Moving with affects in Finnish academia: Resistance practices of social science and humanities researchers and a possibility of change

Abstract

This article discusses the resistance practices of the social sciences and humanities researchers who are doing small-scale qualitative research in Finnish universities. The research material was generated in three online ‘cafés’ where 22 researchers from different academic career stages gathered to share and discuss their experiences and emotions related to both their everyday work and to the effects of current research strategies on their work. The social sciences and humanities researchers felt discomfort with current neoliberal science politics, but they must, to some extent, play by its rules. However, they have found different ways to resist them, too, and this study scrutinises what kinds of resistance practices were generated in the café encounters and, further, how affects became part of these practices. Through my analysis, anxiety, anger, pride and hope came into being as the most meaningful affects that circulated through the cafés, and which fostered the resistance practices. Furthermore, with these affects, academics move towards individual or collective, but sometimes ambiguously towards both of these ways of resisting. The individual way supports the neoliberal idea of competing individuals, whereas a more collective way can open a possibility for more substantial and rapid change.