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The Anthropology of Work Review is a quarterly publication of theSociety for the Anthropology of Work. The fundamental goal of theAnthropology of Work Review is to facilitate development of ideas, data, andmethods and to encourage debate in the anthropology of work in all itsaspects. Articles, reviews and notes may have the perspective of sociolcul-tural, biological, archaeological, linguistic or applied anthropology alone orin any combination. Historical and humanistic pieces are also welcome.Reports of research, meetings and notices relevant to the anthropology ofwork are solicited. Letters to the editors are welcome. The editors of AWRinvite the above contributions from all anthropologists and kindred studentsof human work.

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Copyright c 1995 by the American Anthropological Association

The Academic Sweatshop:Changes in the CapitalistInfrastructure and thePart-time Academic

Jagna Wojcicka SharifCity College CUNY

Johanna LessingerIndependent Scholars of South Asia

[This paper was originally presented in a panel, "SweatshoppingAcademe," at the annual meetings of the American Anthropo-logical Association in Washington, D.C. in November 1993. Ashorter version appears in Anthropology Today, October 1994,published by the Royal Anthropological Institute, Great Britain.]

Introduction

In 1992 the American Association of University Professors(AAUP) reported that

non-tenure-track faculty, the majority of whom are part-ti-me, account for about half of all faculty appointments inAmerican higher education.... The proportion ofnon-tenure track faculty continues to grow while theproportion on the tenure track does not. (AAUP 1992:39)

The report concludes:

While the colleague whose performance is undervalued orwhose potential is blighted bears the personal brunt of thesituation, the status of all faculty is undermined by thedegree of exploitation the profession allows of its members(AAUP 1992:48).

Why have U.S. colleges and universities constructed anacademic "underclass"1 to perform their traditional functionof teaching? Our research suggests that the reorientation ofU.S. corporations towards global, rather than domestic,economic interests is a major factor. By analyzing theimpact of this reorientation we can begin to understand the"casualization" of academic work as well as to suggestexplanations for several other recent transformations in thestructure of higher education.

As part of this research we also interviewed ten of ourcolleagues, un- or under-employed anthropologists likeourselves who fit the AAUP profile of the non-tenured,temporary academic teacher-scholars who, without jobsecurity, benefits, and sometimes no office to work in, carryout the central teaching/advising duties of tenured facultyat a fraction of the salary. Their remarks evoke thepersonal humiliation, economic emiseration2, intellectualisolation and wastage of this system. We also suggest thatthis pattern of employment is destructive both to ourprofession and to the aims of higher education itself.

Mainstream commentary on the deteriorating conditionsof higher education invokes budget deficits or the public'sloss of confidence in higher education or changing values.In line with these superficial explanations, the discipline of

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anthropology often points to the alleged shortcomingsamong the academic underclass itself. Of two recentsurveys published by the American AnthropologicalAssociation's Newsletter, one suggests that the "elapsedtime between receiving the BA and PhD degree" maycontributeto unemploymentand underemployment(Givensand Tucker, 1993:49). The other suggests that lower"productivity," in the form of published articles and books,may be responsible for the "significantly lower ranks" heldby women in full-time positions (Bradley and Dahl,1993:35). A third survey, organized by the Committee toStudy the Academic Employment of Women in Anthropo-logy, suggests that once the present cohort of senior maleanthropologists retires, there may be more women amongthe ranks of the tenured (Webster and Burton, unpublishedmanu-script, 1993:7). We suggest that this optimism ismisplaced in the face of the continuing (and striking)concentration of women in the temporary, nontenuredunderclass, and the simultaneous attrition and disappear-ance of tenure lines (AAUP 1992; McCarthy 1991).

Interestingly, our own profession, dedicated to thecollection of socially relevant information, has no reliablestatistics showing the scope of part-time employment in thediscipline. The Committee to Study the Academic Employ-ment of Women in Anthropology began collecting data onpart-timers only last year and received responses from onlya third of the anthropology departments surveyed. Sotrends in the use of part-timers in anthro-pology cannot becalculated over time, nor is the current data reliable(Webster, personal communication: 1993). However, thecommittee's 5-year study of anthropology departmentsshows that between 1983-87, when 26,545 job applica-tions were submitted, only 531 people got jobs. The datafor 1992 also show the discouragingly high ratio of appli-cants to jobs—the very situation of job scarcity whichfosters the exploitation of the academic underclass.

The scarcity of jobs also slows the entry of women intothe ranks of full-time academics. Although women are asfrequently offered jobs at the assistant professor level asmen, 72.5% of jobs that were without tenure were filled bywomen (Webster and Burton, unpublished manuscript:1993). The possibility that these temporary workers willeventually get full-time tenured positions, as the discipline'sofficial ideology suggests, is statistically low, given thedisappearance of tenured lines and even of whole depart-ments under university restructuring.

We are persuaded that much of the mainstream explana-tion for the growth of an academic underclass involves amystification rather than a clarification of infrastructuralcausality (Harris, 1979). In searching for the underlyingcauses for the growth of an academic underclass, we notedseveral other structural shifts in higher education that werealso poorly explained. We feel that these trends are allrelated to the creation of an academic underclass. Theyinclude:

1. Direct capital corporate investment in universityresearch (DePalma 1993; Negi 1993).

2. A dramatic rise in tuition fees, increasing at morethan twice the rate of inflation (National Center for Educa-tion Statistics 1992).

3. Continuing bitter complaints from colleges anduniversities about "fiscal agony" despite enrollments thatare at an all-time high of over 14 million students andtuition revenues that have doubled over the last decade(Negi 1993; National Center for Education Statistics 1992).

4. A rapid rise in the administrative costs of U.S.universities (19%), as compared to their instructional costs(5%) during the 1980s (National Center for EducationStatistics 1992).

Corporate Goals and the Structure of Higher Education

We use as our starting point Saskia Sassen's model ofchanging capitalist relations, outlined in her 1990 book TheGlobal City, to relate corporate interests to the restructuringof U.S. higher education. We should note that Sassen doesnot treat academic work specifically when she analyzescorporate global reorientation and the consequent reorgani-zation of the labor market. Yet we feel that it is illuminat-ing to examine the question of underemployed academicsas part of a reorganized and exploited labor force and tohighlight their similarity to other workers. This demandsreexamination of academics' class position as autonomousprofessionals.

We begin with Sassen's proposition that U.S. corpora-tions now focus on management of capital and labor in aglobal arena rather than, as formerly, on the production ofgoods. As she points out, this global reorientation requirescorporations to eschew all local, nation-based obligationsand loyalties. For post-industrial capitalists, such localinterests as remain are focused on the provision ofhigh-tech services for corporations' management headquar-ters, on the low-wage service sector and on innovative,potentially profit-making research. We argue that U.S.universities are increasingly drawn into the provision ofsuch services for corporations.

The impact of this corporate orientation on U.S. societygoes well beyond the economic shift from production toservice provision. Sassen and others such as Harrison andBluestone (1988) document profound changes that rangefrom the polarization of incomes to changes in housing andlife-styles. Most crucial to this paper is what Sassen termsthe "casualization" of work for all but the highest wagesector.

The impact of this corporate reorientation on highereducation is complex. On the one hand, publicly-fundedstate and city colleges and universities have suffered budgetcuts resulting from the relocation and closure of manymanufacturing companies. Removal of the corporate taxbase created a fiscal nightmare for localities, which haveresponded by cutting funding for social services—includingeducation. In educational institutions, the money forsupport staff, maintenance, libraries and salaries foruntenured faculty took the deepest cuts (National Center forEducation Statistics, 1992).

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On the other hand, private colleges and elite researchinstitutions have become eager, if junior, partners servingcurrent corporate needs. Since the beginning of the 1980s,U.S. and foreign corporations have been increasing theirinvestment in university-based research. The inducementsfor this growth were a series of patent-law revisions,enacted and amended in the 1980s, granting universitiesownership of discoveries underwritten by federally fundedresearch. This, in turn, "allowed the universities both tolicense patentable inventions directly to corporations for aroyalty and to solicit up-front contributions" (Negi1993:43). Currently 8% of university research budgets arefunded by corporations (Negi 1993; DePalma 1993). Forthat modest investment, which produces huge savings forcorporations on in-house research and development, theyreceived a veritable windfall of public funds through theuniversities. The National Coalition for Universities in thePublic Interest notes that

The American public now pays for university research fourways: federal tax dollars underwrite most campus-basedresearch; undergraduate tuition fees help pay for labs,scientists and research assistants; corporations investing incampus research receive tax breaks, which means a loss tothe federal treasury; and corporations with exclusive rightsto a patent produced by publicly funded research can sellthe product at a monopoly price. (Negi 1993)

A provost at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Techno-logy was recently quoted as saying, "We think that thecoupling we have done with industry has worked verywell" (DePalma, 1993). Indeed it has, for highly placeduniversity administrators and for the research sector, as wellas for corporations. According to a 1988 study by the U.S.government's General Accounting Office (GAO), links withU.S. universities helped a number of Japanese corporationsto develop new technologies. A House subcommitteesubsequently criticized universities for selling researchresults in biotechnology, communications and pharmaceu-ticals to foreign corporations. They noted that "suchactions undercut the U.S. economy when, ironically,university officials were asking for more federal support forcampus research to help U.S. companies compete interna-tionally" (quoted in Negi 1993:44). A GAO follow-upstudy of technology transfers from schools that receive themost federal grant money found that 24 universitiessurveyed were involved with 499 foreign corporations. Theprograms at MIT, Stanford and the University of Californiaat Berkeley accounted for 58% of them (Negi 1993).

But it is misleading to point a finger at "foreign" cor-porations. U.S.-based corporations are equally involved(DePalma, 1993). The more important factor for ourdiscussion is that the "coupling" between universities andindustry contributed to the impoverishment of other areasof U.S. higher education. We find that the process ofwooing corporate investment has forced universities todevote a growing share of their budgets into venture capitaloutlays. These include the building and modernization oflaboratories for applied research, much higher salaries forindustrially qualified scientists, improvements in thehousing and social amenities offered as inducements to

such faculty, and hiring an array of administrators tofacilitate this process.

Negi notes that "the heightened emphasis oncapital-intensive applied research has led a number ofschools to cut back course offerings and eliminate entiredepartments." (1993:34). He goes on to say that "Onceuniversities become a business, the objective is not 'educa-tion for the people' but looking for marketable productsand selling the institutions to corporate investors." Henotes that the situation at research universities has had a"trickle down" effect on state and private institutions, whichscramble for research dollars and allocate funds dispropor-tionately to the more prestigious science-technologyresearch sector (Negi 1993). This system encouragesfaculty to favor research over teaching, both for prestigeand salary and to acquire tenure and promotions.

In such a reorganization of the university, teaching—thetraditional mission and function of faculty—is increasinglytransferred to an underpaid academic underclass (AAUP,1992). At the same time, the massive reallocation ofuniversity funds towards applied science research is turningthe traditional liberal arts sector of education into anorphan in all but the elite institutions. In the liberal arts,tenure lines have been erased, classes have been enlargedor cancelled, and faculty salaries have stagnated at 1972levels in constant U.S. dollars (National Center for Educa-tional Statistics 1992). Administrations have elevated somefaculty out of this morass to "superstar" status. This smallelite, with startlingly high salaries and research budgets, thelightest of teaching loads, ample travel funds and sabbaticalleaves, can be shown oii to parents, students and taxpayersas a symbol of excellence. The "superstars" become partof the promotion of individual institutions to students andtheir parents, alongside tasteful new buildings and com-puter labs.

This same academic elite, relieved of teaching duties bythe secondary labor force of non-tenured teachers and labassistants, can be persuaded to look the other way whenthe low pay and miserable working conditions of theacademic underclass are brought up. The resulting segmen-tation of the academic labor market encourages lack ofsolidarity among the teaching staff that, in turn, makes iteasier for the administration to pursue its own agenda.

The corporate reorientation has also provided theimpetus for the sheer growth in the number of administra-tors, who attempt to introduce "scientific management" tothe academic endeavor in return for salaries significantlyhigher than those of most ordinary academics (Edwards1991:2). These administrators are charged with courtingcorporate investment, with destroying or maiming depart-ments judged "non-cost-effective," with dismantling facultycontrol over curriculum and university affairs, with defusingthe inevitable faculty discontent and with smothering anyattempts to organize around such issues.

Non-tenured Faculty As Part ofthe Casualized Labor Force.

In the previous section we provided arguments forviewing the academic labor force as segmented. We also

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outlined the economic infrastructural conditions thatproduce, and promise to deepen, the class divisionsbetween the favored, corporation-linked research sector andthe deprived, liberal arts sector. We lack space here toconsider the effect of global capitalist reorganization on thestructure of higher education—a structure already highlystratified in relation to labor market segmentation. Wesimply note two factors vital to the topic at hand. The firstis that the liberal arts are alive and relatively well in elitecolleges. The high wage corporate sector needswell-educated and worldly (in more sense than one) recruitsto command its global operations.

Working-class colleges meet opposite goals; communitycolleges must supply low-wage technicians and serviceworkers who are somewhat literate (including "computerliterate") and capable of following directions. It cannot becoincidence that of all academic institutions, communitycolleges function with the smallest core of full-time faculty;most of their teaching is performed by ill-paid, interchange-able, and unattached adjuncts (National Center for Educa-tion Statistic 1992; AAUP 1992). In some New York areainstitutions there are twice as many adjuncts as full-timeteachers. The conditions prevailing at community collegesare quickly spreading to adult and general educationprograms designed for workers, frequently attached in aseparate and unequal way to major institutions (AAUP1992). Moreover, city and state consortia, such as the CityUniversity of New York (CUNY) system,3 are threatenedwith divisive "restructuring." The planned reorganizationwill turn some of the city's colleges into vocational institu-tions for producing drudges. Other colleges will turn outpotentially co-optable, salt-of-the-earth, lower level elites(Kushner 1993; McFadden 1993). And it doesn't take acollege education to figure out how particular racial groupsor immigrant categories will be tracked into one or theother college sector. These trends, which we lack space todevelop, deserve a thorough critique in preparation forrestoring academia to its theoretically democratic mission.

For the purposes of this section, we return to Sassen'sproposition that the shift in global capitalist interests hasreorganized the U.S. labor market, turning former occupa-tions and professions into casual work (1990). In examin-ing non-tenured academics simply as workers exploited likemany other workers, we cut through some of the mislead-ing rhetoric surrounding the non-tenured academic. Muchof that rhetoric, produced by university administrators,embarrassed department chairs and even by thenon-tenured faculty themselves, obscures their true margin-alized state by insisting on the "professional" status of theseteacher/scholars. In academic surveys and discussions,part-time employment is sometimes treated as a matter ofpersonal choice, not as imposed reality. Even the efforts ofmarginalized academics themselves to win respect andstatus can lead to blurred, sentimentalizing language—seefor instance the term "independent scholar."4 Recognitionof our status as exploited workers, or abandoning falseconsciousness, may be our first necessity.

One of the most striking features of the U.S. economyis the increase in the number of part-time and temporaryworkers in the workforce. This trend is sweeping everyfield (Harrison and Bluestone, 1988, Kilborn, 1993:A13,Uchitelle, 1993b:1). Occupations traditionally dominatedby well-paid and secure professionals are now increasinglyfull of part-time, temporary workers. Doctors, executives,lawyers and architects, for instance, are now forced intotemporary contract work, at lower pay and worse benefitsthan ten years ago. Writing in the New York Times, SusanDiesenhouse says, "Elite temps—professionals or otherhighly skilled workers— account for 24 % of the 1.15million people who work as temps.... In 1981 it was 14%." Furthermore, "Specialty temporary-help companiesform the fastest- growing, most profitable sector of anexpanding industry." (1993:5). We are thus moving towarda system of wholly interchangeable, disposable workers inentire sectors of the economy, not just, as in the past, at thebottom of the employment structure. Increasingly evenprofessionals find themselves competing with their cheaperoverseas counterparts.

For example, the big insurance company, UNUM inPortland, Me., recently hired temps from India to designsoftware through a temporary help company in Clearwater,Fla. "'UNUM's software development would cost $60 inMaine, $30 in Ireland, and $15 in India, Malaysia or thePhilippines,' said John J. Alexander, vice president forresearch" (Diesenhouse 1993:5). Another recent Timesarticle, entitled "Those High-tech Jobs Can Cross the BorderToo," describes, without analyzing, how corporations takeadvantage of the differential costs of social reproduction offoreign versus U.S. workers. The article notes that inMexico almost 150,000 young people are graduatedannually from the expanding network of publicly fundeduniversities and technical institutes, and are paid foron-the-job training only a tenth of what a U.S. beginnerwould earn. Commenting on the advantages to corpora-tions setting up shop in Mexico, a Harvard labor economistis quoted as saying, "What we can train here, they can trainfor much less money" (Uchitelle, 1993a:4). Note the useof "what" for "who" in characterizing workers.

The overall effect of this economy-wide shift is thatwhile wages for a small elite of corporate managers haverisen astronomically, wages for most workers have fallen,and professionals are no longer exempt from this kind ofinsecurity. Two-income families are no longer a choice buta necessity, if both partners can find jobs. And the jobs aregoing. Since the early 1970s permanent job losses as apercentage of unemployment rose from an average of 25%to almost 45% last year (Bureau of Labor Statistics 1993).And even strong companies are joining the stampede to cutlabor costs. As another New York Times article comments,"It is no longer news that troubled companies are eliminat-ing jobs by the tens of thousands. But the recentannouncement by Proctor and Gamble that it, too, willshrink its work force called attention to a surprising aspectof America's job's crisis: profitable companies withbooming sales are also shedding jobs, insisting that to

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survive the 1990s, they must prepare for the worst"(Uchitelle 1993c, p. A1).

In a parallel process, those who manage higher educa-tion have pared down secure jobs in academia, substitutinga feminized (and in some areas increasingly immigrant)casual labor force to perform the functions of teaching(Edwards 1992). In assessing the meaning of sectorsegmentation in academia, however, it is also important tospecify how academics, as academics, fit into the laborhierarchy. On the face of it, according to labor economists'typologies, academics fit the definition of the upper tenthpercentile of the labor force, as rank-and-file professionals.They share with the top 1 percentile of upper professionals,"highly valued intellectual resources," but do not, as a rule,work for "resource-rich organizations" such as corporationsand powerful service providers, as do the top professionals.(See Sassen's discussion of Brint's 1988 classification,1990:258-259.) Categorizing all academics as "profes-sionals," without specifying differentials in income and jobstability, underlies the prevailing emic views on academicstatus held by lay people, professional analysts and theacademics themselves. Despite the enormous shifts in theclass structure of academia, the "professional" title can still betrotted out by administrators to distract the various constitu-encies from reality. The academic underclass itself oftenclings to this title to shore up its pride on the unemploy-ment line, in a classic example of the role false conscious-ness plays in obscuring oppressive relationships.

But if we look behind the emic curtain of status and"professionalism," and consider instead non-tenured rank interms of real wages, income and job security, it mostclosely resembles the wage earned by undocumented,immigrant domestic workers. In New York City, forexample, a Polish housecleaner who has overstayed hervisitor's visa to earn a small nest egg for use back home,where she expects to receive free health and retirementbenefits, charges an average of $10 dollars an hour.Academic part-timers in anthropology in New York, on theother hand, nominally earn about $50 dollars an hour. Butthis "official" rate is purposefully deceiving. It is calculatedfor only the number of "contact", hours, or hours where theprofessor actually presides over a classroom containingstudents.

Taking into account the actual number of hours spent incourse design, consultation, library time and readingrequired to prepare a course, as well as time spent outsidethe classroom in mentoring students and grading, we havecome up with very different figures. Part-timers in NewYork are usually paid $2200-$3000 for 45 "contact" hoursfor a three-credit semester course. Our calculations showa minimal time expenditure of 125 hours for an introduc-tory course taught repeatedly (without even taking class sizeinto consideration), and 250 hours for a new elective thatwill be taught for the first time. Instead of earning theaverage CUNY wage of $2,225 for a 3-credit semestercourse, a part-timer should be earning $6,225, for anintroductory course, and $12,500 for a new elective, ifactual hours of work were compensated.5 Or, looking at it

another way, in the first instance the part timer is earningonly $18 dollars an hour, still a respectable wage for askilled blue-collar worker, and in the second, only $9dollars an hour, not quite so respectable. And unlike theundocumented housecleaner, the academic part-timer hasno home country that will provide her with free healthbenefits or a secure old-age. Looking at it still a third way,the part-timer is subsidizing the institution to the tune of$4,000 dollars in the first case, and a whopping $10,000dollars in the second, as a result of not being paid forher/his actual time spent working. Marx labelled this theextraction of surplus value.

Maintaining the "professionalism" facade and theillusion of a high hourly wage serves both the institutionand the individual part-timer. The administration keeps themoney, the academic keeps her alleged status. It is in noone's interest to "speak truth to power." In their quietquest to maintain dignity, non-tenured faculty remain at themercy of administrators who can threaten and actuallyreplace demanding part-timers, since the surplus labor isthere, waiting. The threat of replacement affects allnon-tenured faculty and even helps to "speed-up" the workeffort of tenured faculty competing for rank promotions. Itis in this sense that the academic sector is now segmentedand its work processes to a large extent "scientificallymanaged."

The low wage, or secondary, sector of academia iscomposed of teacher-scholars who can generally obtainonly part-time work. It is a variable category, however.Although, as we have seen, an infinitesimal percentage ofthese workers will get full time tenured jobs, most have onoccasion been hired for temporary full-time jobs, orsuccessfully applied for research grants (see Section 3 fordetails). On a day-to-day basis, however, the majorityexperience working conditions that to some extentresemble the conditions of low-skilled labor. Some of thework they must pursue as scholars is akin to industrial"homework" in terms of isolation, low pay for long hoursof effort, and the necessity of having to purchase andmaintain one's productive equipment. The work theyperform as teachers has some of the characteristics general-ly identified with sweatshop work. From the interviews weconducted with our underemployed colleagues and fromour research, we have distilled some of these characteris-tics:

1. The work is a form of sub-contracting of highly paidwork to low-paid piece workers.

2. The low-wage workers earn approximately one-fifthof the salaries of full-timers, even before benefits such ashealth insurance and pensions or perquisites such asxeroxing, postage, office space and travel grants areincluded.

3. Part-timers are interchangeable, hired hastily, oftenover the telephone, without promise of job security orcontinuity.

4. Part-timers are usually working this way involun-tarily.

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5. Part-timers are frequently ineligible to join unions.When they are eligible, obstacles are put in their way todiscourage union activity or the nature of the work, whichoccurs in disparate times and places, makes union activitydifficult.

6. Part-timers often have little or no space for seeingstudents, preparing course materials, grading or storingbooks. Like the garment-maker in a basement sweatshop, orthe restaurant workers sleeping on the tables after the placecloses, the sweated academic must function in the inter-stices of the formal institution's physical plant.

7. They perform evening and weekend work unwantedby full-time faculty.

8. Their work frequently takes them to dangerousneighborhoods at dangerous times, again because full-timefaculty refuse to do such work.

9. Part-timers are deskilled and their work is routinized.10. They fear reprisals for protesting their work condi-

tions.11. They are often not evaluated for their performance.

If they are evaluated, such evaluations may be usedpunitively, rather than to build teaching skills.

12. They are rarely promoted on the basis of achieve-ment.

13. They have inferior, if any, work benefits: no retire-ment contributions, no health insurance, no sick pay,overtime or holiday pay.

14. Part-timers suffer enforced layoffs during summerand winter vacations, or one-third of the year. Many areineligible for unemployment compensation during thosetimes.

15. Part-timers must do additional, unpaid academichome-work to maintain their professional status.

16. Part-timers are cut off from the social dimension ofthe community of work. They are on the periphery ofsocial contacts that create networks for presenting andpublishing papers, disseminating new advances in the field,and, ironically, acquiring and keeping good jobs.

An excerpt from our interview number 08 is typical of theangry eloquence with which many of our colleaguessummarized their situation.

But adjuncting, it makes me angry! You have noleverage, no power, no say in anything. You don't daresay anything to anyone any time, because you're worriedabout your job all the time. And unless someone comesalong and says, "Hey, adjuncts are entitled to some kindof seniority, security or some evaluation on merit"—at leastsomething—then you'll have nothing.... It was much betterwhen I was a graduate student. But once you startteaching 2 courses, 3 courses, your teaching load isbasically that of a full-timer.... I try to teach only coursesI have taught [before] because I don't want to spend thetime anymore preparing. But... I have to take whatever isavailable. So there's just not enough time. You're beingasked to do most of a full-time job and you're given noneof the supports that the full-time faculty gets, and none ofthe benefits—aside from the pay. And you're alwaystreated like something lower to the ground than snake-shit.That's about it.

In this section we indicated how non-tenured academicwork shares the character of an increasingly segmented andcasualized labor of other sectors of the economy. Wesuggested that the notion of "professionalism" for non-tenured academics obscures the reality of part-time work,and ultimately only serves the objectives of cost-savingadministrations. Our argument connects the changes inacademia to world wide transformations in diuturnity ofwork that are set in motion by corporate decisions andallocations. In the last section we move to the micro level,detailingthe impact of these transformations on individuals,as recorded in interviews with our colleagues.

Conversations With Our Colleagues

As a preview, we need to note that the overwhelmingresponse to our question on how to improve workingconditions within the context of casualized work was"equal pay for equal work." In taped interviews rangingfrom 1 to 4 hours, the people we spoke with expressed agreat deal of anger but also offered us insights and con-structive proposals. Often the interviews are interrupted bylaughter at snared, bizarre experiences in the shadow worldof temporary teaching. For example, informant 06 asks, "Ialmost got a [full time] job. Do you want me to tell youabout it?" "Sure, why not?" says the interviewer. "The 'onethat got away.' We all have that story."

Our interviews with 10 colleagues were conductedbetween July and October of 1993. These 10 (8 women,2 men) ranged in age from 42 to 60. Four are married, twolive in long-term partnerships, one is divorced and three aresingle. Two have school-aged children, one has smallgrandchildren. In addition, eight respondents had eitherfull-time or part-time responsibility for care of aging parentsor in-laws. All but one have Ph.D.s earned between 1969and 1991, from Berkeley (1), Brandeis (1), Brown (1),Chicago ABD (1), Columbia University (4), CUNY (1),University of Hawaii (1). All of our respondents havetaught full time at some point in their career, mostlyholding "visiting" positions for periods of 1 to 3 years,although two, both of them women, were terminated after 5and 8 years of teaching, respectively.

All of our respondents have also done part-time teach-ing, one for as long as 24 years. The average number ofpart-time teaching years is 10 and collectively our respon-dents possess 100 years of teaching experience. The pointthat non-tenured teaching wastes this social capital wasrepeatedly raised by our respondents. Because part-timework pays below poverty wages, one of the strategies formaking a living without abandoning the profession involvesseeking full-time, funded research. The "fat" years withbenefits and adequate salaries subsidize "lean" years ofpart-time teaching.

As a result, most of our respondents have conductedsignificant research following their Ph.D. and have pub-lished. Those who were able to get unemploymentcompensation following the termination of their research or"visiting" full-time employment utilized it as a grant forcontinued writing and professional involvement. All

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reported performing work that includes mentoring presentand former students, writing recommendations, serving onthesis and dissertation committees, leading informalseminars, editing colleagues' work, consulting on curricula,writing reviews, reviewing grant proposals, working on theAssociation's committees, and other diverse "volunteer"work. This is expected of fully-employed professionals, apart of their collegiate obligations. Our informants did itpro faono. Like women, who without recognition maintaincrucial social bonds through "kin work," our non-tenuredcolleagues perform "social work" of educating and connect-ing that goes unrecognized and unrewarded as well.

It is our impression, based on this sample, that the earlypublication record of these individuals compares favorablywith records of people who were hired in assistant profes-sor lines and retained. The non-tenured careers divergelater, when the chaos, poverty and stress of temporaryteaching are compounded by lack of institutional andcollegiate support. As one respondent, who for a time didcommunity work after losing her full-time teaching job,said,

Meanwhile, all my research, the book I had been writingat the time I had left University, had been put awayin boxes, and I must say was a source of great sadness tome. I mean, I couldn't bear to think about it.... Conscious-ly I might not have had any regrets, but the fact that tearswould form in my eyes indicated that something else wasreally going on.

The career history of this informant and others indicatesthat it was not disparity in publications that was decisive inwho was hired for tenure line jobs, but the reverse; thediminishing number of decent jobs increasingly led in most(but not all) cases, to impaired possibilities for publishing.

The growing loss of tenured lines that began in the1970s turned the academic market into a lottery, with veryfew winners, increased competition between candidatesand inflated hiring criteria. Under the guise of complyingwith equal employment directives from the federal govern-ment, administrations pursued cynical hiring policies.Questions of class, race and gender in hiring and retentionwere manipulated to provide a cover for expandingadministrative control of academic and fiscal decisions.6

The effects of these administrative policies had differentialnegative impact on individuals. Respondent 03 is marriedto a fellow anthropologist who, after years of searching, hasbeen hired for a tenured line job. The job doesn't payenough to support them and their child, nor to pay thedebts incurred to finance her education. She talks aboutthe effects of constant moves in search for work on her andher family:

There were times when I couldn't get any work because ofmy husband's work. He would be teaching in a place thatwould be a one university town. And they ... would hireme as an adjunct, because they saw that as a way ofgetting variety in their curriculum for no cost at all. Theycould pay me a thousand dollars ... and they could counton me having a place to live.... One time when he taughtin a major university in the , I couldn't find anywork. And there my husband was making almost enough

to make ends meet, but I suffered.... One of my mostrecent experiences was being offered a two-thirds positionwhere my husband worked ... and the next year I was toldI couldn't continue like that because it was nepotism ...[since then] I worked in three different institutions ...teaching seven different courses and driving great distancesto teach these courses with no job benefits and extremelylow salaries. And I was barely able to bring in a third ofwhat my husband makes teaching five courses.... In thepast ten years I have moved on an average of every singleyear. Some years we have moved more than once ... andour child has suffered incredibly.... He's always the newkid in school, and you know how rough that is for kidswhen they're growing up, to always be the new kid inschool. And to always be among the poorer kids too.

The second year [after receiving her Ph.D.] I wasable to get two research grants to try to get publicationstogether ... but I should say that it's been a really greatstruggle to get a lot done ... getting the bills paid, lookingfor places to live, taking care of our child ... and for theupcoming year again, I have only part-time work, nobenefits and the job is not going to even pay for the placeI have to live in.... And I've borrowed incredible amountsof money to finance this education ... and [now] I can'teven find a place to live that's decent for me and my kid!It's unbelievable, just unbelievable. I mean that's thebottom line.

My husband and I have to live separately, we haveto be 200 miles apart in order just to survive asacademics.... Living this incredible existence, most peoplethink we're ridiculous. They can't figure out what myhusband and I are really doing. Are we divorced? Are weseparated? What's the story? For most people the postmodern marriage is not something they can really compre-hend very easily. Those are the main problems, and Iguess, psychologically, the worst problem is having tomove so much ... and having to get used to a whole newenvironment and never being able to keep any friends.

In interview 09 the respondent talks about the relatedaspect of isolation in part-time teaching and its impact onher teaching.

There is a kind of problem that affects the part-timeteacher herself: isolation, feeling of hopelessness, feelingof worthlessness, being treated like shit, the toll this takeson your self-esteem.... But then there is also, I think, thetoll it takes on your ability to teach well, your commitmentto teaching. And that's why I basically stopped doing part-time teaching. You know, at some point I decided to packit in. If I'm offered one year or one semester replacementposition that's physically close enough for me to get to, I'lldo it. But this one course here, one course there ... it'srush and scurry and hurry and slip, to get one courseready on ten days notice. It may be cancelled, in whichcase you have done a tremendous amount of work, sothat's gone for nought. Or, as the canny do, you waituntil the course is really going to take and then you doyour last-minute preparations. And I'm like you, who doesit better the second, the third and the fourth time around.You know, you refine the course as you go along, and Ifind it really exhausting trying to ... adjust to a constantlychanging student population ... this place has one kind,that college has another kind; courses have differentlengths. This one meets three times a week, this onemeets once a week. I find it just exhausting and themoney they pay me isn't worth it.

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Informant 04 echoes the distress at the constant adjust-ment to new teaching situations that casual teachingrequires. The interviewer then states that several peoplehave reported gaining flexibil ity by teaching in diverseinstitutions and asks:

Do you think that over the years of teaching in places thathave different subcultures, different age levels, differentbackgrounds, different classes, one can become moreflexible than colleagues who teach only in one place, overand over again?

In response informant 04 agrees, but stresses the initial lackof appropriate introduction to the expectations, goals andsubculture of departments where she taught:

Every teaching situation is different—you're told nothingabout that. Otherwise benevolent institutions just take itfor granted. Even at , which was the most idealsituation, they didn't tell me what the expectations were.It could have been a disaster because I wasn't sufficientlyinformed about what I was expected to do.

Interviewer:

I think you're right, that the attitudes of people who hireyou are very cavalier in most cases. Maybe they haven'tthought about it, but it seems to me, because of the wholestructure of academia, teaching students is the leastimportant item on their agenda ... that being a goodteacher ... it's "just go in there and sink or swim." Theydon't really care.

Informant 04:

It's a tactic of intimidation.... They know that perfectlywell. Every time they have an opening they have lots ofapplicants from whom they can choose and the "sink orswim" business is another tactic of intimidation. And thefact that some people do sink is in fact necessary ... it'sfunctional ... it enables the whole depressed labor workforce to be whipped into shape. Depending on thesituation, it can be benign neglect or it can be malign anddeliberate.

We found considerable differences in attitude towardnon-tenured teaching between informants who are stillpersuaded that "professional" training provides them with"status," however mean the working conditions, and thosewho analyze their situation in terms of power and class.The former outlook is visible in the fol lowing reflectionsfrom respondent 06, who seems to be simultaneouslyasserting a permanent, ineradicable professional identityand drawing a parallel between the situation of marginal-ized anthropologists and their more traditional "subjects":

I guess the people who are in the position like we are givethe discipline a kind of vitality. The fact that we stillconsider ourselves anthropologists ... to me it feels like avocation. It feels like what I should be doing because, ina sense, it is a status position for me to occupy.... I thinkin terms of the discipline and those people in the establish-ment at this point, the broader social trends that arehappening may be good, because you read about IBMfalling apart, and you read about how the work place isdecentralizing, or how part-time or entrepreneurial workwithin the computer industry is becoming more and more[casualized].... That's becoming more the expectation

rather than the exception to the rule. So that may be goodfor the way we feel about ourselves and the way we'retreated within the broader discipline... The way I look atit is: just as we study any group of people to see howthey have solved their problem of survival, we're doingthe same kind of thing. Just the way we are not judg-mental about the way they adapt to their environment, wetend to be perhaps less judgmental about ourselves andothers. Ethically and morally [we are in a better position]than someone who is well situated in the social structuremight be. It certainly demonstrates the human spirit ofsurvival. Not that you're willing to do anything. Butwhatever you happen to find to do, that you can do,somehow you can make some sense of it in terms of theanthropological paradigm.

The interviewer asks, "What? 'I am an anthropologist andtherefore I am'?" 06 replies:

That's right. So I enjoy it.... And I've seen it time andagain with my colleagues who are in the same boat I am.When they identify themselves they say "I am an anthro-pologist." That's what we'll be regardless of whetherwe're sweeping floors or teaching English, whatever. Ithink it's an important thing to bring to the attention ofthose in the establishment.

This confident sense of identity was less salient forrespondent 04, who emphasized the unequal powerrelations pervading the profession:

There are major class divisions that are unspoken, unmen-tionable, and there is a lot of institutional investment inkeeping much of this under the carpet. And then thepeople who are victimized are invited to participate in thisperformance of denial because they would only becontributing to their own injury by acknowledging beingstigmatized.

Like several others, this informant believes that opendiscussion is the first step toward changing the underpaidand stigmatized status of non-tenured teaching. And likethe previous informant, she believes that the presentsituation can lead to a redefinition of the concept of"work":

Even if academic departments don't have too much power... speech is the first level of attaining any kind of control.And to remain silent is to deny any possibility of any kindof change.... So if this is something people would talkmore about, up front, "so OK, no big secret, it's not adisgrace," and the fact that it's not only universities but inall kinds of work that the life-long, sinecured positions, thelife-long regular job [is over]. The definition of work, thatpeople are now more responsible for themselves and beingindependent contractors ... can bring about some redefini-tion. That this isn't some kind of disgrace and a catchingdisease, whereby people want to avoid you, but indeed[you] might have interesting things to say that up to nowthey didn't want to hear about because it represents theworst nightmare about what could have happened tothem.

Informants had various suggestions and recommenda-tions. All urged proportionate wages, pegged to those offull-time teachers, as real compensation for equal time andeffort. Most also wanted health and retirement benefits, a

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significant issue for those who are no longer young andwho suffer considerable stress from their working condi-tions. As one informant said, "stresses and strains expressthemselves in different ways.... I have lived with terror asmy companion for much of the time because there's reallynot too much between me and the street."

As basic, first-step reforms to the current exploitativesituation, our informants urged security of appointments, intenured or contractual half and part-time positions. Theneed to establish guidelines for rank promotions within thepart-time situations was also stressed. Institutional affilia-tions for access to libraries and for obtaining grants werelisted as crucial. As one respondent said, "I have had to dohand stands and crawl on my belly" to get into a researchlibrary.

Describing "the subtle games" of stratification that go onat meetings and in department gatherings, where the non-tenured professional has to "withstand the situation incomplete anonymity," one informant pointed to theprofession's need to make more effective efforts towardinclusion. But she, like others, also believes that solidaritycan only be achieved with equal pay and security ofappointments. Most yearned for, but did not realisticallyexpect, more support from colleagues lucky enough to havepermanent jobs, because they are aware that the segmenta-tion of the academic sector encourages competit ion. Theyunderstand that even tenured jobs may no longer be assecure in a global climate inhospitable to human valuesand lives. As informant 07 noted, "Yes, it's a society ofwaste. People can be just wasted, as wel l as paper, astrees—it's an ecology of waste."

Respondent 09 succinctly forecast the future of aca-demic jobs if present trends continue:

Ideally, departments should be forced to go back to hiringfull-time people. I'm very disturbed about the trend ofusing part-timers because I see it as a way of underminingtenure. Eventually, part-timers will replace tenuredpeople—deans like the flexibility. "We'd like to get rid ofProfessor Crock, also Dr. Youngblood because he's aMarxist, and we can do without Professor Womanspirit."If pragmatically this is all we can hope for, [we need]essentially tenured, permanent part-timers, who areproportionally paid, with benefits, and integrated into theirdepartments, because there's no point in having a caste ofserfs who are crammed into the broom closet down theend of the hall.

Meanwhi le, we take comfort in varying coping attitudes.Informant 02 reflects the "mendicant" position, similar torespondent 06, when he says, "We are the migrant workersin academic vineyards," whi le informant 08, reaches forgallows humor: "My Ph.D. is only good for gettingbumped up to first class on the airlines." Although mostremain committed to anthropology, several note thegrowing irrelevance of the discipline to the real problemsof our wor ld , problems that are reflected in the wastage ofour training. As informant 05 commented when askedwhether she would go into anthropology if she werechoosing a f ield today:

I don't really know. Intellectually, I find it challenging andsatisfying. There is synthesis that is possible in a field likeanthropology that I don't think any of the other socialsciences offers. That's the strength of anthropology. Buton the other hand, anthropology is increasingly rejectingthis heritage ... it has really swapped that birthright for amess of pottage.... When people come up to me and say,"Oh, are of still doing that?" this is not the way I prefer toevaluate intellectual productivity. If I were going into itnow, no, I would be bored and consider it arid, sterile....Look at the situation! There's going to be a conference inthe fall on "ethnography and surrealism." That's probablya good note to end [the interview], anyway.

We end with a quote from respondent 03:

I'm attracted to anthropology not because of the money,not because of the prestige of being an academic ... butbecause of a variety of things, a constellation of featuresthat make anthropology an interesting discipline.... I don'tlike the jargon, I don't like the pain, I don't like all theproblems associated with academics. But anthropology!I think I would have naturally gravitated in that directionbecause of the way I think and because of my interest inunderstanding the world.

Notes

1. The term "underclass" is increasingly used by conservativecommentators and social scientists as a derogatory label, stereo-typing poor people's strategies and adaptive behavior. We use theterm metaphorically to dramatize the intensity of discriminationand marginalization non-tenured academics face vis-a-vis theirrelatively privileged, fully-employed colleagues.

2. Part-time college teaching salaries are so low that it is difficultfor such a teacher to support her/himself, let alone a family, bysuch work. In New York City, one of the most expensive in theworld, part-timers are paid $2200-2700 per 1-semester course.Because of the time demanded, few people can teach more than6 such courses in a year (a strategy that entails dashing betweentwo or three colleges each week.) In contrast the 1992-3 meansalaries of faculty at a 4-year liberal arts college in New York City,for teaching loads of 4-6 courses per year, were: assistantprofessors $38,150; associate professors, $46,800; full professors$68,800.

Thus people's ability to cling to the margins of the profession,as part-timers, for any length of time is highly dependent oncooperation from an individual's support networks: an employedpartner, well-off parents, house-mates willing to subsidize thescholar in their midst, or another, better-paying job in addition.One explanation for the concentration of women in part-timeteaching may have to do with their structural and personalwillingness to exist in such a dependent position.

3. The City University system, consisting of 4-year colleges and2-year community colleges in each borough and a centrally-located graduate center, was once New York's pride and joy andis lovingly evoked in (often romanticized) evocations of the city'simmigrant heyday ca. 1920-1960.

4. If the term "independent scholar" is an effort to prettify thesituation of marginal academics, various independent scholarorganizations have nevertheless played vital roles within theprofessions in winning institutional concessions for the un- ormarginally-employed. These organizations have persuadedinstitutions to grant library cards to independent scholars and haveforced funding agencies to accept grant applications from peoplewithout institutional affiliation. The current target is publications

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that still refuse to review books by people without academicpositions.

5. If the part-timer were to receive 1/6th of the average assistantprofessor's salary, s/he should receive $6358 per course.

6. Superficial administrative compliance with equal opportunityguidelines often provides the cover for divisive administrativeagendas. For example, recently the St. Bonaventure Universityunilaterally fired male faculty members of whom 18 were tenured.The rationale publicly offered was "fiscal exigency" and the"glaring lack of women on our faculty." At the same time,however, the university slashed salaries, reduced its contributionsto health and retirement benefits, and is engaged in a multi-million dollar building expansion (Nuttall, 1994:1-2). We do nothave space here to discuss the ethnic and racial cleavages that arefostered by the "divide and rule" administrative tactics. Theydeserve a separate study, because they cut, deeply, and in manydirections.

References

American Association of University Professors. 1992. "Report Onthe Status of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty." /Academe, Nov/Dec.

Bradley, Candice and Ulrika Dahl. 1993. "Gender Differences inCareers." Anthropology Newsletter, 43(7):35.

Brint, Steven. 1988. The Upper Professionals of the Dual City:A High Command of Commerce, Culture and Civic Regulations.New York: Committee of New York City, Social Science ResearchCouncil.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1993. Permanent lob Losses as aPercentage of Unemployment. Washington, DC: US GovernmentPrinting Office.

DePalma, Anthony. 1993. "Universities' Reliance on CompaniesRaises Vexing Questions on Research." The New York Times,3/17/93.

Diesenhouse, Susan. 1993. "In a Shaky Economy Even Profes-sionals Are Temps." The New York Times, 5/16/93, p. 5.

Edwards, Mary. 1991. "The Decline of the American Professori-ate 1970-1990." Paper delivered at the annual meetings of theAmerican Political Science Association. Washington, DC,September 1, 1991.

. 1992. Women and Immigrants: The Feminization andInternationalization of U.S. College Faculties. Purchase, NY:Department of Political Science, SUNY.

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Harris, Marvin. 1979. Cultural Materialism The Struggle for aScience of Culture. New York: Random House.

Harrison, Bennett and Barry Bluestone. 1988. The Great U-Turn:Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America. NewYork: Basic Books.

Kilborn, Peter. 1993. "New Jobs Lack the Old Security in a Timeof 'Disposable Workers'." The New York Times 3/1 5/93, p. A1 5.

Kushner, Tony. 1993. "University Or Trade School?" The NewYork Times, Op-Ed., 6/28/93.

McCarthy, Coleman. 1991. "Academia's Stoop Laborers." LosAngeles Times, 9/28/91.

McFadden, Robert. 1993. "CUNY's Board Gives Backing to aRedesign: Program Could Be Cut in Efficiency Reviews." TheNew York Times, 6/29/93, p. B1.

National Center for Education Statistics. 1992. Digest of Educa-tional Statistics. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.

Negi, Elliot. 1993. "Why College Tuitions Are So High."Atlantic Monthly, March 1993, 32-44.

Nuttall, Steven. 1994. "St. Bonaventure Fires 22 FacultyMembers, 18 of Them Tenured." Melville, NY, New YorkAcademe, 9/94: 1-2.

Sassen, Saskia. 1990. The Global City: New York, London andTokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Uchitelle, Louis. 1993a. "Those High Tech Jobs Can Cross theBorder Too." The New York Times, 3/28/93, p. 4.

. 1993b. "Temporary Workers are on the Increase in Nation'sFactories." The New York Times, 7/6/93, p. 1.

. 1993c. "Strong Companies Are Joining Trend to EliminateJobs." The New York Times, 7/26/93, p. A l .

Webster, Cynthia. 1993. Personal communication.

Webster, Cynthia and Michael Burton. 1993. "Update on the5-year Survey and Results From the 1992 Survey." AAA Commit-tee to Study the Academic Employment of Women in Anthropo-logy. Unpublished manuscript.

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