ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Power relations and academic values in the Italian university system: A Marxist perspective
Author: Palermo Giulio
This paper is about power relations in the Italian university system. I argue that power relations are a consequence of a peculiar form of recruitment within Italian universities, characterized by a contradiction between its form, based on public competition exams, and its substance, based on the predetermination of the winner of these competition exams. First I describe the mechanisms of recruitment and career in the Italian academia. These mechanisms allow actual university professors controlling the recruitment of their future colleagues, notwithstanding their lack of formal power on them. Then I review the debate on power within social sciences, by distinguishing two conceptions, one as a purely interpersonal relationship, the other as a social relationship. Within the latter, I develop in particular a Marxian perspective, according to which power relations are analyzed as part of the mechanisms of reproduction of the whole system. Finally, I apply these conceptions to the Italian university system. My thesis is that university power relations are not confined to interpersonal relationships between subjects of different hierarchical levels but that, on the contrary, the Italian university system altogether is a “system of power.” This system promotes very particular moral values and rules of behaviour that exclude people with really challenging scientific ideas from academic life.
Registred web users only can download this paper - Go back
Please note that files available for download have not been checked for viruses. These files have been submitted by authors of the conference to this web site. Conference organisers can't accept any responsibility for damages caused to users by downloading such files.