Far from allowing a governance of universities by the invisible hand of market forces, research performance assessments do not just measure differences in research quality, but yield themselves visible symptoms in terms of a stratification and standardization of disciplines. The article illustrates this with a case study of UK history departments and their assessment by the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and the Research Excellence Framework (REF), drawing on data from the three most recent assessments (RAE 2001, RAE 2008, REF 2014). Symptoms of stratification are documented by the distribution of memberships in assessment panels, of research active staff, and of external research grants. Symptoms of a standardization are documented by the publications submitted to the assessments. The main finding is that the RAEs/REF and the selective allocation of funds they inform consecrate and reproduce a disciplinary center that, in contrast to the periphery, is well-endowed with grants and research staff, decides in panels over the quality standards of the field, and publishes a high number of articles in high impact journals. This selectivity is oriented towards previous distributions of resources and a standardized notion of "excellence" rather than research performance.

Academics undertake considerable efforts in order to define positions for themselves and for their peers that are meaningful and convey who they "are". The current article examines how academics manage the practical task of making sense of one another by analyzing the way in which academic obituaries beget and consecrate research biographies. A qualitative analysis of 216 obituaries published in academic journals from the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, in physics, history, and sociology, and from the 1960s to the 2000s reveals (e)valuative practices that consecrate academic subjects. The results demonstrate how obituaries: (1) categorize academic subjects by positioning them within spheres of academic knowledge and institutional posts, and (2) legitimize academic subjects by applying biographical narratives of talent and merit. This biographical (e)valuation evokes naturally talented, highly devoted academic subjects with coherent research profiles, and omits both biographical hurdles and the decedent's gender and class. The insights shed light on underlying academic virtues and values.

How do academics become professors? This paper considers the making of ‘professor’ as a subject position through which academics are acknowledged in both organizational contexts and disciplinary fields. The paper examines social processes of recognition in 145 appointment procedures for professorships in the discipline of history at sixteen German universities between 1950 and 1985. Based on an analysis of over 1500 documents from archived appointment records, I investigate how academics are acknowledged as professorial in appointment procedures. The procedures invoked both (1) processes of judgement, in which worth and qualities are attributed to candidates, and (2) processes of legitimation, in which said judgements are stabilized and made acceptable. Using insights from the sociology of valuation and evaluation, this paper sheds light on the fundamental processes of recognition and valorization in academia. The findings contribute to the sociology of scientific knowledge and science and technology studies, which have concentrated on academic recognition in the realm of research, but paid less attention to such recognition in organizational contexts. Complementing this literature, the paper allows for a more general understanding of ‘professor’ as a focal academic subject position.

This paper presents a comparative analysis of career gatekeeping processes in two cultural fields. Drawing on data on appointment procedures in German academia and booking processes in North American stand-up comedy, we compare how gatekeepers in two widely different contexts evaluate and select candidates for established positions in their respective field and validate their decisions. Focusing on three types of gatekeeping practices that have been documented in prior research-typecasting, comparison, and legitimization-our analysis reveals major differences in how gatekeepers perform these practices across our two cases: (1) typecasting based on ascriptive categories vs. professional criteria, (2) comparisons that are ad-hoc and holistic vs. systematic and guided by performance criteria, and (3) legitimation by means of ritualization vs. transparency. We argue that these differences are related to the social and organizational context in which gatekeepers make selection decisions, including differences in the structure of academic and creative careers and the organization of the respective labor markets in which these careers unfold. These findings contribute to scholarship on gatekeeping in cultural fields by providing comparative insights into the work of career gatekeepers and the social organization of career gatekeeping processes.