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Paying dearly for privilege: conceptions, experiences and temporalities of vocation in academic life

Abstract This paper explores the forms of lived time that characterise a vocational relationship to academic work. Drawing on interviews and surveys with over 30 academics who have left the profession early or have given up looking for ongoing academic work, it paints a portrait of vocationalism as a double-edged sword. The research found that despite widespread disaffection and disillusionment, academics overwhelmingly consider their profession to be a ‘vocation’. A vocational relation to work implicates temporality and embodiment in particular ways. Vocation is, as David T. Hansen argues, not merely an attitude, idea or feeling of commitment, but a mode of being enacted through practice. It relies on big temporalities (legacies from the past; visions of a collective future) and on particular configurations of lived time (or what Sarah Sharma calls ‘temporal architectures’). It typically produces a sense of purpose, meaning and satisfaction, while also being open to exploitation by managers.