Abstract
I have been looking forward to reading Academic Conferences as Neoliberal Commodities since having first seen it featured on social media and having read an LSE (The London School of Economics and Political Science) blog by Nicolson (http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/08/16/the-last-great-unknown-the-impact-of-academic-conferences/). It was good to see the final manuscript (I had access to an electronic post-proof copy) and there is a lot to like. Another part of the reason for wanting to read this book was that the title had piqued my interest, and it had made me wonder two things. First, I found myself thinking how exactly is it the conference could be seen as neoliberal? And second, why hasn’t anyone written a book about academic conferences before? To answer the first of these, there is a really good, compact discussion in the opening section of the book on neoliberalism in the academy and it helps to put flesh on the bones of what is sometimes a very sparsely defined and nebulous concept. For the second, I am still not sure why no-one has tried to write about this before at length, but the book certainly does open up some interesting lines of inquiry.
This is definitely and deliberately an unconventional book. One of the interesting devices Nicolson deploys is to use the names of events associated with conferences as chapters to structure the book. So, for instance, we have “registration” instead of a preface and the “opening keynote” instead of an introduction—then, “parallel sessions” report empirical examples and a “plenary report” goes into detail on conference case studies. There are a number of other features throughout the book which break up sequential flow and make the book seem more authentic and immediate. One small example being to use non-sequential room numbers in the sessions so that the chapters read: room 11, room 15, and so on. The footnotes are also unusual at times in terms of how openly they invite readers into the creation of the text (p. 58). There are also rich and intriguing anecdotes in it (e.g. the “Wolf Man” on p. 23) that help to make it an interesting read. Nicolson has certainly made the most of a novel format to create something that is original, and this license also allows him to carry out work with the care and passion of genuine and sustained intellectual curiosity, rather than having to follow—perhaps narrower—academic strictures. Overall, there is a lot in the book that is clever and it seems a kind of cleverness that reflects a natural intelligence which is not stilted or formulaic. Instead, there is a certain fluidity of thought that lends itself well to this emerging topic (the academic conference). The only other text which this brought to mind was David Lodges account of an academic conference—which is indeed mentioned in the opening, “welcome” section (p. 7).
Nicolson’s book is published as part of a new series by Palgrave, called Pivot. The rationale behind this is to turn research that is longer than a journal article, but shorter than a typical monograph into published work. Palgrave also tries to do this more quickly than the book publishing process usually takes. This would seem to make sense as a marketing proposition in that there are few other outlets that allow this neither-article-nor-book length work to come to light. Does it make sense as an intellectual proposition though? I think this is very much a question of fit and in this case there is a good fit. One advantage of a Pivot-style approach is that it enables us to explore emerging or frontier topics and it may be there is scope to open up more work in the area, following Nicolson’s lead.
A potential disadvantage with the pivot route to publishing is that ideas do not perhaps have as long as they could to mature. I can imagine that for some authors it could be that the conventional length of the review and publishing process is appropriate and even helpful if it gives time and space for reflection and revisions. Happily enough for Nicolson the speedier pivot route seems to have worked well and even though this is his first book it reads as being something that is both fresh and developed. If I had one conceptual extension to suggest it would have been to look at the concepts of social and cultural capital in case these may have provided an additional insight into neoliberalism. Having said this, that reflects a personal interest in Bourdieu rather than being an obvious omission. Overall, this is fluently written—an interesting read and also the first substantive treatment of this topic with a decent body of relevant literature reviewed to support it. The innovations in style and structure are really refreshing and I hope to see more from Nicolson in future.