ABSTRACT
The thesis for the state doctorate is, as we have seen, what enables the professors to exercise a lasting control over those aspiring to their succession.
(Bourdieu, 1988:154)
In the last chapter we used supervisors’ accounts to explore the theme of ‘balance’—the tension between a supervisor’s intervention and the original, individual efforts of the doctoral student. We showed that such a tension reflects issues that are pervasive in the supervision of doctoral students, in turn reflecting the ‘essential tension’ in scientific discovery and scholarly research generally-between originality and continuity, and between collective and individual responsibility for a research student’s contribution to knowledge. In this chapter we move explicitly to research students’ accounts —although we include relevant material from members of academic staff as well. Here we explore similar themes to those of the previous chapter in accounts of the social and intellectual status of the research student. Again, issues of collective and individual responsibility are prominent, and we once more explore key differences between academic disciplines.
