ABSTRACT
Recruitment was a form of anticipated co-optation whereby the elders chose not subordinates destined for subaltern careers…but their potential peers.
(Bourdieu, 1988: 152)
Time and Generation
The social organization of academic socialization depends on the intergenerational transmission and inheritance of knowledge, skills and orientations: in short, of the academic habitus. As we stressed throughout the preceding chapters, there are significant cultural differences between different academic disciplines in the organization and construction of such transmission. Indeed, ‘generation’ itself is subject to different constructions in different cultural contexts. The nature of academic generations, and the character of transmission between them is subject to contrasting disciplinary definitions. In the course of this chapter we examine how disciplinary identities and loyalties are reproduced through the generations; how academics and their graduate students construct generations and the relations between them; and the implications these have for the reproduction of academic knowledge.
