Affecting advantage: class relations in contemporary higher education

The critical (micro)political economy of health: A more-than-human approach

“…New materialism is a term applied to various ontological approaches that actively engage with materiality, and model power and resistance as fluxes within an emergent and heterogeneous social world ( Braidotti, 2011 : 137; Grosz, 1994 ; Saldanha, 2006 ). 2 Within the social sciences, new materialist ontology has been applied to a growing range of topics, from technology to sexualities to health, including social stratifications by gender ( Lorraine, 2008 ) race ( Colebrook, 2013 ; Saldanha, 2006 ) and latterly social class ( Fox and Alldred, 2021b ; Fox and Powell, 2021a ; Mulcahy and Martinussen, 2022 ).…”

“…Although analysis of capitalist social relations has been foundational to some new materialist theory ( DeLanda, 2006 : 62–67; Deleuze and Guattari (1984 , 1988 ); Massumi (2015) : 83–91), this has not previously translated into a fully-fledged political economy approach. However, a route into a ‘critical micropolitical economy’ (CMPE) has emerged through an acknowledgement of the part that more-than-humans assemblages play in producing sociomaterial inequalities ( Fox and Alldred, 2021b ; Fox and Powell, 2021a , 2021b ; Mulcahy and Martinussen, 2022 ). To establish the parameters for a CMPE, it is valuable to identify the challenges facing a new materialist ontology when engaging with the kinds of issues around capitalism and health inequality addressed in the predominantly structuralist and anthropocentric critical political economy of health literature.…”

“Fear Factor(y)”: Academia. Subtle Mechanisms of Symbolic Domination in the Academic Field1,2

“…2019) or by sharing personal stories about the anxieties they experience (Gill 2016; e.g., Brunila and Valero 2018). Publications in higher education and related fields are increasingly concerned with how structures in academia reinforce emotions and affects (e.g., see Clegg 2013; Hermanowicz 2009; Mulcahy and Martinussen 2022; Naidoo 2018); with the challenges scientists experience with regard to their well‐being (Sabagh et al. 2022; Tytherleigh et al.…”

“…Ever more researchers are tackling the impact of science's ongoing transformation in the realm of fear, whether by way of empirical investigation (Mart ınez-Nicol as and Garc ıa-Gir on 2021; Weinstein et al 2019) or by sharing personal stories about the anxieties they experience (Gill 2016;e.g., Brunila and Valero 2018). Publications in higher education and related fields are increasingly concerned with how structures in academia reinforce emotions and affects (e.g., see Clegg 2013;Hermanowicz 2009;Mulcahy and Martinussen 2022;Naidoo 2018); with the challenges scientists experience with regard to their well-being (Sabagh et al 2022;Tytherleigh et al 2005; Wray and Kinman 2021); and with the frequently deleterious emotional consequences of these circumstances (Chubb et al 2017;Watermeyer 2019)-developments which, overall, can "erode the quality of science" (Cardew 2020). The phenomena described here run the gamut between subjective manifestations such as diffuse perceptions of a threat to one's work-life balance (Lashuel 2020) to very concrete phenomena involving the deterioration of physical and mental health (Cho and Hayter 2020).…”