Precarization, Productivism, and University Bureaucracy: Doing Anthropology in a Neoliberal Academy

Precarización, productivismo y la burocracia universitaria: hacer antropología en la academia neoliberal

The transformations that have taken place in the last two decades in the university world system have implied a series of demands oriented towards what university bureaucracies value as productivity in order to make visible and position, based on a series of indicators, university establishments, in which rankings of the universities and to achieve the accreditations and recognitions of the different academic programs. For anthropologists this has meant a growing undermining of favourable conditions for the production of relevant anthropological knowledge, as well as a blurring of the specificities of our discipline in university environments. Faced with this scenario, this text, coming from a series of exchanges that the authors have carried out in experiences around Latin American and Caribbean anthropologies, seeks to problematize and discuss the constitution of a world university system. From this conception we observe and develop some significant constituent elements, such as: the management models of universities, the structuring conditions around publishing, and the work of anthropology in current university contexts and we close by leaving some challenges and research agendas.