Essential Properties and Functions of Academic Conferences: A Field Theory-based Perspective
Huang Juchen1, Zhao Qiang2
1.Institute of Higher Education, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China 2.Institute of Science and Technology Education, Hubei University, Xianning 437000, China
Abstract：Based on the ideas and perspectives of Bourdieu’s “field theory”, this paper focuses on the essential properties and functions of academic conferences from the core concepts and perspectives of capital, inherent habits, actors and their strategies. The analysis reveals that: (1) academic conferences are rich in connotation and form. Academic conferences are not only a concept of physical space in daily existence, a product of social life, a medium and means of exchanging academic ideas and producing knowledge, but also an aggregated network of relationships formed by individual scholars or academic organizations and other actors in different positions and the academic resources and even academic power they occupy, while their operation relies on the academic reputation, academic values, academic attitudes, academic resources and other specific capital recognized by peers. At the same time, its operation depends on the existence and supply of specific capital such as peer-recognized academic reputation, academic values, academic attitudes, and academic resources, while academic responsibilities and academic norms maintain and regulate the structure and order of academic activities as unique forms of habits, and together make academic conferences always maintain a dynamic tension. (2) Under the extension of the above meaning, academic conferences have multiple functions. ①Academic discipline and control. The academic conference is a microcosmic place for constructing various kinds of order and relationships related to academic activities. Academic conferences initiated by academic communities can provide professional discourse, technical and theoretical norms and methods for individual academic activities; ②Linking and exchanging resources. Academic conferences are essentially a kind of “resource link,” adhering to the principle of mutual benefit and complementarity of resources, in which resource demanders and resource providers exchange resources to achieve a win-win situation; ③Knowledge production and innovation. The academic conference takes the activities related to knowledge production, dissemination and service as its responsibility, and assumes the role of “knowledge gatekeeper”. (3) Academic conferences have their own unique operation logic and mechanism in specific disciplines, but they also reveal some of their current problems: the “alienation” of academic norms induced by the intervention of external administrative forces, the “polarization” of resource distribution caused by the monopoly of a few academic elites, and the utilitarianism of the assessment and evaluation system. However, it also reveals some of its current problems: the “alienation” of academic norms induced by the intervention of external administrative forces, the “polarization” of resource distribution caused by the monopoly of a few academic elites, and the “weakening” of intellectual innovation brought by the utilitarian orientation of the assessment and evaluation system. (4) In order to better play the role of academic conferences, the academic quality and communication effects of academic conferences should be improved by introducing institutional regulatory documents, regulating the participation behavior of administrative leaders, optimizing the management system of academic conferences, promoting diversity and inclusion of participants and establishing a reasonable assessment and evaluation system of academic conferences. Finally, the contribution and value of this paper lies in the theoretical interpretation and analysis of an important academic phenomenon that is often overlooked in the academic world from the perspective of “field theory”, which is the first time to clarify the essential attributes and functions of academic conferences in domestic research, and to use it as a “window” to guide people to pay attention to deeper issues, including: where are the academic tribes and their groups going in their overall value pursuit in the academic system? What is the real-life situation of scholars? How to build a healthy academic ecological landscape in a country? And so on.
2022, Vol. 52 
