Nicolas Raineri

The PhD program: between conformity and reflexivity

Purpose – This paper seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the impact on doctoral education attributable to performativity pressures in academia, by exploring the practices associated with the production of academic knowledge within the doctoral process.Design/methodology/approach – An (auto)ethnographic inquiry was conducted over a period of ten months within the business school of a major Canadian university in order to examine socialisation practices and discourses from a given PhD program. Empirical observations from direct participation, local documents, and two interviews were analysed using a theoretical framework derived from Bourdieus structural social constructivism and from Foucaults concepts of disciplinary techniques and technologies of the self.Findings – The study shows how the doctoral program can be likened to a rite of passage, altering and shaping the cognitive structures and interpretive schemes of lay students – their subjective “selves”, their habitus. By means of a set ...