Work, life, and imbalance: policies, practices and performativities of academic well-being
Article
Article Title | Work, life, and imbalance: policies, practices and performativities of academic well-being |
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ERA Journal ID | 201511 |
Article Category | Article |
Authors | Saltmarsh, Sue (Author) and Randell-Moon, Holly (Author) |
Journal Title | Somatechnics |
Journal Citation | 4 (2), pp. 236-252 |
Number of Pages | 17 |
Year | 2014 |
Place of Publication | Edinburgh, Scotland |
ISSN | 2044-0138 |
2044-0146 | |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2014.0130 |
Web Address (URL) | http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/soma.2014.0130 |
Abstract | Work-life balance policies have become a ubiquitous feature of university strategies for formally recognising that employees have personal interests, ties and obligations beyond those of the workplace. However, rationales for work-life balance policies and programs in Australian universities predominantly link personal health, well-being and family responsibilities to imperatives for a more productive and competitive tertiary sector. In this paper, we call for an encounter between work-life balance policies, everyday organisational practices and the performativities of academic subjects. Informed by poststructuralist theories of institutionality, governmentality and subjectivity, we draw on personal and policy narratives to argue that ‘well-being’ is a construct through which the risky humanity of academic subjects is not only managed, but also appropriated into normative discourses of obligatory productivity and self-governance. Informed by Sara Ahmed's recent work on the cultural politics of emotion and in particular, what she terms the obligation or ‘duty to happiness’, we consider how academic performativities are implicated in discursive fictions that equate work-life balance with personal and organisational well-being. |
Keywords | work-life balance; higher education; affect; governmentality; performativity |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 390203. Sociology of education |
390303. Higher education | |
Public Notes | Files associated with this item cannot be displayed due to copyright restrictions. |
Byline Affiliations | Australian Catholic University |
Macquarie University | |
Institution of Origin | University of Southern Queensland |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/q3v71/work-life-and-imbalance-policies-practices-and-performativities-of-academic-well-being
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