ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 returns to the key questions of how, and according to what forces of power and control, academic boundaries are being shaped and reshaped in the twenty-first-century university, and what the implications of this are for whether the university will be an institution that thrives, or one that merely (and barely) survives in the years and decades ahead. There can be no simple conclusion, not least because academia does not consist of a single boundary, but rather is multi-dimensional, interacting with society and the world on multiple fronts. This chapter homes in on three dimensions of academia that have emerged as particularly important and relevant throughout the study: institutional status, research orientation and branch of science. The boundary lens I have employed finds that these three dimensions mediate academic boundary processes and relations; influence the opportunities academics have for interacting with (certain kinds of) non-academics; and partly determine the conditions of boundary-crossing interactions, such as whether they take place from a position of relative power or rather one of relative dependency. I conclude the chapter, and the book, by discussing how the conceptual tools developed herein may help academia to attain a sustainable balance of ‘power’ and ‘control’.
