Holding Ourselves to Account: The Precarity Dividend and the Ethics of Researching Academic Precarity

Theresa O'Keefe, Aline Courtois

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Abstract

This article uses critical reflexivity as a method to document and analyse the ethical dilemmas that emerge when researching academic precarity across the permanent/precarious divide. With our project on long-term academic precarity as a case study, and as people who experienced long-term academic precarity, we take as the starting point other researchers’ silences on their positionality and about who does the work in the production of research on academic precarity. Although our small, unfunded project was driven by feminist ethics and transformative feminist praxis, there were some ethical issues we did not foresee, nor could we resolve. We focus on three main ethical dilemmas that arose as moments of discomfort, triggering extensive reflection and discussion: (1) authenticity and subjectivity, (2) disclosure of employment status and (3) complicity in and benefit from the precarisation of academic work, or what we term the ‘precarity dividend’. The article seeks to push the boundaries around how researchers hold themselves to account in the process of knowledge production. We suggest that precarity and especially the precarity dividend must become an inherent ethical consideration in all social scientific research design. It is a call for social researchers to make explicit – in writing, in ethics reviews and in presentations of their work – the labour process and labour conditions of all those involved.
Original languageEnglish
JournalThe Sociological Review
Early online date19 Sept 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 19 Sept 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank our research participants who gave generously of their time and spirit. We are also grateful to the reviewers for their feedback and to Ellen O’Sullivan for her transcription assistance.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article

Keywords

  • academic precarity
  • critical reflexivity
  • knowledge production
  • research ethics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Sociology and Political Science

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