DISCLAIMER: This essay is heavily loaded with personal interpretations that I can’t back up with scholar education, being neither a sociologist nor a philosopher nor a historian. It reflects my personal experience as well as discussions I had with other camarades similarly opinionated.
—-
Scientific communities develop interactions in the physical and virtual space. The physical space is defined by the structure of the lab, of the department, of the institute and of the university, occasionally by conferences. The virtual space is online, made of Twitter threads, communication with publishers and zoom meetings with collaborators.
The physical space has to be planned and divided according to a scientific ideal. More specifically, it follows a certain idea of academia that policymakers and taxpayers currently hold (1). Hence, the structure of universities and scientific institutes secretly hints at what our predecessors had envisioned. Their ideas have organized the space, and now this spatial organization, whether it is a temple or a factory (2), produces a certain type of science.
Modern universities have for instance long corridors full of doors that a researcher never opens. Among this multitude of rooms hosting students, teachers, administrative staff and researchers, a single person will sit routinely in a handful of them. In those large spaces divided between disciplines, between teaching and laboratories, between libraries and dining halls, most of the faces met during the day belong to unknown strangers.
Compared to these institutions founded for multiple reasons – elite training, student gardiennage or universal education – more recent and smaller scientific institutes look like family estates. There, the scientific force is smaller, often nurtured (healthcare, legal advice, subsidized housing to name some advantages). Scientific institutes propagate their paternalism to their everyday communication, speaking about their employees as part of a large family. Those words contrast heavily with the reality of academic employment. Indeed, institutions have to publicly demonstrate care and inclusiveness, but scientists turnover is fast, much faster than the average time one gets to spend with parents or siblings.
Let’s not forget that the primary function of scientific institutes is not to leverage education from a post-high school level to scholar profiles. Instead, they host smaller scientific ecosystems, designed to efficiently increase academic knowledge. In those new science factories, one recognizes easily post-industrialist concern for productivity and transparency, coupled with a guild structure that is more reminiscent of medieval Europe. This paternalistic enclave is a big glass house where the employer can see every employee, and where good relationships with guild masters secure good recommendation letters. I have to stop there my anachronisms, as I discovered I was too hasty thinking that the modern lab open space was a gift from management consultants. It seems on the contrary that it was inherited from German academics at more ancient times (1).
The material conditions around academic workers are real, however, even when my social derivation is wrong. Experimental biology labs are open spaces where employees at the bottom of the food chain have no access to privacy. Class structure is reflected in the amount of private space people own.
The architects of modern science have structured work to standardize it. There is no planned private space in scientific institutes because there is no planned interference of private life with work – or alternatively, on the other extreme, because there is no boundary between private life and work when science is work, hobby and passion, all at the same time. Fun cultural fact: in Germany, work insurance actually covers the scientist until they reach the toilet seat, which can be interpreted in two ways: either (a) the only private space at work is the restroom (but I would then have to prove that the previously described situation is the only one in which work insurance does not apply) or (b) institutes have not yet acknowledged the human condition of their employees, a condition that necessitates the maintenance of private spaces at the workplace (to breast feed, to lie down, to have a nervous breakdown, to pass a private call – to quote only a few).
Modern capitalist architecture is not for academia alone, of course. However, considering the professional bias of scientists towards rationality that often contaminates their private life, the denial of human failures at work should be taken seriously, especially in the light of the mental health crisis that crushes academia. Placarding posters to encourage fitness or yoga looks like a micron-sized band-aid placed on the skin of scientists who dedicate so much passion and brain time to their invasive profession. I started joking with toilets but in the end, I want to stress out the difficulties and incompatibilities between an academic impeccable track record and the accidents that life presents us with. Which will eventually bring me to the last part of this post, dealing with social pressure, instagrammable science, and the denial of humanity by social networks.
Many will agree that, above everything else, academia is a collegial place. Climbing up the ladder requires multiple appreciation from colleagues. To increase this social and scientific reach, academics build tiny public personas. Their pictures can be found online, depending on the research departments they have visited. Their papers can be googled and searched. Their resumes are for everyone to see, on personal and professional websites. It is about getting your Science known, but it is also very much about getting yourself known.
The most recent platform for self-advertising is Twitter/X, and its use by academics is particularly concerning. Among all the media available to communicate about research virtually, why online pdfs and a snobbish version of Instagram? None of these two formats reflects the logic and philosophy of scientific knowledge construction. Worse, the second one has increased the importance of political games in the scientific sphere, and has the same adverse side effects than other social networks. It favors depreciation, depression, narcissistic spiraling and consensual meaningless verbose. It reinforces productivity myths instead of fostering collaborative interactions. It remains, in the end, a clickbait machine that has to generate profit by feeding on our insecurities. And it places academics between the injunction to love the purity of science with the rest of the chosen people, and their confrontation with reality: doubts, failure and unfairness.
Where can we find circles in which we would support each other through the challenges posed by academic life, instead of bragging about pseudo-accomplishments or indulge in self-advertising? We can’t find those circles yet, we have to build them.
1 – Sophie Forgan (1989). The Architecture of Science and the Idea of a University. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 20(4), 405-434.
2 – Harry W. Paul (1985). From knowledge to power: the rise of the science empire in France, 1860-1939. Cambridge University Press.