“We strongly encourage qualified women and minorities to apply”: Ethnicity, language and gender as personal, political and epistemological positions
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Using auto-ethnography, the presentation/paper will explore the possibilities and challenges offered
to a female researcher coming from a post-Yugoslav minority background -- myself. While personal,
the account aims at bringing to light some of the wider structural dimensions of the seemingly
individual/private decisions, opportunities and difficulties, reframing them as collective/public. My
argument concerns the relevance of engaging with not only the researchers’ personal but also their
institutional and cultural positionalities. I will construct it through a case study of the experience of
conducting research about multilingualism and state-language learning by members of the Hungarian
minorities in three fieldwork sites: Vojvodina, Transylvania and Prekmurje with the affiliation to the
University of Oslo. My paper will relate to contemporary sociolinguistic literature that is starting to
acknowledge that multilingualism is not only a resource but can be a barrier as well,... in particular at
the labor market – of which the academia is no exception. The other set of literature the paper will
use is that on academic precarity with an additional focus of a gendered perspective.
The presentation will start by a personal recollection of my interest in the topic as well as the
institutional background of undertaking the research in the three locations. The narratives about the
personal and the institutional setup will serve not merely as “context” or “background”, but I see
them co-constitutive of my study. The meta-research will therefore attempt to show some of the
(im)possible positions I have taken in my research. These are scattered around various axes, some of which are shared with interlocutors and others that distance the researcher. These include the
presence or the lack of the following: knowledge of the state language, the shared historical legacy of
Yugoslavia, the socialist heritage, a linguistic dialect spoken, gender, age, class, education, political
ideology, etc. These positions however do not only have consequences for the interpretation of the
“research material” and the “results” but are positions negotiated on another level: as a precarious
female researcher from the former Yugoslavia in Western academia. The paper will therefore also
touch upon dilemmas related to: What are the career strategies available to a post-Yugoslav female
postdoc? Being Hungarian, is she (post-)Yugoslav at all? Where does gender play into her roles?
What are the personal and academic qualities that are valorized and what are the traits that can
hinder her career? What perspectives and what methodologies accessible to her and why she is
discouraged from taking others? What issues is she supposed to discuss and what shall she better be silent about when presenting the research? Where is the demarcation line between East and West, knowledge production and reproduction, personal and political? Even though raising questions primarily about post-Yugoslav academic subjectivities, the issues the paper engages with are also related to ethno-national epistemologies and to (im)possibilities of a “safe distance” as a researcher from the former Yugoslavia precariously producing knowledge in a Western (Northern) academic institution.
Извор:
Workshop on Post-Yugoslav Neoliberal Academic Selves and Possibilities of Knowing the Balkans Otherwise, University of St Gallen, 5.2. – 7.2.2020., 2020Финансирање / пројекти:
- Министарство науке, технолошког развоја и иновација Републике Србије, институционално финансирање - 200025 (Универзитет у Београду, Институт за филозофију и друштвену теорију) (RS-MESTD-inst-2020-200025)
Напомена:
- Konferenciju je organizovao Univerzitet u Sent-Galenu, Švajcarska
Колекције
Институција/група
IFDTTY - CONF AU - Racz, Krisztina PY - 2020 UR - http://rifdt.instifdt.bg.ac.rs/123456789/3186 AB - Using auto-ethnography, the presentation/paper will explore the possibilities and challenges offered to a female researcher coming from a post-Yugoslav minority background -- myself. While personal, the account aims at bringing to light some of the wider structural dimensions of the seemingly individual/private decisions, opportunities and difficulties, reframing them as collective/public. My argument concerns the relevance of engaging with not only the researchers’ personal but also their institutional and cultural positionalities. I will construct it through a case study of the experience of conducting research about multilingualism and state-language learning by members of the Hungarian minorities in three fieldwork sites: Vojvodina, Transylvania and Prekmurje with the affiliation to the University of Oslo. My paper will relate to contemporary sociolinguistic literature that is starting to acknowledge that multilingualism is not only a resource but can be a barrier as well, in particular at the labor market – of which the academia is no exception. The other set of literature the paper will use is that on academic precarity with an additional focus of a gendered perspective. The presentation will start by a personal recollection of my interest in the topic as well as the institutional background of undertaking the research in the three locations. The narratives about the personal and the institutional setup will serve not merely as “context” or “background”, but I see them co-constitutive of my study. The meta-research will therefore attempt to show some of the (im)possible positions I have taken in my research. These are scattered around various axes, some of which are shared with interlocutors and others that distance the researcher. These include the presence or the lack of the following: knowledge of the state language, the shared historical legacy of Yugoslavia, the socialist heritage, a linguistic dialect spoken, gender, age, class, education, political ideology, etc. These positions however do not only have consequences for the interpretation of the “research material” and the “results” but are positions negotiated on another level: as a precarious female researcher from the former Yugoslavia in Western academia. The paper will therefore also touch upon dilemmas related to: What are the career strategies available to a post-Yugoslav female postdoc? Being Hungarian, is she (post-)Yugoslav at all? Where does gender play into her roles? What are the personal and academic qualities that are valorized and what are the traits that can hinder her career? What perspectives and what methodologies accessible to her and why she is discouraged from taking others? What issues is she supposed to discuss and what shall she better be silent about when presenting the research? Where is the demarcation line between East and West, knowledge production and reproduction, personal and political? Even though raising questions primarily about post-Yugoslav academic subjectivities, the issues the paper engages with are also related to ethno-national epistemologies and to (im)possibilities of a “safe distance” as a researcher from the former Yugoslavia precariously producing knowledge in a Western (Northern) academic institution. C3 - Workshop on Post-Yugoslav Neoliberal Academic Selves and Possibilities of Knowing the Balkans Otherwise, University of St Gallen, 5.2. – 7.2.2020. T1 - “We strongly encourage qualified women and minorities to apply”: Ethnicity, language and gender as personal, political and epistemological positions UR - https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_rifdt_3186 ER -
@conference{ author = "Racz, Krisztina", year = "2020", abstract = "Using auto-ethnography, the presentation/paper will explore the possibilities and challenges offered to a female researcher coming from a post-Yugoslav minority background -- myself. While personal, the account aims at bringing to light some of the wider structural dimensions of the seemingly individual/private decisions, opportunities and difficulties, reframing them as collective/public. My argument concerns the relevance of engaging with not only the researchers’ personal but also their institutional and cultural positionalities. I will construct it through a case study of the experience of conducting research about multilingualism and state-language learning by members of the Hungarian minorities in three fieldwork sites: Vojvodina, Transylvania and Prekmurje with the affiliation to the University of Oslo. My paper will relate to contemporary sociolinguistic literature that is starting to acknowledge that multilingualism is not only a resource but can be a barrier as well, in particular at the labor market – of which the academia is no exception. The other set of literature the paper will use is that on academic precarity with an additional focus of a gendered perspective. The presentation will start by a personal recollection of my interest in the topic as well as the institutional background of undertaking the research in the three locations. The narratives about the personal and the institutional setup will serve not merely as “context” or “background”, but I see them co-constitutive of my study. The meta-research will therefore attempt to show some of the (im)possible positions I have taken in my research. These are scattered around various axes, some of which are shared with interlocutors and others that distance the researcher. These include the presence or the lack of the following: knowledge of the state language, the shared historical legacy of Yugoslavia, the socialist heritage, a linguistic dialect spoken, gender, age, class, education, political ideology, etc. These positions however do not only have consequences for the interpretation of the “research material” and the “results” but are positions negotiated on another level: as a precarious female researcher from the former Yugoslavia in Western academia. The paper will therefore also touch upon dilemmas related to: What are the career strategies available to a post-Yugoslav female postdoc? Being Hungarian, is she (post-)Yugoslav at all? Where does gender play into her roles? What are the personal and academic qualities that are valorized and what are the traits that can hinder her career? What perspectives and what methodologies accessible to her and why she is discouraged from taking others? What issues is she supposed to discuss and what shall she better be silent about when presenting the research? Where is the demarcation line between East and West, knowledge production and reproduction, personal and political? Even though raising questions primarily about post-Yugoslav academic subjectivities, the issues the paper engages with are also related to ethno-national epistemologies and to (im)possibilities of a “safe distance” as a researcher from the former Yugoslavia precariously producing knowledge in a Western (Northern) academic institution.", journal = "Workshop on Post-Yugoslav Neoliberal Academic Selves and Possibilities of Knowing the Balkans Otherwise, University of St Gallen, 5.2. – 7.2.2020.", title = "“We strongly encourage qualified women and minorities to apply”: Ethnicity, language and gender as personal, political and epistemological positions", url = "https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_rifdt_3186" }
Racz, K.. (2020). “We strongly encourage qualified women and minorities to apply”: Ethnicity, language and gender as personal, political and epistemological positions. in Workshop on Post-Yugoslav Neoliberal Academic Selves and Possibilities of Knowing the Balkans Otherwise, University of St Gallen, 5.2. – 7.2.2020.. https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_rifdt_3186
Racz K. “We strongly encourage qualified women and minorities to apply”: Ethnicity, language and gender as personal, political and epistemological positions. in Workshop on Post-Yugoslav Neoliberal Academic Selves and Possibilities of Knowing the Balkans Otherwise, University of St Gallen, 5.2. – 7.2.2020.. 2020;. https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_rifdt_3186 .
Racz, Krisztina, "“We strongly encourage qualified women and minorities to apply”: Ethnicity, language and gender as personal, political and epistemological positions" in Workshop on Post-Yugoslav Neoliberal Academic Selves and Possibilities of Knowing the Balkans Otherwise, University of St Gallen, 5.2. – 7.2.2020. (2020), https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_rifdt_3186 .