Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Legibility Zones

Associated organisational unit

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Legibility Zones: An empirically-informed framework for considering unbelonging and exclusion in contemporary English academia

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>21/07/2021
<mark>Journal</mark>Social Inclusion
Issue number3
Volume9
Number of pages11
Pages (from-to)16-26
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This article introduces a new, empirically-derived conceptual framework for considering exclusion in English higher education (HE): legibility zones. Drawing on interviews with academic employees in England, it suggests that participants orientate themselves to a powerful imaginary termed the hegemonic academic. Failing to align with this ideal can engender a sense of dislocation conceptualised as unbelonging. The mechanisms through which hegemonic academic identity is constituted and unbelonging is experienced are mapped onto three domains: the institutional, the ideological, and the embodied. The framework reveals the mutable and intersecting nature of these zones, highlighting the complex dynamics of unbelonging and the attendant challenge presented to inclusion projects when many apparatuses of exclusion are perceived as fundamental to what HE is for, what an academic is, and how academia functions.