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The new language of sociology: ‘Line manager’

November 7, 2011 1212

At some point during the past decade, the line managers began to arrive. Many sociology departments lost their ‘heads’, who then re-appeared under the aforementioned label. This development forms part of the much-discussed corporatisation and commercialisation of British higher education in recent years. To begin with, the advent of the line manager underlines a gradual, still partial shift in universities’ organisational ethos from a deliberative model of collective decision-making, driven by properly academic considerations, to the top-down, military-like chain of command characteristic of the world of business. Second, where heads of department are often senior academics enmeshed in the structures of intellectual exchange and collaborations within their departments, line managers may be full-time administrators without an academic agenda, who see their primary role in the implementation of the corporate strategies defined by more senior managers. They therefore may serve as a conduit between academics and the new class of academic/corporate managers, opening their departments up to increased surveillance, performance monitoring, and top-down control.

Of course, this scenario in many cases may not apply, and line managers may well continue to work along the lines of traditional heads of department. Rather than making undue generalisations, it is my intention to bring to the fore the cultural imagery which the term ‘line manager’ conjures. This imagery might serve as a springboard for a discussion of a number of interesting questions: How, if at all, has the advent of the line manager re-shaped the conditions of intellectual labour in sociology departments? What has its impact been on matters of curriculum design, choices about research areas to be emphasised or discouraged, the balancing of teaching and administrative workloads, and so forth? Has the intrusion of the language of top-down management had significant effects on academic freedom within sociology departments? Given the changes which institutionalised sociology in Britain is certain to face over the coming years, this questions will certainly merit thorough consideration.

My career so far has taken me to a fairly wide range of places, and this has allowed me to experience a wide range of approaches to sociology and social science. In my blog, I reflect on this diversity and its implications for the future of the discipline. Over the last few years, I have also become interested in exploring the contours of academic life under neoliberal hegemony. Far-reaching transformations are taking place at universities around the world, in terms of organisational structures, patterns of authority, and forms of intellectual activity. With my posts, I hope to draw attention to some of these transformations.

View all posts by Daniel Nehring

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