Bourdieu and Academic Capitalism: Faculty "Habitus" in Materials Science and Engineering

In today’s interconnected world economy, science and technology (S Slaughter Robbins, 1993). Thus, Bourdieu’s views of the academy have been criticized as inadequate to capture the contemporary complexities around academic capitalism (Delanty, 2001). It has also been suggested that Bourdieu was not always consistent over the span of his lengthy career with his conceptual formulations (Swartz, 1997). This may also be the case with his work about the nature of the academic world given that it is clear that higher education as an organizational field is embedded within his broader theoretical framework in which all organizational fields are influenced by larger social, cultural, economic, and political conditions. Based on empirical data, we argue that Bourdieu’s theoretical framework is indeed quite adequate to describe the academic field in light of academic capitalism. To accomplish this, we present Bourdieu’s academic field based on his notions of field, capital, habitus, and strategy, and how these concepts might apply today in light of academic capitalism. Then, using Bourdieu’s academic field as the conceptual framework, we present an empirical study of faculty work in one specific field in engineering that exemplifies current tendencies brought by academic capitalism. Finally, we discuss the relevancy of Bourdieu’s framework to characterize faculty work in light of academic capitalism as well as providing a discussion of practical implications.