ABSTRACT
Mario and Julie are experiencing organizational practices embedded in systems of legitimacy in academe that privilege more traditional kinds of scholarship and scholars, and constrain the agency and recognition of engaged scholars and engaged scholarship. This chapter considers how academics are engaged in a profession focused in large part on earning and maintaining legitimacy within academia. It considers how organizational practices set up to legitimize some work and devalue other work within higher education constrain professional agency. The chapter outlines the key concepts just discussed while moving back and forth between Julie's and Mario's career experiences, viewing them through the lens of professional legitimacy, agency, and inequality regimes. Thus, systems that constrain engaged scholarship as a form of faculty work also constrain the agency of engaged scholars as people. Such networks can create their own sense of fit and legitimacy, support individual and collective agency, and create systems that support equity.
