ABSTRACT
In chapter 7, Vincent Gengnagel, Stephanie Beyer, Christian Baier and Richard Münch analyse the European Research Council as an example of a European contribution to a global academic capitalism. For EU integration to gain traction as a socially significant process, the academic field is also required to convey its specific authority and actively invest significant amounts of its respective symbolic capital into ‘Europe’. This, in turn, cannot be vertically imposed, but requires the mobilisation of an academic sense of autonomy. Against this backdrop, the European Research Council (ERC) as the most respected representative of European academic excellence is crucial for legitimating European research policy in academia, and thus makes for a perfect case study to trace processes of Europeanisation at the very core of academic autonomy. In doing so, this chapter presents a field-theoretical analysis of the transformation of science in Europe through the rise of academic capitalism, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative research. The authors are interested in (a) how the ERC targets the construction of a European framework for academic competition and acts as a lever to open up national fields; (b) how this competition inherently creates inequalities and furthers existing status hierarchies; and (c) ultimately acts as a catalyst for a globally dominant form of academic capitalism under the US hegemony that it is supposed to challenge.
