Accelerating Academia

Filip Vostal examines the changing nature of academic time, and analyzes the 'will to accelerate' that has emerged as a significant cultural and structural force in knowledge production.

“The present-day university has become a hot topic in several sociology, anthropology and philosophy subfields. Filip Vostal’s debut monograph on the institutional transformations and subjective experiences of (social) scientists at universities is a welcome addition to the burgeoning interdisciplinary area of critical studies of science, higher education and academia.” (Milena Kremakova, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 31 (2), March, 2018)

“I recommend Vostal’s book highly. He gives us considered, inquiring reflections across a broad literature on neoliberalism and speed at universities, and is critical, fair and constructive. The empirical research is limited by the range of interviewees, but provides revealing information that brings a fuller picture and is the foundation for further research that is more inclusive. Vostal’s work is a basis for pursuing solutions and alternatives.” (Luke Martell, LSE Review of Books, blogs.lse.ac.uk, August, 2017)

 

"This is an impressive debut, achieving both depth and breadth in the sociological understanding of today's fast academia. Theoretically, Vostal engages productively with the leading commentators on social acceleration, whilst also offering a strong empirical dimension. Throughout, the author provides astute assessments of what is new and what is not, what is bad and what might not be so bad after all, in the speeding-up of university life. The closing analysis of the nature and future of sociology itself in this context is insightful and thought-provoking." - Gregor McLennan, University of Bristol, UK 

"Speed thrills, speed kills… Probing into the Janus-face of the all-encompassing acceleration of society, Filip Vostal especially targets the temporal colonization of the academic lifeworld, where the neoliberal economic mindset has enforced intensified workloads and a culture of cold competition. Instead of engaging in a one-dimensional praise of slowness, however, he highlightsthe ambivalence of the experience of speed within academia, which also thrives on fast communication, brainstorming and digitalization. Vostal's emphasis on the dialectic of speed and his balanced critique of the Slow Movement hence offer original and important contributions to the accelerating sociological study of time." - Dick Pels, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

"Academia is no ivory tower from which observations about society are made, it is the engine room of the neo-liberal knowledge economy. As such, as Filip Vostal acutely argues in this important book, it is both subject to the processes of that economy – commodification, speed-up, etc – and contributes to their legitimation. Acceleration, while intrinsic to the neo-liberal university, undermines capacities for organised reflection and, therefore, one of the very purposes that defined the university in the past. This is a book that need to be read … while there is still time!" - John Holmwood, University of Nottingham, UK

"This book offers a brilliant analysis of the ambiguities of social acceleration in the current managerial university. It explores insightfully academics' subjective experiences of growing speed, business and time-pressure in their work, combines these experiences with the political economy of capitalism, and shows how the dominant discourses on competitiveness and excellence and audit technologies increase acceleration in academic work. You may be unable to escape the pains of acceleration, but after reading this book, you certainly understand why this is so, and even that being and working fast may sometimes be a plain pleasure." - Oili-Helena Ylijoki, University of Tampere, Finland

Filip Vostal is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Science, Technology, and Society Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic.