an oddball. As far as ordinary people are concerned, he does not fit in.

However, if we have a closer look at the current cultural codes we notice that simultaneously with this (often unexplicated) belief system concerning science, the traditional cultural distinction between notions of femininity and masculinity seems to have become more and more blurred. Nowadays it looks as if the ideal of a ‘developed’ person was constructed as ‘someone who combines feminine intimacy and emotional expression with masculine independence and competence’ (Cancian 1987; ref. Lupton 1998, 135).

Now, does this entail that the phrase ‘men of science’ has started to decompose? By introducing extracts from my interviews with academic men and women, my hope is to explore this question. I will ask: what are those cultural practices and discursive operations through which academics produce and reproduce academic meaning systems that appropriate, and confirm, their identities as academics? What are these identities made of?

4. Choosing the interviewees for the study

The study is based on 24 interviews, 12 with women and 12 with men. My sampling strategy may be called theoretical, or purposive sampling (see e.g. Mason 1996). My aim was to choose ‘key-informants’ in academia (see Spradley 1979). This implied that the ones that I contacted had established their position as academics in Finland (and most likely internationally as well), and they were acknowledged by others. They were therefore ‘inside’ the academic community, and were supposed to be committed to it. It can also be assumed that they knew the ‘academic-discourse’ well, because they were part of it and they obviously constructed it as they went along.

Like a social anthropologist, I was hoping to make visible some general aspects of the academic culture through the specificity of the accounts of these distinguished academics. My assumption was that the accounts of the academics who had worked for quite a long time in academia represented the dominant professional culture better than, say, those of young postgraduates who might still be in the margin of the community. Furthermore, since my aim was to read the material ‘gender sensitively’, it was important to have both female and male informants in the data.

I did not use any ‘objective’ criteria for evaluating the professionalism of those I was going to contact - such as the number of their academic publications. Neither did I choose famous emeritus professors, but wanted to find academics who were somewhat closer to my own rank. My aim was to find people that I thought were suitable for my cause, that is, people who were able to explore themselves in the kind of way that would tell me something. In order to do this, I used my own experience, or rather, my intuition (cf. Boucouvalas 1997). I contacted academics that I found interesting and therefore wanted to talk to. I might have read something from them, or about them. Some of the informants I knew personally because of some joint projects in the past, or on the basis of whatever other academic connection. However, non of them were my close friends.

I was hoping that by choosing people who were not so far ahead, or behind, me in terms of the academic career ladder, and hence of somewhat similar status and age would be favourable in the interview situation. First, I would have a lot of everyday understanding on what the interviewees might be talking about, and I could therefore use my previous cultural knowledge when analysing their accounts. Second, the interview situation could encourage confidentiality in terms of shifting the interview situation into a conversation between colleagues, and back to an interview again. Because of my aim for a self-reflective analysis of the data, I was not only interested in the informants’ descriptions of emotions at work, but also on those discursive operations through which we, the interviewee and the interviewer, together reproduced the cultural meaning systems related to academic work. My question later when reading the transcribed interviews was: what kinds of identity positions do we accomplish in the context of the interviews?

In order to give a description of the data, I have divided the participants into three categories in terms of their field of expertise: The Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Natural Sciences. The Faculty of Theology is included in the Humanities, and the Faculty of Law and the Business School are included in the Social Sciences. In the Natural Sciences are included the Faculty of Agriculture and Foresty, the Faculty of Medicine, and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. In each of the three categories there are 8 informants: 4 women and 4 men, 24 interviewees altogether. What might be of interest to mention here (for the sake of the arguments presented later in the paper) is that only half of the women have children, whereas among the men ten out of the twelve have children.

My aim was not to search for the ‘typical’, or to make any general statements about the phenomenon in question, but to identify and make visible discursive operations contributing to the constructions of academic identity. However, in order to talk about ‘academics’ instead of, say, social scientists, the ‘horizontal distribution’ of the sample is wide: there are informants from a variety of departments in each faculty. The ‘vertical distribution’ is the opposite: most of the informants have rather high status in their field, like a professorship. Furthermore, most of them are middle aged - like myself. Overall then, most of the informants (and myself) are approximately at the same stage in their academic career, and have spent about the same amount of years in academia. As a consequence, I expect them (us) to represent well the ‘key’persons contributing to, and maintaining, the socio-cultural realm of academia.

The data gives rich and versatile descriptions of the experience of academic working. In the current paper, however, I will not be able to illustrate but only a fraction of these descriptions. My hope instead is to demonstrate how the adopted discursive practices of ‘research’, or ‘academic work’[1], suggest underlying meaning systems that confirm a rather familiar but contradictory construction of academic identity.

5. The interview situations

Every interview started with a question about the participant’s emotions in relation to the research work in a seemingly simple way: ‘How does doing research feel like?’ An open question like this gave the interviewee a ‘permission’ to start exploring the issue from whichever angle she or he found personally relevant. Some of the interviewees responded in terms of giving fragments of their life story throughout the interview, others reflected on their mental and spiritual self in detail. In these cases the situation could easily turn into a kind of therapy session in which I was given the position of a therapist, or a close friend. Alternatively, the confidentiality worked both ways. There were also informants, whose main focus was on the work process itself. They described in detail the way they tune into their work, the different stages of the work process, and the emotions involved in each stage. All of the informants also talked about teaching and other activities related to their work.

The point of my interview strategy was that by asking about the emotions involved in academic work I wanted to prompt the interviewees to talk about their working methods, and themselves when working, in a personal way. This aim in mind I also tended to respond to their accounts instead of only listening and asking questions. Most of the interviewees seemed to take full advantage of the situation in which they could talk to somebody (me) in such a way that enabled them to explore and reflect upon themselves. At the end of the interview, most of them said that they had enjoyed the occasion.

Also I enjoyed talking to, and listening to, these people tremendously. Although I had developed the themes of discussion beforehand, I improvised on the spot with each person. We discussed all the themes, but the chain of association that led the conversation was different in every interview. In addition to the themes of discussion, we talked about professional as well as personal matters in the course of most of the interviews. After these discussions, my previous acquaintance with some of the participants became more friendly. We realised that we had something in common - which will be demonstrated later in the chosen extracts.

Overall, I think the fact that I knew many of the interviewees and they knew me, as well as my strategy to use my own subjective views and intuition in sampling, were more rewarding than any formal method of sampling would have been. However, the kind of closeness that tended to develop between the informant and myself during the interview could affect the interview situation, as well as my reading of the data, in an unpredictable way. There might be a bias caused by my too strong identification with the people I am studing. This issue calls for a careful reflection in relation to the material as a whole - which is not possible in this paper. My hope is, however, that by including myself in the material presented and interpreted here, the possible bias will be manageable to the reader.