Global Journal of Human Social Science, C: Sociology and Culture, Volume 23 Issue 4

© 2023 Global Journals Volume XXIII Issue IV Version I 14 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 C Exploring Motives and Strategies in the Production of Knowledge in the University Context by the Example of Academic Career Trajectories • To gather one’s own experience by means of autonomy, one’s own projects, and learning by doing • To engage in exchange among peers • To observe/imitate • To claim answers to questions, to ask for advice. “To hide knowledge” and “prosocial and pro- self motives” as strategies were seen to be associated with the motive “to deal with competitors”. In contrast, the motive “to impart knowledge” described the passive receipt of knowledge. Without much action on their part, actors receive knowledge from other actors. These are strategies used by different actors to support the given respondent. Strategies associated with the motive “to impart knowledge” include “to ask for advice” (referring to the transmission of experience-based knowledge, mostly from superiors to subordinates), “to take along to conferences”, and “to involve in research projects”. The strategies applied to implement the motive “to gather (subject-specific) experience” were “to write to relevant people”, “exam strategies and colloquia”, and “test publications”. Habitus was seen to play a rather higher-level role in the analysis and proved to be particularly visible in interview passages that described sympathies. IV. M otives and S trategies in the U niversity C ontext In the following section, the motives and associated strategies will be presented with excerpts from the scientific material and interrelated to the theory. a) Strategies concerning the motive “to acquire tacit knowledge” First, i mplicit knowledge and tacit knowledge were seen to commonly constitute field-specific knowledge which can only be acquired in the respective scientific field 9 . 1. One strategy in this context was the search for “personal proximity to superiors/lecturers”. As shown in the following interview passage, professional and personal contacts were frequently mingled: “I have to say, I personally was also very naïve in going up to the matter. [...] So, I had a BREAKING experience, if you will, because I thought, I was a straight-A student [...] I thought, ‘Yes, that’s how it’s going to stay’ (laughs). And 9 The concept traces back to Bourdieu. “Social fields develop and exist whenever people driven by common interests agree on rules of the game, along the lines of which they play for and, or fight over valuable goods and, or capital [...] Social fields are the areas in which these concrete situations of exchange take place: Here, people as interested parties get together to apply their capital in the best possible way and to achieve the best possible relationships” (Hennig & Kohl, 2012, p. 25; own translation). The field concept implies a space of practice in which actors are involved in interactive relationships (cf. Bourdieu, 1996). then I suddenly noticed that, first, nobody’s waiting for me and, second, uhm, the people, suddenly everything was about things that were COMPLETELY different from what I thought everything was about all along. So, there was no such thing as the qualifications that I thought were important, they were suddenly COMPLETELY unimportant. By contrast, what played a role was, uhm, how you, how close you are to people like researcher X who now had a significant impact [...] The game just went like I have to get a lot closer to this person intellectually, methodically, but also socially.” (Interview 2, lines 130-141; own translation) This passage illustrates the process of disillusionment in a respondent who believed in the merit principle and realized that, in her scientific field, it is important to effect performance, but above all, to personally become visible by bringing oneself in the proximity of decision- makers. However, it is less personal closeness to such decision-makers, but rather similar theoretical positions, methodical approaches, and social attitudes to be signaled. The assumption was that orientation towards, and imitation of the decision- makers’ scientific habitus is more promising than merely providing evidence of scientific qualifications. In other words, the example postulates that proximity to certain individuals is significant in generating field-specific knowledge, which can be a condition for strategic knowledge practices. Proximity to individual people plays an important role in theory. For instance, knowledge-related networks have been seen to be positively affected by strong ties ( Phelps et al., 2012, p. 1124 ). In the example above, Ego profited from being close to her superior, both on a personal and an intellectual level, which was associated with observing and imitating the professorial habitus. However, it should be noted that proximity to other people and the related mingling of personal and professional contacts are not to be understood as exclusively vertical, but rather that it is also implemented horizontally in terms of colleagues, as the following interview passage shows: “I once believed that, but it proved to be the wrong conclusion or too one-sided, because it was so easy, so simple, well, it wasn’t like THAT either. There are OTHER possibilities, too [...] Anyway, the moment I, when you always look up, but of course you also have to look horizontally, right?” (Interview 2, lines 142-144; own translation) 2. This leads us to the next strategy, “exchange among equals”, in which tacit knowledge is generated in study or work groups. “Well, I suddenly had access to BOOKS, and we read Foucault and all sorts of stuff. [...] We went to the bookshop regularly and just bought books and that was our studying, right? Studying was not about attending seminars, but I did that along the way [...] So I additionally studied what I thought was right and important. But that was also very coincidental, and well, I got to know people while studying who supported me. So, [...] there were always WGs, that is,